If I closed my eyes, I could still see Laura’s body writhing on the floor, hear her gasps as I rushed out of the room. I knew now that these were the signs that you should call 911 right away. I knew now that these were the signs that the reaction to pepper spray was turning lethal. If the police knew these details, they’d have more than enough evidence to charge me. They would know that the timing matched up between the pepper spray attack and Laura’s death, and that Laura started suffocating only after breathing it in.
A better person than me would’ve turned herself in. Regardless of whether I would be found legally at fault, it was the right thing to do. But ruining my life would not bring back Laura’s. Perhaps this was just as cruel of a logic as I had used before, but at least it was less twisted. At least I was no longer lying to myself. I knew that I was a bad person. This, I would spend the rest of my life trying to atone for.
I knew I wasn’t likable. I knew that anyone who could hear my inner thoughts would root against me. Nora had not heard it all, but she had heard enough to know what kind of person I was. Still, she seemed to care about me, or at least about helping me become better. Perhaps she was motivated by gaining professional experience from our sessions. The idea that this was a quid pro quo comforted me; it was something that I could understand. The alternative I could not reconcile with my worldview.
But another possibility came to mind. Gigi’s visit had brought to light an alternative worldview that I began to consider more and more as the days dragged on. The world shaped me, but I also shaped the world. The latter would have an exponentially smaller impact than the former, but still an impact. The simplest example being this: perhaps part of the reason I had felt underappreciated and ignored in high school was because I underappreciated and ignored high school. Maybe it would be better for society as a whole if I became a better person. Maybe a less status-obsessed version of myself would help to shape a less status-obsessed world, or at least push it in a minutely kinder direction. But would this minute impact even matter? Wasn’t it better to focus on exploiting the present systems for the maximum benefit to myself rather than feel shaped by some abstract idea of morality? The former would at least have a much more tangible payoff.
But then I remembered my current state: sent home from college on the brink of psychological collapse. My status-obsessed perspective had both worsened the world and worsened my own life. Maybe the impact wasn’t minute. Maybe the impact was meaningful. If I hadn’t been a percentiles-obsessed person from the start, Laura might not be dead. And I probably also wouldn’thave gotten into Harvard, but I wouldn’t have cared, because I’d be the type of person for whom Georgetown was enough. Maybe I’d be the type of person for whom everything was enough because my self-worth was not predicated on external, percentile-based distinctions. Besides, it’s not like being a percentiles-obsessed person had gotten me what I wanted in the first place. If anything, it had ruined my life—and ended another.
—
I returned to New Yorkin late May for my graduation ceremony. Because I was taking medical leave, I no longer had access to the dorms. Eunjin had to sign me in as a guest. The door to the room I had occupied for almost a year was locked. I followed Eunjin to her room, which still looked exactly the same.
Eunjin was playing music from her laptop, songs that had been popular during our first year of college, the hits that screeched out of cheap speakers at crowded parties in the freshman dorm, Carman, and it was like I could suddenly smell the anxious sweat of eighteen-year-olds who had left home for the first time, the cheap vodka that we mixed with cranberry juice stolen from the dining hall, the grinding and the awkward eye contact and the piles of black puffer jackets strewn on the couch and the sticky floors.
A few minutes before our call time, we met Leah and Alex in front of Lerner Hall. Together, we walked into the building and lined up against the diagonal railings. The air buzzed with anticipation, and crowds of parents held out their phones to take pictures of us through the glass walls. The weather was warm and sticky and the smell of sweat permeated the air.
During the ceremony, I clapped for any person whose nameI recognized, ignoring that my palms were tingling and my fingers were sore. Three hours later, it was finally my row’s turn to line up by the stage. A third of the audience had already snuck out, but I knew that the people I cared about were out there, watching me—my mom, Eunjin, Eunjin’s mom, Leah, Alex. I imagined my freshman-year self out there in the crowd, standing on the sidelines like a ghost, wearing her Henley, skinny jeans, and Converse, clothes that I had thrown out by the time sophomore year came around because I thought they didn’t look cool enough.
I wondered how that younger version of Elizabeth would feel if she could see me now. Would she feel surprised that I had ended up at this point? Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe this was the exact trajectory that I had been on all along. Maybe destruction had been inevitable from the start.
The dean called the name of the person standing in front of me, then called mine, sending the ghost of my eighteen-year-old self away from my thoughts. The breeze rippled through my dress as I walked across the stage. I shook a couple hands. It was over before I knew it.
The ceremony ended with another couple of speeches, and my friends and I met with our families in front of Butler Library. Leah had snuck in a bottle of champagne and passed around plastic fluted cups. Our parents toasted the new graduates, and we each took a sip. For the first time in months, I felt at peace. For the first time in months, I did not feel like I was trapped in an abyss, grasping onto anything to prevent myself from passing the event horizon, the point of no return. I knew the freedom wouldn’t last, that I was on borrowed time and soon I’d fall right back into the abyss.
I thought of what Nora would say. She’d tell me that the freedom could last. I could make it last. The key was right in front of me, but it would mean throwing away everything my freshman-year self thought she knew. It would mean telling her: “Fuck comparing yourself to others. Fuck placing too much value on what everyone else thinks. Fuck always caring about what comes next and not caring about what’s happening right now. Fuck percentiles. Fuck Harvard Law School.”
I stood with my eyes closed and my head tilted toward the cerulean sky, the May breeze playing with my hair and flapping the robe against my skin, the eager calls of parents echoing distantly in my ears, the sun shining on my forehead. Through the darkness I caught a glimpse of the person who I could become: A person who loved and let herself be loved, a person who defined herself as a person rather than a list of qualifications. A person who was still a work in progress. A person who was okay. But when I opened my eyes, Nora’s voice faded away, and this alternate image of myself disappeared like a vivid dream that you forget as soon as you wake up.
TWENTY-SIX
After a few weeks ofphysical 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 inGreenpoint. 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 relievedwhen 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 werehosting 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?”
