I Am Not Jessica Chen(3)
She flicks my forehead lightly, then fiddles with her fake Chanel scarf. It’s the one she always wears when she’s meeting Dad’s side of the family. “Shush. You can’t expect us to show up at your uncle and auntie’s house empty-handed, can you? They’re already too kind to us, hosting these gatherings every time.”
Neither of us says the obvious—that the only reason my uncle and auntie always host is because our house is way too small to fit all of us, what with its one-and-a-half bathrooms and living-room-slash-kitchen. Even the dining table Dad dragged home from a garage sale a few years ago is only made for four people at most.
“I told you not to pack so many,” Dad mutters as he follows us down the driveway, the gravel crunching beneath his old sneakers. “Nobody’s going to finish all of that. And they’re already preparing hot pot.”
“Better to bring too much than too little,” Mom returns.
“Then we should’ve brought the apples from our backyard. Add more variety—”
“Apples? Do you want them to think we’re cheap? Besides, some people don’t even like them.”
Dad looks so affronted you’d think he’d invented the fruit himself. “Everyone loves apples—”
We’ve reached the front door now. When it swings open, revealing my smiling uncle and auntie, I watch my parents pause mid-bickering and switch to bright smiles, the whole thing quick and subtle as a magic trick.
“It’s so good to see you!” Mom greets, passing the wontons forward. “We made some extra ones, and thought we’d share them with you.”
“Aiya, you’re too polite.” Auntie makes a big fuss of tutting and shaking her head while Uncle fetches the slippers. It’s what she tells Mom every visit; sometimes I swear all the adults are following some kind of secret rulebook on social etiquette. “I keep telling you, you don’t have to bring anything. We’re all family here.”
“It’s because we’re family that we should all share,” Mom insists. Another all-too-familiar line, followed by the even more familiar “By the way, you look so skinny. Have you been eating well lately?”
I tighten my grip on the wonton containers, dreading the moment they finish running through the pleasantries and turn their attention to me. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep pretending everything’s fine when I’m one wrong question away from breaking down. And I can’t imagine anything more mortifying than breaking down over my Harvard rejection at my Harvard-bound cousin’s house.
“Jenna!” Uncle greets me first, waving me into the warmth of the living room. As different as he is from Dad, I’ve always liked him; he smiles more than he laughs, seems to know something about everything, and unlike most grown-ups, he never treats me like a little kid. But today, I just want to get away from him. From all of them. “How have your studies been?”
“Oh, not bad,” I say, hoping he can’t hear the catch in my voice.
“You’re being modest,” he says, nodding sagely. “I’m sure your grades are excellent.”
They’re not. Harvard doesn’t seem to think so, anyway.
But before he can pursue the topic, Jessica appears beside him like a living saint. An enviably accomplished saint dressed in arctic-blue cashmere and a perfect plaid skirt. From afar, Jessica and I look so similar that we could easily be confused for each other, and at school, we often are. But one day I overheard a girl in our history class comment, in this flat, blunt way that meant she was being totally honest, that I look like the dollar-store version of Jessica Chen.
Ever since then, I haven’t been able to stop seeing it. Obsessing over it. Whereas Jessica’s hair is black and glossy, like something out of a shampoo ad, mine is dull and deep brown; whereas her complexion is Chinese-beauty-pageant smooth, mine is sickly looking, even after layers of foundation. She’s also taller in a supermodel way, with the long neck of a ballerina and the posture of a princess.
“Oh my god, hey.” She beams at me, all her straight white teeth flashing. She’s never had to wear braces either, never had to suffer to make them the way they are; her teeth are just like that, which pretty much sums my cousin up. Jessica Chen has always been a natural. She was born the best, while I’ve spent my entire life trying to just be good, and I’ve failed at even that.
I chew down on my tongue until it’s numb and force myself to beam back. “Hi.”
“Guess who’s here.”
Something about the way she says it, how she’s bouncing on the balls of her feet, sends a jolt of unease through me.
“Huh? Who?” I crane my neck and scan the room, but all I can make out is the usual casual display of wealth: the chandeliers glittering above the plush couches, the gleaming Yamaha piano set in the corner for every visitor to listen to her play “River Flows in You,” the gold-framed abstract paintings adorning the walls, the patterned porcelain vases and decade-old yellow wine stacked on the bookshelf, beside rows upon rows of trophies. All Jessica’s, of course, for everything from advanced algebra to badminton to cello.
Then a boy our age steps out from behind the shelf with quiet, unfathomable grace, and my stomach flips.
I almost don’t recognize him right away. His hair’s grown longer, the thick, dark strands curled beautifully around his head like a crown, his jaw sharper, his shoulders broader than they were a year ago. But that self-assured expression arranged on his face is exactly as I remember it. So is the not-quite smile playing across his lips as he meets my gaze. It doesn’t matter that I blocked him on every single social media platform when he left for his fancy medical youth program in Paris on a full scholarship, that I tuned my parents out every time they brought up “Mr. Cai’s talented son.” He might as well be engraved in my memory, etched into my mind, every part of me. I remember it all.