“We were wondering the same thing,” Antigone said. “My friend told me that their office didn’t know one of their prospective students had died until today, when Laura’s parents sent an email telling them she had passed away and wouldn’t be attending in the fall. When my friend told me about it, I thought the name sounded familiar, so I looked it up and found all of these posts from after she died.”
“Maybe it’s her ghost!” someone joked. Antigone ignored them.
“Anyway, the whole thing isn’t a huge deal—probably just an online troll. But since we were meeting up today, and this meet-up originated from the same Facebook group, I asked my friend to quickly check all the names of people who RSVP’d with the names of people who have actually been accepted to Harvard Law. And everyone checked out.” Antigone turned to me, pointing a perfectly manicured finger in my face. “Except for you.”
Everyone in the circle was looking at me now. Some of them looked confused, while others looked like they had just seen a ghost. Maybe that’s what they thought they were seeing: Laura’s ghost. Jason was typing rapidly into his phone while Antigone was eyeing me as though assessing an art piece at an auction.
“Wait, so are you the troll?”
“Were you the one impersonating a dead girl?”
“Who are you? Why are you here?”
“I…I…” There were a million things I should’ve said. For starters, I should’ve vehemently denied that I was the troll. I should’ve said that it obviously would’ve been Gina, the prime suspect of her murder. I should’ve accused all of them of racism for assuming that I was the impersonator just because I was Asian. I should’ve admitted that I hadn’t been accepted to Harvard Law yet, but that I came to the event out of curiosity. I should’ve turned the accusations back onto Antigone, argue that it was fucked up for her to make a scene like this. She could’ve just pulled me aside and I would’ve given her a perfectly reasonable explanation, but clearly she just wanted the attention. Despite the defense I had built up in my head, my mouth wasn’table to catch up to my brain. Instead, tears welled up in my eyes. When I finally managed to put together a sentence, the voice coming out of my mouth was barely a whisper.
“What?” Jason said. “We can’t hear you.”
I realized that I had been whispering to myself.
“She…she had everything. I just wanted this one thing.” My pitch had risen to a quiet wail. A sob erupted from my chest. “Just this one thing.”
Jason placed a hand on my shoulder. “Um…how about I call you a car? What’s your address?”
The pity in his voice sent a red-hot shock of anger through my body. I pushed his hand off.
“I did everything right.Every single thing.She didn’t deserve it more than me. None of you deserved it more than me.” I picked up the nearest cocktail napkin and rubbed the snot from my nose. A couple of people from nearby tables were looking at me now, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I was raising my voice. I didn’t care that I was making a scene. My anger surpassed the shame; and besides, I had nothing to lose. This was all over anyway.
The fury rolled inside me like waves. “You guys think you’re so much better than me, don’t you?” I was shouting now. “Especially you.” I pointed at Antigone, who raised her eyebrows but looked otherwise unperturbed. It made me disproportionately angrier. “All I’ve wanted my entire life was to have the things you take for granted every single day. And you don’t even care! People like you and Laura are the problem. You don’t even care that you have everything. You don’t even care that you were born at the top of the world.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. I laughed so loud that I snorted.Then I cried some more, while still laughing like a madwoman.Am I making the type of decisions that I’m going to regret in the morning? Oh well, it’s too late now.I was thirsty. My voice was cracking. I picked up the pint of beer in front of me and drank it as fast as I could. As I was setting it down, I knocked over another glass. It crashed on the floor.
“Hey, hey, hey.” The bartender, a scraggly man with a beard, approached our table. “Everything okay here?”
What a ridiculous question. Was everything okay here? Of course it wasn’t.No!I screamed in my head. But then I realized by the expressions on everyone’s faces that I hadn’t screamed it in my head. I had shrieked it out loud.
“All right, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
The entire bar was staring at me now. They wore their expressions naked on their faces. Pity, fright, curiosity.Let them, I thought.Let them look at me.I flashed them all a dazzling smile. I felt like a celebrity. No, Iwasa celebrity. The sticky linoleum floors were my red carpet. The curious, drunk strangers were my paparazzi. I loved their attention. I loved their shock, their discomfort, and I loved my own vulnerability. My emotional state splayed out like organs for everyone to see. My motives, my insecurities, my anger, my jealousy. This was not how I would’ve liked to be recognized, but at least I was recognized. So this was what it felt like to besomebody. It was as great as I expected. No, it was better than I expected.
The bartender escorted me outside. A cool chill hit my face, but my body felt like a furnace, like every inch of it was emanating heat, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to look down and find that my skin was glowing red. Was it all the martinis andthe beer? No, I knew it wasn’t the alcohol. I had experienced this sensation before. It was a sweet, familiar sensation. The sensation of hitting rock bottom.
It was all quite funny, wasn’t it? I had already “hit rock bottom” many times now. I thought I hit rock bottom when I got rejected from Harvard. I thought I hit rock bottom when I accidentally killed Laura. But now I knew that rock bottom was only something humans made up to convince themselves that life could only get better. But the secret was that rock bottom didn’t exist. Each time you thought you had reached the lowest point you could go, the floor would fall out from under you, and you’d simply be demoted to an even lower level of failure and despair. It was oddly comforting, the inverse of climbing a mountain. Just like how there were no limits to how high you could go, there were no limits to how low you could fall. Maybe I should embrace the fall, dive headfirst into the abyss, see where it’d take me. Maybe it’d be somewhere warm. Maybe it’d be somewhere safe. Maybe it’d be somewhere percentiles didn’t exist, Harvard didn’t exist, and failure didn’t exist. Maybe Laura would be there. I laughed so loud that my voice hurt my ears. I bet she’d remember me now.
TWENTY-FOUR
I don’t remember blacking out.But I do remember waking up. Everything hurt, like I had been hit by a bus. That was because I had actually been hit by a bus. The doctors informed me when I woke up. My mother was sleeping on the couch next to the hospital bed. Everyone—the doctors, the nurses, my mother—looked at me with that same expression, furrowed eyebrows, pursed lips. It wasn’t until week two, when the psychiatrist arrived, that I realized they thought I hadjumpedin front of the bus.
Two broken ribs, a concussion, a fractured arm, a torn knee, an ankle strain, and a bit of internal bleeding, but apparently not thesuper seriouskind—only the pretty serious kind.
My recovery was…rough. Everything was rough. The physical pain actually wasn’t too bad. I found I was quite good at disassociating. I’d just close my eyes and imagine that I was in my happy place, Harvard Law School. Plus, they gave me the good painkillers.
The worst part about recovery was the nonphysical parts. I hated the way everyone talked to me as though I were a delicate little flower that would collapse and die if someone used a voice that was slightly too menacing or slightly too loud. And I hated being stuck in bed, scrolling through social media with all its reminders of the senior-year rituals I was missing: the boat cruise, the senior gala, the various other traditions involving drinking, and the many, many parties. That was before I deleted all of my social media. I didn’t want to, but my mom made me.
My body was a wreck, but I’d make a full recovery. The physical injuries were the least of everyone’s worries. Apparently I had suffered a “psychotic break.” No one used this term in front of me. I only found out when I overheard Leah talking with Eunjin outside the hospital door.
“I think she’ll be happy to see us,” Eunjin said. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.”
Leah snorted. “Yeah, there’s not exactly a manual for what to do when your close friend has a psychotic break.”
