I Am Not Jessica Chen(44)
“How do you know I’m not?”
“Because if you’d wanted to hurt me, I’m pretty sure you’d adopt slightly more effective measures than treading on my toes.”
“Don’t sound so sure. Maybe it’s part of a long-term plan,” I cautioned. “Maybe by the end of this session I’ll have trampled you enough times that you’ll find yourself unable to walk at your normal speed and be late to your next class, and the teacher will mark you down for tardiness.”
“How threatening.”
“Please.” I spun out again and let him pull me back with a tug of my wrist, and for a moment we might’ve been in a period drama, classical string music rising sweetly in the old halls around us. “Reputational damage matters way more than physical damage around here. You know that.”
He laughed then, the sound low in my ear, and I felt a disconcerting rush of pleasure.
And afterward the girls in my class had flocked around me, complaining about their partners, wishing aloud that they had mine. “How did it feel?” they’d asked, giggling. It was no secret that half of them had a crush on him. “To dance with Aaron Cai?”
“Uh. Just . . . normal,” I’d replied hastily, but I couldn’t meet their eyes.
I remember the weekend after, my parents telling me last-minute that we would be having a picnic by the lake with Aaron, and a strange lump forming in my throat, almost akin to rage. We had been fifteen then.
“Why didn’t you warn me Aaron was coming?” I’d demanded, because that was the word that made the most sense to me, even when I couldn’t make sense of the emotion inside me yet: warn. Like a natural disaster, an impending storm. My mother had cast me a perplexed look while my father frowned and lectured me about my attitude.
“It’s just Aaron. I thought you were good friends,” he said. “And Aaron has always been so nice to you.”
“He likes to make fun of me when I embarrass myself,” I corrected. “I don’t think that qualifies as being nice.”
But still I went because I had to, painfully, unbearably self-conscious the whole time without understanding why. I squeezed into an impractical strapless dress and refused to wear sunscreen because it made my face look greasy. After three hours on the lake’s edge, sitting cross-legged underneath the sun, my shoulders had started to sting and redden from the heat. Even now, the mortification feels fresh, a wound not healed yet: my mother noticing and fussing over my sunburn, rummaging through our bags for some kind of herbal ointment and then smearing it all over me while Aaron politely averted his gaze.
More months passed before I realized it, but something inside me had already shifted. We were studying tectonic plates at the time, and that’s what it felt like: something heavy and fundamental rearranging itself beneath my rib cage. He would change a room just by being in it, knock the breath from my lungs just by glancing at me, smiling a certain way. I would invest too much energy into scrutinizing my appearance before school, fussing over my bangs and fiddling with my school skirt, rolling it up and tugging it back down again.
I seemed to fall into a perpetual state of waiting: for my next chance to meet him, my next excuse to linger near his locker, our next class together. I wanted him the only way I knew how to want anything—obsessively, fervently. At times it was excruciating, to be studying next to him in the library, our shoulders almost brushing, to open the front door for him and invite him into the living room, to be so close and still have to swallow my heart, seal my lips shut. I couldn’t tell him. This too was never a conscious decision I made, just a truth that crept up on me. We knew each other too well, our lives were too inextricably tangled. Anything I felt toward him was my problem. My weakness. My sworn secret.
But then there came that day in the rain, and I forgot, like a fool, and nothing’s been the same since. Nothing will ever be the same again.
This was the scene I played over and over in my head on nights I couldn’t sleep. Or perhaps this was the scene that kept me from sleeping. We had been riding our bikes home together from school when the rain started. It came without warning—not a drizzle, not even a flicker of lightning, just the serene sky and suddenly the wild, gray rush of water, the streets running dark with it.
And so we’d sought shelter under the almond groves. They’d been in full bloom then, the delicate white-pink petals quivering in the rain, our bikes leaning against the trees, his black hair damp and curling over his forehead, his school shirt soaked through. Even during the storm, he was so casual, so unbothered. Gazing out at the heavy downpour like it was nothing. Sometimes I thought he was the kind of person you wanted on your side during a disaster, someone you could trust to keep a level head no matter what and guide you to safety. Other times, in my less generous moods, I was certain that he was the very last person you wanted next to you if the world collapsed; his calmness could be maddening like that.
We were standing close, maybe closer than we needed to be, and the air was so cold it tasted sweet.
“It looks like we’ll be here awhile,” he said, and I thought, Good.
I thought, I could stay here forever.
I said, “God, I hope not. It’s freezing.”
“You’re always cold,” he told me, in a flippant sort of way, like it was none of his business, but then he was reaching into his schoolbag and pulling out his sweater. Handing it over to me. Black cashmere. Soft and still dry and wonderfully warm, as though he’d just taken it off.