I Am Not Jessica Chen

by Ann Liang

For anyone who’s ever wished they could be someone else

I’ve always had this theory that if I want something badly enough, the universe will make sure to keep it just out of my reach—either out of boredom or cruelty, like an invisible hand dangling stars on a string.

But I still can’t stop myself from hoping it’ll be different this time around. Maybe a miracle will happen. Maybe the universe will be kind for once, and when I reach up, the stars will fall into my palms.

I’m simply not that good. Not in academics. Not in extracurriculars. Not as a student, or a daughter, or a human. It doesn’t matter if I crammed my brain to the point of breaking with formulas and dates, threw myself into my classes, painted until the skin on my hands blistered and split open. Here is incontrovertible proof. Something in me is missing. Lacking.

It’s such a suffocating thought—that everything I will ever feel and know and accomplish must begin and end with my own mind.

When you’re so widely known and loved, so soaked in glory you’re swimming in it, all you have to worry about is maintenance, not metamorphosis.

From then on, every time he had to leave for a competition or debating camp or a school excursion, he would come back with a new pen just for me.

It’s cruel, really, how the world tends to present its most beautiful parts to you when you’re so profoundly sad. Like a crush who comes up to you in the moonlight and smiles at you each time you insist on moving on—just enough to keep you lingering, to make you wonder how good things could be. If only, if only.

For the thousandth time, I wish he wasn’t here. I wish he had never come back. But that’s half a lie, because I’ve missed him too. Sometimes I missed him so much it’s embarrassing.

I hope that broken, embarrassing version of me never resurfaces again. I hope she remains buried. I hope she’s disappeared permanently.

You have to prove yourself over and over, and when the glory for your most recent achievement expires, as it must, as it always will, you have to start again, but with more eyes trained on you, more people waiting for the day when your talent withers, and your discipline weakens, and your charm wears away. Success is only meant to be rented out, borrowed in small doses at a time, never to be owned completely, no matter what price you’re willing to pay for it.

Sometimes I forget that in the bigger scheme of things, it’s okay to not be the best at everything.

I just feel so exhausted at the idea, like I’ve been running as fast as I can toward a mountain in the horizon, and it always looks within reach, but I’ll never actually get there. Everything exhausts me these days.

Beautiful, distant, infuriating Aaron. The boy I would refuse to lend a pencil to, but who I would give up the world for, even after all this time.

Jenna Chen. Always the second one, the afterthought, the girl not good enough for anybody.

And that’s what I’d try to tell myself at first. I would come up with a thousand reasons why I could succeed without the Ivy League education. I might even be able to forget about it from time to time, but it would always linger in the back of my mind. One day, ten years from now, I’ll be at a party and everyone will be chatting and someone will casually bring up their classes at Harvard and someone else will gush over how smart they are, and in that moment I’ll feel so insignificant I’ll want to vanish.

My life has never been like that. The only discernible pattern, really, is inconsistency: the second I improve in certain areas, I regress in others. My skin becomes clearer, but my hair becomes thinner. My grades in English rise, but my grades in math fall. I start exercising more in the mornings, but stop doing my laundry over the weekends. One step forward and one step back, and repeat, until in the end, it looks like I’ve been standing in the same spot for years.

“If I’d kissed you,” he goes on, “you would have wanted me for an afternoon, and I would have wanted you for the rest of my life.

“Anything you want. I’ll be here, always.”

“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.”

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.

“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.

Always so observant. He’s always known me so well.

“I would never move on,” Aaron says softly. “I would never take your paintings down.”

I miss it all. I miss my life, because even when I felt like I had nothing, I had everything. I just didn’t know it at the time. You never do, until it’s in hindsight.

“Jenna, you’re all I’ve ever wanted,” he says, quiet. Perfect. “It’s always been you. It can only be you.”