I Am Not Jessica Chen(76)
“I’ll bring her back,” I say, stepping away from him. “I—I’ll make you remember again.”
“Remember what?”
I don’t answer him. I just spin on my heel and keep running.
I go home.
My real home, not Jessica’s house.
The front door is unlocked. It swings open when I push it, and the smell of chrysanthemum tea and fresh mangoes envelops me at once. The news is playing in the background, a soft hum of sound, the volume dialed low enough to allow for conversation. The afternoon light leaks through the windows and turns the rugs canary yellow. It’s all so achingly familiar that I start to cry again, muffling the tears with the heel of my hand.
But as I walk deeper inside, I realize that something’s different. The furniture has been rearranged. My study desk is no longer sitting in the corner of the living room—the desk my mom and dad had carried down the stairs for me, because I once made an offhand remark about how my bedroom was too cold to study in during the winter. The cards I’d hand-painted for my mom’s past five birthdays have been taken down from the refrigerator door. My section of the bookshelf has been emptied out and filled with encyclopedias and travel guides instead.
A new fear races through my veins. I trace my fingers over the wall behind the kitchen door, searching for the crack in the plaster from when I’d slammed the door too hard in a fit of anger. We’d been talking about how Jessica was chosen for the school’s academic extension program, and I wasn’t.
You have to pay for it, my mom had yelled when she saw the damage later. Do you have any idea how expensive it’ll be to repair this? The entire house value will drop. I didn’t know anything about real estate values, but I’d made the unfounded calculation that it would probably cost a million dollars. I’d run up to my room sobbing and searched frantically online for the fastest way to make that kind of money without having to donate any vital organs. The next morning, I’d devised a grand plan that involved teaching abstract art to young heirs, but my parents never mentioned the incident again. They didn’t end up fixing the crack, either.
Except now the surface is completely smooth, unnervingly cold against my skin. It’s as if I was never here.
As if I’d never even existed.
My eyes close. I wish I was myself again. I scream the words into my mind. I wish I could reverse my wish from before. It should work—I’ve never meant anything more. But nothing changes.
“Jessica?” My mom comes downstairs to find me weeping over a random spot on the wall. I can understand why she looks so concerned. “Tian ya, what are you doing here? Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, the tears falling faster.
She pauses, then cleans her hands on the towel draped over the oven and rests them on my shoulders. “Where’s your mom? Does she know you’re here?”
I mean to keep quiet. I’d come here for answers, not comfort, but—
“Mom,” I sob. “Mama. It’s me.”
She blinks. “I . . .”
“I’m your daughter.” I look up at her, willing with every single cell and nerve in my body that I can somehow make her remember. “I’m your only daughter.”
No recognition surfaces. Just bewilderment. “You . . . have always been like a daughter to me, yes,” she says politely.
“That’s not what I’m saying. Listen. You have to listen to me—”
Her hands fall from my shoulders. “I’m going to call your parents,” she says, and starts to turn away, her alarm growing visibly by the second.
“No, Mom.” My throat is hoarse. “Bie bu li wo ya.” Don’t ignore me. Don’t neglect me. Don’t forget about me.
The door swings open behind us, the sound making me jump. Then I see who it is. My dad is home.
“What’s happening?” he asks, staring at me.
My mom makes a helpless gesture with her hands. “Buzhidao zhe haizi shou shenme ciji le.” I don’t know what’s gotten into this child.
“Shouldn’t she still be in school right now?” Dad asks over my head. I’m a guest to him. An outsider.
“Well, she won’t say anything. She just keeps crying. . . . I’ve never seen her so distraught before.”
“Should we call someone?”
“I was just about to . . .” Mom grabs her phone from the kitchen counter. The news is still playing from the speakers.
“. . . rare meteor sighting expected tonight. Viewing conditions are favorable. Stargazers should travel to a dark location to get away from light pollution . . .”
My blood freezes. Everything seems to slow, to sharpen. Nothing feels real except this.
Rare meteor sighting . . .
A shooting star.
That was what Aaron had been talking about. Could it be that? The moment that cleaved my life in half, the moment after which everything went wrong?
No, not just that, I remind myself. I had headed home that night as well, and I’d smeared paint all over my self-portrait. That could be another factor. Maybe I just need to retrace every step I took.
“I have to get something,” I decide out loud, straightening. For the first time today, I feel hopeful. My head is clearer, my thoughts reshaping themselves around my new plan. I have a course of action. A path forward.