Drift Reality > South Korea > February 2001

Jessica is one of my older students, she is about fourteen. She comes to class everyday and sits with her friends and gossips sometimes, but she listens most of the time. She laughs at my humor, most of the time it is comments I don't expect any of them to understand, and this tells me that she listens to me more than I think.

Maybe sometimes, when she is indulging in the trivialities, which surround her, she is casting sideward glances in my direction.

She is cute and she will be beautiful perhaps one day. She is tall and as a result, somewhat lanky because she has not completely acquired a talent for grace, but she is getting there. When her friends do not have the capability, or the confidence to speak to me, sometimes she explains to me on their behalf in excellent English.

I decided to take her and her classmates to McDonalds one day, and as we were seated, munching our burgers, I noticed a bruise on her face, right below her cheek.

"Did you fall or something?" I ask but she just looks down at her French fries and doesn't say anything.

One of her classmates turns to her and places her hand on her shoulder.

It is not the first time that I've seen this blue circle on the face of a student.

Every time I inquire about it's origin, I am met with an expression that seems to echo in my mind because I have seen it in the past and the future. The look disappears though and it is soon forgotten in a haze of gossip.