I Am Not Jessica Chen(17)

Where is the real Jessica Chen?

I have to find my cousin—but how am I meant to do that if I’m wearing her face?

The sky has already started to darken by the time I stop outside the front door, thick clouds crowding in from the edges, threatening rain. I stamp my feet over the tiles and shakily lift my finger to the doorbell. Then pause. There’s a buzzing sensation in my veins, like the moments before I walk into an examination hall. Will some old version of me open the door? Will I bump into myself? Do I run? Attack? Call the police?

No, of course not. Nobody would believe me.

The thought sends another spike of apprehension running through my body. I shiver, wrap my blazer tighter around myself. No matter what happens, I’m completely on my own.

“Don’t be such a coward. Just get this over with,” I hiss out loud, and the sound of Jessica’s voice is enough to jolt me into action.

The bell rings once before the door swings open.

It’s not my face that appears in the doorway, but one just as familiar.

“Mo—” I catch myself. Clear my throat. “A-Auntie.” The word sounds horribly stiff and unnatural on my tongue. Wrong. Like calling our robin’s-egg-blue couch green, or pointing at a turtle and calling it a rat.

My mom blinks at me with faint surprise, before her expression quickly arranges itself into a smile. It’s a smile I recognize at once, the warm, polite one she always uses in company. I’ve seen her switch to that smile mid-lecture on countless occasions, when a neighbor popped up with fresh-baked cookies or a relative from China rang her on WeChat. One second she would be scolding me for splashing too much water around the bathroom sink, and the next she would be all gentle mannered and sweet voiced like she was meeting a royal.

But I’ve never been subject to it. It feels wrong too, even more so than greeting her as “Auntie.” It’s too nice, everything real forced beneath the surface. It’s something I never thought I would experience: being looked at by my own mother like an outsider.

“Jessica,” she says. “I didn’t expect you here today. Were you looking for something?”

I try to scan the space behind her, but I can’t see anyone inside. “Uh . . . I just—wanted to finish a group project Jenna and I were working on. She left the materials in her room. Is that okay?” I watch her reaction closely, looking for signs of—what, I don’t even know. Maybe confusion. Suspicion. Maybe for her to clap her hand to her mouth and exclaim: Speaking of Jenna, I haven’t seen her all day. Or, better yet, Of course, Jenna is right upstairs.

But she says neither of those things. Her expression is smooth, her polite smile still perfectly in place. Yet instead of reassuring me, it only drives a deeper sense of unease down my spine. “Oh, certainly. Come on in.”

I enter the room without thinking, the way I have a thousand times before: shrugging off my blazer and throwing it over the couch; letting my schoolbag fall to the floor with a thud; sliding into my plastic pink slippers by the closet.

It’s only once I’ve completed my routine that I notice Mom staring at me.

“Uh,” I say, panicked, trying to recover in record speed. I manage a short laugh. “Sorry, Auntie, I was . . . I think I’m a little too comfortable around here, you know. It feels even more familiar than my own house.”

Her expression clears. “Ah, that’s how it should be! We’re all family. Let yourself be as comfortable as you want.”

“Th-thank you,” I tell her distractedly. There’s still no sign of anyone else yet. My eyes slide past the empty kitchen and faded furniture and family portraits to my bedroom upstairs. From my angle, all I can see is the closed door. “I’ll just . . . go and get started, then.”

“Of course,” she says, her smile back and brighter than ever, but still strange. Still foreign. It’s making my skin itch, the distance and the niceties. She should be nagging me to do my homework or wash my hair in time for dinner, not speaking softly as if I’m someone else’s daughter. “Take as long as you’d like.”

I run up the stairs, taking two at a time, my heart beating madly in my chest like a wild, spooked creature. Then I burst through the door without knocking, expecting—anything. A duplicate of myself, a phantom, some supernatural force. A banner and camera crew waiting to inform me that I’ve been pranked.

But I’m greeted with silence.

All I can hear is my own harsh breathing, as if I’ve just sprinted straight over from school. There’s nobody here. In fact, there’s no sign that anybody’s been in this room since I went to sleep last night. The covers are wrinkled, unmade, the blanket sliding off the bed.

I creep across the space, feeling oddly like an intruder in my own bedroom. My uniform’s where I last threw it, crumpled at the bottom of my closet, my skirt spotted with old paint stains that have withstood the strongest laundry detergents our local mall has to offer. Even my homework is in the same place, my math textbook flipped open to the bonus questions, my laptop half open and charging, my Muji highlighters poking out of my pencil case.

Nothing has changed at all, and yet . . .

I can’t shake the feeling that something’s off. Something important.

Mouth dry, I slowly make my way around the rest of the room, treating it like a crime scene, every pen and yellow Post-it note and half-dry mascara wand evidence of what this is. But what is this? What am I now? I keep my hands curled up by my sides, letting my gaze wander.