I Am Not Jessica Chen(24)
I spend the rest of the free period trying to sort through the notes and qualm my fears, while Leela mumbles feverishly to herself and Celine sprawls sideways across the desk, her textbook held up in the air with one hand. They get up only to stretch, or to use the bathroom, or to worry out loud about how hard the test is going to be.
More students file into the library and out again, doors swinging, leather shoes squeaking over the hardwood floors. At some point it starts drizzling again, the sound of the rain against the glass strangely soothing, muted and musiclike, the sky outside a sinking, somber gray. And always in the background: the dry rustle of flipping pages, the rapid click-clack of the keyboard, the clink of a thermos, someone furiously hushing a group of whispering friends, the brief pause before the conversation picks up again.
“That’s it, I give up,” Leela says, setting down her books to massage her neck. “I’m just going to accept my fate. I’ll simply fail the test. It’s whatever.”
Celine shrugs. “It doesn’t really make a difference. The test doesn’t count for much.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Leela says, now rubbing her shoulders. “Why are we even getting worked up over this anyway? It literally does not matter. At all. Grades aren’t even an accurate marker of intelligence—there have been, like, numerous studies to prove it.”
“And we all know grades alone aren’t going to help us get the best jobs,” I point out before I can stop myself, glancing up from Jessica’s notes.
They both pause, their expressions frozen in matching disbelief. Leela is wearing the look of someone unsure whether they’ve stepped into an alternate reality. Celine simply stares, as if one of the library’s statues of some ancient British lord has sprung to life and started tap dancing right on our table.
“What?” I ask.
Leela shakes her head. “I just . . . never thought I would hear our model student say that grades aren’t everything.”
“Well, it’s true,” I tell them. “Even if you get perfect grades, that doesn’t guarantee a good future. Not when you’ve got people like Lachlan Robertson already lined up to be an executive at his father’s law firm the second he graduates.”
“The system’s fucked,” Celine concludes, recovering from her shock. “Meritocracy is a myth, academia is corrupt, and grades are irrelevant.”
“Agreed.” Leela nods hard, her ponytail swishing. “This test means nothing.”
“Absolutely nothing,” Celine echoes.
A beat passes.
Then we all put our heads down and continue studying.
Ten minutes before the test, Leela rises from her seat and stretches, arching her back like a cat.
“Okay,” she says, eyeing the clock. “Okay, oh god. I think it’s time to head down.”
Celine frowns at her textbook. “Are you serious? I’ve still got three more pages of content left to memorize—”
“But we can’t be late,” Leela says, looking visibly queasy at the very idea. “They’ll lock us out of the classroom. And you can scan over your notes on the way there.”
“Fine, fine,” Celine grumbles, and starts to pack up her things. Well, thing. Singular. She’s only prepared a single ballpoint pen that looks like it might reach the end of its life halfway through the exam. Leela, on the other hand, has brought an impressive array of four different pencils, all sharpened to a lethal point, seven neon highlighters, two erasers, a pencil sharpener and a one-liter bottle of water filled to the very brim.
I glance down at my own equipment: the pens packed neatly in a translucent plastic pocket, Jessica’s ID card, and a pastel pink watch. As I stare, the minute hand ticks.
Nine minutes left.
I swallow, try to calm myself. But I’m even more nervous than I used to be before a test. In a sense, I’m facing two tests now: whether I’ve retained enough information from our world politics classes, and whether I can live up to everyone’s expectations for Jessica, fool them all into believing that I’m really her. I can feel the tremors gathering just under my skin, my nerves stretching thinner and tighter than ever. It’s as if there’s a wild creature scrambling around inside me, desperate to escape, jolting my bones and throwing my heartbeat into disarray. I remember hearing somewhere that the body can’t tell the difference between fear and anticipation. All it knows is that something important is about to happen soon, so sit up, stay alert, pay attention.
We file out of the library, move across the vast halls, the Palladian windows throwing great swathes of light over the black-and-white checkered tiles, and join the line of nervous students waiting outside the world politics classroom.
“Wow,” Celine remarks dryly. “Everyone sure looks like they’re having the time of their lives.”
Half of them are fidgeting or muttering to themselves, making desperate last-minute attempts to check their study sheets and quiz themselves and their friends. The other half appear to have given up completely. One guy is busy folding notes into a paper airplane.
“I’m, like, so over it already,” a girl is saying to her friend, her voice a bit too loud to be natural. “I didn’t start studying until three hours ago. I’m not even exaggerating. It’s so bad.”
Celine snorts and turns her head to whisper to both of us. “Don’t buy it for a second. I saw her making flash cards for this test last month.”