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“How was school?” Auntie asks across the dining table.

Both of Jessica’s parents are home today. That’s still the only way I can think of them—as Jessica’s parents, not my own. Because my mom and dad would never be seated so formally for a small family dinner, with their designer

blazers and ironed shirts still on, the television turned off in the background, the only sound the light scrape of their

chopsticks against the plates. They would never come home with boxes of takeaway from the most famous—and expensive—Chinese

restaurant in town. I would always have to beg my mom to let us order food, and more often than not all I ended up with was

a stern lecture on how we already had everything we needed at home. And besides, her cooking was better than anything a chef

could put together, and didn’t I know her friend’s uncle’s coworker would eat takeout once a week and ended up divorced at

twenty-eight, even if the two matters seemed entirely unrelated, and did I want to end up divorced at twenty-eight?

I scoop up a piece of sweet-and-sour chicken and pop it into my mouth, the rich flavor bursting on my tongue. “School was... okay,” I lie through my teeth. My thoughts leave the table and creep into Jessica’s bedroom, where her schoolbag sits, the anonymous note folded and hidden inside her pencil case. The mere reminder of it sends dread scuttling down my spine. “I got my test back. For politics.”

“Oh?” Uncle glances up. “What did you get?”

“Ninety-one percent.”

A very brief silence moves over the room, so subtle I almost don’t notice it. I doubt I would have, if I were here as a guest.

If the silence weren’t directed at me.

“Ninety-one,” Auntie repeats. Her tone is light, but there’s a quizzical look in her eyes. “Was it a particularly difficult

test?”

“No,” I say. I feel like this is another test, and it’s proving very difficult to pass. “I mean, a lot of people did worse.”

“But a few people did better than you?” Auntie asks, her tone sharpening.

Uncle shoots her a look. “It’s only a score for a humanities subject. It doesn’t matter—”

“I don’t care about the score,” Auntie says, shaking him away. “I care about how Jessica is reacting to the score. She doesn’t even look upset. How can she improve if she’s not reflecting on what she’s done?”

I take another bite of the chicken. It’s a little too salty, and I’m uncomfortably aware of how dry my tongue feels, but I

don’t dare stand up for a glass of water—not with Auntie staring me down.

“I’m sorry?” I try.

“No, no, I don’t need you to be sorry to me.” Auntie stabs her chopsticks into the middle of her rice. Bad luck, my mom would say. It looks like incense; it is associated with death in the family. “I told you, I don’t care about your studies. I’m not like one of those tiger parents. I don’t have to care about you at

all. Soon you’ll be an adult living all on your own and whether you succeed or not will have nothing to do with me. If you

fail, then you only have to be sorry to yourself.”

I stare. There are a number of things Auntie likes to brag about on a regular basis, and one of them is how she isn’t invested

in Jessica’s studies at all. She would always speak with faint derision of those parents who signed their children up for

intensive tutoring in chemistry and math and Chinese, who stayed up to help their children with homework, who closely monitored

their children’s grades. According to her, Jessica just happened to have perfect grades. Jessica just happened to be the perfect daughter. Jessica was simply blessed with perfect genes.

But maybe she’s never worried about Jessica’s grades before because Jessica never gave her a reason to worry.

Because Jessica must have learned at some point that at the first sign of anything less than perfect, her mother would react

like this.

“How did your friends do?” Uncle asks. He probably means to help, but my mouth only dries further.

“Yes, good question,” Auntie says. “That Leela is a good student, isn’t she? Did she do better than you? And what about Celine?

You’re always telling me she’s a genius at those humanities subjects.” This time it’s clear what the correct answer should

be. It won’t matter as much if I’m not perfect, so long as I’m superior in some sense.

I remember the tears shining on Leela’s cheeks, the way she’d hidden her test behind her, and my gut clenches. To avoid answering right away, I pick at a piece of the fried crab dish and suck on the shell.

Both my uncle and auntie’s eyes widen.

“What are you doing?” Auntie asks shrilly.

I’m so startled I flinch. Drop my chopsticks. Blink up at her pale face. My immediate assumption is that this is about the

grades, but then my auntie shoots to her feet and—in what I register as a very random, bizarre thing to do—points a shaking

finger at the crab.

“How much did you eat?”

“What?”

“How much?”

“I—just that bite—”

“Go rinse your mouth,” she demands. “And eat your medicine. Right now.”

Medicine? What medicine?

Auntie’s features twist with urgency. “Don’t just stand there! Hurry. ”

It’s primarily out of confusion that I obey, my feet moving for me while my brain remains at a standstill. Only when I’ve

reached the bathroom and rinsed my mouth twice and glimpsed my reflection in the mirror do I realize what’s wrong.

A horrified gasp tears through my teeth.

Red welts have started to swell up all over my neck and cheeks, marring Jessica’s otherwise smooth skin. Crabmeat. I’d been so caught up in the ominous message and her grades that I’d forgotten one very critical piece of information: Jessica Chen is allergic to seafood.

And as if I’m in need of any further evidence, my whole face starts to itch.

“Crap,” I mutter, fumbling around her cupboards for the medicine with one hand while scratching furiously at my skin with

the other. In my panic, I send pretty little tubes of face wash and scented soaps and unopened lipsticks tumbling to the ground.

The more I scratch, the more it itches, as if I’m driving the sensation deeper into my body.

Finally my fingers close around a white bottle. I check the label, twist the cap open, pour two pills out onto my palm, and

swallow them without any water. Then I dig my nails into the flesh of my face, waiting—praying—for the medicine to kick in.

“Jessica?” Two fast knocks on the bathroom door. Auntie’s voice. “Jessica? Do you need me to come in?”

“No,” I say quickly. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Do we need to take you to the hospital? I’ll ask your father to start the car—”

“No,” I repeat. Breathe in. Check my reflection again. It’s hard to be certain in the bright yellow wash of the bathroom lights,

but the hives seem to have faded a little. It also no longer feels like there are angry poisonous ants crawling over my skin—now

they’re just plain ants.

Three more deep breaths, and then even the ants disappear.

When I crack open the door, Auntie seizes my shoulders and heaves out a long breath of relief.

“What were you thinking?” she asks. “You’ve always been so careful.”

“I just got distracted, I guess,” I say weakly.

She frowns but doesn’t pursue the subject. Nor does she bring up the politics test again. “Come on,” she tells me. “Let’s

go down to finish dinner. You barely ate anything.”

But I don’t feel hungry. Not for the food waiting for me downstairs, anyway. What I want is my mom’s cooking. The tender pork

ribs and seaweed we’d dip into soy sauce. The vegetable rolls she’d steam herself using white flour and scallions. The rich

egg-and-tomato soup she’d serve with rice. The congee she’d make for me when I was sick, the tendrils of dried pork floss

she’d sprinkle on top, the scattering of white sesame. When I was younger, I would secretly look forward to catching a cold,

because I knew it meant she would let me stay in my bedroom and doodle all day, and she would bring the bowl of steaming congee

and a plate of peeled pears and apples....

Stop. I force the thought aside, ignore the ache lodged inside my chest like a blunt arrowhead, the urge to call my parents, to

talk to them. I can’t simply let nostalgia distort my memories, erase those dinners where the pork ribs and soup went untouched

because I was sulking over one of Jessica’s accomplishments.

“I’ve finished dinner,” I say, summoning a smile to my lips. “I think I’m just going to go study.”

Auntie hesitates, then nods. “All right. Tell us if you have any other symptoms—your dad and I are both flying out tomorrow

and we aren’t coming back until the seventeenth, but we can cancel our trip.”

“Hang on... the seventeenth?” I echo. “What’s the date today?”

“The thirteenth. Why?”

My heart clenches. I should have remembered what today is. What it means to Aaron.

It’s his mother’s death anniversary.

His father wouldn’t be home. He seldom is, and especially not this evening. Five years ago, on the same date, he’d gone missing

for as long as three weeks. Disappeared without a note, without leaving anything in the fridge, no money on the counter, not

even an emergency number. Aaron had hidden it from all of us until I noticed that he wasn’t bringing lunch to school.

“Just asking,” I say. “Don’t worry about me. Everything’s good here.”

Once my aunt is gone, I slip into Jessica’s bedroom, letting the door swing shut. My eyes find the ever-growing pile of homework

papers and textbooks waiting ominously on the desk. If I want to keep up Jessica’s grades, redeem myself after the ninety-one

percent, I should really spend the night studying. It’s what Jessica would do. It’s what a perfect student would do.

But my gaze slides past all the schoolwork and lands on Jessica’s phone.

I don’t have to search the contacts for his number; I’ve had it memorized for years. As I lie back on the bed and wait for Aaron to pick up, a series of memories flickers through my mind: Aaron, that first awful year after his mother had passed from her sudden heart condition, still only a child and so quiet it made people nervous. The counselor the school had arranged for, reporting back to my mom because his own father wasn’t around.... It would be much less concerning if he threw a tantrum. But he doesn’t even cry. He doesn’t want to talk about it at all.

I’m concerned his emotions are going to consume him from within. The Mother’s Day after that, all the kids showing off their caramel cookies and illustrated cards, while Aaron kept himself

distant from them, sitting back, the lines of his face hard. Already, he’d perfected his mask of boredom.

Nobody else connected the dots when he signed himself up for a first-aid course the summer after his mother passed, when he

memorized the fastest route to the hospital from every major road and fastidiously refilled their supply of medicine every

year, just in case of another emergency. Nobody else seemed to notice how he’d tense whenever someone complained about chest

pain or feeling lightheaded, how he’d spend his spare time reading up on every documented illness while other boys his age

were partying or playing video games.

“Yes?” Aaron’s voice.

Even though I was the one who called, I still feel my pulse jump slightly. I’m used to thinking about him; I’m not used to

actually reaching him. “Hi,” I say. “Are you busy?”

“Not really.” He sounds guarded. Almost suspicious. “Is something up?”

“Oh, no, I just...” I pause. I can hardly say the truth, that I was worried about him, that I know how much this day affects him even though he’ll never admit it, and the only reason I know is because I’ve been watching him and wanting him in silence for years. No, I definitely can’t say that. But there is something I can ask him about—something I actually need to find out. “I was wondering if you saw anyone move my test today.”

“Your test?”

“Yeah. For politics. I’d left it on the desk, and when I came back...” The image of the note unfolds inside my head, as

clearly as if I were holding it up in front of me. Not so perfect, are you? “I don’t know. It looked like someone had gone through it while I was outside.”

“You’re scared someone saw your score?” he asks. “I would have thought you’d love for people to find out your score.”

I’m grateful he can’t see my expression. “Maybe not everyone is a show-off like you.”

“Fair enough,” he says dryly. But for the first time since he picked up, there’s a hint of amusement to his tone too. “Well,

I wasn’t paying attention to your desk the entire time, but nobody crossed the room. So if someone did sneak a glance at your test, I suppose they would have been sitting near you.”

Sitting near me. Celine’s face flashes through my thoughts. The look in her eyes when she found out I’d been accepted at Harvard. The edge

to her smile.

My heart thuds. The only other person sitting at our table was Leela, and even if I hadn’t been outside with her, I knew she’d

never do something like that. But Celine—the girl who intimidates everyone, who only speaks to those she deems worthy of her

attention, who I was barely acquainted with as Jenna...

“Hello?” Aaron prompts. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” I say, rolling over to cover my stomach with one corner of the blanket. “Sorry, just thinking.”

“Does it really bother you that much? If someone saw?”

“It’s a matter of principle.” I’m omitting the real truth, but this is true too. “It’s such an underhanded move.”

“You’re right,” he says. “Unfortunately, it’s the Havenwood spirit. I never did understand why everyone here is so weird about

their studies. All the constant competing and comparing—it must require an incredible amount of energy.”

Despite myself, I snort.

“What?”

“Of course you wouldn’t get it,” I tell him. “You’ve never had to worry about your studies.”

“I’d never worry about anyone else’s studies,” he counters. “Which is what most people seem to do.” Then he pauses. “Is that

the only reason you called? To ask about your test?”

“Yeah,” I reply, then realize he’s about to hang up. “Wait—no. Um, I still wanted to ask... I also needed...”

“What do you want, Jessica?”

I only want to distract you. I want to keep you company, so you don’t have the chance to feel lonely. Even if it means you’re

annoyed with me. Even if I haven’t forgiven you yet for leaving.

“I wanted to ask...” I look around in desperation and spot a framed photo of the three of us on Jessica’s bookshelf. It had been Aaron’s twelfth birthday, and on my suggestion, my mom had taken us to the Imagine Your Future immersive theme park across town. Aaron is dressed up as a doctor, a faint smile on his lips. Jessica stands beside him in a businesswoman’s blazer and pencil skirt, staring calmly ahead. And I’m squashed in the middle in my painting apron, my hair a mess, my face turned away, self-conscious, because Aaron’s arm was around my shoulder. An unexpected pang hits my chest. It had been one of those rare days where everything went exactly the way I’d planned, where joy felt simple.

“I just wanted to ask how your whole gifted kid medical program went,” I tell Aaron. “I, um, have a friend who’s considering

applying.”

“A friend? Who?”

“You wouldn’t know them,” I say. “I have so many friends.”

He lets out a breath of laughter. “All right. Well, if your friend is really set on this career path, they should give it

a try. There aren’t that many programs around that’ll let you study medicine in such depth before you’ve even entered college.

We had professors and doctors come in to deliver lectures every week. Like, there was this renowned cardiologist, Dr. Zhou,

who specializes in basically all aspects of cardiac rhythm management, and he’s written these groundbreaking research papers

on atrial fibrillation....”

As he talks faster, I can imagine his eyes lighting up with genuine excitement. I tug the blanket higher, stare up at the

blank white ceiling, and let his voice fill my head.

“. . . and recently, he helped invent this heart monitoring device that’s completely noninvasive and more sensitive than anything available. It’s smaller than the size of your nail, if you can believe it. Imagine coming up with something like that—an idea, a single device, a new way of thinking, that could help advance disease prevention and treatments all over the world....” He trails off, his next words almost shy. “I realize that was likely far more than what you or your friend are interested in.”

“No, no,” I say quickly. “No, not at all.”

There’s a warm, foreign emotion blooming past my ribs: awe, untainted by jealousy. The thing about Havenwood is that it has

a way of shrinking everything down inside its ivy-crawled gates. It’s so easy to feel like nothing else in the world exists

beyond our latest test score, who’s valedictorian, who was accepted into an Ivy League and who was rejected, and the reward

becomes the glory itself, the validation, the praise. It really is the Havenwood spirit, like Aaron says.

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

who can solve problems you can’t, who are talented in different ways, who will go on to change the world. Aaron’s intelligence

isn’t just something that will earn him good grades and compliments at dinner parties; it’s what will help him become a brilliant

doctor and save lives.

“Tell me more,” I say.

He does, even though it’s with a kind of incredulous caution, like at any moment I might interrupt and announce that I’m recording

him as a prank.

“You know, I believe this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had,” he says later.

I squint up at the dimmed light of my screen. We’ve been talking for over two hours, long enough that my battery is nearly

dead. Still, this information surprises me. I had assumed— feared —that Jessica and Aaron chatted all the time when I wasn’t around, that they could talk forever, given how much they had in common.

“I should probably make myself dinner now,” he says after a pause. “But if your friend wants to ask me anything about the

program, feel free to give them my number.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow, then.”

“Bye, Aaron,” I whisper, prepared for him to linger, to repeat himself, the way he always did when we used to call after school,

just for the sake of annoying me. But he’s already hung up.

The note is still there.

In the pencil case. In the back of my mind. Even when I attempt to fall asleep and squeeze my eyes shut, I can see that sloping

handwriting, lit up in the darkness behind my eyelids. And with it, the anonymous email, and the Haven Award. After tossing

around on the sheets and fluffing out Jessica’s pillow for the seventh time, I flick the table lamp on, wrap Jessica’s bathrobe

around myself, and crouch down in front of Jessica’s drawers.

Then I pull out the very thing I’d vowed to myself I wouldn’t pick up again.

Her journal.

My heartbeat accelerates as I touch the cool leather. Guilt drives itself deeper into my gut, but I’m running out of clues.

There has to be something in here that I’ve missed.

I flip open to a random page and scan the first few words—

It happened.

It finally happened. I got into Harvard.

The instant tightening in my chest is all too familiar. But I guess envy is similar to muscle memory, and this has always

been what envy feels like for me: like dread. Like physical pain, like raw, pulse-speeding panic, like watching a train run

off its tracks. Every time Jessica announced something that had gone well in her life, my stomach would tense and my blood

would run cold as if bracing for the threat of violence.

I force myself to keep reading.

Even now, it doesn’t seem real. When the notification came in, my heart started beating so fast I thought it would explode.

I was shaking as I opened up my emails, but then I saw the Harvard logo, and the word “Congratulations.” I had to read it

three times to be sure. But there was my name, Jessica Chen, and the words I’ve been waiting to see for years. They accepted

me. They want me to be a student at Harvard. The college of my dreams.

I ran to the living room to tell my parents and they were so excited—more excited than I’ve ever seen them. They were hugging

me and calling everyone they knew on WeChat, and I delivered the news to my relatives myself, one at a time: my great-grandaunt

and second aunt and my uncles and my cousin and her husband and my grandparents on both sides. I didn’t even know we had that

many relatives, but my mother somehow kept finding more people to call.

My grandmother cried, and I just remembered the story my mother used to tell me, how she never even had the chance to get her high school diploma before she started working at the hair salon to support her younger brothers. And it was like I could picture our family tree, with my ancestors at the roots, and all those branches spreading out toward the sky, and with every new branch we stretched higher, and more flowers bloomed, and that was how we grew, generation after generation.

They kept telling me how proud they were. I was a genius, I was so incredibly talented, I had worked so hard. I was the one

who’d made it, who’d succeeded. It was perfect. For those first ten minutes, everything was perfect.

And now I’m up here alone in my room, the same as always, and the thrill has faded, and I know it sounds awful and so very ungrateful, but all I can think is: that’s it? This, right now, is the culmination of all those sleepless nights, every test I cried over, every extra hour I spent studying when I could have been driving down to the coast, eating dinner with my family, going to the mall with my friends, visiting the cherry orchards or swimming in the lake in the high heat of summer. This is as good as life will ever be and... I don’t have anybody to talk to about it. Sure, there are people I can tell, like I’ve told my relatives—in the form of an announcement, an opportunity for my parents to brag about me. But who is there I can truly celebrate with? Who else will feel genuinely happy for me?

Then there’s Harvard itself—all I could think about was doing the work and getting in, but it’s hitting me now that I’ll have

to keep working once classes begin. I’ll have to prove myself all over again to new classmates and new professors. 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.

A sudden wind howls through the trees.

I jerk my head up. I’m half convinced I’ll see Jessica—the real Jessica—right there, hovering behind me, watching in silence.

I even whisper her name out loud. “Jessica? Are you there?”

But there’s no response. The only person inside her bedroom is me. I swallow back my shock and turn to an older entry.

I shouldn’t have done it.

I know I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t think of anything else by myself. My brain was blank—my brain often feels blank recently, like I’m too tired to even form a solid thought—and I only had one day left to write it, and I knew the teacher was expecting something phenomenal from me, something that would top everything I’ve ever written before. I can never just be okay. I have to be perfect. I have to astound them. I have to prove that I’m intelligent or I’ll stop mattering.

Now it’s submitted, and it’s too late to turn back.

There shouldn’t be any evidence, unless they somehow find out. If they do accuse me... I can only pray my reputation will

protect me. Everyone thinks I’m good, and they’re right, in a way. I’m a good student, a good daughter, a good example.

But I’ve never been a good person. I don’t know how to be.

The journal slips from my fingertips and thuds to the floor.

I’d expected to find clues, but I hadn’t expected to find this . Suddenly everything looks different. All the ominous notes from the anonymous student. I know what you’ve done. I had been so certain they’d found out that I wasn’t really Jessica, but maybe the messages were addressed to the real her.

“What did you do?” I ask the air, wishing more than anything that I had some way to speak to my cousin. Jessica Chen, who’s

meant to be flawless. Who I’ve grown up with, who was there to carry my books for me after I twisted my ankle in gym class,

who let me stay in her bedroom when my parents were out of town, who’d bake soft lemon cookies for me when I was stressed

about exams. Who I’ve envied for most of my life, who I would follow around everywhere when we were only five, until our parents

joked that I was her little shadow. It hadn’t stung, then. It had felt like a compliment, because I’d wanted to be just like

her. “What could you have done that’s so terrible?”