I Am Not Jessica Chen
Ann Liang
One
I’ve always had this theory that if I want something badly enough, the universe will make sure to keep it just out of my reach—either out of boredom or cruelty, like an invisible hand dangling stars on a string.
Sometimes the universe will be creative with its tricks too. Take, for instance, that morning a snowstorm appeared out of nowhere. It never even snows in our part of town, and the sky had been an especially vivid acrylic blue, the sun fat and golden and rising over the tufted treetops. But I’d left all my notes in the classroom at Saturday Chinese school, and I desperately needed them for Havenwood’s monthly language test on Monday—I still couldn’t remember half the phrases we’d been taught, which ones meant “this floating life” and which ones meant “the flow of years like water” and “to dream of becoming a butterfly.” If I didn’t have my notes, I would fail.
And if I failed, I would have to tell my parents. Watch them try to hide their disappointment.
So I’d rushed down to the car, my chest tight, my heart thrumming with urgency, when, as if summoned by a curse, the clouds had flocked together overhead like wild dark birds, and the temperature had plummeted. The snow had fallen fast, in a mad flurry, quickly sweeping across the town and blanketing the elm trees and blocking off the roads. Chinese school ended up being closed for the entire weekend—something I hadn’t known was possible, considering that it never closed, not even during Christmas and New Year’s or when one of the buildings caught fire—and I learned to never expect any help from the universe.
But I still can’t stop myself from hoping it’ll be different this time around. Maybe a miracle will happen. Maybe the universe will be kind for once, and when I reach up, the stars will fall into my palms.
Maybe . . .
I lean my head back against my locked bedroom door and draw in a deep, rattling breath. Another. Another. It doesn’t work; the terrible tingling sensation in my fingers only spreads down to my feet, mutates into a violent trembling. My laptop is open and laid out on the floor below, the screen staring back at me like a beckoning, the time blinking in the corner.
4:59 p.m.
One minute until the email from Harvard arrives. Until I can know for certain if I was accepted or not. If I’m good enough or not. One minute until my life changes for better or worse, every passing second stirring up the wasps in my belly.
I can almost imagine it playing out like a scene from a movie. The beautiful, life-changing ding of my notifications, the words I’ve been dreaming of unfurling before me in concrete black-and-white text—Congratulations, Jenna Chen, I am delighted to inform you—the way my parents will beam and beam when I run downstairs and tell them, just before we head over to my auntie and uncle’s house, where they’ll finally get to brag about me. That’s how it always goes in those Harvard acceptance reaction videos, and I’ve watched every single one of them, half salivating, my wanting overtaking every cell in my body, pressing down hard on my chest like a physical sickness.
But then I imagine thousands of anxious high schoolers spread out across the world in this exact moment, all making the exact same wish, all staring at their laptops, waiting for the same email to come in. People like my cousin Jessica Chen: people smarter and cooler and objectively better than I am. People who’ve been preparing for this moment since before they could walk, who haven’t already been rejected by all the other Ivy Leagues they’ve applied to so far. The very thought makes me claustrophobic, makes doubt chew a ragged hole through my gut.
Ding!
I jump at the alert. It’s louder than I imagined, the sound harsher.
One new email.
My heart lurches into my throat. This is it—oh god, it’s here, it’s really happening. I’m going to throw up.
I brace myself, all my muscles tensed as if for a boxing match. My fingers are shaking so hard that I have to click the email four times before it loads onto the screen. There’s something about the moment, all the buildup before it, that feels almost anticlimactic. The air doesn’t change. The ground doesn’t shift beneath my feet. Just a quick, simple action, a blink, and there it is: a few pixels on my laptop that’ll determine the entire trajectory of my life.
At first I’m too nervous to even absorb anything, can only gape at the wall of text, the Harvard logo splashed across the bottom like a bright bloodstain.
Then the words creep into my vision:
I am very sorry to inform you that we cannot offer you admission. . . . I wish that a different decision had been possible. . . . Receiving our final decision now will be helpful . . . as you make your college plans. . . .
I read it, read it all over again, and my gut sinks down to my feet. Time seems to warp around me, trapping me within it like an insect in amber. Distantly, I can still hear Mom and Dad moving downstairs, the sharp rattle of car keys, the clack of shoes, their muted bickering over how many wontons to bring with them to the gathering at Auntie’s place. But they might as well be thousands of miles away.
I pick my way through the rest of the email, as if there might be some other piece of information I’d missed, some final thread of hope. But all I see is further confirmation of what I’ve always known, deep down in the core of me.
In recent years . . . faced with increasingly difficult decisions. . . . In addition, most candidates present strong personal and extracurricular credentials . . .