Fifteen
On the night of the art exhibition, I stand before Jessica’s wardrobe, considering my options.
There are plenty, when it comes to clothes and accessories. The prettiest dresses in silk, satin, cashmere, with delicate
floral lace patterns and puff sleeves and ribbons wrapping around the waist. Ironed tweed jackets and sleek leather coats
that look like something models might wear on the runway. Twenty different kinds of bags in twenty different sizes, the smallest
one so tiny it can hold only mascara and lipstick, the largest one big enough to contain an entire folder and textbook. Three
dozen pairs of earrings glittering from inside a glass display, laid out on crimson velvet, designed in the image of the sun
and the moon, two broken hearts, studded with real pearls and emeralds and what might be real, actual diamonds. Stilettos
and platform shoes and thigh-high boots.
I feel spoiled, greedy, almost guilty to be able to afford such luxury. The act of choosing what to wear always used to be an exercise in self-criticism, a reminder of my own inadequacies. Sorting through the old, lumpy sweaters and ill-fitting skirts to find something that didn’t look too terrible. I was almost always in a worse mood afterward, and too busy scrutinizing the way the clothes looked on me to enjoy whatever event I went to.
That’s no longer a problem.
Now, anything I try on looks incredible, and it’s not only genetics; I have this other theory that accomplished people instantly
become more attractive.
No moisturizer in the world can compare to the sheen of success, the glow of glory. No contacts or eyelash extensions can
make the eyes glow brighter than immediate validation. No rouge can ever replicate the flush of victory.
Don’t get too attached, I remind myself. Now that I’ve spoken to Cathy, the most urgent matter is finding Jessica’s soul.
“Jenna,” Aaron calls from below. “Are you ready yet?”
I fluff out my hair and hurry downstairs as fast as I can in two-inch heels, nearly tripping over myself. “You can’t call
me that,” I warn him.
He’s waiting by the front door, sleeves rolled up, arms crossed over his chest. “The house is empty. Nobody is around to overhear.
And , ” he adds, his eyes bright, “it shouldn’t be a problem soon.”
I pause. “What do you mean?”
“I think I’ve figured it out,” he says. I’ve never seen him so hopeful before. “How to undo everything before the one week
is over. It’s actually so simple that we’d overlooked it.”
“I... what?”
“You said you made a wish that night,” he tells me, so patient, so gentle, so sure of himself. “Maybe that’s all there is to it. Maybe you just have to close your eyes and wish for yourself to change back. Ask for your old life. For Jessica to return.”
“Right now?” I ask. Those are the only words I can produce. My mind feels empty, slowed down, like the world has split off
into two timelines and I’m stuck in the one that’s running behind. Right now? Before the art exhibition?
He loosens a huff of laughter. “When else? Don’t you want to change back right away?”
“Yeah,” I say, but my voice comes out less certain than I intended, wavering up at the end. “Yes,” I repeat, and this time,
it manages to sound somewhat convincing. “I do. Of course I do.”
“So go ahead.” He gestures to the open space. “I’ll be here in case anything goes wrong.”
“Okay. I mean, I feel kind of ridiculous doing this, but... sure.” I clasp my hands together. Make the wish. I scramble to find the right words, to repeat them inside my head. I wish to be myself again. I wish for my cousin to come back. But it’s like I’m reading lines off a teleprompter. The wish doesn’t feel like mine, and the air doesn’t change, the universe
doesn’t respond.
I squeeze my eyes shut so tight that when I finally blink and lift my head, the white lights of the living room streak across
my vision.
“Did it work?” I ask Aaron, already knowing the answer. My feet are starting to ache. The heels, while gorgeous, are too narrow
at the front, and too stiff at the back.
“No,” he says. He conceals his disappointment well; if I were anyone else, I wouldn’t even notice it. “But maybe it’s because there are other factors to consider. Maybe you need to make the wish at the exact same time as you did the first, or you need to replicate the exact conditions, or there’s an object involved—like when you make a wish as you blow out a birthday candle... or when there’s a shooting star. Remember?” he asks, with dawning recognition. “There was a shooting star, the night you disappeared. I was there. We all saw it in Jessica’s backyard. Maybe it also has something to do with that.”
“Oh yeah.” I swallow. “Good point.”
He pauses. The way he’s staring at me, as if he can see right through me, makes my stomach pinch. He doesn’t speak for a long
time, too long, and then he says, quietly, “You don’t actually want to change back, do you?”
Blood roars through my skull. My lips form the shape of a protest, but my throat closes. I can’t deny it, because it’s true.
It’s the secret I’ve buried in the deepest soil of my thoughts, the secret that I prayed he would never find out, that I couldn’t
even admit to myself. Now he knows what I am: weak, twisted, selfish. “I can’t help it,” I whisper, afraid to meet his gaze.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I do want my cousin back, I swear, but I don’t... I just don’t want to return to my life. If there were any other way to reverse
the wish, even if it meant walking across the country on bare feet, I’d make myself go through with it. I really, really would,
but I can’t wish for something I don’t want. I simply can’t force myself to believe with my whole heart that I’d like for everything to go back to how it used to be.”
Another horrible beat of silence.
He must hate me, I think. Maybe he already regrets confessing his feelings to me, or coming back from Paris early. Maybe he won’t even want to talk to me again.
The soft jingle of car keys jolts me back to life. “Let’s continue this conversation in the car,” he says. There’s no disgust
or resentment in his voice. Only resolve. “If you’re not going to change back now, then we still have to get to the art exhibition.”
I swallow and nod quickly, following him all the way to the car. Dusk is falling, the sky a watercolor spread of deep blue,
the horizon fringed with the faintest shade of yellow. Without another word, he pulls open the door to help me inside, before
walking around and settling naturally into the driver’s seat. As he places his hand on the wheel and starts the ignition,
I curl up around the seat belt, hugging my knees.
“I just don’t understand,” he says at last, steering the car onto the main road. “I know you’ve always compared yourself to
Jessica, and I would get it if you just wanted to try out her life briefly, like when people talk about what celebrity they’d
like to be for a day. But this... ”
“Of course you don’t understand,” I tell him. “But you know, someone like Cathy Liu would. Can you believe that?” My laughter
tastes bitter on my tongue. “I have so much in common with the girl who’s been blackmailing my own cousin.”
“You’re not like Cathy,” he says firmly. “You’re nothing like her.”
“I am. I’m just as jealous and insecure, though I wouldn’t even have the guts to threaten someone else. But you—you’re exactly like Jessica. You’re a genius. You’re so talented you don’t even have to try, while all I do is try.” I grit my teeth until they hurt, until I feel something inside me splinter. The greenery rushes past us, the light
bleeding out of the sky. “I try again and again and nothing happens. Nothing comes of it. I’m never going to be first. I can’t
even be second , like Cathy. Nobody would care if I came back—”
“Why does it matter—”
“Because.” I almost scoff out loud. There are no stupid questions, the teachers always like to remind us, but what a ridiculous, nonsensical question this is. That’s like asking why we need
to breathe. Why we need water. Why the ocean exists. “That’s the one thing I’ve worked for my entire life—to be someone who
matters. That’s why my parents moved to this country. That’s my purpose. If I can’t do it, then what’s the point of anything ? What’s the point of me? What possible value could I provide?”
He’s silent.
He’s silent for so long I can hear the air tremble against my lips. I can hear my heart thrumming, the blur of brown noise
from outside the car, the wind moving over the windows, the world tipping on its axis. I can hear my own resentment, expanding,
the corrosive truth eating away the space between us.
Finally he says, “There are far worse things to be than untalented.”
“I’m aware, but—”
“Are you really?” The heat in his voice shocks me. The burr of anger. “Because you act like the worst fate for a person is to be mediocre, to go about their lives without accomplishing anything significant enough to leave behind a lasting legacy. Do you even know—” He inhales.
“You say I’m a genius? Okay, fine. I am. You’re correct. School comes easily to me; it always has. I can memorize anything
I see. I can ace an exam without studying. I’ll head off to an Ivy League, and I’ll be admired by my classmates and my professors,
and I’ll be able to get into medical school, and I like to think I’ll still be at the top of my class. But I would trade all
of that— any of that —to have what you have.”
“What do I have?” I whisper, because I’m genuinely confused, genuinely curious. What could I have that he wants?
“Oh, I’m not entirely sure,” he says, his sarcasm sharp enough to cut, his grip tightening over the wheel. “Maybe a family?
Maybe a mother who’s alive, a father who actually cares?”
I flinch.
“I wouldn’t even want to be a doctor if not for my mother,” he continues. “I just... that’s the best I can do. That’s the
most and the least I can do. To find a cure that could have saved her, to be the person who stops someone else from losing
their mother. But for her—for me—it’s too late. And I will have to spend the rest of my life grieving, in pain. Do you know
what that’s like?”
“Aaron, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” I say, and I could die from my shame. It’s burning the skin off my fingers, my face.
Because of what I’ve said. And because of what I’m going to say next. “But I... I can’t make myself do it. I can’t...
I can’t change the wish—”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
“That’s not an excuse!”
My heart is in freefall. “I don’t need to explain myself.”
“I deserve an explanation,” he says fiercely. “Just tell me why. Please. It’s driving me mad—”
“Aaron, drop it.”
“You can’t just avoid the subject forever. Why—”
“Because I hate myself too much.”
There.
The real, full, humiliating truth. It feels like someone’s extracted a tooth, removed a vital organ. It’s the same raw feeling
I get after I’ve been crying for too long.
“Are you happy now?” I demand, my skin stinging. “Is that answer good enough for you?”
I glance over at Aaron’s face, terrified of the pity I might see on the features I know so well, but he doesn’t look remotely
sympathetic. He looks livid.
He’s always been exceptional at concealing his emotions, at smiling even when he’s suffering; he’s the kind of person who
could take a beating with a complete poker face. But he doesn’t seem capable of hiding anything now. Everything is laid open
in his gaze. His frustration, his grief, his confusion.
His hurt.
Like someone holding out their bloodied hand after they’ve been cut. The space of the vehicle is suddenly too small, too intimate,
the doors locking me into this conversation. I can’t escape it. I have to face him.
When he speaks, his voice trembles. “You really don’t know yourself at all, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have no idea,” he goes on in a furious whisper. “You truly have no idea what you mean to me. You can’t see yourself from
anyone else’s perspective; you don’t even really know yourself. You’re so stuck in your own skewed version of your life, and it’s not... it’s not real. You’re incredible.”
I actually laugh. Slap the dashboard in my hysteria. “Oh my god, okay, seriously. We’re not doing this—”
“No. Let me continue,” he says, his eyes flashing. “You are incredible. You see the world like an artist. You notice every color in the sky, you stop and marvel at the sight of a sparrow flying by or a ripple in the lake or an autumn leaf in the sun. You’re always the first person to sense if someone else is having a bad day, and you can’t watch a sad movie without crying, and you always skip the ending if you know it’s going to be tragic, so you can make up something better in your head. Once, you teared up after your elderly neighbor asked you to read the expiration date on a loaf of bread for him because his eyesight was fading. You also tear up every time you watch that cereal commercial about the border collie who runs away from home. When we found a dead bird in the forest, you insisted on building a grave for it out of twigs and wildflowers. You hate small spaces, but you still came to sit with me in the attic for hours when my father was mad at me. You’re sarcastic, but never in a mean way. You’re dramatic, and you can make anything sound like poetry. You’re sensitive, and maybe that means you feel pain and fear and humiliation more sharply, but you also feel joy more beautifully and completely than anyone I know. You make me feel the same joy just by looking at you.”
My heart is pounding fast, so fast.
“And you’re always showing up at the right time and place. Like speech night in tenth grade,” he continues. He’s twisted around
slightly in the driver’s seat, even though he keeps his eyes on the road ahead of us. “Do you remember? We all had to get
there early for rehearsal, and when everyone else was waiting for their parents to arrive, and my father couldn’t make it
that night... you came over and stood next to me. And suddenly—suddenly I didn’t feel alone. I realized I would never have
to be alone again, if you were there.”
Speech night. Tenth grade.
I remember Jessica Chen getting all the awards she was eligible for. Top achiever and the academic award for every subject
she took and the Diana Bagshaw Award for contributions to the school.
I remember the teachers organizing the seating according to the awards we’d received. Those who had one or more were seated
at the front. Jessica sat first. Those who had none—those like me—were ushered to the very back.
I remember Aaron sitting with her. I remember watching them from behind, the bright, glaring lights of the stage limning their
silhouettes. They look so perfect together, I’d thought to myself. And I’d made sure I congratulated them both. I’d been the first to tell them how happy I was for them, and I’d helped them hold their bags while my uncle and auntie took pictures, proud and beaming ever so wide.
But I don’t remember this part at all. That scares me. It makes me wonder what else I’ve forgotten, what else has slipped
through the cracks. If I’m forgetting myself too, like everyone else has. Except him.
“That was ages ago,” I finally manage. “It doesn’t even matter—”
“It does matter. You matter,” he interrupts, jaw tight. “And maybe... maybe there’s a selfish part of me that just wants
to see you again. I want to do all the things I used to mock from the movies. I want to have picnics by the lakes with you
and walk down the corridors with your hand in mine and call you up late at night.” His eyes darken, deepen. “I want to kiss
you—”
The car lurches sharply over a bump in the road, but even after it’s behind us, my stomach still feels like it’s forgotten
gravity. “No,” I say. “No. Don’t do that. You’re not playing fair.”
“I’m not playing fair? You’re literally defying the known laws of physics.”
“You know it’s my weakness,” I breathe out. “You know you’re my weakness.”
“Then come back to me,” he says, softer, his voice pained now, pleading. I’m unprepared for how quickly it unravels me. I
had been braced for a war; I had entered the car with my armor on, my weapons sharpened. I can do that. I can fight him if
I have to. But not this. Not him with his guard lowered, his sword dropped to his feet, his palms open, empty, searching.
And he senses it.
Always so observant. He’s always known me so well.
“I can help you, really,” he says. “I can figure it out. You said it yourself—I’m a genius. Just say the word, Jenna, and
I’ll do anything. Please, I’m begging. If you don’t really believe in the wish, I’ll come up with an entire list of reasons
your old life could be good. I’ll remind you of it every single day until you can make the wish and mean it. Everything will
be fine.”
Just say the word.
My lips part, but the word won’t form. Not the right one, the one he’s hoping for.
“Jenna?”
“No,” I whisper, even though it physically hurts me to say it.
“Do you realize what you’re saying?” he demands. “You can’t stay like this forever. And what about Jessica? It’s her life—if you don’t make the wish, she won’t be able to return.”
“I know that,” I cut in, tears of frustration prickling my eyes. “I know the consequences. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do , Aaron. It’s how I feel; it’s beyond my control. I wish I could brainwash myself. I wish I didn’t have these thoughts at
all. I wish I was kinder, and selfless, and convinced that I could be happy back in my life, with you. But there’s no point
pretending it’s all I want when it’s not. It’s just not enough for me.” I swallow. “It’s not enough.”
The silence in the car is terrible.
“Nothing is ever enough for you,” Aaron says, gazing over at me.
I’m not sure what I would have replied then. Maybe I would have admitted that he was right. That I don’t know how to do anything except crave what I don’t have. I don’t know how to be content, to sit with myself and my life and let it wash over me like daylight. But before I can say anything at all, a dark blur appears in my peripheral vision, approaching fast, heading straight toward us—
I gasp. “Watch out!”
Aaron’s eyes snap back to the road.
He yanks the wheel hard to the left.
For a moment the ground seems to drop out from under me, the car swerving so fast the world spins, tires shrieking against
asphalt, and I would scream except my head hasn’t even caught up to what’s happening.
We jolt to a stop against the curb just as the other vehicle whizzes past us, honking twice.
I don’t think I’m breathing.
My heart is hammering so hard I’m terrified it might break my ribs or tire and stop altogether. I’m gripping the door handle
so tight the joints in my fingers ache but I can’t let go. Finally I manage to unfreeze just enough to glimpse Aaron’s face.
He’s shaken as well, and doing his best to hide it. He wipes a hand over his forehead. Licks his lips.
“We could have died,” he says, more in disbelief than anything.
“But—but we didn’t,” I say shakily.
“I... probably shouldn’t be driving like this.” He rubs his eyes and reaches for the door. “We’re better off walking the
rest of the way.”
“Aaron...”
He pauses and glances back at me, his gaze gentle, despite everything. “Yes?”
“You’re not leaving me here?” I whisper. “I mean... aren’t you angry?”
The look in his eyes changes, hardening to resolve. “You think you can get rid of me so easily?” He steps out and walks around
to open the door for me. The cold air rushes in, surrounding me like a frozen embrace. “Come on. Let’s go.”