Chapter Twenty-Six
TWENTY-SIX
After a few weeks of physical and mental recovery in South Dakota, I returned to New York in June for the summer semester.
It was strange to live in the dorms again, to attend classes again, even though I had already walked across the graduation stage.
I was only enrolled in two three-credit courses, the minimum I needed to graduate, so I had a lot of free time on my hands.
More free time than I had ever had before.
It was unnerving. My brain wasn’t sure what to latch on to, what to obsess over, especially now that I was trying to stop thinking about law school, Laura, and percentiles.
I still let my mind wander down that path from time to time, but it wasn’t as satisfying with Nora’s voice in my head telling me that it was unhealthy, that I should stop those thoughts in their tracks, blah blah blah.
Eunjin visited me in July. We spent the long summer days wandering around New York City, going to a community yoga class in the Village, strolling along the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, eating dumplings in Flushing and pierogi in Greenpoint.
Our conversation had seemed normal at the hospital, and I wasn’t sure if that was because she no longer suspected me of having something to do with Laura’s death, because she no longer cared that I had stolen her scarf, or because there were other people around.
Now that we were alone, it seemed that it had been the last possibility.
Our conversation felt stilted, leading to a loneliness that burrowed in my chest, especially at night when we were back in my dorm, me on the bed, her in a sleeping bag on the floor, after we turned off the lights and said good night.
I knew what underlay the awkwardness but I didn’t know how to release it.
I wished one of us would bring it up but I knew it was better if we didn’t.
It was too much of a liability to tell her the truth about what happened the night Laura died.
I did not want to make her choose between protecting me and doing the right thing.
At the same time, I didn’t want to lie to her, even though it would be easier than ever to explain away the scarf and clear my name.
I wasn’t sure where my conviction came from.
I had lied plenty of times already. Maybe some part of me believed that I shouldn’t get off scot-free, believed that the bus accident hadn’t been sufficient punishment, that I deserved to lose something important for everything I had done.
So I stayed silent, let myself be okay with the small talk.
And at night, I stared at the ceiling until the sound of the air-conditioning lulled me to sleep.
—
I was a bit relieved when the day for Eunjin to leave arrived. There was too much baggage in our conversations now, and it weighed me down, drained me the way it would if I were hosting an acquaintance rather than an old friend. My best friend.
She was packing to return to North Dakota, where she’d spend a few weeks before moving to Austria for school. I watched silently as she rolled up her clothes and tucked them in neat little rows in her suitcase.
“Oh. I almost forgot something,” she said, right before she zipped up her bag. She pulled out two identical wooden objects, first tearing apart the many layers of tissue paper protecting them. It took me a second to recognize what the wooden objects were.
“Two metronomes,” I said. “My piano teacher from first grade had one. I would’ve thought these were obsolete.”
“They kind of are. Now everyone just downloads an app. But I have this one because my mom bought it for me a long time ago.” She held up the one in her left hand. The wood was chipping on its side. She released the pendulum from the hook and it began to tick.
“Listen closely,” she said. “What do you hear?”
I closed my eyes and concentrated.
“The sounds are uneven.”
“That’s right. One day, I was frustrated, and I threw it so hard that it messed up the weights.”
“Were your parents mad that you broke it?”
“I didn’t tell them. I saved up some babysitting money and bought myself a new one. This one, right here.”
She released the pendulum on the second metronome. This time, it ticked with a steady beat.
“I want you to have it though. The messed-up one.” She handed the metronome with the chipped paint to me. “As a souvenir for all those times you had to listen to me practicing.”
“Are you sure?”
She shrugged. “I mean, I have no use for it.”
“Thank you,” I said. I set it carefully on the bookshelf above my desk. It had gotten a bit chilly in the room, so I turned off the AC and opened the window a couple of inches.
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“I told you. A souvenir. Of when you listened to me practicing. Something to remember me by.”
“You make it sound like you’re dying,” I joked.
She scoffed. “I am moving across the world though.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But I mean, I can always visit. Or I could drive up to Fargo during the holidays.”
Eunjin didn’t say anything. Maybe she was distracted because she was doing a final sweep of the room.
I asked if a couple of the chargers plugged into the wall were hers, and she said no.
I sat on the chair in front of the desk and waited for her to finish.
She zipped up her backpack and placed it on top of her suitcase.
Then, she sat facing me on the bed. We stared at each other for a few seconds.
I wondered if this was the moment she would bring up the scarf.
When she finally spoke, her voice sounded odd, a bit high-pitched, but I wasn’t sure if it was just me.
“You probably don’t remember this, but…”
“Don’t remember what?”
“You mentioned to me once, a few months ago, that you had purchased pepper spray.”
“I did?” I was afraid to look at her, afraid of what my expression might reveal.
“I almost forgot about it, then after graduation I went back to our text messages and checked.”
“Oh.”
“After you were spit on in the subway. You asked me if I wanted one and I said no.”
“I forgot about that.”
“I don’t think you offered it to Leah or Alex. At least, they never mentioned it.”
“I see.”
“I don’t think you mentioned it to anyone else either.” She looked out the window. “I didn’t mention it to anyone. I won’t mention it to anyone.”
“I…appreciate that. I threw all of them away a while ago.” I wasn’t sure if I had revealed too much.
“That’s probably a good idea.”
Finally, I met her eyes. And as soon as I did, she looked away.
“Eunjin, I—”
But she stopped me before I could finish my thought. Which was good, because I didn’t know what that thought would be.
“I know you’re not evil. You are a lot of things, but not evil. So maybe it’d be better for both of us if we just left it at that?”
I nodded. She unzipped her backpack again, checked that she had her ID, laptop, and wallet.
Together we took the elevator down to the lobby, then walked a couple of blocks to the station.
I walked with her all the way to the turnstiles.
She tapped her phone on the screen, rolled the suitcase under the metal bar, and walked through to the other side.
For a moment, I worried she wouldn’t turn around, that this was it, and she would just leave me here to watch as she walked away.
But finally, she swiveled her head and looked at me.
“Goodbye, Eunjin,” I said. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Goodbye, Elizabeth.” The train was arriving and she adjusted the backpack on her shoulders.
I pretended not to hear the finality in her voice, pretended not to know what the metronome represented.
The last words she said to me were “Take care of yourself.” Then she headed down to the platform and left.
—
I sold Laura’s scarf to a consignment store on the Upper East Side. Keeping it didn’t seem like a good idea, and throwing it away seemed disrespectful. I donated all the money from the sale to the American Heart Association, the charity her parents had linked on her memorial page.
Is that what Laura would’ve wanted? The truth was, I didn’t know.
I never knew her very well, even though I thought I did, even though I thought that obsession and stalking could replace actually getting close to someone.
You could say I knew her in the same way that Harvard Law School knew me.
Only the shape of her life, none of the substance.
I believed that Harvard had reached the wrong conclusion about me, so was it fair to say that I could’ve reached the wrong conclusion about Laura?
In mid-July, her family released the essay that she had written for Harvard Law School.
In it, Laura revealed that she had been born with a rare, genetic heart defect called Ebstein anomaly.
Growing up, she had been in and out of hospitals, and now, as a young adult, lived with the knowledge that at any second, her heart could stop working.
She was only able to access excellent treatment and care because of her father’s employer-based health insurance, but she knew many other people who didn’t have the same privilege.
She wanted to be a lawyer because she was interested in the law but also because she wanted to improve the lives of others.
After getting a few years of experience at a firm, she wanted to work in public policy, creating laws that would help low-income families obtain access to the same quality of healthcare that she had.
The toxic part of me wanted to roll my eyes.
Every law student said that they wanted to pursue public interest law after a “few years of experience at a firm.” But by the time they paid off the loans and built their nest egg, they’d have grown too accustomed to the fancy dinners and nice apartment to give up the big law paycheck.
I mean, I also liked the idea of working in public interest law.
The difference was, I was self-aware enough to know that it probably wouldn’t happen.
But the nontoxic, post-accident version of me decided that I’d believe her.
I’d believe her words about herself over my own preconceptions about the shittiness of other people.
For all I knew, she really would have worked in public policy after a few years in big law.
Besides, it was pointless asking myself what Laura would’ve wanted.
She would’ve wanted me to not assault her with pepper spray. She would’ve wanted to not die.
—
On a Thursday in August, I dropped by the halal cart on 115th and Broadway after my morning classes.
“Hey, Amir. Could I have a lamb over rice?”
“Extra white sauce, a little bit of hot sauce?” I nodded. “No iced coffee?”
“Not today. Already had one.”
I brought the Styrofoam container back to my dorm and ate it while scrolling through my phone.
George, the guy who was blamed for the right-wing blog post I wrote, showed up on my feed.
A few weeks after he left for school, he decided to take full ownership of the blog post and had now become an up-and-coming right-wing influencer.
I was still getting used to seeing him as a talking head on all those conservative talk shows. We were living in weird times.
As I scrolled past his clip, an unknown number was calling me, a Massachusetts area code.
There was a good chance it was spam, but there was also a tiny chance it was someone offering me a job interview.
I had been applying to dozens of open positions recently but with no luck.
I answered the phone, hoping for good news but not expecting much.
“Hi, is this Elizabeth?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yep. This is she,” I said, in between bites of lamb.
“Hi, Elizabeth, my name is Lilly. I work for Harvard’s JD Admissions Team.” I dropped my fork. A few grains of rice fell out of my mouth. “Is now a good time to talk?”
“Hi, Lilly. Yes, now is a good time.”
“Great. I’m calling because you had applied to our program a few months ago, and you received a rejection letter, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Recently, it’s come to our attention that the Law School Admission Council, which administers the LSAT, sent us the wrong score report for your application.
The score report they sent was for a much lower score than what you received.
We’re still conducting an investigation as to what happened, but we’re confident the mistake was on their end.
Also, it looks like it wasn’t just us, but that they made the same mistake with other schools on your list.”
She asked if I was still on the line. I realized I’d been holding my breath.
“Yes, I’m still here,” I said.
“Great. Fortunately, we’ve received your correct score now, and our team was able to review your application again without you needing to reapply.
So I guess I’ll just get right to it.” I stood up.
My entire body was trembling. “On behalf of the entire admissions team, we were incredibly impressed by your entire application, and we’d love for you to join our incoming law school class starting this fall. ”
I wondered if I had entered a new stage of psychosis, one that involved audio and visual hallucinations.
Or maybe it was simpler than that—maybe I was just dreaming.
Pinching did not seem sufficient for the gravity of the situation so I picked up Eunjin’s metronome from my desk and smashed it against my arm.
I looked at my phone screen. Yes, I was awake.
Yes, Lilly was still on the line. Then I wondered if someone could be playing a practical joke on me, so I asked Lilly to give me a second while I logged in to the application portal.
They had already updated it with my acceptance letter.
My arm was throbbing and I’d kept Lilly on hold for way too long, but at least now I knew that this was all real.
“Hi, Lilly, I’m back. Sorry about that.”
“No worries. I know this is a lot at once. The bottom line is, we think you’d make an excellent addition to the law school. You don’t have to provide me with an answer now, but we’d love to hear about your decision soon. Do you have any other questions for me?”
I said that I didn’t. I told her that I was grateful for the offer. Also, I would like to accept. “Obviously,” I wanted to add. After all, this was fucking Harvard Law School. What was I supposed to say?