I Am Not Jessica Chen(40)

My grandmother cried, and I just remembered the story my mother used to tell me, how she never even had the chance to get her high school diploma before she started working at the hair salon to support her younger brothers. And it was like I could picture our family tree, with my ancestors at the roots, and all those branches spreading out toward the sky, and with every new branch we stretched higher, and more flowers bloomed, and that was how we grew, generation after generation.

They kept telling me how proud they were. I was a genius, I was so incredibly talented, I had worked so hard. I was the one who’d made it, who’d succeeded. It was perfect. For those first ten minutes, everything was perfect.

And now I’m up here alone in my room, the same as always, and the thrill has faded, and I know it sounds awful and so very ungrateful, but all I can think is: that’s it? This, right now, is the culmination of all those sleepless nights, every test I cried over, every extra hour I spent studying when I could have been driving down to the coast, eating dinner with my family, going to the mall with my friends, visiting the cherry orchards or swimming in the lake in the high heat of summer. This is as good as life will ever be and . . . I don’t have anybody to talk to about it. Sure, there are people I can tell, like I’ve told my relatives—in the form of an announcement, an opportunity for my parents to brag about me. But who is there I can truly celebrate with? Who else will feel genuinely happy for me?

Then there’s Harvard itself—all I could think about was doing the work and getting in, but it’s hitting me now that I’ll have to keep working once classes begin. I’ll have to prove myself all over again to new classmates and new professors. I just feel so exhausted at the idea, like I’ve been running as fast as I can toward a mountain in the horizon, and it always looks within reach, but I’ll never actually get there. Everything exhausts me these days.





A sudden wind howls through the trees.

I jerk my head up. I’m half convinced I’ll see Jessica—the real Jessica—right there, hovering behind me, watching in silence. I even whisper her name out loud. “Jessica? Are you there?”

But there’s no response. The only person inside her bedroom is me. I swallow back my shock and turn to an older entry.

I shouldn’t have done it.

I know I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t think of anything else by myself. My brain was blank—my brain often feels blank recently, like I’m too tired to even form a solid thought—and I only had one day left to write it, and I knew the teacher was expecting something phenomenal from me, something that would top everything I’ve ever written before. I can never just be okay. I have to be perfect. I have to astound them. I have to prove that I’m intelligent or I’ll stop mattering.

Now it’s submitted, and it’s too late to turn back.

There shouldn’t be any evidence, unless they somehow find out. If they do accuse me . . . I can only pray my reputation will protect me. Everyone thinks I’m good, and they’re right, in a way. I’m a good student, a good daughter, a good example.

But I’ve never been a good person. I don’t know how to be.





The journal slips from my fingertips and thuds to the floor.

I’d expected to find clues, but I hadn’t expected to find this. Suddenly everything looks different. All the ominous notes from the anonymous student. I know what you’ve done. I had been so certain they’d found out that I wasn’t really Jessica, but maybe the messages were addressed to the real her.

“What did you do?” I ask the air, wishing more than anything that I had some way to speak to my cousin. Jessica Chen, who’s meant to be flawless. Who I’ve grown up with, who was there to carry my books for me after I twisted my ankle in gym class, who let me stay in her bedroom when my parents were out of town, who’d bake soft lemon cookies for me when I was stressed about exams. Who I’ve envied for most of my life, who I would follow around everywhere when we were only five, until our parents joked that I was her little shadow. It hadn’t stung, then. It had felt like a compliment, because I’d wanted to be just like her. “What could you have done that’s so terrible?”





Nine




Jessica’s voice echoes in my head all throughout the next day. I hear it as clearly as if she’d read her journal entry aloud to me: I’ve never been a good person.

Maybe it’s a blessing, then, that our usual classes are canceled for our annual swimming carnival. The school arranges buses for all of us first thing in the morning and takes us down to the lakes.

It’s so early that there’s still a light mist rolling in over the slate-gray water and the weeds, the chill of last night clinging to the air.

“We’re going to get hypothermia,” Celine grumbles as she slips out of her school uniform, kicking her skirt aside into the grass. Like all the other girls, she’s already wearing the standard black swimsuit underneath.

Leela removes her blazer and folds it very neatly into the waterproof bag she’s brought, then sets her school shoes down in a perfect line facing the lake’s edge. “I’m more concerned about getting bitten by a water snake.”

Celine laughs at her. “That was only a rumor spread by the boys in the upper year to scare us. There aren’t any snakes—”