Chapter Twenty #3
Gradually, new details began to emerge, and the public pieced together a story that was so convincing even I started to believe it was true.
It started freshman year. Gina and Laura became friends when they both joined Theta.
Like richer, cooler versions of Eunjin and me, they had a lot in common.
They both were planning to major in economics, and they both were considering going into finance or law.
They even spent a summer abroad in Paris together, rooming together in a little flat in the Latin Quarter and flirting with boys from the Sorbonne.
During the start of senior year, Gina went to a mixer at SigEp and met Harrison.
They started seeing each other. Well, Gina said they were seeing each other.
Harrison probably would’ve described it as “hooking up.” A few months into their situationship, Harrison suddenly stopped responding to her messages, and Gina spent days crying over him in Laura’s room.
Gina started skipping mixers at SigEp. But of course, Laura still went, just with other sisters.
One night, when they were both on their third or fourth drinks, Harrison made a move, Laura reciprocated, and the entire party saw them making out near the bathroom together.
The sorority sisters argued among each other about how to break the news to Gina.
Together, they decided to confront Laura in an act of sisterly love.
“If you don’t tell her, we will.” So Laura did. That was the week before she died.
But one thing people were still stuck on: why did Laura go to Gina’s party if they were on bad terms?
The rumor was that Gina had pretended to forgive Laura the week before, which was why Laura showed up.
In reality, Gina had been plotting her revenge all along.
After the party, she had waited for Laura in her room, then attacked her with pepper spray as soon as she arrived.
This was the first time everyone was hearing about the involvement of pepper spray.
Just as the gossip had started to die down a little, the news of the murder weapon only spurred more speculation about Laura’s death.
It seemed like I was the only person on campus who didn’t want to think about it.
The news just confirmed what I had thought all along—the pepper spray had killed Laura.
I had killed Laura. The realization didn’t shock me as much as haunt me, constantly simmering under the surface of my consciousness, sometimes taking the form of a dull headache or a thumping in my chest. I could temporarily ignore it if no one brought it up.
But there was no way of avoiding the conversation on campus. It was all anyone wanted to talk about.
“Pepper spray on its own isn’t likely to cause someone’s death,” I overheard someone saying in the dining hall. “It was probably that with the combination of too much cocaine.”
“Maybe she was just allergic to pepper spray,” his friend replied. “I mean, I’ve been pepper sprayed before. It sucked, but it didn’t kill me. Seems like just a really, really unlucky situation for everyone involved.”
I found it jarring how quickly Gina’s friends became convinced that she was culpable.
The common sentiment was that Gina likely hadn’t meant to kill her; otherwise why would she have chosen to use pepper spray?
They believed it had been a tragic accident, but they still believed that she did it.
Gina had been furious over Laura’s betrayal, they said.
And besides, we all knew what it was like to get ghosted by a guy you really liked. It sucked. It made you crazy.
“The worst part is, the Harrison guy isn’t even that hot,” Leah complained.
She was right, but I couldn’t blame either Laura or Gina for their choice in guys.
It was slim pickings for normal-ish heterosexual men at Columbia University, and Harrison was tall, was not a sociopath, and looked like he showered regularly.
As for my involvement—that, in my humble opinion, was the most interesting part.
The police did indeed find the footage of me sneaking into Laura’s town house.
They did find out that the person claiming to be Laura was not actually Laura.
But here’s what was absolutely hilarious: They thought that it was Gina in the footage!
They thought it was Gina pretending to be Laura to the housing employee and getting access to Laura’s room.
They thought that I was Gina! I laughed until I cried when I learned about this.
To make matters even funnier, the housing employee himself identified Gina as the person to whom he had given the temporary key card.
I never thought I’d ever say this in my entire life, but thank the heavens that people think all Asians look alike!
Thank the heavens for stereotypes! Thank the heavens for racism!
Once I got over the relief of not being accused of murder, I found there was even more to be elated about.
Clearly, my physical appearance bore some similarity to that of Gina.
Gina was quite pretty—not as pretty as Laura, but obviously she was pretty enough to be friends with Laura and get into Theta.
And they mistook me for her. That meant I had increased my percentile of attractiveness. Maybe I was getting a pregnancy glow.
“Have I been looking better than usual?” I asked Eunjin one day.
“Uh…” She looked bewildered. “I mean, I think you always look great.”
I rolled my eyes. She saw me almost every day, which was why she didn’t notice the difference.
After the elation wore off, the guilt began to sink in.
Gina would be facing consequences for something that she didn’t do.
With the arrest report, we now knew for sure that the pepper spray I used had killed Laura.
And Gina would be paying for the crime. It was a counterbalance to the relief of no longer being a suspect, but I was numb to experiencing either sensation to the greatest extent.
I was hovering on the edge of a black hole.
The black hole sucked in both the guilt and the relief.
In the place of these emotions it left an insatiable addiction.
My mind kept going back to Laura and those last moments in her room, the fact that I had been witness to her last moments of consciousness.
I compulsively checked Laura’s social media accounts to the point that I had memorized every caption, could describe every picture in every post.
When I ran out of material on Instagram I went to her lesser-used accounts, like Facebook.
She had never been very active on the platform, but I went to her profile to look at the groups that she had joined, wondering if any of them would clue me in to which law schools she had been accepted to.
No “Harvard Law School Class of 2027” group or “Yale Law School Class of 2027” group, unfortunately, and I found it such a shame that she would’ve missed the opportunity to join an online circle of other 99th percentile people.
I felt that familiar pinch of envy. Envy for a dead girl, but envy nonetheless.
I rubbed my stomach. With the baby, it was practically guaranteed that I would get into Harvard Law School.
I had already started working on the letter I’d send about my situation.
It’d only be a matter of time before I could join one of these Facebook groups myself.
Days, maybe weeks, depending on how quickly the admissions officers made their decision.
Still, that was too long. If only I could join now. Oh, I wanted so badly to join now.
The cursor on my laptop screen moved like it was being controlled by a ghost. Maybe Laura was the one moving it. I looked down. No, it was my hand, but I was disassociated from its movements. Laura was moving through me, I liked to think.
I created a new Facebook profile. First name Laura, last name Rose.
Rose was actually her middle name, but plenty of people used their middle names as their last names on Facebook, and I used it this time to arouse less suspicion.
For the profile photo, I uploaded a generic photo of a waterfall.
I set my occupation as “student at Columbia University” without specifying which school.
The key was to provide enough information for the admins of the Facebook group to believe I was one of their admitted students, but not enough for the Columbia students I was about to add as friends to suspect I was impersonating the dead Laura Kim.
I added a hundred people, then added a hundred more the next day and the day after that.
Most people rejected or ignored my request, but by the end of the week I had about 200 “friends.” In the meantime, I shared a few more photos of nature on my feed.
Then I looked up the official admitted students group for Harvard Law School and requested to join the group.
All it asked for was my first name, last name, and undergraduate school. Easy-peasy. Laura Kim, Columbia University. A day later, I was in.
—
How wonderful it was to be with my peers, to be with these like-minded, hardworking future lawyers.
It made me almost feel okay that Eunjin was abandoning me to move to Austria.
I no longer needed her. I would be surrounded by other future lawyers who would probably be a bore to talk to, but that was a price I was willing to pay.
Besides, I would have the baby, my own little Eunjin 2. 0.