I Am Not Jessica Chen(12)
“Move before we run you over!” Celine calls.
The freshman blinks up at us like a deer in the headlights, wide-eyed and white-faced with alarm, then recognizes the person yelling at her. At once, she scurries away from the last empty parking spot, her open bag hugged tight to her chest, notebooks almost falling out of it in her haste.
“Thanks, Lydia,” Celine yells to the freshman as Leela slams her foot down on the gas and swerves sharply into the space, just one dangerous inch away from knocking the sideview mirror off the neighboring BMW. “Love your lipstick today, by the way. Is that Dior?”
Lydia flushes, and actually breaks into a shy, earnest smile. “Y-yeah. It is.” She hesitates. “Do you . . . want one? I have a spare since my older sister works there. . . .” I cringe slightly at the obvious attempt to boost her social standing, but I can’t blame her. There’s something about this school, these people, that brings out an almost animal-like desperation in you, a hunger for validation.
“Shit, could you?” Celine bats her long false lashes—a trick that always seems to work on everyone.
“Yeah, of course! I—I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
I watch the exchange with quiet incredulity. Only Celine Tan could threaten to kill someone one second and compliment them the next, and walk away from it even more adored than before—with a new lipstick, no less.
Leela shakes her head and cuts the engine. “Come on, babe, you need to stop scaring the poor freshmen. I swear little Lydia was about to have a heart attack.”
“It’s necessary for maintaining social order,” Celine reasons without a hint of remorse, sliding smoothly out the car door, her platform heels landing, soundless, on the grass below. “If we don’t instill an appropriate amount of fear into the hearts of the young ones, this school will descend into utter anarchy. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”
Leela snorts. “Spoken like a true leader.”
“I would be a great leader. I have it all: charisma, good fashion sense, influence. . . .” Celine swings back to me, her long hair almost whacking me in the face. “Back me up here, Jessica.”
I resist the urge to look around for someone else, and fall into step behind her. I’m Jessica now. She’s waiting for me to speak. So what would my brilliant, witty cousin say? “Um.” Definitely not that.
But Leela rescues me. “Stop forcing Jessica to side with you, oh my god.”
“I’m only speaking the truth; the evidence is irrefutable—”
“Save your persuasion tactics for your politics essay, ’kay?”
Celine groans. “Don’t remind me. I still have two thousand words to write before midnight.”
As we continue down the narrow pebbled paths to the main entrance, my attention slips away from their conversation, pulled as always to the view. Havenwood Academy looks exactly how you’d expect a school with such a name to look: like ancient power and old money. The kind of place angels go to rest and artists go to die. The imposing redbrick buildings rise beyond a stretch of balsam firs and a vast sea of deep green grass, with crimson myrtle creeping over the stone gates like spilt blood. Even my dad, who neither knows nor wants to know anything about architecture, couldn’t stop himself from pointing out the impressive gardens and carefully clipped lawns and bone-white statues the first time he visited, the school motto etched above all the doors in gold, lest we forget: Ad Altiora Tendo. I strive toward higher things.
A strange prickling sensation snakes down my arms as we take the shortcut around the chapel. This is the latest addition to the campus (“So that’s where our school fees are going,” Leela had commented to me the first time we walked past it), although more students use it to study than to pray, unless it’s for good grades.
Soft, flurried whispers from passing students follow in our wake, and soon I realize what the foreign sensation is: I’m being watched.
“God, she’s so pretty.”
“Who?”
“Jessica Chen.” A sigh, strained with awe. “I wish I could look like that.”
“Is it just me, or has she somehow gotten even prettier?”
“Right? Her skin is basically glowing.”
“If I had even some of her genes, I swear I’d be invincible.”
It’s surreal. Everyone in my peripheral vision has me in their central line of view. I feel the ripple in the air, the eyes pinned on my back, bright, envious, eager, the way people adjust their positions to accommodate mine like flowers turned toward the sun, so subtle I wonder if they’re even aware they’re doing it.
“You know, I heard they recently started a fan club,” Celine says when we reach the humanities building.
I’m still trying not to startle at the sound of Celine Tan speaking to me. When I was myself, she had only acknowledged my existence when she wanted to borrow something in class, or when I was blocking her way in the corridors. “A fan club? For who?”
“For you, obviously,” Leela tells me, smiling. This too is different from what I’m used to. We’ve been friends for years, but Leela has never looked at me with such sincere admiration, like I’m standing one step above her.
And that’s when I decide, firmly, unequivocally, that I can’t be dreaming. Because even in my wildest dreams, my imagination wouldn’t be able to conjure something so realistic, to create a feeling I’ve never experienced in all my seventeen years: the kind of joy that springs from other people’s awe. The pleasant warmth on my face, the firmness to my steps. Like I’ve been underwater the whole time, and I’m finally moving up, breaking through the surface, into the sun.