I Am Not Jessica Chen(68)

Mr. Howard barely seems to be listening. “Is that so?”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Mr. Howard,” I say, smiling Jessica’s best smile, the one that could make world peace possible if she directed it at the right person.

“Nice to meet you too,” he says, then pauses. Looks at Ms. Lewis in question. It’s a quick look, but I catch it, because I’ve seen it hundreds of times before. “Jessica . . . Choi, was it?”

A sinking feeling hits my gut.

I don’t know why I’m still smiling, why it’s so important to maintain my facade of politeness. “Jessica Chen,” I say.

“Jessica Chang,” he says confidently. “Right, right. Actually, I believe we’ve met before—aren’t you also the one leading the orchestra? The violinist?”

My smile threatens to collapse. Jessica plays the cello and the piano and the guzheng, but not the violin. He’s thinking of Cathy Liu. “No,” I tell him. “Sorry, that wasn’t me.” I don’t know why I’m apologizing, either.

“Ah, really?” He frowns, like he’s wondering if perhaps I’ve suffered a brief lapse of memory and forgotten that I am, in fact, the same violinist he’s talking about. “I could have sworn . . . We even shook hands.”

“Must’ve been another person,” I manage.

He shrugs. Looks toward something over my shoulder. “Well, keep up the good work, yes? Study hard.”

And that’s it.

He brushes past me to speak to Sarah Williams, and I catch pieces of their conversation. “At your aunt’s old beach house” and “How is dear Susannah?” and something about a Christmas party and the club on the other side of the city. He looks infinitely more engaged, laughing outright at whatever Sarah is saying. He remembers her name, and her mother’s name, and even her family friend’s name.

I feel like I’ve missed the instructions on a test. Like I’ve done something wrong, made a fatal miscalculation. Wasn’t this supposed to be the moment I was proven right? That I became worthy at last, having received approval from the person in power, the man at the top of the school? But there’s no vindication here, no sense of satisfaction. Only confusion.

Aaron tugs lightly at the corner of my sleeve. “Let’s keep moving,” he says. “There’s not much left to see here.”

I follow, unsteady, my mind clambering around for clarity that isn’t there.

“What, are you really that surprised?” he asks me, but his tone is gentler than it was before. “You could win the Nobel Prize, and I’d bet he would still have trouble remembering who you are. All that matters to him is that they can market your results and encourage more students like you to enroll in the school.”

“I understand that,” I say, frustrated. “I mean, on some level, I obviously understand that it’s a business. But I still . . . I don’t know.” Humiliation singes my throat. “I just thought it’d be different.”

He doesn’t say anything.

At first I think he’s given up on trying to reason with me, or perhaps he’s preparing to laugh at me for my naivety, but then I realize he’s staring at the series of paintings on the wall before us.

“They’re yours,” he says. “Aren’t they?”

They are.

Or they were, once. I had painted a collection of self-portraits, close-ups of my face at different angles. I can remember every stroke, every shade. There should be a portrait where I’m staring directly at the sun, another where I’m holding up a hand as if reaching through mist, another where I’m resting my head against my forearm, my eyes dark and weary.

In order to capture my features, I’d spent way too long scrutinizing my appearance in the mirror, until I grew unbearably bored of my own face and hated what I saw—and that had come through in the paintings. I didn’t look remotely happy in any of them, and the colors I’d chosen were just as depressing: the deep blue of an ocean in the storm, the silver of a jagged mirror edge, the maroon of a rusted door.

But now, in all of them, half my face is gone.

Erased.

As if painted over with dark acrylic, hiding my eyes and nose.

It’s a self-portrait of a stranger, someone unrecognizable, someone who might not even exist anymore.

There’s no artist statement underneath it either. No name.

“Excuse me,” I say, turning to the closest art teacher I can find—Ms. Wilde, a woman with glittery butterfly clips in her graying hair and huge emerald rings on both bony hands. She was always hanging around when I’d go in to work on my pieces during lunch breaks and after school. “Excuse me, sorry, but I was just wondering about these paintings. Do you know who they’re by?”

Ms. Wilde shakes her head. “They’ve just been lying around in the art room. We figured we would put them on display. They’re not bad, huh? There’s something just slightly ominous and unsettling about them. . . . I can’t quite put my finger on it. A shame that we don’t know who the artist is.”

I swallow. My voice comes out shrill, shaky. “I hear . . . I hear it’s by Jenna Chen.”

She stares at me, mystified. Blinks twice. “And . . . who is that?”

My stomach drops.

“An art student here,” I try.