Nine
Jessica’s voice echoes in my head all throughout the next day. I hear it as clearly as if she’d read her journal entry aloud
to me: I’ve never been a good person.
Maybe it’s a blessing, then, that our usual classes are canceled for our annual swimming carnival. The school arranges buses
for all of us first thing in the morning and takes us down to the lakes.
It’s so early that there’s still a light mist rolling in over the slate-gray water and the weeds, the chill of last night
clinging to the air.
“We’re going to get hypothermia,” Celine grumbles as she slips out of her school uniform, kicking her skirt aside into the
grass. Like all the other girls, she’s already wearing the standard black swimsuit underneath.
Leela removes her blazer and folds it very neatly into the waterproof bag she’s brought, then sets her school shoes down in
a perfect line facing the lake’s edge. “I’m more concerned about getting bitten by a water snake.”
Celine laughs at her. “That was only a rumor spread by the boys in the upper year to scare us. There aren’t any snakes—”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Leela protests. “Look at the water. If there were snakes, we wouldn’t be able to see them, now would we?”
We both look—Celine, just to humor her, and me, because I secretly share her fear. Venomous snakes might not be first on my list of concerns, but they’re definitely on it.
The lake waits ahead of us, the surface as dark as the clouded sky, revealing nothing of its depths. The little light that
touches the edges is instantly dispersed by the rippling waves. Celine turns away after a brief moment, but my gaze lingers.
Water is one of the most difficult things to paint because it’s always moving, always shifting shapes; because it cannot exist
separately from its surroundings. I couldn’t paint the lake without capturing the cluster of bellflowers growing over the
banks, or the reflections of students warming up and gathering their towels in their arms, huddling together to escape the
cold. And to get the colors right, I would need to mix indigo with Aegean and spruce and find a darker shade for the shadows—
“I still doubt there are snakes,” Celine says contemplatively. “Maybe dead bodies, though.”
“Celine.” Leela glares at her.
“Or friendly mermaids,” she compromises. “Happy?”
“Not at all.”
“What are you so worked up over?” Celine asks. “Jessica will test out the waters for you. She’s getting in first.”
“Yeah. Can’t wait,” I say as I shrug off my school shirt until I’m standing in my swimsuit. The freezing air shocks me, nipping at the skin on my bare arms. In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve managed to skip the swimming carnival due to a feigned stomach bug or fever or mysterious skin rash that magically faded by the next day. I wasn’t even close enough to the lake to see who was swimming—exactly the way I liked it.
It’s not just that I detest swimming. I’m one of the only people in my class who had to take the school’s water safety program
three times before they let me pass, and that was with the recommendation that I actively avoid large bodies of water.
But Jessica is one of the school’s star swimmers, and it’s basically tradition by this point for her to swim the first and
longest race.
“Speaking of,” Celine says, “you should head down now, Jessica.” She points to the lake, where the school’s swim coach is
barking out instructions. “Look, the other swimmers are already lined up.”
I take a deep breath and tuck my ponytail under my uncomfortably tight latex cap.
Leela glances over at me and pauses, her eyes widening. “Wow.”
“What?”
“No, I’m just impressed by how good you look with the swimming cap on. It makes everyone else look bald. But on you...
it’s basically high fashion,” she gushes. “It really brings out the color of your eyes.”
I’d think she was being ironic, but as I tread over the grass and join the other swimmers, I catch a glimpse of myself in
the dark shine of their goggles. Incredibly, I do look good; with my hair pulled back, my cheekbones are more prominent than ever, my neck as elegant as a swan’s.
Then I stare ahead. Four parallel diving boards have been suspended over the lake. The wood is rough and freezing under my
bare feet as I walk slowly to the end of the board like someone walking the plank, scared I’ll slip and fall off before the
race has even started.
“Get ready,” the swim coach calls, his voice rolling over the water.
In my peripheral vision, I watch the swimmers lower themselves with expert precision, their arms stretched out in a perfect
line, the starting position I never learned. Just when I’m imagining myself tumbling headfirst into the lake, Jessica’s muscle
memory kicks in: my own arms seem to extend on their own, my toes inching toward the edge of the board, my calf muscles steadying
me when I lean forward. It’s like magic. It is magic.
A chorus of excited shouts sound from the banks.
“Let’s go, Jessica!”
“You’ve got this.”
“We’re all cheering for you!”
“Oh my god, oh my god—Jessica’s race is starting.”
“Damn, she looks ready .”
Warmth shoots through my veins the same time adrenaline does. I feel like everything I wasn’t: strong, capable, athletic . My fingers flex. My breathing quickens with anticipation. Maybe I could actually win this.
“Set,” the swim coach says.
A shift in movement around me. A collective inhale. One final breath.
“Go.”
I kick off from the board—there’s a heartbeat’s moment where it seems I’m weightless, where I’ve escaped gravity itself. Then
my hands pierce through the surface, and the water rushes in around me. It’s even colder than the air, but the cold feels
separate from my body, from the heat in my limbs.
And then I start swimming.
Though I might not be, Jessica’s body has been trained for this. Her lungs expand as I dive deeper, and when I come up for air, the
oxygen slides sweetly through my teeth in the half second before I go down again. Her arms slice expertly through the white
spray. Each powerful kick propels me farther and farther away from the other swimmers; I can hear them splashing behind me,
sense the quick, frantic bursts of movement through the ripples. Nothing can stop me. Nobody can beat me. I swim on and on,
sleek as an otter, the water parting with every stroke.
There’s no exhaustion dragging me back, only elation humming in my veins, pulling me forward, buoying me over the waves.
It turns out that I don’t detest swimming at all—I just detest being bad at things.
I’m the first to reach the end. When I break through the surface, drinking in the fresh air, blinking against the water in
my eyes, I see them all gathered on the shores: my classmates, clapping, cheering, screaming my name.
“Jessica Chen. Jessica Chen. Jessica Chen.”
And I’m suddenly grateful for how similar our names sound, because it’s so easy to pretend—at least for a few golden, delirious, glory-soaked moments—that I’m really her, and it’s me that they’re all cheering for.
The best part about winning the first race—other than the winning itself, of course—is that I can simply stand by myself and
watch everyone else for the rest of the carnival.
But I’m not left alone for long.
Aaron approaches in my peripheral vision. Like all the other guys who’ll be swimming later, he’s taken his shirt off—a fact
that’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the closer he draws.
“Hello,” I say to a pebble on the ground, wrapping my towel tighter around my shoulders.
“Hi,” he says.
I make the mistake of glancing up and I’m instantly overwhelmed by flashes of dark hair, smooth skin, sculpted shoulders,
sharp lines. I’m torn, trapped by the impulse to keep looking and the sense to look away before I betray myself.
“That was quite a race,” he comments. “Congratulations on the win.”
“Oh yeah, thank you,” I say, looking back down to continue my conversation with the pebble. “I mean, I’m definitely not surprised
I won. I’m just so naturally athletic.”
“Right. That’s great.” He sounds distracted. “Hey, you haven’t seen or heard anything about Jenna, have you? She’s still missing,
and nobody I’ve asked can tell me where she is.... It’s like she’s just vanished .”
“Jenna?” I repeat, lifting my head. I feel like I’m diving underwater again; everything else grows muted, blurry. “No. Sorry, I—I haven’t.”
“I’m getting worried.” His brows furrow slightly. “It doesn’t make sense for her to leave without warning.”
“Well, maybe she just doesn’t want to be found,” I tell him, and turn to go, eager to untangle myself from this conversation.
I don’t want to think about my old self. I don’t want to think at all. I just want to play pretend a little longer, let my
classmates come up to me with their pretty words of praise, linger in the lilac haze of my recent victory.
“Wait.” Aaron reaches out, his fingertips accidentally skimming over my damp hair, and my breath catches in my throat. It’s
such a familiar sensation, the kind that drags you back through time, sweeps the ground out from under your feet. With a sudden
ache, I remember all those evenings spent walking home after school, in the clear blue summer light, him following behind
me. Whenever he was close enough, he would play with a stray strand of my hair, wrapping it around his ring finger, smiling
with one corner of his mouth, and I would swat him away. Pretend to be annoyed. But secretly I would always slow my steps
on purpose whenever I heard him coming, just so he could catch up. Just so he could tease me and laugh.
But instead of leaning closer, the way he would when he was with me, he drops his hand at once and steps back.
“What did you mean?” he presses, fixing me with a sharp, contemplative look, like he can see something invisible to everyone else, something beyond the overcast sky and pearl-gray lake water. “That she doesn’t want to be found? Do you know why she left? Did she tell you? Is she... is she angry at me?”
I swallow, my heart straining against my ribs. I should keep my jaw locked. Bury my secrets under my tongue. But instead I
falter. Meet his questioning gaze, so heavy with worry, so sincere. And I miss—something. Maybe what we once were before,
maybe the knowledge that when he used to look at me this way, he was seeing my face, not Jessica’s.
Tell him, a small voice inside my head whispers. Tell him the truth. It’s Aaron. You can trust him.
“I...” I lick my lips, tasting the lake on them. Overhead, the clouds have scattered, soft beams of yellow light falling
over the rippling water, outlining the sides of Aaron’s face, so his skin appears almost to be glowing. Beautiful, distant,
infuriating Aaron. The boy I would refuse to lend a pencil to, but who I would give up the world for, even after all this
time.
Even after all this.
“What’s going on, Jessica?” he asks.
Not Is something going on? But What?
“If I tried to explain,” I say slowly, “would you really believe me?”
“Of course.”
“Even if it sounds ridiculous?” I press. “Even if it makes no scientific sense whatsoever, and might leave you questioning
my sanity?”
The line between his brows deepens, but he nods. “Okay.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
“Okay. Then to be completely honest... well, I don’t really understand it myself yet but... the thing is that I’m—”
The words push themselves up to the tip of my tongue, but for a few seconds, I hold them there. What if this is it? What if
I admit it out loud to him, and the illusion is broken, the spell is shattered? My heart kicks harder against my ribs. It’s
too late to back out now. He’s waiting, watching me. “I’m not... who you think I am.”
He hesitates. “In a philosophical sense?”
“In a very literal sense,” I tell him, shaking my head. “This body... this life...” I gesture to myself with both hands.
“I woke up one day as Jessica. I look like her and talk like her and everyone thinks I am her when I’m not. Not really.”
He stares, long enough for my nerves to fly into a frenzy. “That’s interesting,” he says at last. “You’re referring to yourself
in third person.”
“Because it’s not me ,” I say, frustrated. “Don’t you get it? I’m not Jessica Chen. I’m—I’m Jenna.” My mouth seems to be moving on its own accord,
everything tumbling out into the cool air. “I made a wish to be her, and somehow it came true, and now I have no idea where
my cousin really is—her soul, I mean, or whatever you want to call it. I’ve tried searching for her, but I don’t even know
where to look and I—I just... I don’t know.”
I clamp my jaw shut, and the silence that follows is terrible. All the noise in the background is muted: the faint silver splashing of waves; students laughing and screaming at each other in the far distance; a teacher yelling at them all to be careful, the school isn’t responsible if they die, their parents signed that form stating so; the colored banners slamming against the wind. It’s just me and him and this uneasy quiet, stretching between us like a shadow.
After an eternity, he runs a hand through his hair, that familiar, agitated gesture he does whenever he’s trying to clear
his head. “Wow,” he says, and it’s impossible to decipher the tone of his voice. “I’m not certain what the point of this joke
is, but it’s definitely creative.”
My heart falls. “Aaron, I really mean it....”
But his expression hardens. The sun disappears behind the clouds again, and when he looks at me in the purple darkness, his
features are pinched tight, his eyes almost pained. “Look, you can joke about whatever you like, just not—just not her, okay?”
He turns his head toward the lake. “Not Jenna.”
Before I can figure out what he means, he’s already walking away from me. And it’s strange, because up until this very moment,
my worst fear was that someone would call me out for being an imposter. For faking everything, pretending to be somebody else;
a sparrow dressing up as a phoenix. I should be relieved he doesn’t believe me. It means my act has been convincing enough. But as I watch Aaron leave, his last words echoing in
my mind, the heaviness in my chest feels an awful lot like disappointment.
I spend the rest of the day furious at myself.
I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have avoided Aaron altogether. I’d spent the whole year brainwashing myself into hating him, convincing myself I didn’t harbor any feelings except resentment anymore, cutting my ties and cleaning my hands for good. And now this.
He still has so much power over me.
He always has.
I don’t even know how it happened. When. It came onto me gradually over the years, all the days flowing together, building
into something more. There he was, sometimes walking past the window with his hands in his pockets, stopping by for dinner
when we made our pork dumplings, standing in our living room with the top button of his collar undone and his black hair falling
soft over his forehead.
Aaron Cai, the boy my mother always praised for his manners, the one my father called a prodigy, the student all the teachers
fawned over. I was jealous of him—I can be certain of that, at least. His unmatched grace and his faint good-natured smiles
and his calm, contemplative air. We were born the same year but he seemed older, somehow, like he understood the world better
than I did or he had some kind of trick to navigating it that eluded me. I had this ridiculous idea every birthday that things
would be different, and I would grow overnight to become just as mature, just as poised as he was, but my birthdays passed
without any luck. Twelve years old. Thirteen. Fourteen.
I was always watching him. Maybe because I hoped to see if he would slip up, even though he never did. I remember studying him in class, his head low, flipping through the faded yellow pages of a textbook, a highlighter held casually between his fingers like a painter’s brush. The day in Chinese school, when we were meant to be analyzing the “Song of Divination” by Li Zhiyi, and he was very clearly gazing out the window, his mind on something else.
The teacher had asked me to call on a classmate to read out the poem and I said his name as a challenge, waiting for him to
flush, to startle, to stumble over his words. But he had looked me straight in the eye and recited every line perfectly, until
the whole class fell into silence, mesmerized. Impossible, I thought to myself, fuming. Once the teacher finished praising him, he’d flashed me a smug, crooked smile and turned right
back to the window—yet his shoulders shook slightly, like he was trying to keep from laughing.
Then there was the school dance our teachers had insisted on holding in the ballroom, and the many rehearsals that preceded
it, with the old woman with the croaky voice who looked like she’d been summoned from the Regency era just to teach us. I
remember being paired up with Aaron, how his one hand had closed over mine and his other had rested lightly on my waist, and
noticing how warm his skin was, how smooth. When I’d stumbled and stepped hard on his feet, not once but three times, he had
merely rolled his eyes.
“If I didn’t know better, Jenna, I’d think you were doing it on purpose,” he murmured as he spun me, his voice dry.
“How do you know I’m not?”
“Because if you’d wanted to hurt me, I’m pretty sure you’d adopt slightly more effective measures than treading on my toes.”
“Don’t sound so sure. Maybe it’s part of a long-term plan,” I cautioned. “Maybe by the end of this session I’ll have trampled you enough times that you’ll find yourself unable to walk at your normal speed and be late to your next class, and the teacher will mark you down for tardiness.”
“How threatening.”
“Please.” I spun out again and let him pull me back with a tug of my wrist, and for a moment we might’ve been in a period
drama, classical string music rising sweetly in the old halls around us. “Reputational damage matters way more than physical
damage around here. You know that.”
He laughed then, the sound low in my ear, and I felt a disconcerting rush of pleasure.
And afterward the girls in my class had flocked around me, complaining about their partners, wishing aloud that they had mine.
“How did it feel?” they’d asked, giggling. It was no secret that half of them had a crush on him. “To dance with Aaron Cai?”
“Uh. Just... normal,” I’d replied hastily, but I couldn’t meet their eyes.
I remember the weekend after, my parents telling me last-minute that we would be having a picnic by the lake with Aaron, and
a strange lump forming in my throat, almost akin to rage. We had been fifteen then.
“Why didn’t you warn me Aaron was coming?” I’d demanded, because that was the word that made the most sense to me, even when
I couldn’t make sense of the emotion inside me yet: warn . Like a natural disaster, an impending storm. My mother had cast me a perplexed look while my father frowned and lectured me
about my attitude.
“It’s just Aaron. I thought you were good friends,” he said. “And Aaron has always been so nice to you.”
“He likes to make fun of me when I embarrass myself,” I corrected. “I don’t think that qualifies as being nice.”
But still I went because I had to, painfully, unbearably self-conscious the whole time without understanding why. I squeezed
into an impractical strapless dress and refused to wear sunscreen because it made my face look greasy. After three hours on
the lake’s edge, sitting cross-legged underneath the sun, my shoulders had started to sting and redden from the heat. Even
now, the mortification feels fresh, a wound not healed yet: my mother noticing and fussing over my sunburn, rummaging through
our bags for some kind of herbal ointment and then smearing it all over me while Aaron politely averted his gaze.
More months passed before I realized it, but something inside me had already shifted. We were studying tectonic plates at
the time, and that’s what it felt like: something heavy and fundamental rearranging itself beneath my rib cage. He would change
a room just by being in it, knock the breath from my lungs just by glancing at me, smiling a certain way. I would invest too
much energy into scrutinizing my appearance before school, fussing over my bangs and fiddling with my school skirt, rolling
it up and tugging it back down again.
I seemed to fall into a perpetual state of waiting: for my next chance to meet him, my next excuse to linger near his locker, our next class together. I wanted him the only way I knew how to want anything—obsessively, fervently. At times it was excruciating, to be studying next to him in the library, our shoulders almost brushing, to open the front door for him and invite him into the living room, to be so close and still have to swallow my heart, seal my lips shut. I couldn’t tell him. This too was never a conscious decision I made,
just a truth that crept up on me. We knew each other too well, our lives were too inextricably tangled. Anything I felt toward
him was my problem. My weakness. My sworn secret.
But then there came that day in the rain, and I forgot, like a fool, and nothing’s been the same since. Nothing will ever
be the same again.
This was the scene I played over and over in my head on nights I couldn’t sleep. Or perhaps this was the scene that kept me
from sleeping. We had been riding our bikes home together from school when the rain started. It came without warning—not a
drizzle, not even a flicker of lightning, just the serene sky and suddenly the wild, gray rush of water, the streets running
dark with it.
And so we’d sought shelter under the almond groves. They’d been in full bloom then, the delicate white-pink petals quivering
in the rain, our bikes leaning against the trees, his black hair damp and curling over his forehead, his school shirt soaked
through. Even during the storm, he was so casual, so unbothered. Gazing out at the heavy downpour like it was nothing. Sometimes
I thought he was the kind of person you wanted on your side during a disaster, someone you could trust to keep a level head
no matter what and guide you to safety. Other times, in my less generous moods, I was certain that he was the very last person
you wanted next to you if the world collapsed; his calmness could be maddening like that.
We were standing close, maybe closer than we needed to be, and the air was so cold it tasted sweet.
“It looks like we’ll be here awhile,” he said, and I thought, Good.
I thought, I could stay here forever.
I said, “God, I hope not. It’s freezing.”
“You’re always cold,” he told me, in a flippant sort of way, like it was none of his business, but then he was reaching into
his schoolbag and pulling out his sweater. Handing it over to me. Black cashmere. Soft and still dry and wonderfully warm,
as though he’d just taken it off.
My heart was beating very fast. I tried not to look too eager. “Oh, you don’t have to—”
He snatched the sweater back and draped it over his own shoulders. “Okay, then.”
I stared at him for a solid beat, my whole face hot, but then he suddenly grinned at me with quick, unnerving charm.
“Kidding, of course,” he said, and this time he didn’t just hold the sweater out but stepped forward until I could see the
water glistening on his lashes like teardrops. Then he fastened the sweater’s sleeves around my neck so that it covered me
like a cloak. His eyes turned gentle, his lips wet from the rain. I stared up at him, overwhelmed by his nearness, his scent,
by how we had stood together like this a thousand times before but each time it felt different. New. Like we were on the edge
of something dangerous.
“Do you always have to tease me?” I grumbled, tearing my gaze away. “You couldn’t just be nice?”
The rain fell harder, drowning out the rest of the world.
“It’s hard to resist,” he said, and he sounded honest. “I don’t know why I do it, really. It’s only with you.”
I swallowed. My throat felt raw, and I didn’t understand what he meant, only that I couldn’t bear it if it all ended here,
if I went home without anything happening, without touching him.
“Maybe it’s because you don’t like me,” I said, seized by a terrible boldness, my heart racing ahead of itself. “Because you
hate me.”
His brows drew together. “No,” he said firmly, despite his confusion. “I could never hate you.”
“Really?”
“I swear it.”
“Not even if I did this?” And before I could lose my nerve, before I could think about why this was a horrible idea, I grabbed
the front of his shirt and pulled him closer, leaving only a hair’s breadth of distance between us. I watched him breathe,
or struggle to, his chest rising and falling erratically, eyes wide, lips parted, half his face cast in the silver dappled
shadow of the petals overhead. I had never kissed a boy before, yet now it seemed so simple. Just one movement, and I’d have
him, the way I wanted.
He was staring at my mouth too, like the same thought had occurred to him. But he didn’t close the distance. Didn’t lean in
the way I hoped. Before our lips could meet, he twisted his head away from me.
All the chill in the air seemed to flood into my lungs.
I blinked at him, speechless, choking on my own humiliation.
“We shouldn’t,” he whispered, his voice strained. “We can’t.”
“I don’t understand.” There was no time to polish my words, make them less embarrassing. I simply said what I thought.
“Jenna...”
“You don’t... want me?” The tears were coming fast now, stinging the back of my eyes and my throat. I stepped back, away
from him and out of the shelter, letting the rain pelt my skin. “Is it because I’m—” But I couldn’t think of any good reason,
other than who I was. Jenna Chen. Always the second one, the afterthought, the girl not good enough for anybody. Why had I imagined things would be different?
Why did I even still believe in anything? “Why? Why not?”
A low exhale. “It’s not like that.”
“Like what? You don’t even care,” I said, and by now my self-defense mechanisms were kicking in, my hurt hardening into pure
blistering rage. “You never care about anything, damn it. Do you think it makes you superior, somehow, always keeping yourself
apart from everyone? You could have stopped this. You should have—I mean, you knew, didn’t you? On some level?”
“What, that you liked me?”
My cheeks felt scalded. Somehow it was a thousand times worse hearing him say it out loud, in that calm, matter-of-fact voice.
“Not anymore,” I said, unsure who I was trying to convince. “From now on, I hate you, Aaron. I seriously—I hate you so much.”
The rain was a miracle, in a way; it mingled with my tears, until it was impossible to tell one from the other. My whole face
was wet. “I’m going home.”
“I can walk you back,” he said, taking one cautious step toward me, like I was a bird that might fly away. “Let me—”
I spun around, wiped my cheeks roughly with my sleeves. “Stop it. I’m not talking to you.” I could hear how childish I sounded, how foolish, but I didn’t care. I closed my eyes in the violent downpour, and there was a sharp pain in my chest, a jagged bone set wrong, and I felt so awfully small, like anything in the world could eat me alive.
One week later, he was gone.