I Am Not Jessica Chen(14)
“I mean, we all saw this coming,” Celine comments on my left, and it’s hard to define the emotion in her blue-lined eyes. She hasn’t moved an inch, but she’s looking right at me, as though still trying to decide what her response should be. At last the corner of her mouth curves. As much in acknowledgment as in challenge. “Congrats, bitch.”
“You’re literally the only person I know who’s been accepted,” Leela gushes.
“Wait, didn’t Cathy Liu apply as well?” someone asks. “She must have been accepted too, right?”
A few people turn around to search for her. I glance back over my seat at Cathy. She freezes at the sudden attention, her large doe eyes flicking to me. She skipped two grades when she was only in elementary school; that, combined with the fact that her features are naturally younger, with her full cheeks and soft brows, and her tendency to wear heart-shaped jewelry and bright ribbons in her hair, all create the impression of a tween who’s wandered into a senior class by mistake. But her scores are proof that no mistakes were made. She’s received the academic award for almost as many years as Jessica has, and there was once even a short article about her in the local paper, with a photo of her grinning and holding up all her certificates, her front teeth still missing.
Which is why I’m not surprised when she nods, once.
“Oh, so we have two Harvard girls among us,” someone calls.
“Quiet down now—the other teachers are going to think I’m running a circus in here,” Old Keller tells the class, but there’s no real annoyance in the way he shakes his head and leans back against the whiteboard, only pride.
“Congratulations, Cathy,” I tell her, surprised by how smoothly the words flow from my lips, how genuine my smile feels. It’s so easy to be generous when you lack nothing. To be nice when you’re not in pain. It doesn’t matter if people are cheering for someone else, because they’re already cheering for me.
Cathy smiles back at me. “Congratulations to you too. You’re such an icon.”
Even after Old Keller starts handing back our essays, someone reaches out and thumps my back, and another person jokes about how they want to be exactly like me when they grow up, even if they’re three months older.
It’s like a do-over of yesterday night. Like the universe has realigned with all my deepest wants and dreams. Every time I pinched myself awake when I started feeling lightheaded from studying, when I felt close to throwing up before a big exam, when I stayed up until the moon fell and the sky burned red, highlighting and writing and repeating obscure facts under my breath, when I filled in my paintings stroke by stroke by stroke, this is the scene I envisioned. Exactly, entirely, this.
The warm glowing bodies around me, the electric pulse of envy, the longing dangling from their faces. For years, I’ve watched Jessica Chen from the back of the room, how she sat with her chin up, shoulders straight, how her ponytail swayed when she laughed, how the teachers reserved their smiles and praise just for her. I’ve watched and wondered what it’s like to be that talented, that brilliant—
And now I know.
I feel incredible. Invincible.
I feel like I could claw the sun from the sky and eat it whole.
The first and only time I ever won something, it was for an art competition.
I’d painted a huge family portrait, with Mom and Dad placed at the center of the frame, their eyes sad but smiling, and me standing just off to the side, my features darkened and blurred in their shadow. The setting was meant to be difficult to make out; there was nothing but a vast open field, tendrils of pale purple mist rising around all of us like smoke, a mere suggestion of a place, rather than a place itself. The judges had said there was something unspeakably lonely about the piece that made it stand out. One of the judges had even teared up, studying it.
When I’d gone up to collect the reward for my loneliness, my eyes fastened on the gold medal and the hundred-dollar cash prize, the boy who’d come in second place (he had done an abstract piece, supposedly in the style of Pollock; in all honesty, I just found it very messy) had congratulated me. Then, with all the airs of someone making a bold accusation, he added, “You’re just in this competition for the glory, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” I replied, the medal now clutched to my chest. I loved the weight of it, its polished edges, how it glinted beneath the lights. “Obviously.”
He’d stared at me, clearly not expecting me to agree.
I was surprised by his surprise. Why else would I have entered the competition, put in all that work, if I didn’t care for glory? It seems a common enough motivator for men, and it’s never questioned. The realms of history and literature are heavily populated by kings who’ve gone mad for glory, knights who’ve killed in search of it, writers who’ve devoted their lives to capturing it. It’s the needle to my compass, what I’ve mapped my entire life around. It’s what my body runs on: food, water, air, and that ceaseless, propulsive desire for greatness.
Now, walking through campus as Jessica Chen, with Leela and Celine falling into step on either side of me, I can taste it. Glory. Radiant as the white sunshine slicing through the trimmed lawn. Sweet as the chocolate-dipped strawberries Leela’s shared with both of us. The news about the Harvard acceptance has spread all over the school, and the stream of congratulations hasn’t stopped yet.