I Am Not Jessica Chen(72)

I feel something inside me go cold. With forced nonchalance, I start to close my laptop, tidy my notes, my fingers quivering slightly over the papers, all the equations I’d been working on bleeding together. Nobody moves. The quiet is punctuated only by the screech of the chair as I stand up. It doesn’t make much of a difference—even with my back straight and my head lifted, Lachlan is still tall enough to block out the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Tall enough to cast a shadow over me.

“I should get to class,” I tell him, and I have to marvel at how steady my voice sounds, how perfectly controlled, even when I think I might be sick.

He doesn’t stand in my way. But as I stride away from him, my books hugged tight to my chest, my leather shoes squeaking over the floor, he calls after me, “There’s nothing remotely special about you.”

Ignore him, I urge myself. It’s what my mother would advise. Don’t talk back. Don’t get into any drama. Don’t make a mess. Nobody will stand on your side. I can hear her voice now, in the back of my mind, firm and coaxing. There are plenty of things in life that are bitter, Jenna; you must learn to swallow the bitterness and continue on.

Yet I skid to a halt, my heart pounding, the cold feeling in my stomach spreading out to my fingers. Transforming into heat. I clench them as hard as I can, my nails digging into skin.

“Nothing that stands out,” Lachlan goes on. “I’ve met plenty of people like you before, you know, and most of them end up crashing and burning out the instant they step into the real world. You don’t even have a personality. The school just gives you these awards because you’re the more diverse choice. You don’t actually deserve it—”

I twist around on my heel, the library a dark brown blur in my peripheral vision, and fling my notebook at the wall behind him. The sound it makes is louder than I’d imagined, a solid thud that seems to ring and expand through the space even after the notebook has fallen to the floor, its cover bent like the broken wings of a bird.

Gasps rise from the other students. A girl cries out.

Lachlan flinches, his eyes wide, the look on his face not one of fear or outrage, but pure disbelief, like he’s not sure what’s happening. He wasn’t expecting it. Certainly not from me.

I let my hand drop back down to my side, adrenaline buzzing through my blood. I can still hear my mother’s voice in my ear, warning me against making a scene. If I were really the one Lachlan was insulting, I might be able to listen. But this is my cousin he’s talking about. My cousin he’s attacking. The girl who I understand better than I ever have before.

My mouth opens. This is the time to say something profound, something that could express all my rage and resentment and grief, but I’m jarred by the limitations of the English language, the very history and design of it weighed against me.

And in the end I don’t get the chance to speak.

Ms. Lewis steps forward from the teachers’ desks, and I’m gripped by the absurd, terribly inappropriate urge to laugh. Her lips are pursed in one tight line, her face pale. From her expression, you’d think someone had just been brutally murdered right inside the library. “Jessica Chen,” she says, in a tone I’ve never heard her use on Jessica before. “Come to my classroom now.” She pauses, and glances over at Lachlan, who’s staring at the spot where the notebook hit the wall as if it’s the scene of a grisly crime. “And you too, please.”



As Ms. Lewis shuts the door behind her, trapping us inside the dim classroom, I realize that I’ve never gotten into trouble at school before.

Even when I wasn’t always the best student in the class, or even the second best, I was still considered well-behaved. Most parent-teacher conferences were so anticlimactic as to be a waste of time, the comments always the same: Jenna Chen is attentive, you can tell she tries really hard, she seems to be following the curriculum without much trouble. . . .

It used to be a major point of frustration, listening to their canned, polite responses, then comparing the lackluster experience to Jessica’s. Once, a teacher had grown so emotional in describing how simply remarkable Jessica was and how very privileged she was to teach her that she’d burst into tears.

There was nothing very remarkable about me. But now that I really think about it, there was nothing wrong, either.

Not until now.

“I have to say, I’m quite stunned we’re even here,” Ms. Lewis begins, sitting down behind her desk, her bony hands folded in front of her. There’s a significant stack of test papers waiting on the side, most of them already marked with red. Our papers, I realize, noting the familiar-looking questions on the first page. And despite the dire circumstances, despite the fact that I’ve just threatened one of the most powerful people in our school, I can’t resist the impulse to peek at the scores. Kevin Cheng received seventy-five percent. Leela received ninety-eight percent—

“In all my years of teaching at this school,” Ms. Lewis says, her lips a bloodless white, “I have never witnessed such terrible behavior.”

I yank my gaze back and remain standing.

I know this is probably the part where I’m meant to bow my head in shame and dissolve into inconsolable sobs, but all I can think is: Really? This is the worst behavior she’s ever seen? Not when one of our old PE teachers was “transferred” to another private school after he harassed a student in his class? Not when someone in the year above ours scribbled a slur in permanent marker on the bathroom walls? Not when Tracey Davis posted her ex-best friend’s home address online after an argument, and trashed her locker with raw eggs and chicken blood? Not when two boys in our class fought each other in the parking lot over some girl they both liked, until one ended up with a broken nose and the other with a fractured arm?