I Am Not Jessica Chen(16)
On the lawn during lunch, after I spend forty dollars of the hundreds I have on a ridiculously overpriced salmon bagel and a pumpkin spice Frappuccino, Cathy Liu skips up to me. Her silver earrings sparkle in the midday brilliance, and a camera dangles from her wrist.
“Congratulations again, Jessica,” she says, waving at me first, then at Celine and Leela, who are already lying on the grass, in almost the exact same positions as they were during the morning break.
Leela waves back. Celine just flicks a strand of hair from her face.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Cathy approach Jessica’s group. She’s always hanging around their desks after class, asking Jessica about her grades, trailing after the three of them like an adoring puppy, perking up at the slightest sign of attention. They’ve never insulted her, of course, or outright excluded her. But you could sense it in the atmosphere, the same inarticulable feeling that made me keep my distance whenever Jessica was with her best friends, when she transformed from my cousin to the girl everyone wanted. You wish you could be us, the air around them sang. But you can’t.
Except the impossible has happened: I am her. I take a slow sip of my Frappuccino, the creamy sweetness trickling down my throat, and wait for Cathy to speak.
“I’m actually here on behalf of the yearbook committee,” she says, fidgeting with the camera strap. “They’re doing a video segment on the school’s star students and, well, obviously they wanted to interview you. Do you have, like, two minutes to spare?”
I flash her a dazzling smile. “Yeah, why not?”
“Oh my god, amazing, thank you.” She holds up the camera, and as the lens extends with a faint mechanical sound and focuses on me, I stand a little straighter, shoulders relaxed, chin up. For once, I feel no urge to check my appearance. I know I look beautiful. Even the way my shadow falls across the grass is striking, my profile as perfect as a doll’s.
“So, Jessica,” Cathy begins, “I’m sure you get this question all the time, but we’re dying to know—how do you balance everything you have going on in your life? Do you ever even sleep?”
I laugh breezily, like an immortal who’s just been asked about their secret to longevity. “I never really think of it in terms of balance. There are just so many things I’m interested in, I feel like it’d be much harder if I were to pick only one thing and devote all my time to that. People are always saying that you can’t do it all, but, well, why can’t you?” The fake answers race each other out of my mouth. See how relatable I am? How passionate? How humble? “And in terms of sleep—rest assured that I definitely do sleep. It’s why I wake up refreshed every morning. Plus, I love sleeping.”
Cathy nods hard. “Everything you said was just—wow. What an absolutely eloquent and inspiring response.”
Without any context, nobody could possibly guess that this was a straight-faced reaction to the phrase “I love sleeping.”
“I’m glad you think so,” I say, taking another sip from my drink as a gentle breeze fluffs out my hair, even nature cooperating with me. It’s so irresistibly fun playing this part, like when I would pretend to be a famous singer holding a concert in my shower stall, or when I would deliver an imaginary Oscar acceptance speech from my bedroom.
“Now,” Cathy prompts, “what advice would you give to freshmen who might be feeling nervous about their studies?”
I wink at the camera. I don’t think I’ve ever winked before in my life; the one time I tried, someone thought my facial muscles were spasming. But now it comes effortlessly, like everything else. “If I were to give any advice, I would say . . . copy and paste is your friend.”
Cathy laughs even louder than I anticipated, a shrill, seesawing sound, the camera shaking with her shoulders.
“I’m just kidding, of course,” I say, laughing too. Jessica has the kind of laugh that’s instantly contagious, bubbling up through my lips and filling the air. “But really, my advice would be to enjoy the process.” In my mind, I see a memory of myself sobbing from sheer exhaustion at three in the morning because I hadn’t finished the English project that was due the next day.
“Studying is important, but you can’t just coop yourself up in your house with your textbooks. . . .”
Another memory: me lying face down on my bed, my dinner going cold on my desk, a mountain of practice papers stacked up beside it.
“And, you know, don’t take things too seriously. . . .”
Me, hunched over and typing into the search bar in the dark: “I don’t understand logarithms. Am I doomed?” Throwing my pen across the room when I still couldn’t solve the equation.
“That’s all there is to it.” I beam, the sun spilling over me. “Believe in yourself, and everything will work out.”
When the final bell sounds, I take the earliest bus from school in a daze, my head swimming. It already feels like an eternity has passed since I opened my eyes this morning.
How long will all of this last? How long until the spell breaks? A day? A week? I need answers. I need to go home—not Jessica’s home, but my own. There has to be some kind of sign, evidence of what’s happening to me. And even through the haze of my euphoria, there’s another, more crucial question that’s been pounding at the back of my skull: