I did get what she was saying, but I didn’t know if I could ever feel that way about someone. And besides, what was the point, if I’d just end up sobbing on the couch while eating thousands of calories?
I decided to keep her company for the rest of the night. Iasked Leah what she wanted to do and she told me that she just wanted to cry. But I told her that wasn’t an option and she had to pick something else, so she said that we should watchBooksmartwhile eating McDonald’s. Obviously, I agreed and even offered to pick it up, but she insisted that we order it straight to the dorm.
After we finished the movie, we pushed apart the twin beds that had previously formed her and Alex’s makeshift king bed, and she pulled out a spare set of twin XL sheets from the dresser that smelled like dust mites and had probably been crawled over by a cockroach or two. But I was so tired at that point that I didn’t think about it too much and immediately fell asleep.
—
I didn’t know that I’dbe staying over at Leah’s, so I hadn’t brought a spare set of contact lenses. I ended up walking back to my dorm room in the morning half-blind, a feat not helped by the fact that my phone had also died. Fortunately, I reached my room after only tripping a couple of times, and when I plugged in my phone I was pleasantly surprised to see that Laura had responded with feedback to Suzie’s college essay.
Hi Suzie,
Thanks so much for sending this over! I think you’ve chosen a great topic for college essays for all the reasons you probably already know. Your commitment to varsity tennis shows work ethic, passion, and teamwork, all of which are crucial to being a successful college student!
As for areas of improvement, my comments are mostly related to your writing style. Your tone is very abrupt andto-the-point. Have you considered adding more imagery? For instance, you could say something about how the color of the tennis court is like freshly mowed grass. I’d also recommend using stronger vocabulary. For instance, you said that you “felt good on the day of the match.” Is there a better word you can use here than “good”?
I’ve also highlighted all the places where you’ve used an adverb or passive voice. I’d recommend taking all of these out. If you need to use an adverb, that means that your verb is not strong enough. And instead of passive voice, you should always use active voice. In other words, your topic is great, but stylistically it still needs a bit of work. Let me know if you have any questions!
I was quaking with rage by the time I finished reading the email. It was not the response that I had been expecting. I expected lavish praise. I expected that Laura would be infinitely impressed with Suzie’s writing, so concise yet so effective. Instead, she thought that “stylistically it still need[ed] a bit of work.” What did that even mean? How dare she criticize my use of adverbs and passive voice? Did she not know that those tips were only for the most beginner writers, who tended to use an excess of both, and that used sparingly they could be quite effective? Maybe she did know that, and just thought that Iwasa beginner writer. How dare she?
In place of my succinct, impactful sentences, she had added an excess of flowery language and pretentious vocabulary. I was enraged by her suggestions. Judging by the sheer volume of her markups, she must have thought she was doing Suzie such a huge favor, that poor Suzie had written something so terriblethat it needed a complete rewrite from the generous and brilliant Laura Kim.
I knew that I was overreacting, but I couldn’t stop myself from burning with loathing for Laura, hate-reading every word of her email until I forced myself to shut the laptop and take five deep breaths. I told myself that Laura’s terrible suggestions only acted as further proof of my conviction that she was not that smart, that I was right to dig into Laura’s background to find out more about her application. Besides, she wasn’tcompletelyoff base; I had written Suzie’s essay quickly, so obviously I used far simpler language than what I’d use for an actual essay I needed to turn in for school, and even for the actual essays I used to apply for college. Once I finally calmed myself down, I opened the laptop again to look at the document she had attached with her proposed revisions. I accepted all of Laura’s suggestions, cringing with each change. I sent the revised version back to Laura, along with my effusive praise and thanks.
EIGHT
In the three weeks betweenThanksgiving and the start of winter break, I continued corresponding with Laura as Suzie. After a couple more rounds of edits, she said that Suzie’s essay was “good to go!” That meant I was ready to move on to the next stage of my plan: asking Laura for her law school essays. To ensure that the transition wouldn’t appear too suspicious or abrupt, I would ease into the questions by first asking Laura if she was still planning to go to law school. She would tell me that she was, and I would ask if she knew where she was going, she would say she had gotten into a few already, and I would exclaim that I was so happy for her and would love to learn more about the admissions process. Only then would I ask if she could so graciously provide a copy of her law school essays.
On social media, Laura often posted pictures of herself and her friends studying at Avery Hall. It was not my library of choice, but I decided it couldn’t hurt to start studying there too. It wasn’t like I was going there just because Laura liked it there.There were plenty of people who preferred Avery to all the other libraries on campus, and since it was my last semester at Columbia, it made sense to take advantage of the facilities before I no longer had access to them. Besides, even if I had been going there to garner juicy information about Laura, it wouldn’t have worked. All she ever did in Avery was study. The only event that had even mildly piqued my interest was when a relatively attractive man dropped by her desk to talk to her about some school assignment. At first, I didn’t remember his name, but once I heard his accent it popped into my head. Harrison Ng. He had been in one of my recitations sophomore year. His family was from Hong Kong but he had attended school in London, and when I met him I thought his accent was quite posh, but to be fair, I thought all English accents were posh. Once I got over the exotic appeal of his accent I realized the things he was saying were quite dumb. Regardless, Harrison was the type of person who Laura would hook up with. And judging from their body language, the way he lightly touched her shoulder as he whispered in her ear, the way she started playing with her hair as soon as he arrived, they were definitely hooking up. He had even brought her a coffee—from a real coffee shop, not the Columbia cafés that accept dining dollars. I had thought Harrison was dating Gina, but I realized my gossip was probably outdated.
—
By mid-December it was timeto go home for winter break. The first semester of my senior year had officially ended, and I only had one semester left before I would graduate. I spent my month off in South Dakota in much the same way that I spent my week off for Thanksgiving. Regressing into old habits,spending time with my mom, shutting myself up in my room when I was sick of spending time with my mom. It wasn’t until I no longer had access to Laura that I realized just how much she had become part of my routine, and I briefly wondered if that was something I should be worried about. However, I decided to hold off on evaluating my own mental state for the time being, as I had more important, practical things to worry about.
For instance, had my last email come off too pushy? Not pushy enough? Was that why Laura still hadn’t responded? I read my message over and over again until the words no longer made sense. I considered following up with another email from Suzie but decided to wait until the start of school. I could see from Laura’s Instagram that she was spending New Year’s with extended family, so perhaps she wasn’t really checking her phone. If I sent it now, it could fall through the cracks, and I needed to maximize Laura’s probability of responding. It was important I got this just right; otherwise I’d lose my chance to find out her strategy for getting into Harvard. I would not send the email until I felt 100 percent confident in its efficacy.
It crossed my mind from time to time that I was wading into some sketchy territory by impersonating a minor on the internet. But at the end of the day, I didn’t think I was doing anythingthatwrong. Besides, it was for a good cause. The cons were negligible at best. Suzie would never find out I was impersonating her; Laura would never find out she had sent me her essays under false pretenses. The pros were that I could finally get closure over why she had taken my rightful spot at my dream school. Otherwise, the not-knowing would haunt me for the rest of my existence. Once I found the information I needed, I would return to normal life, and Laura would fade out of my consciousness.
—
Eunjin was staying home fora couple days longer than I was, so we weren’t able to coordinate our flights this time. When I returned to campus in the middle of January, it was a new semester, the eighth and final semester of my undergraduate career. Within the first two weeks we were allowed to drop any classes we wanted without penalty, so I signed up for ten with the plan of staying with half of them. In the back of my mind I wondered whether I’d spot Laura in any of my classes. I didn’t think it was likely. For one, our majors were different. For two, she’d probably fill up her schedule with easy As so she could spend more time partying, whereas I was a diligent student who wouldn’t take a second of my academic experience for granted. But one day, I was sitting in the front row of the large lecture hall for History of the Modern Middle East waiting for the professor to start class, and she appeared at the door.
My eyes were instantly drawn to her neck, around which was the most beautiful silk scarf that I had ever seen—peach colored with eclectic images of animals and plants, like a Bosch painting, but charming rather than macabre. I found myself yearning for the scarf like I had never yearned for a piece of clothing before. I didn’t even look good in orange. She sat in the fifth row, and I moved from the front row to the sixth and took a seat right behind her. How else was I supposed to find out more about the scarf?
When the lecture started, instead of taking notes, I doodled the pattern on my notebook, using my limited drawing ability to sketch a likeness of the monkey, filling in the nose and the paisley pattern surrounding it. I was about to move on to the giraffe when Laura unwrapped the scarf and slipped it off herneck. I almost cried out loud from disappointment. Fortunately, she wasn’t putting it away. She unfolded it until it was just a large, square piece of fabric, then folded the corners and rolled it up, then wrapped it a couple of times around her neck, finishing it with a knot. It was wrapped more tightly around her neck this time. I wondered if it constricted her breathing. No, probably not. It would need to be much tighter to affect her breathing. I wondered how much tighter.
Sitting down, I couldn’t help but also notice that her skin looked better than usual. In her pictures on social media, you could occasionally see a couple of zits on her chin, but they had completely disappeared. I wondered if getting into Harvard Law School had improved her mood, thus also clearing her skin. It wouldn’t surprise me. My own skin had been excessively prone to breakouts ever since I found out I had been rejected. Some days I tried covering the acne with concealer, but what was the point? I had gotten rejected by Harvard. My life was already in shambles. Why would I care about a couple of zits?
The professor stood behind the podium and cleared his throat before pulling up his slides on the projector. I took a cursory look around me. Everyone was watching the projector or typing notes on their laptops. No one would notice if I…Before I could even finish the thought, my palm reached out and brushed the surface of the scarf.
Suddenly, Laura whipped her head around.
“Did someone tap me?” she whispered. I shrugged and shook my head. The guy sitting a couple of seats down from me gave me an odd look. If he caught me touching her scarf, he didn’t say anything.
When the professor dismissed class, Laura startedrummaging through her backpack, so I also started rummaging through mine. The people sitting in the middle of the row squeezed past me, muttering their passive-aggressive “Excuse mes” as they stepped over my belongings sprawled across the floor. Laura started walking toward the aisle, so I pretended I had finished organizing the inside of my backpack too and walked toward the aisle, joining the crowd of students leaving the auditorium like a minnow released back into the stream. I tapped her shoulder.
“Hey, I love your scarf,” I said. She turned around, her face brightening with the compliment. “Where did you get it?”
I could tell from the tinge of embarrassment in her smile that the scarf would be expensive.
