I Am Not Jessica Chen(39)
“I just wanted to ask how your whole gifted kid medical program went,” I tell Aaron. “I, um, have a friend who’s considering applying.”
“A friend? Who?”
“You wouldn’t know them,” I say. “I have so many friends.”
He lets out a breath of laughter. “All right. Well, if your friend is really set on this career path, they should give it a try. There aren’t that many programs around that’ll let you study medicine in such depth before you’ve even entered college. We had professors and doctors come in to deliver lectures every week. Like, there was this renowned cardiologist, Dr. Zhou, who specializes in basically all aspects of cardiac rhythm management, and he’s written these groundbreaking research papers on atrial fibrillation. . . .”
As he talks faster, I can imagine his eyes lighting up with genuine excitement. I tug the blanket higher, stare up at the blank white ceiling, and let his voice fill my head.
“. . . and recently, he helped invent this heart monitoring device that’s completely noninvasive and more sensitive than anything available. It’s smaller than the size of your nail, if you can believe it. Imagine coming up with something like that—an idea, a single device, a new way of thinking, that could help advance disease prevention and treatments all over the world. . . .” He trails off, his next words almost shy. “I realize that was likely far more than what you or your friend are interested in.”
“No, no,” I say quickly. “No, not at all.”
There’s a warm, foreign emotion blooming past my ribs: awe, untainted by jealousy. The thing about Havenwood is that it has a way of shrinking everything down inside its ivy-crawled gates. It’s so easy to feel like nothing else in the world exists beyond our latest test score, who’s valedictorian, who was accepted into an Ivy League and who was rejected, and the reward becomes the glory itself, the validation, the praise. It really is the Havenwood spirit, like Aaron says.
Sometimes I forget that in the bigger scheme of things, it’s okay to not be the best at everything. To be surrounded by people who can solve problems you can’t, who are talented in different ways, who will go on to change the world. Aaron’s intelligence isn’t just something that will earn him good grades and compliments at dinner parties; it’s what will help him become a brilliant doctor and save lives.
“Tell me more,” I say.
He does, even though it’s with a kind of incredulous caution, like at any moment I might interrupt and announce that I’m recording him as a prank.
“You know, I believe this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had,” he says later.
I squint up at the dimmed light of my screen. We’ve been talking for over two hours, long enough that my battery is nearly dead. Still, this information surprises me. I had assumed—feared—that Jessica and Aaron chatted all the time when I wasn’t around, that they could talk forever, given how much they had in common.
“I should probably make myself dinner now,” he says after a pause. “But if your friend wants to ask me anything about the program, feel free to give them my number.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“I’ll see you at school tomorrow, then.”
“Bye, Aaron,” I whisper, prepared for him to linger, to repeat himself, the way he always did when we used to call after school, just for the sake of annoying me. But he’s already hung up.
The note is still there.
In the pencil case. In the back of my mind. Even when I attempt to fall asleep and squeeze my eyes shut, I can see that sloping handwriting, lit up in the darkness behind my eyelids. And with it, the anonymous email, and the Haven Award. After tossing around on the sheets and fluffing out Jessica’s pillow for the seventh time, I flick the table lamp on, wrap Jessica’s bathrobe around myself, and crouch down in front of Jessica’s drawers.
Then I pull out the very thing I’d vowed to myself I wouldn’t pick up again.
Her journal.
My heartbeat accelerates as I touch the cool leather. Guilt drives itself deeper into my gut, but I’m running out of clues. There has to be something in here that I’ve missed.
I flip open to a random page and scan the first few words—
It happened.
It finally happened. I got into Harvard.
The instant tightening in my chest is all too familiar. But I guess envy is similar to muscle memory, and this has always been what envy feels like for me: like dread. Like physical pain, like raw, pulse-speeding panic, like watching a train run off its tracks. Every time Jessica announced something that had gone well in her life, my stomach would tense and my blood would run cold as if bracing for the threat of violence.
I force myself to keep reading.
Even now, it doesn’t seem real. When the notification came in, my heart started beating so fast I thought it would explode. I was shaking as I opened up my emails, but then I saw the Harvard logo, and the word “Congratulations.” I had to read it three times to be sure. But there was my name, Jessica Chen, and the words I’ve been waiting to see for years. They accepted me. They want me to be a student at Harvard. The college of my dreams.
I ran to the living room to tell my parents and they were so excited—more excited than I’ve ever seen them. They were hugging me and calling everyone they knew on WeChat, and I delivered the news to my relatives myself, one at a time: my great-grandaunt and second aunt and my uncles and my cousin and her husband and my grandparents on both sides. I didn’t even know we had that many relatives, but my mother somehow kept finding more people to call.