Chapter 2 #2
I tried hanging around once too, on my third day here, and it only made me feel ridiculous. Ridiculous and kind of sad, since I had no one to wait for. I ended up just standing in the middle of the corridor, my bag gripped tight in my hands, praying for the school bell to hurry up and ring.
After that, I decided I might as well wait around in the classroom, books and pens out like I’m actually studying.
I’m pretending to look over my calc notes from the other day when I hear footsteps approach. Pause, right before my desk. Then—
“Hey, Eliza.”
I jerk my head up in surprise.
These two girls I’ve never spoken a word to in my life are smiling at me—positively beaming—as though we’re best friends. I don’t even know their names.
“Hi?” I reply. It comes out like a question.
They take this as an invitation to slide into the two empty seats beside me, still smiling so wide I can see all their pearly-white teeth. As one of them nudges the other, and a quick, meaningful look passes between them, I begin to have some idea of why they might be here.
“We read your essay,” the taller, tanner girl on the left blurts out, confirming my suspicions.
“Oh,” I say, unsure how else to respond. “Um, good. I’m glad.”
“I just—god, I loved it so much,” she continues brightly, in the manner of someone building to a big, emotional speech. “I was literally up all night reading it and—”
“It was so cute,” the other girl chimes in, hand fluttering to her heart.
Okay. I definitely wasn’t expecting this. Nor the small, involuntary smile tugging at my lips.
But soon they’re both gesturing wildly and talking at the same time, their voices growing louder and louder with excitement:
“My favorite part was the bit at the grocery store, oh my god—”
“I had no idea you were going out with someone! You’ve been so low-key about it—”
“Do you have a picture of him? I mean, you don’t have to show us if you don’t want to, but—”
“What’s his name? Does he go to our school?”
“Is he in our year level?”
“Is he in our class?”
They both turn, wide-eyed, to the classroom door, where more students are trickling in, as if one of the guys might suddenly step forward and declare himself my secret boyfriend.
Nothing of the sort happens, of course, but people do slow down and stare at me like they’ve never really seen me before.
Like they’re hoping I might share something about my fake love life with them too.
The only person who goes straight to his desk at the very back is Caz Song. Hands in pockets, one AirPod in, expression of perpetual boredom on his face. Just like yesterday. He glances my way, briefly, impassively, then turns away.
And though it’s really the least of my concerns, my rib cage curves inward. I’m not even sure what I was hoping for, why I imagined he’d acknowledge my existence after that one anomaly of a conversation out in the corridor. Caz Song and I are so different we might as well inhabit separate planets.
“Well?” the girl on my left prompts, drawing my attention back to her and her friend. “Is he?”
I study the two of them, searching for any signs of ill will or mockery. But they both just continue smiling, and I notice the light scatter of freckles across the taller girl’s nose, the yellow butterfly clip in the other girl’s wavy hair. They seem … nice. Genuinely friendly—
“Um, I can’t tell you that,” I say with a small, apologetic smile, hoping they’ll leave the conversation there. “I wish I could, but, you know. We haven’t been together that long, so we want to keep things private for now.”
“Ah.” They both nod slowly. Beam some more. Neither of them budges. “That’s totally understandable.”
Even though this is all part of the script I’d prepared when submitting my essay, it was only ever meant to be a preventative measure, not something to be shared with people across the world. It’s like those life jackets they store on airplanes; nobody actually expects to have to use them.
As if on cue, my phone flashes again on my desk.
531 new notifications.
The taller girl sees before I can flip the screen down.
“Wow,” she says as she finally starts unpacking her own stuff for class.
A MacBook Air in shiny casing. Highlighters and pens with cute designs all over them.
A thick planner that hardly looks used but has bright colored tabs running down the sides and a giant sticker of some K-pop group plastered on the cover.
“You must’ve had a pretty wild morning, huh? ”
“Wild is definitely one word for it,” I say, relieved I can at least be honest about this.
“I’ve always wondered what it’s like to go viral,” the other girl muses.
She has her laptop out, and nothing else.
This is actually standard for students here, I’ve learned the hard way.
At my old school, we were only allowed paper notes, so I didn’t realize I would even need to bring a laptop until my first class at Westbridge, when everyone was working on a Google Doc and all I had was a notebook and pencil.
Yeah, not exactly the best start.
“Nadia, didn’t that Douyin of yours go viral for a while the other month?” the tall girl is saying.
“The video got, like, twenty thousand views.” Nadia waves a dismissive hand in the air. “That’s very different from having like a bajillion people read your writing. Plus”—she wrinkles her nose—“I kept getting all those weird comments about my feet.”
“True. We don’t love that.”
As the two of them break into giggles, I feel a dull pang in my chest. I’d kill to have that—to be sitting next to Zoe, laughing over some silly inside joke without worrying that I’ll be leaving in a year. To feel so comfortable, at ease, at home.
Something must show on my face, because the tall girl stops and turns to me with concern. “Are you okay, Eliza?”
“Huh?” I feign confusion, then quickly pull my lips into a sheepish smile. “Yeah, of course. Just … thinking about the essay, I guess. And what I’m going to do about it.”
The two of them make long ahing sounds and nod again in total sync.
“That’s a good point,” the tall girl says. “You should do something about it for sure. You should— Oh! You should capitalize on the fame.”
“Yes!” Nadia points one finger at me excitedly—and almost pokes my eye out. “Oops—sorry! But Stephanie’s right. Whenever people go viral on Twitter, they always use it to promote themselves or boost their friend’s baking account or something.”
“Do you have one?” Stephanie asks, leaning over the back of her seat.
“What, a baking account?”
“Something to promote,” she clarifies with a laugh. “So? What are you thinking?”
And it’s silly, and beside the point, and completely unrealistic given the circumstances, but I do find myself thinking about it, some of my initial giddiness from this morning bubbling back up inside me.
I’ve always dreamed of having people read my writing—read it, and actually like it—and now, for the first time ever, I have a potential readership.
I have a following. Maybe if I published more essays while people are still paying attention, I could …
I don’t know. Jump-start a legitimate writing career.
Make a name for myself. I could be a Writer, not just someone who writes.
But just as quickly as hope sprouts in my chest, I crush it back down.
People only want to hear more from me because they think my essay was real.
They think I’m dating a good-looking boy who takes me out on spontaneous motorcycle rides around the city and once slow-danced with me in the middle of a grocery store aisle and texts me good night every evening before I fall asleep. They’re in love with my love story.
If I want to keep writing and capitalize on my fame, as Stephanie says, I’ll have to keep lying.
“I don’t know,” I say slowly. “Maybe—”
The door swings open before I can give a vague response, and everyone snaps to attention at once.
Our math teacher, Ms. Sui, strides to the front of the classroom, an intimidating sheaf of worksheets balanced on one hand, a briefcase swinging from the other.
She reminds me of the teachers at my old Chinese Saturday schools.
Everything about her is sharp: her gaze, her voice, the cut of her pure white blazer.
Her teaching style reminds me of them too.
She doesn’t greet us. She simply lets the worksheets drop to the desk with a menacing thud and calls on Stephanie to help pass them out.
We each get fifty double-sided pages of math questions printed in the tiniest of fonts, all due by tomorrow morning. This feels illegal. Someone makes a strangled noise that they quickly disguise as a cough.
Still, I’m almost grateful for the insane workload, for the focused silence that continues throughout the rest of class. I might be a good bullshitter, but I honestly don’t know how many more questions I could field without letting something slip.
· · ·
By the time lunch rolls around, I’ve spoken to more people in the past few hours than I have since I started school here.
People keep coming up to me, calling for me in the busy corridors between classes, at the start of double English, even on my way to the bathroom—and now here, in the middle of the cafeteria line.
Someone taps my shoulder. “Hey, you’re the girl with the essay, right?”
This is my reputation now, I guess: not “The New Girl from America” but “The Girl with the Viral Essay.” I would consider it an upgrade if it weren’t for my overwhelming fear of becoming known as “The Girl Who Lied” in a few days or weeks. Depending on how long I can keep pretending.
I spin around and find a whole squad of girls and three guys gaping at me.
They look a few years younger than I am, maybe year nines or tens. Some of them haven’t even shed their baby fat yet, but the girls are all wearing heavy makeup and the guys have on copious amounts of hair gel in an attempt to look more Grown Up.
“Yeah,” I say, smiling a little despite myself. “Yes. That’s me.”