When You Trap a Tiger: Chapters 14–26

She scoffs. "Typical. You hear one story about a male tiger and think we're all the same? Humans are the worst."

Maybe I'm trapped in an elaborate dream—but I don't think so.

I feel the chill in the air, the brush of goose bumps on my arm, the warped wood beneath my feet, and the pinch in my shoulders as I press them back.

"Why so hostile, Little Egg? I am not going to eat you, just so you know. I'm on a kimchi diet."

"What kind of sick?" I ask, even though I already know it's the bad kind.
Mom grimaces, then pulls me over to the couch.

"That's what's causing the symptoms you might have seen: the nausea, the paranoia, and all the—Well, sometimes with this type of illness, patients can have, uh, hallucinations."

"It's just because I don't have a word brain. That's why. Or a numbers one, I guess. But I'm going to be a psychologist. I have a very intuitive understanding of the human psyche," he says, as if he's reciting something he read online. "I'm very good at reading people."

"I mean, hypothetically. Obviously not actually. But, like, if someone were to catch a tiger."

I glance at Ricky, but he's just eating his second pudding, completely oblivious to any strangeness.

I feel a pang of jealousy because Sam just got someone's phone number, no problem, like everything is easy for her.

Silently I tell him, Give me your number now, super subtle.

"It's not intense," I tell him, bristling a little.

"You didn't even ask me if you could have a friend over," she says, her voice bordering on exasperation.

I nod along, but my mind snags on the used to. It's like what he said at the grocery store: she used to make sticky buns. She likes hats, in the present tense, but they used to buy hats.

For one overwhelming moment, I want to uncork the jars and hold them to my ear like seashells, so I can hear magic inside, roaring like the ocean.

Instead of two braids framing my face, my hair is twisted into a braided crown, with wispy strands hanging around my ears.

What I thought were dust motes in the jar look like stars now—an entire miniature galaxy, captured in glass.

"The truth is always painful, especially when it's been hidden so long. There are bound to be unexpected complications."

"That place is just a little…” Mom makes a face like she's smelling rotten garlic but trying to be polite about it. "Well, it's not authentic."

The restaurant sign says DRAGON THYME! in red curlicue letters, and two stone lions sit by the doors, guarding the entrance.

"I haven't been here in ages," Mom says as she ushers us inside.

Sam raises an eyebrow at me like, Can you believe? And I furrow mine back like, Halmoni is wild.

At Halmoni's last doctor's appointment, the prognosis wasn't good. She could have a couple of months, or maybe just a week.

"You have a beautiful home," Mom says, her voice stilted and overly formal.

Sam shrugs and throws the rope out the window. It pulls taut against the bed frame, and I lean out the window.