I Am Not Jessica Chen(82)
“I know exactly what I want now,” I tell him, my voice holding even, despite how hard my heart is pounding. “And that includes you. I promise you’re not just some dream for me to chase. I promise I’ll never stop wanting you—”
I don’t have the chance to finish. He spins around, and his hands are in my hair, his lips are on mine, and my heart is on fire. I can’t believe it’s happening, even as I kiss him back, urgently, recklessly. Even as my fingers find the collar of his shirt to pull him closer, closer, closer, bridging the months of absence, the years I loved him in private. And I’m stunned by how right it is, how natural it feels. I’ve dreamed of this for so long that it seems impossible the reality of it could ever match up to the vision I’d been building inside my head, but it’s somehow even better.
He pulls back just to look at me. His eyes are the deepest black, a shade I can never seem to replicate with oils or watercolors. He lifts his hand and tugs my hair once, lightly, teasing, testing, as if he needs to confirm that I’m really here. Then he runs one gentle thumb over my cheek, and I think I lean in. I think I stop breathing.
“Jenna, you’re all I’ve ever wanted,” he says, quiet. Perfect. “It’s always been you. It can only be you.”
The sun is bursting through my chest, breaking past my lips. It’s my life, I think with amazement, and it’s beautiful, and I can paint it any color I want to. Right now it’s drenched in the brightest shade of gold. I have the brush in my hands, and the canvas is mine. It’s all mine.
Twenty-One
Unbelievably, I still have to go to school the next day.
I brush my hair and shrug on my blazer and pack my lunch as if everything is normal. But I pay more attention now. I finish the entire bowl of congee my mom makes for me and ask for seconds, with more pork floss and century-egg slices on top. (“Has my cooking improved?” she marvels, to which I answer, “Of course!”) I wave at my dad on the way out.
The sky is a pure, perfect blue, and I pay attention to that too, the feeling of the sun on my face, even though my bag is weighed down by homework and mock papers.
My first class is art. I don’t realize how much I’ve missed it until I’m sitting at my usual table, my paints and paintings spread out in front of me. All of my self-portraits have been restored to what they were before, my face showing, every brushstroke in place.
“Morning.”
I spin around at the familiar voice. It’s Leela, her ponytail swinging over her shoulder as she drops into the other seat, and I can’t stop myself. I reach out and pull her into a crushing hug.
“Oh my god,” she says, laughing, but she hugs me back. “What’s with the sudden display of affection?”
“I just had a bad dream,” I say, squeezing her arm. “I’m still a little spooked.”
She snorts. “Is it as bad as that dream you had where Old Keller transformed into a spider and started scuttling around on your desk so you couldn’t finish your English essay?”
“You still remember that?”
“Um, yeah, you traumatized the hell out of me with that story.” She shudders, then pulls back to study me. “Why are you smiling so wide?”
“Am I?”
“Very wide,” she says. Then she glances over at the self-portraits and claps her hands together. “That’s what I was looking for. Of course.”
“What?”
“It’s so weird,” she murmurs, “but the other day, I suddenly thought of this series of paintings I loved. I had like, the vaguest impression of them; I couldn’t even tell you what they were about, only the feeling I would get when I looked at them, like this—this tightness in my chest, right where my heart is. It drove me mad that I couldn’t remember who the artist was and what they were called. I even tried to Google it. But this is it. It’s your paintings I was searching for. Have they been here the whole time?”
“Yeah,” I say. “The whole time.”
“I really love them,” she says. “Like, genuinely.”
“That’s good, because I was thinking of adding another self-portrait to the series.”
But this self-portrait is different.
I start on the sketch, shaping my nose, my eyes, the contours of my cheekbones. I’m not looking directly ahead or up at something I can’t have, but at someone over my shoulder, and I’m smiling. The colors are softer, plum-purple and pale lavender and carnation pink for the collar of my dress, buttermilk yellow for the sunlight streaming in behind me, old rose for the shadows under my collarbones. I mix and blend the paints and run my brush across the canvas and it’s like the world disappears. I don’t even realize the period is over until Leela nudges me, giggling.
“Looks like someone’s come to see you.”
“Who?” I ask.
The answer is waiting by the door, hair falling perfectly over his eyes, his eyes falling straight on me. He’s holding his books in one arm, the other propped against the frame. He looks so beautiful that I can’t believe he’s waiting for me.
I make my way toward him, and I’m surprised to find him grinning. “Hi,” I say, uncertain.
“Hello,” he says, then leans in. My heartbeat skyrockets, but he stops inches away from my ear and whispers, “You have paint on your face.”