Six
An hour later, we spill out into the corridors, everyone waving their hands about and talking all at once.
“Oh my god ,” Leela says, yanking out her unraveling ponytail, then retying it with a velvet scrunchie. Her forehead is jeweled with
sweat, as though from physical rather than mental exertion. “That was terrible. I mean, I was already prepared for the worst,
but that was just inhumanely difficult. At several separate points throughout that test, I contemplated punching a hole through
the window and escaping through it.”
Celine slumps back against the closest wall, one ankle crossed over another. “No joke. Question six was a bitch.”
“What did you write for that one?” Leela asks. “About the lasting consequences of—”
“No, no. We’re not doing this again.” Celine cuts in firmly, holding up a hand. “No comparing answers after tests, remember?”
Leela sighs and turns to me. “How did you find it, Jessica?”
I try to think back to the questions, to what I wrote, but already the test is a blur in my memory. The most I can recall
is the feeling —the awful sense of time running out, the cramp in my fingers from gripping the pen too tightly, the pressure at the sides of my skull as I pushed my mind harder than ever before. But before I can say anything, Cathy Liu strides over to join us, her heart-shaped silver earrings bouncing as she walks.
“I’m sure it was easy for Jessica,” Cathy says, flashing me a wide smile. “She’s going to top the class. As always.”
“Of course she will,” Leela agrees.
“Not necessarily,” I say, my chest constricting. “We don’t know that. There’s literally no way to know that.”
Celine and Leela exchange a pointed exasperated look: it’s a familiar one, an old routine, done so many times as to be an
inside joke.
“Yeah, but it’s you ,” Leela tells me.
Except that it’s not. At the end of the day, I took the test alone. Even when I’ve tricked everyone into thinking that I really
am Jessica, the most I can do is maintain the illusion. There is the idea of Jessica Chen people hold in their minds, and
then there’s me.
“Perfect Jessica,” Cathy says with an adoring sigh, her eyes wide and fixed on me. It’s probably how I used to look at my
cousin when I was younger. “Sometimes I wish I were you.”
“Don’t we all,” Leela says.
I release a silent sigh of relief when the bell rings, sending everyone scattering down the hall.
We have back-to-back classes for the rest of the day, and of course Jessica’s picked out the most complex, content-heavy subjects possible. So instead of heading to the art classroom, losing myself in the familiar smell of paints and charcoal and dried flowers, focusing on how to capture the shape of water, the color of light, I’m dropped headfirst into an accelerated physics class I’ve never taken before. It’s like finding yourself in a country where you don’t speak the language at all, but you’re expected to get around just fine on your own.
I’ve already filled in three pages of Jessica’s notebook when I stare at my notes on torque and angular acceleration, then
up at the board, and arrive at the terrible, inevitable conclusion that I have no idea what the teacher’s saying. Around me,
my classmates are all taking notes too, comparing formulas and whispering. None of them appear to be struggling.
I’m meant to be the smartest person in the room, I think hysterically, but everyone here is so much smarter than I am.
“...your answer, Jessica Chen?” the teacher calls.
I jolt in my seat. “Sorry?”
“Your answer for question nine,” the teacher says. Ms. Gonzalez, I think her name was. She’s never taught me before, but I
know that she’s as young as she looks, just a few years out of college, and once went on a research trip to Antarctica, which
she brings up at every possible opportunity.
“Oh, I... let me look....” I fumble around for my notes, as if the answer might have magically appeared on its own.
All the tiny equations and numbers and graphs swim before me, senseless, dense, impossible to comprehend. I can feel people
starting to stare, the natural silence stretching out into tension as the moment drags on. My throat closes. They’re all going to find out. Any second now, they’re going to realize that I’m not meant to be here, that I’m not actually Jessica Chen, that I’m not like them.
“It’s a fairly straightforward question,” Ms. Gonzalez says with a light frown. “Really, this is the kind of question we’d
do for fun while we were in Antarctica....” As she goes on a tangent about her trip, the class listening with polite but
increasingly strained interest, I sneak a desperate glance at the notebook of the boy sitting in front of me. He’d received
some kind of prestigious physics award just last year, and he’s on track to study physics at MIT; if anyone were a reliable
source, it would be him.
“...ah, good times, good times,” Ms. Gonzalez finishes ten minutes later, wiping her eyes. Then she straightens. “But back
to—what was it? Question nine? Jessica?”
“Thirty-four point four,” I say, projecting as much confidence into my voice as I can.
“Great. Thanks, Jessica,” Ms. Gonzalez tells me, but I’ve barely breathed a sigh of relief when she pauses. Her brows draw
together. “Hang on, I’m sorry,” she says slowly, like she’s doubting herself. “No, it seems the correct answer is... thirty-seven
point six. Is that what everyone else got?”
A few nods from around the classroom. More eyes flickering to me.
My face goes hot. The shaky feeling from the test is back, but somehow worse. It’s public failure; the mortification of making
a known, visible mistake. The sentence of other people’s judgment.
I stare over at the boy’s notebook again, certain I must have misread it, but the number is the same. Thirty-four point four.
He’d answered it wrong.
“That’s okay,” Ms. Gonzalez says in a hurry, failing to conceal her surprise. “It was a small slip-up. Happens to the best of us.”
I hide my burning cheeks with the sleeve of my blazer and nod, even though it feels small in the same way a bone fissure is
small, in the beginning, or a crack in a vase: apply the right pressure, and everything breaks.
The only reprieve from class comes in the form of our belated Women’s Day and Literature event. It’s a somewhat disjointed
combination of two topics that the school cares the least about, but must pretend to, for the sake of its image: the arts,
and women. Even World Chocolate Day received more than an hour’s attention.
We all gather together in the main hall, with its warm brown interior and crimson stage curtains and high cathedral ceiling.
Celine slides into the seat on my left, and Leela crosses her legs on my right.
The school made a bad investment last year and installed folding seats, which curve around the raised stage in long rows.
Every time somebody sits down and then stands again, or so much as lifts their weight, the seat snaps up with an absurdly
loud slamming sound. When we’re asked to rise for the school hymn, the heavy silence of the hall is broken by the thud and
echo of over three hundred seats bouncing up at once.
The organ drags out its first note, a mournful, eerie tune that reminds me of funerals, the claustrophobic settling of clouds before rain. Our head of music struts up the stage and conducts using a ballpoint pen in sharp, jerky movements. I mouth along to the lyrics: something about courage and light and perseverance through trying times.
Then a girl from our year is invited to do a poetry reading. Her ponytail bobs wildly on her way down the aisle. She takes
her time, flattening a crumpled piece of paper that looks like it was ripped straight out of her school notebook, and lowering
the microphone down to her height.
“This is a poem about my mother,” she says, her mouth so close to the microphone that it makes crackling noises every time
she breathes. She clears her throat. “My mother...” She pauses deliberately. Gazes out at the crowd like she’s just made
a significant point. “Once told me... that life... is a ship... and we must... take courage... and succumb...
to the waves...”
This continues for some time. Every two or three words, she stops, and makes intense eye contact with someone in the audience.
It doesn’t help that the static from the microphone makes the word “ship” sound like a certain expletive—a fact all the teachers
must have noticed as well, but are making admirable efforts to pretend not to.
“Is it just me,” I mutter to Leela, “or did that poem just encourage drowning?”
She lets out a startled laugh, quickly muffling it with her blazer sleeve.
Celine glances over at us. “What did you say?” she whispers.
“Oh, um, nothing,” I tell her, feeling awkward. I’m still not quite sure how to act around Celine. How Jessica would act around Celine. “It’s not important.”
She frowns slightly, but leans back again.
“Thank you for that incredibly moving piece,” Old Keller says as the girl returns to her seat below the stage. “Now, let us
turn our attention to our student-nominated Haven Awards. Remember, if there’s someone you would like to nominate—and it can
be for anything , from saving a cat to qualifying for the Olympics to helping a friend with their homework—you only need to email me or Ms.
Lewis by Friday afternoon. This week, our first award goes to...” He peers down at the card in his hand. “Jessica Chen.
For being a model student, a shining example to others, and for her unwavering integrity. Submitted by...” His eyebrows
rise as he holds the card closer. “An anonymous admirer.”
The skin on my neck tingles. For her unwavering integrity. Maybe I’m simply being paranoid, but it sounds less like sincere admiration, and more like a taunt. Even when wild applause sounds throughout the hall—even when Leela gives me a friendly shove and hugs her knees to her chest
to let me squeeze past—even when I’m walking into the bright glare of the spotlight, I can’t help feeling like there’s barbed
wire coiling tighter and tighter around my insides. That nameless friction, that cold gut instinct that something isn’t right,
only intensifies when I squint out at the sea of seated students. They’re all watching me, their faces obscured by the shadows,
too dark for me to make out their individual expressions. To determine if they’re staring at me with awe, or with something
else.
Her unwavering integrity.
Whoever nominated me for the award is out there, somewhere. And I can’t see them, but they can see me perfectly. I’ve always wanted that: to be looked up at, to be known by people I’ve never even spoken to before, to be special, distinct, standing up on the tallest, brightest platform. But only now do I realize that when you’re out in the open, alone under the lights, and everyone else is in the darkness, you make for such a terribly easy target.
Even after we leave the stuffy air of the hall, my head feels light, and my breathing is a little too quick, too unsteady.
Then it stops entirely when I notice the school photo hanging outside the hall.
The photo was taken two years ago, in celebration of Havenwood’s one-hundredth anniversary, and every single student had been
forced out onto the lawn to pose. We’re all in our best uniforms, white socks and polished leather shoes, hair smoothed back
from faces and stiff smiles. Jessica is standing in the front row, next to Aaron Cai, the sun coming in at the perfect angle.
Seeing the two of them together is like seeing celebrities on TV; they’re larger than life, glowing, untouchable, the subject
of everyone’s envy. It seems like the most natural thing in the world that they would belong beside each other. Nobody else
could reach either of them.
Then there’s me at the back. Or at least, that’s where I’m supposed to be.
My heart hammers inside my chest.
Somehow, impossibly, my features have all been blurred. As if the photo were drawn using charcoal, and somebody had smudged a finger right over my face. If I hadn’t seen it before, I wouldn’t even know it was me. But it can’t be the photo quality itself. Everything else is clear as ever, of such high resolution I can see the glint of Cathy Liu’s silver earrings, the blue cut of Celine’s eyeliner, the loose button on Aaron’s school shirt.
“Jessica?” Celine glances back at me, brows raised in question, and I realize I’ve stopped walking completely.
“What’s wrong?” Leela pipes up, turning around to study the school photo too. “Did they photoshop an extra arm on someone
again? You’d think they’d learn their lesson after that lawsuit three years ago.”
I shake my head, my throat tight. “Can you... can you see that?” I ask, pointing at my face. Jenna’s face.
Leela frowns and looks closer. She’s quiet for so long I almost forget how to breathe. “Who’s that meant to be?”
“Jenna,” I say. There’s a great roaring in my ears, my two selves and realities colliding; in the same instant, I feel something
shift in the air, like the universe itself is a physical presence, watching from afar.
“Right...” Her frown deepens. “It’s weird, but I actually can’t remember what she looked like.”
“What?”
“Jenna Chen.” She says the name very slowly, as if she’s never said it before, as if unsure it’s the right one. “I can’t remember,”
she says again, her voice more distant, her expression clouded over.
A slow chill spreads down my spine.
It’s quiet back in Jessica’s house. Her parents are out again, and everything is the same as it was this morning.
I stare around their luxurious kitchen, the porcelain dinner sets and marble countertops and modern glass lanterns suspended from the high ceiling, the house I’ve always dreamed of. Magnolia Cottage: even the name of it is like a place from a fantasy. A place of peace, without any disruptions or distractions.
Back in my house, there was always noise: my mother chopping up garlic in the kitchen, some kind of thriller movie playing
in the background; my father listening to the news, repeating snippets to himself to improve his English. More often than
not, one of us was complaining about the lack of space, the lack of silence. I remember trying to study for our politics test
last semester, and my father practicing outside the door, murmuring over and over the new phrases he’d learned for the day,
switching between tenses: This country... is beautiful. This country... was once beautiful. This country... could be beautiful.
My heart pinches. It already feels like forever since I heard my father’s voice.
But with that comes the memory of our last exchange—the disappointment in his eyes, the bitter accusation in his tone.
Look at your cousin Jessica.
He would be much happier to see me now, like this. The daughter he’s always wanted.
I circle the living room a few times before the tug of hunger in my gut pulls me back to the kitchen. There’s a thick leather-bound
menu sitting next to the microwave. Phil’s Private Dining , it reads in gold-foil italic letters. I flip through pages and pages of glossy images of appetizers and stop when I reach the number at the bottom. Once, Jessica had flippantly mentioned that nobody in her family cooked, because either her parents brought food home, or they had their private chef deliver Michelin-star dishes straight to their house.
My brief moment’s hesitation is broken by the gurgling from my stomach. I enter the number into Jessica’s phone, double-checking
it against the menu, then wait. It feels wildly overindulgent to order such fancy food for a snack , like buying a new fur coat just to wear it once, but it’s not like I’m doing anything Jessica wouldn’t. Really, when you think
about it, I’m just staying in character.
After the second ring, a pleasant, polished male voice floats up from the speaker. “Good afternoon. This is Phil’s Private
Dining. How can I help you?”
“Hi,” I say brightly, leaning against the kitchen cabinet. “It’s Jessica Chen here—”
“Ah, looking for an afternoon snack again?” The voice is warm, as if recounting a familiar joke. “I’ll get Pete to deliver
your usual order—he’ll be thrilled to make the trip, I’m sure. Should only take ten minutes.”
“That would be great,” I tell him, relieved and slightly amazed that he already knows what Jessica would want. I’d been going
to the same café down the corner from my house for seven years straight and ordering the same thing each time—a blueberry
muffin and lemon tea. But when I’d tried to ask for my usual, the owner had only fixed me with a blank stare. “Thank you so
much.”
“Always my pleasure. Have a lovely day, Miss Jessica.”
The doorbell sounds before I’ve even finished unpacking my schoolbag. A breeze kisses my cheek when I open the door, letting in the light and the boy waiting outside. He looks my age, with rumpled gold hair and emerald eyes and perfect teeth, the kind of conventionally attractive guy you would notice from a distance.
“Hey, Jessica,” he says. He sets down the giant ribbon-wrapped white box in his arms, then holds up a bouquet of daisies.
“These are, um, for you.” Color spreads fast through his neck as his eyes flicker to my face, then away, like he’s scared
of being caught.
“For me?” I repeat, breathing in the flowers’ fragrance. The daisies appear to have been hand-picked, bound together with
string, a card tied to the end. A phone number is scrawled over it, the first few digits so lopsided I can imagine his hand
shaking as he wrote them. My brows rise in disbelief. I’d always assumed that guys only acted this way in romance movies—then
again, my cousin’s life has always been like a movie. “Wow, that’s so sweet,” I tell him, offering him a smile.
“I—I’m glad you like them,” he stammers. “I wasn’t sure what your favorite flower was, and I saw last time I was here that
you already had magnolias in your driveway—I mean, not that I was, like, actively taking note of it in a creepy way or anything....
Okay,” he cuts himself off, his whole face such a bright, vivid red I could match the shade to one of my oil paints. “Okay,
yeah, I’m going to go now. Enjoy your meal.”
He appears dazed as he steps out into the front yard, spins back around, and promptly walks into a tree.
“Sorry,” he calls. I’m unsure if he’s talking to me, or the tree.
I feel a little dazed myself as I shut the door and pop the daisies into an empty vase. It’s silly, and it’s shallow, but it feels good to be wanted. To be so openly adored. I can’t stop smiling while I unwrap the ribbons around the box, the cool silk sliding like water between my fingers.
Jessica’s usual order is, apparently, an entire afternoon tea set: potato quiche and Parma rolls and hazelnut torte and butter scones with cream
and glistening slices of fruit, and a papaya salad containing so many kinds of nuts and seeds it seems almost offensive to
call it just a salad.
In the sitting room, I sink back into one of the massage chairs, transporting the tiered tray with all the exquisite bite-sized
treats onto the armrest, and open Jessica’s laptop.
Time to focus.
After physics class and the Haven Awards announcement, I can’t allow for any cracks in my performance. I have to prove to
myself that I can be Jessica, that perfection isn’t so far out of reach from me I can’t even emulate it properly. But there’s more at stake
than my pride—if people find out that I’m a fraud in Jessica’s body, who knows what they’ll do? They could lock me up, or
report me to the police for identity theft, or maybe they’ll make a movie about it: the mysterious case of the missing cousin.
Even if we were to eventually return to our own bodies, it wouldn’t just be my life that’s forever altered—it would be Jessica’s
too. I can’t do that to her.
No, I have to make sure nobody finds any reason to doubt me. And that means controlling every detail possible—including Jessica’s
emails.
I smear the clotted cream thick over the scones and take a large bite, the pastry soft and piping hot in the center and crumbling instantly in my mouth, then click into her inbox.
Right away, a flood of emails come through. Between the reminders about the swimming carnival coming up in two weeks, the
automated responses from school reception, and the increasingly desperate reminders to fill out the student feedback survey,
it’s all just award after award, praise after praise, the world’s greatest news distilled into text on the screen.
Dear Jessica, I am delighted to inform you that the Admissions Committee has voted to admit you to the Harvard Class...
Congratulations, Jessica! In recognition of your commitment to excellence, we are delighted to present you with the Katelyn
Edwards Award. You will receive a cash prize of ten thousand dollars...
Subject: Some absolutely amazing news! Huge congrats!!!
Dear Jessica, As a highly valued member of the Havenwood student community, your experience matters. That’s why we would like
to warmly invite you to fill out the following questions—
Wait. No. That one’s still the feedback survey.
I’m thrilled to be sending along this early offer from the Dean’s Institute. The selection process this year was the most
competitive yet, with only two candidates selected out of the thirty thousand who applied...
Jessica!!! I always knew you’d make it big! Just wanted to send a quick note and say I’m SO proud to know you!
It is a great pleasure to inform you that you have been awarded the National Merit Scholarship...
Subject: Media Request. My name is Samuel Richards, and I write for Business Insider . I was incredibly impressed to hear about everything you’ve accomplished at such a young age—perhaps most notably, the five
million dollars you raised for your global education campaign. Because of this, I wanted to reach out and ask to interview
you for the next issue...
I stop scrolling and lean back against the couch, catching my breath, overwhelmed by the sheer weight and scope of her achievements.
I’d heard somewhere that the imagination is always limited by experience, and that must be true, because no matter how I stretched
my mind, I would never even have dared imagine such success.
Then a new email pops up. There’s no heading, no sign-off, only one sentence.
I know what you’ve done.
The world sinks beneath my feet. I drop the rest of the scone back onto the tray and read the email again. My pupils shrink
down until all I can see is the black text creeping across the screen. I know what you’ve done. I know.
It feels like my scalp is trying to crawl off my skull.
With shaking fingers, I click into the sender’s details, but it’s anonymous. Just like the person who nominated me for the award.
The little food I’ve eaten threatens to lurch back up. I swallow hard, draw in a tight breath, even though it fails to fill
my lungs. A clock ticks from the mantel. The wooden boards of the back porch creak. The silence in the house takes shape until
it’s impossible to distinguish the vibrations of the air from the high-pitched ringing in my ears.
What do they know? Who is the email really addressed to? My cousin? Or have they already found out that I’m an imposter, that
I’m only wearing her appearance and her reputation like a stolen crown? And if it is meant for me, and they have found out— how ? Was it because of my mistake in physics? Or was it something else? Have they been watching me at school?
Could they be watching me now?
Goose bumps break out all over my body. I jerk my head toward the closest window, but all I can see is the burnt orange of
flowers, the spreading claws of the trees, the pale yellow light piercing through the gaps in the leaves. Then the clouds
shift to cover the sun, and my reflection falls over the darkened glass. Jessica’s perfect, angelic face stares back at me,
her large eyes filled with my horror.