Three
“Move before we run you over!” Celine calls.
The freshman blinks up at us like a deer in the headlights, wide-eyed and white-faced with alarm, then recognizes the person
yelling at her. At once, she scurries away from the last empty parking spot, her open bag hugged tight to her chest, notebooks
almost falling out of it in her haste.
“Thanks, Lydia,” Celine yells to the freshman as Leela slams her foot down on the gas and swerves sharply into the space,
just one dangerous inch away from knocking the sideview mirror off the neighboring BMW. “ Love your lipstick today, by the way. Is that Dior?”
Lydia flushes, and actually breaks into a shy, earnest smile. “Y-yeah. It is.” She hesitates. “Do you... want one? I have
a spare since my older sister works there....” I cringe slightly at the obvious attempt to boost her social standing, but
I can’t blame her. There’s something about this school, these people, that brings out an almost animal-like desperation in
you, a hunger for validation.
“Shit, could you?” Celine bats her long false lashes—a trick that always seems to work on everyone.
“Yeah, of course! I—I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
I watch the exchange with quiet incredulity. Only Celine Tan could threaten to kill someone one second and compliment them
the next, and walk away from it even more adored than before—with a new lipstick, no less.
Leela shakes her head and cuts the engine. “Come on, babe, you need to stop scaring the poor freshmen. I swear little Lydia
was about to have a heart attack.”
“It’s necessary for maintaining social order,” Celine reasons without a hint of remorse, sliding smoothly out the car door,
her platform heels landing, soundless, on the grass below. “If we don’t instill an appropriate amount of fear into the hearts
of the young ones, this school will descend into utter anarchy. And we wouldn’t want that , now would we?”
Leela snorts. “Spoken like a true leader.”
“I would be a great leader. I have it all: charisma, good fashion sense, influence....” Celine swings back to me, her long
hair almost whacking me in the face. “Back me up here, Jessica.”
I resist the urge to look around for someone else, and fall into step behind her. I’m Jessica now. She’s waiting for me to speak. So what would my brilliant, witty cousin say? “Um.” Definitely not that.
But Leela rescues me. “Stop forcing Jessica to side with you, oh my god.”
“I’m only speaking the truth; the evidence is irrefutable—”
“Save your persuasion tactics for your politics essay, ’kay?”
Celine groans. “Don’t remind me. I still have two thousand words to write before midnight.”
As we continue down the narrow pebbled paths to the main entrance, my attention slips away from their conversation, pulled as always to the view. Havenwood Academy looks exactly how you’d expect a school with such a name to look: like ancient power and old money. The kind of place angels go to rest and artists go to die. The imposing redbrick buildings rise beyond a stretch of balsam firs and a vast sea of deep green grass, with crimson myrtle creeping over the stone gates like spilt blood. Even my dad, who neither knows nor wants to know anything about architecture, couldn’t stop himself from pointing out the impressive gardens and carefully clipped lawns and bone-white statues the first time he visited, the school motto etched above all the doors in gold, lest we forget: Ad Altiora Tendo. I strive toward higher things.
A strange prickling sensation snakes down my arms as we take the shortcut around the chapel. This is the latest addition to
the campus (“So that’s where our school fees are going,” Leela had commented to me the first time we walked past it), although more students use
it to study than to pray, unless it’s for good grades.
Soft, flurried whispers from passing students follow in our wake, and soon I realize what the foreign sensation is: I’m being
watched.
“God, she’s so pretty.”
“Who?”
“Jessica Chen.” A sigh, strained with awe. “I wish I could look like that.”
“Is it just me, or has she somehow gotten even prettier?”
“ Right? Her skin is basically glowing.”
“If I had even some of her genes, I swear I’d be invincible.”
It’s surreal. Everyone in my peripheral vision has me in their central line of view. I feel the ripple in the air, the eyes
pinned on my back, bright, envious, eager, the way people adjust their positions to accommodate mine like flowers turned toward
the sun, so subtle I wonder if they’re even aware they’re doing it.
“You know, I heard they recently started a fan club,” Celine says when we reach the humanities building.
I’m still trying not to startle at the sound of Celine Tan speaking to me. When I was myself, she had only acknowledged my
existence when she wanted to borrow something in class, or when I was blocking her way in the corridors. “A fan club? For
who?”
“For you , obviously,” Leela tells me, smiling. This too is different from what I’m used to. We’ve been friends for years, but Leela
has never looked at me with such sincere admiration, like I’m standing one step above her.
And that’s when I decide, firmly, unequivocally, that I can’t be dreaming. Because even in my wildest dreams, my imagination
wouldn’t be able to conjure something so realistic, to create a feeling I’ve never experienced in all my seventeen years:
the kind of joy that springs from other people’s awe. The pleasant warmth on my face, the firmness to my steps . Like I’ve been underwater the whole time, and I’m finally moving up, breaking through the surface, into the sun.
But if this is real life... how the hell did it happen? What theory could possibly begin to explain this? And even more importantly, if I’m inhabiting Jessica Chen’s body, living her life...
Then who’s living mine?
Even on days without freakish supernatural events, first period English tends to give me a headache.
All the windows are closed, the single door shut tight, the air in the room stuffy as the inside of a turtleneck sweater and
smelling inexplicably of chlorine (the rumor goes that a student was once killed in here, and the school cleaned the body
up themselves to avoid bad press). Old Keller is already scribbling out today’s learning objectives on the board when we file
our way inside, the red marker so faint the words are barely visible. Something about aloneness and selfness and metaphors.
To be fair, Old Keller isn’t even that old. Certainly no older than my dad. But he has all the mannerisms and fashion style
of someone transported here from the nineteenth century, and he is known to speak fondly of Shakespeare as if they were good
drinking buddies.
“Please copy the objectives down,” he tells us in a voice like chalk.
He doesn’t need to bother; it’s what he says at the start of every lesson. Soon the classroom is filled with the soft flap
of notebooks flipping open, the scratch of pen on paper, chairs pushing out, people squeezing into their designated seats.
Though nobody ever acknowledges it aloud, there’s a pretty clear pattern to the seating arrangement here. An invisible line runs down the classroom. On one side, you have the legacies, the broad-shouldered boys and sun-kissed girls, the wealthy sons and daughters of law firm owners and university professors and construction magnates. On the other side, you have the Asian kids.
Of course, as with any rule, there are exceptions. Like Charlotte Heathers, who’s a musical theater nerd, famously has no
social media whatsoever, and only spends time with the piano prodigies.
I’m making a beeline for my usual desk in the middle when Leela grabs my arm. Pulls me over with an odd expression on her
face, like she’s unsure if I’m joking.
“Where are you going?”
“Huh?”
A few heads swivel toward us, all of them looking just as confused as Leela does.
“Aren’t you sitting with me?” she whispers, waving at the chair next to her. Jessica’s chair.
I falter. Gather myself. “Oh—right. Sorry, I just... got distracted—”
“Ladies, ladies, please stop your yapping and take your seats already.” Old Keller shoots us a half-hearted glare. As with
most teachers, his strictness never seems to apply to Jessica Chen. “Class started one minute ago.”
I quickly sit, but I can’t stop staring at the empty spot where I should be. My heart beats faster, harder, drowning out the beginnings of Old Keller’s lecture. Will some other version of me waltz into class today? Someone with my face and body but not my personality? Or is there some sort of multiverse at work, where two versions of me exist at the same time, my consciousness split between them? The thought drives a chill through the marrow of my bones.
But the seat remains empty, and none of my classmates points out my absence. What’s stranger is that Old Keller doesn’t remark
on the fact that I’m missing either, and he’s the kind of teacher who only accepts absences in the event of death. Even if
you were almost dead, he’d still expect you to drag yourself to class with your last breath to take notes on the symbolism in Romeo and Juliet.
“...before we move on to our next unit, I wanted to hand back your essays. Yes, finally , I know, thank you for your patience. I was especially impressed with Jessica’s work,” Old Keller says, with a rare little smile, the thin wrinkles around his mouth deepening as
he turns to me. “Your thesis was, dare I say, groundbreaking. To have interpreted the characters of Edith and Clara as being
deliberately unlikable, the personification of the author’s own worst fears—indeed, to read their interactions through the lens of self-mockery....
It’s such a fresh, incisive take, and a true indicator of how well you understood the text and the themes—you were not just
thinking about the book, but thinking beyond it.” He pauses dramatically, and clears his throat. “You know I have a policy of never rewarding full marks for essays, as
writing can never be perfect, but I was moved to make an exception in this case. Well done. Very well done.”
All the questions swirling inside my head take a vacation as a happy flush spreads through my cheeks, my lips kicking up involuntarily. If this bursting, radiant feeling were a liquor, I would be intoxicated. And I can’t help myself; I want more of it. I want everything I didn’t have. “Thank you so much, Mr. Keller,” I say, in Jessica’s sweet, angelic voice. I tuck my perfect hair behind my perfect ear and continue with perfect charm, “I honestly don’t think I would have gotten into Harvard without your guidance all these years....”
It works even better than I thought.
There’s a pause before the whole class reacts. An explosion of noise, color, applause, congratulations, and compliments pouring
in from all sides. “Oh my god,” Leela shrieks, jumping up from her seat with such enthusiasm it almost scares me. She actually looks like she might cry with
joy. “Oh my god—you got into Harvard? That’s incredible. Jessica. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me right away . Are you absolutely ecstatic? I’m so ecstatic for you. Do your parents know? What did they say? I’m going to call my mom, she’s
going to be so excited—she always said you’d make it big—”
“I mean, we all saw this coming,” Celine comments on my left, and it’s hard to define the emotion in her blue-lined eyes.
She hasn’t moved an inch, but she’s looking right at me, as though still trying to decide what her response should be. At
last the corner of her mouth curves. As much in acknowledgment as in challenge. “Congrats, bitch.”
“You’re literally the only person I know who’s been accepted,” Leela gushes.
“Wait, didn’t Cathy Liu apply as well?” someone asks. “She must have been accepted too, right?”
A few people turn around to search for her. I glance back over my seat at Cathy. She freezes at the sudden attention, her large doe eyes flicking to me. She skipped two grades when she was only in elementary school; that, combined with the fact that her features are naturally younger, with her full cheeks and soft brows, and her tendency to wear heart-shaped jewelry and bright ribbons in her hair, all create the impression of a tween who’s wandered into a senior class by mistake. But her scores are proof that no mistakes were made. She’s received the academic award for almost as many years as Jessica has, and there was once even a short article about her in the local paper, with a photo of her grinning and holding up all her certificates, her front teeth still missing .
Which is why I’m not surprised when she nods, once.
“Oh, so we have two Harvard girls among us,” someone calls.
“Quiet down now—the other teachers are going to think I’m running a circus in here,” Old Keller tells the class, but there’s
no real annoyance in the way he shakes his head and leans back against the whiteboard, only pride.
“Congratulations, Cathy,” I tell her, surprised by how smoothly the words flow from my lips, how genuine my smile feels. It’s
so easy to be generous when you lack nothing. To be nice when you’re not in pain. It doesn’t matter if people are cheering
for someone else, because they’re already cheering for me.
Cathy smiles back at me. “Congratulations to you too. You’re such an icon.”
Even after Old Keller starts handing back our essays, someone reaches out and thumps my back, and another person jokes about
how they want to be exactly like me when they grow up, even if they’re three months older.
It’s like a do-over of yesterday night. Like the universe has realigned with all my deepest wants and dreams. Every time I pinched myself awake when I started feeling lightheaded from studying, when I felt close to throwing up before a big exam, when I stayed up until the moon fell and the sky burned red, highlighting and writing and repeating obscure facts under my breath, when I filled in my paintings stroke by stroke by stroke, this is the scene I envisioned. Exactly, entirely, this.
The warm glowing bodies around me, the electric pulse of envy, the longing dangling from their faces. For years, I’ve watched
Jessica Chen from the back of the room, how she sat with her chin up, shoulders straight, how her ponytail swayed when she
laughed, how the teachers reserved their smiles and praise just for her. I’ve watched and wondered what it’s like to be that talented, that brilliant—
And now I know.
I feel incredible. Invincible.
I feel like I could claw the sun from the sky and eat it whole.
The first and only time I ever won something, it was for an art competition.
I’d painted a huge family portrait, with Mom and Dad placed at the center of the frame, their eyes sad but smiling, and me standing just off to the side, my features darkened and blurred in their shadow. The setting was meant to be difficult to make out; there was nothing but a vast open field, tendrils of pale purple mist rising around all of us like smoke, a mere suggestion of a place, rather than a place itself. The judges had said there was something unspeakably lonely about the piece that made it stand out. One of the judges had even teared up, studying it.
When I’d gone up to collect the reward for my loneliness, my eyes fastened on the gold medal and the hundred-dollar cash prize,
the boy who’d come in second place (he had done an abstract piece, supposedly in the style of Pollock; in all honesty, I just
found it very messy) had congratulated me. Then, with all the airs of someone making a bold accusation, he added, “You’re
just in this competition for the glory, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” I replied, the medal now clutched to my chest. I loved the weight of it, its polished edges, how it glinted
beneath the lights. “Obviously.”
He’d stared at me, clearly not expecting me to agree.
I was surprised by his surprise. Why else would I have entered the competition, put in all that work, if I didn’t care for glory? It seems a common enough motivator
for men, and it’s never questioned. The realms of history and literature are heavily populated by kings who’ve gone mad for
glory, knights who’ve killed in search of it, writers who’ve devoted their lives to capturing it. It’s the needle to my compass,
what I’ve mapped my entire life around. It’s what my body runs on: food, water, air, and that ceaseless, propulsive desire
for greatness.
Now, walking through campus as Jessica Chen, with Leela and Celine falling into step on either side of me, I can taste it.
Glory. Radiant as the white sunshine slicing through the trimmed lawn. Sweet as the chocolate-dipped strawberries Leela’s shared with both of us. The news about the Harvard acceptance has spread all over the school, and the stream of congratulations hasn’t stopped yet.
I could live like this forever, I think, smiling, as I lower myself onto the grass, right under the glow of the sun, my skirt fluttering around my thighs,
the rich chocolate melting on my tongue. It’s only been half a day, and already I can’t stomach the idea of returning to my
old, small, imperfect self, to my banal disappointments and insecurities.
“Have we heard the news?” Leela asks, lying down flat beside me, one hand raised to shield her eyes.
Celine lies down too, but on her side, in a striking supermodel pose, propped up against her elbow. She somehow manages to
stuff two whole strawberries in her mouth and chews. “What news?”
“About Aaron Cai .” Leela looks deliberately at me when she says his name. For a moment I forget who I am, and my heart tumbles in my chest.
“Apparently he’s come back from his Paris program early.”
“Seriously?” Celine raises her brows. “Who’d leave a fancy gifted-kid program for this?” She waves a lazy hand toward all
the other students milling around the sun-dappled lawn, half of them pretending to study, the wind blowing the clouds into
pieces overhead.
“Havenwood isn’t bad,” Leela says, laughing.
“That’s highly debatable . ”
“Well, he must have his own reasons.” Leela turns back to me, a meaningful smile spreading across her glossed lips. “I wonder
if he’s gotten even prettier. His bone structure was always immaculate.”
I can’t suppress a scoff, even though I know the answer is yes , he has, of course he has. “I honestly don’t think he needs to be any prettier. It would become a legitimate public hazard—didn’t
someone walk into a brick wall two years ago because they were too busy ogling him?”
Leela rolls over, laughing harder. “Can we blame them?”
“Well, I sure hope he’s prettier,” Celine says, her brows completing their ascent to her hairline. “The ratio of attractive
girls to attractive guys around here is actually quite embarrassing.”
“I thought you said Blake Chen was getting cute,” Leela reminds her.
“Yeah, but then he cut his hair, remember?”
“Blake Chen’s still better than Aaron,” I mutter without thinking.
Both of them fall strangely quiet, and my stomach jolts. Of course Jessica Chen would never make a comment like that, joking
or not. Maybe this is it—they’ll realize I’m not her at all. And what will happen after that? Will I somehow snap back into
my own body?
Then a familiar voice floats over from right behind me, the last voice I want to hear.
“Conflict of interest aside, I do agree with that.”
Heat shoots up my neck as I whirl around and come face-to-face with Aaron. Or more like face-to-waist. He’s standing up while
I’m sitting, his shadow falling over me, the sun’s light circling his head like a halo.
“A-Aaron,” I choke out. Apparently the curse about him always appearing at the wrong time is still well in effect, even when I’m no longer myself. “That’s not really—I meant...”
He folds his arms across his chest. “Yes?”
I can’t think of any way to continue without digging myself deeper into this self-made ditch. It doesn’t help that I can see,
very clearly, Celine mouthing, “He’s definitely prettier now.” So I just clear my throat and eat another strawberry.
“Do you want to sit?” Leela offers in a bright voice, patting the space next to me. “I can’t believe you’re back. It’s been,
like, ages.”
Aaron’s eyes flicker to her, the patch of grass, back to my face. He hesitates.
“We have so much to catch up on,” Leela continues. “Why did you leave Paris early anyway?”
It’s like watching a window slam shut; something in his expression tightens, smooths out. Then he straightens, swings his
backpack higher up his shoulder. “I’ll have to pass today, sorry.”
“Oh,” Leela says, disappointed. “That’s fine.”
“Next time,” he promises. Just when I think he’s gone, a combination of relief and disappointment settling inside me like
river sediment, he calls for Jessica.
Jessica.
A delayed beat. I spin around, and his expression shifts again. He looks, briefly, startled. Almost spooked.
“Yeah?” I ask, my pulse picking up.
“Nothing,” he says, though he’s still staring at me like he’s seen a ghost. Shakes his head. “Nothing.”