Chapter Twelve
TWELVE
I didn’t tell Eunjin I was pregnant. I decided I’d tell her after the point at which I could no longer get an abortion.
If I started showing before then, I’d wear baggy clothes or complain that the freshman fifteen seemed to be hitting me late.
I didn’t want her to freak out, to make it out to be a bigger deal than it actually was.
I didn’t want to explain my plan to her. I knew she wouldn’t understand.
My symptoms had eased; for the most part, I felt normal, and I told Eunjin that she was right, it was just food poisoning, likely from the foie gras.
Sometimes I searched online for photos of David, looking closely at his features, at his smile, at his eyes.
Once the seed inside me grew into an actual human being, what would they look like?
Would they have David’s high cheekbones, my dark hair?
On one hand, we would have something significant in common: being raised by single moms. But on the other hand, would their upbringing in New York City as the child of a high-powered attorney prevent the development of a true closeness?
The closeness that two people have when they’ve both been looked down on their entire lives, when they both know what it feels like to be unimportant, to be inferior, to know that the default is that you don’t matter?
They would never know what it was like to look for ants in a one-bedroom apartment, to feel constantly inferior to everyone around them, to want nothing more than to escape.
Each generation builds off the one before it.
My parents sacrificed so I could have a better life.
I strived so my children could have a better life.
And my children wouldn’t have to sacrifice or strive.
They could just enjoy. And maybe that was a good thing.
—
I officially kicked off my mission to get Laura rescinded from Harvard.
First, I conducted some research into past instances of universities rescinding students’ offers of admission.
The most common reasons were that the applicant posted something unsavory online, they were found guilty of academic dishonesty, or, in extreme cases, they committed a crime.
I came up with a plan. I would register a blog titled Musings of a Freethinking Columbia Student.
For the author bio, I would write “Columbia senior otherwise, that would defeat the whole purpose of the project.
I decided I would include details about her life here and there in the body of the blog posts, just few enough personal details that someone like Laura would think that no one could trace it back to her, but just enough that a fastidious reader would be able to narrow down who she was if they cared enough.
And knowing what I had written for the content, there would certainly be someone on campus who cared enough.
There was another problem: if I wasn’t careful, the writing could be traced back to me, and everyone would discover that I was setting her up.
Or worse, they would think that I was the neofascist, not her.
Laura was basic and unworthy of Harvard, but she wasn’t stupid; when Harvard inevitably saw the blog post (because I would anonymously send it to them), she would deny that she had anything to do with it, and she’d probably hire some computer guy to trace the IP address of the actual creator.
I was using the Wi-Fi network for Columbia students, which required me to log in with my ID and password.
I admit I didn’t know much about computers, but I imagined that someone could trace the content back to me.
To play it safe, I couldn’t enact any step of my plan on my personal laptop.
I remembered that some of the libraries on campus, like Butler, offered desktop computers for public usage.
You needed to sign in with your student email address and password, but there were often people who would forget to sign out.
I remembered this because one time some guy forgot to close out his porn.
I could simply use someone else’s account, and with enough other evidence, it would appear that Laura was the one who had used that person’s account.
The next Tuesday I entered Butler and walked to the row of public computers on the third floor, ready to sit down at the first one that still had a browser window open.
But to my utter dismay, all of them showed the log-in screen.
No one had forgotten to log out. I almost screamed.
I could feel my face turning red, hot tears of frustration welling up in my eyes.
But once again, I wasn’t ready to give up.
I sat at a bench near the public computers, pretending to write an essay on my laptop, as I waited for someone to use one of the computers.
About half an hour later, a short blond guy arrived and plopped down in one of the chairs.
He looked vaguely familiar, like maybe he had been in one of my seminars freshman year.
He was the type of person who looked simultaneously very young and very old: balding but with a baby face and a slightly protruding belly.
He was wearing a button-down shirt covered with a V-neck sweater.
He took his laptop out of his bag. The screen was cracked down the middle, a streak of rainbow on each side.
He repeatedly pressed at random on the keyboard but the computer didn’t react.
He logged in using one of the public computers and pulled up a Google Doc.
He spent the next forty-five minutes typing.
I was too far away to read the paper he was writing, but close enough to keep an eye on his movements, waiting for the moment he would get up.
I was tired and dehydrated, and I felt a headache coming on.
But I couldn’t go home now. I couldn’t lose this opportunity.
He got up from his chair, and I felt a sudden elation that faded when I realized he was only walking a few steps to the printer.
Regardless, I had an idea. I sat down at the computer next to his and typed in my ID.
Then, I typed random characters into the password box.
I pressed submit and the system responded with an error message.
I made sure that by the time the blond guy came back, I was staring at the screen with an obviously frustrated expression.
When he sat down, I swiveled to look at him, as though surprised by his sudden presence, even though I had been tracking his movements in my peripheral vision the entire time.
“Oh, hey there,” I said.
“Hey,” he responded. He too looked surprised by my presence. Or maybe he was just surprised that I was talking to him. Usually Columbia students didn’t chat up strangers at random.
Now that I was close, I could see the dark circles under his eyes, the dullness of his skin.
One time, my laptop had also broken the same week I needed to write a paper for class.
I knew he probably wasn’t in a great mood; at the same time, that meant he would empathize with another person in a similar situation.
“My laptop just broke, and now for some reason this computer won’t let me log in.
I’ve tried resetting my password multiple times and it won’t work.
” I gestured to the laptop, which still showed the “wrong password” message.
“Do you know if you’ll happen to be done soon?
Is there any chance you could stay logged in so I could just quickly finish my essay?
It’s due tonight and I’m desperate, otherwise I wouldn’t ask. ”
The man brushed back his hair and gave a loud sigh. At first, I thought he was bracing himself to reject my request, but fortunately, that wasn’t the case.
“Oh god. I’m in the same boat. My laptop broke today too.
” He opened his laptop and turned the cracked screen toward me.
“Fortunately, my log-in actually is working; otherwise I would’ve pulled my hair out.
Anyway, happy to help. I just need like ten more minutes and then you can use it. Does that sound good to you?”
“Absolutely.” I thanked him and started doing some reading while waiting for him to finish.
Ten minutes later, he started packing up his backpack. “All yours,” he said. “Best of luck.”
—
His name was George. What a nice, trusting person, George.
But too trusting, it appeared. He hadn’t even bothered to log out of his email account, which was how I found out his name.
George Reynolds. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve snooped some more, but I had more important tasks to complete.
I registered a new blog under a burner email and cleared the web browser history.
I had already written the first post I would publish to Musings of a Freethinking Columbia Student.
This was the one part of the plan that I had to do ahead of time on my personal laptop.
To account for even the tiniest chance that someone would get access to my computer or to Google Drive and trace the draft back to me, I first uploaded a blank Word doc to a flash drive, then I wrote the blog post in that Word doc.
I even turned off Wi-Fi while working on it so it wouldn’t accidentally sync to the Cloud without my knowledge.