I Am Not Jessica Chen(54)

Everything inside my body goes cold as I pick it up. Read over the handwritten message. It feels like an explosion has sounded right next to my ear, sending my thoughts scattering through my skull. The world slips and sharpens into pieces. The words slice across the torn paper. Whoever is targeting Jessica must be losing their patience, because all the note says is:

If you don’t confess, I’m telling everyone in three days.





Three days.

That’s hardly anything, and the first day is already taken up by my auntie’s planned hiking trip for the weekend.

“Can I not go?” I plead, dragging my heels all the way to the front door. “I still have work—”

“Your aunt and uncle will be there,” Auntie says, which I have to mentally translate into my own parents. “And Aaron is coming along too.”

Aaron.

He might know what to do. I clamp my jaw down over my remaining protests and quickly slide into Jessica’s boots.

Auntie sends me an unsubtle smile. “I thought that might motivate you to join us. Why don’t you put some lip tint on? That rose color looks so lovely on you.”

Wonderful, I think darkly to myself as I step outside. I may not succeed at uncovering the anonymous student, or at recovering Jessica’s soul, but even if I achieve nothing else, at least I can take comfort in knowing I gave my aunt more reason to believe that Jessica and Aaron belong together.

There’s something both terribly familiar and strangely disjointed about the scene at the bottom of the mountain. My parents are busy applying sunscreen in the shade, and I should be standing with them, letting my mom fuss over the exposed back of my ears and my neck, humoring my dad by half-heartedly following along to his warm-up exercises. Except I arrive in Jessica’s fancy car with my aunt and uncle, who are both dressed in designer clothes completely unsuited for physical activity. Aaron is alone, but that’s normal; by now, we know to invite his father to these things only out of politeness, rather than any expectation he might actually show up.

“Everyone’s here, then?” my dad says, smiling around at us as he fixes the cap on his head. His eyes move right over me, and my chest contracts. Dad. I have to shove aside the childlike urge to call for him, like I would when I lost sight of my parents among the crowds at the mall. It’s me. “Great, great, let’s get going. I’ll lead the way.”

My uncle laughs at him. “You look like a tour guide with that hat. All you need is a little flag to wave around.”

Dad makes an unimpressed face. “It’s a nice hat. I got it as a birthday present from—” He pauses.

My daughter should be the rest of his sentence. I’d bought it for him three years ago, and he’d sworn to wear no other hat from that point on.

Now he turns to my mom, confused. “Who gave this to me again?”

“Why are you asking me?” she demands. “Why do you always expect me to remember these things?”

“Because your memory’s better than mine,” my dad says, then shakes his head. “Ah, I must be getting old. I could’ve sworn it was someone important. . . .”

My mouth dries.

“Your memory wouldn’t be so bad if you ate more walnuts,” Mom insists.

The others are laughing, but I don’t feel like laughing at all. I feel like the ground is sinking, like it might crack open at any moment and I’ll fall in. How could my dad have just forgotten? And what other memories has he lost?

“You bought him that hat, didn’t you?”

I startle. I hadn’t noticed Aaron walking over to me while the parents started up the mountain steps.

“Yeah,” I say, making an effort not to look concerned. “I did.”

“You’re concerned.”

“I’m not,” I say, striding forward.

“Don’t lie to me,” he says. “You might have Jessica’s face, but your expressions are still the same—”

“Keep it down,” I hiss at him, glancing ahead at the adults. “Do you want them to overhear?”

He shrugs, perfectly nonchalant. “I guarantee that even if they overheard, they wouldn’t have any idea what we’re talking about, and they wouldn’t believe us anyway.”

“You could still try to be careful. What if they think we’ve lost our minds?”

“I’ve got it under control.”

“Oh sure. Because you just have control over everything. You’re just perfect and magical like that.”

“Well, yes,” he agrees.

I would swat his shoulder, except Jessica isn’t the kind of person to swat things—not even flies—so I’m forced to take my annoyance out on an overhanging branch. It’s darker here on the mountain path, cooler, with the thick spread of trees filtering out the sun.

“How did you even know I bought him the hat?” I ask.

“You mentioned it once,” he says simply.

I falter on the next step, something new occurring to me. “But how do you remember? Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone else has merely accepted that I’m gone,” I tell him in a low voice. My parents are already a good few yards away, the distance between us stretching wider and wider; they appear to be racing each other. “The teachers, my friends, my family. They’re all under the impression that I went away—except you. You came searching for me,” I say. “And you still recall all our past conversations and everything. Right?”