Teenagers trapped in cars will tell you everything.

I know this because it’s Emery’s last year at home, and I started doing school pickup again after six years. I wanted the time. She gets in, drops her bag, and I get a download of her day. Sometimes she naps. Sometimes she reads. Sometimes she just yaps the whole ride home. Her word, not mine. Accurate, though.

Last week she got in the car talking about North Korea.

She was actually INTO it. Telling me about her lessons, the history, the regime, the way people lived. And I sat there realizing I didn’t know any of it. Not really. I knew the headlines. I knew the vague shape of it. But the details she was sharing? I was starting from zero. (Also her history teacher is phenomenal.)

Then I remembered I had a book.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. It follows six North Korean defectors over fifteen years, through famine and surveillance and the slow, quiet process of realizing that everything you were told was a lie. It had been sitting somewhere in my house, unread, for who knows how long.

So right there in the car I said, oh, I should read that while you’re learning about North Korea.

That was it. Not to get ahead of her. Just to be in it at the same time. She was already ahead of me. I just pulled up alongside her. Let her be the one who knew things first.

On Sunday morning I hit a photograph. Chapter 1 is called “Holding Hands in the Dark.” The photo is a satellite image of the Korean peninsula at night. South Korea is lit up. North Korea is almost completely black.

I stopped.

Because of the people in the dark. What are they doing right now? Do they read? Do they sit together and talk, or is it just… quiet? What does it feel like to be that close to the other half of your country and have no idea what’s on the other side?

I took a photo of the page and texted it to Emery.


She texted back one word.

Damn.

Yeah. That’s exactly right.