Ever since I started caring more about how I looked, I’ve been spending longer than I should staring in the mirror.
It didn’t used to be like this. Poor Yan didn’t care about her appearance. She never wasted her time with makeup in the morning or carefully tucked her button-down shirt into her skirt for a girlier look, time that could be better spent studying for her math and science exams.
But Rich Yan knew that what the world saw on the outside was just as important as what was inside her head. It was why she curled her hair some mornings and smeared color over her lips and cheeks. Image held power so it was important that the world saw what she wanted it to see.
Of my three friends, I think Ainsley is the master of controlling how others perceive her. Rich Yan tries to emulate her the most. The effort is unintentional and admittedly a bit pathetic. But it’s easier to afford her understated look and lie about where my clothes came from than to buy designer items fresh off the runway. I don’t have to sew as many clothes pretending to be her. From afar, she almost looks normal, pleasantly middle-class and unassuming.
But if I get closer, I see that she’s different from me down to a molecular level. Her skin is smooth and shiny, miraculously unblemished by the ravages of puberty. Her figure is trim, maintained by a balanced diet prepared by a private chef and a workout regimen carefully mapped by a personal trainer. Outside of school, her wardrobe, skincare, and makeup have been built by a sales assistant her family pays to be on staff at her favorite mall. Everything I have to think about to maintain my facade is taken care of by a team of people for Ainsley.
However, her essence, although largely built by money, does not entirely stem from it. Did it help that she had generations of wealth at her disposal? Certainly. But so did Yuey and Maia, neither of whom can quite replicate her grace even with similar funds at their disposal. It’s why I have a hard time believing that Ainsley is the one behind Natalie’s online bullies. It was too emotional, too immature to resemble anything she would do.
And yet if anyone was going to bring out that side of her, it would be my former best friend.
I place the two of them side by side in my head. Once, Natalie had the money to gain Ainsley’s respect, even though her father’s six-figure hedge fund salary was nothing compared to the influence the Lim family had over the small island of Singapore. But even without the money, she had the one thing Ainsley couldn’t buy: genetics.
In another world where Maia didn’t enroll in Two Bridges and was schooled by private tutors (which very nearly did happen, according to her account), Ainsley may have been forced to make friends with Natalie. She would have noticed her in the way everyone else couldn’t help but be drawn to her. Maybe then I would have noticed Yuey and forgotten the two of them altogether.
It’s hard to tell if she would have been jealous of her. I was naturally inclined to be that way, both poor and plain. Ainsley had more than me, Yuey, Maia, and Natalie combined.
But maybe she would have still found a way to resent her.
I see it between Ainsley and Maia sometimes. When Maia’s princess attitude rears its ugly head, a barely restrained frown tugs at the corners of Ainsley’s lips. Her eyes sharpen with judgment at overt displays of emotion. I imagine her face frozen in a mask of disdain, having to listen to Natalie fawn over boys. It’s the stormy tension between two people with varying dispositions, one cold and one warm.
And yet in this hypothetical, if they overcame these differences, they would come out stronger. They would be two pretty mean girls, terrorizing the whole school out of boredom.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Above all of Ainsley’s qualities – her superiority complex, scathing remarks, and hatred of the poor – was her unwavering commitment to following the rules. No matter how stupid or arbitrary, if the teacher said it or it was written in the student handbook, she would listen.
Two Bridges has a strict no bullying policy. She wouldn’t dare risk expulsion over something as petty as a scholarship student having a higher ranking than her. But what danger would she face if she never got caught?
The possibility bothers me enough that I’m forced to confide in Yuey, too distracted to study that afternoon. She listens, her focus unwavering as she taps her number two pencil against a notebook. When I finish, she finally speaks.
“You’re missing the bigger picture. I don’t think it was your friend that did it.”
“What do you mean?” It was a relief to hear someone else absolve Ainsley of her imaginary guilt.
“The person behind these accounts is clearly a boy.” She pulls up the pages on our phones and it takes everything in me not to pry her hands off my new device. My shiny iPhone cost an entire summer’s worth of labor and an awkward hour at the Apple Store begging for a student discount.
“Look at the Instagram comments. The language used is vulgar and degrading. I’ve never seen another girl call someone a ‘sperm bank’ or a ‘breeder.’ But a loser living in his mother’s basement will say this in online chat rooms all the time.”
She pulls up the Facebook page on my phone. “There’s not a single girl bidding on Natalie’s body.”
“What if that’s what the bully wants us to think? What if the person behind everything was a girl pretending to act like a boy to throw us off?”
As soon as those words leave my mouth, I realize how crazy I sound. But Yuey considers what I say carefully.
“Do you think there’s someone like that in our school? Someone who hates her enough to do that?”
Not someone who hates her more than me.
When I get home, I’m still thinking about the situation. Even during the one shower I’m allotted per week, I obsessively check my phone for the bully’s next moves. I read every comment, scanning for a hint of their real identity. I pat myself dry in the small, tiled bathroom, wondering what it was that made the bully fixate on her.
“Yan, your friend is here to see you,” my mother calls from the other side of the door. I freeze in the middle of squeezing water from my hair.
Friend? My mind immediately jumps to the worst conclusion. Ainsley, Yuey, and Maia found out that I was the other scholarship student and they were waiting outside my apartment door to confront me. I put on some clothes, wanting to face them with dignity.
I blink at the person before me.
“Natalie.” I invoke her name like a curse.
“Yan,” she says, addressing me more politely. “Hi.”
I rub my eyes to make sure I’m not hallucinating. It was like all of my little thoughts about her conjured her in the apartment.
“How did you know where I live?”
She shrugs. “We happen to be walking in the same direction so I followed you.”
You mean you stalked me. “What a weird coincidence.”
“I wanted to talk to you.” She sits down on the living room couch, not caring that she was not invited. I sit with her, processing the horror of her presence in my home. I keep some distance between us, as if being close to her would pollute me.
“You could’ve talked to me in school.”
“Your friends wouldn’t like that.” Between us, there was a gulf of words unsaid, days spent avoiding each other’s eyes, and furtive glances.
“What do you need to tell me?”
My mother places a plate of sliced oranges in front of us, beckoning for Natalie to eat. I offer her a glass of water, encouraged by the telepathy of my mother’s angry side eye looks. Natalie accepts both and I wonder for a moment if Koreans have the same way of greeting their guests, if she was used to this sort of thing. When my mother retreats into the kitchen, her expression changes.
A helpless look comes over her face, softening her pretty eyes. I think that she wants to ask me for help, tired of the barrage of abusive online comments.
“Stay away from Mikael,” she says instead.
“I don’t talk to him.” My eyes narrow in confusion.
“I saw you two at the dance. I notice the way that he looks at you. Are you telling me that you don’t see these things?”
“What things? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Gosh, maybe she should have spent more time in the psych ward.
“It’s so obvious! The thing between you two.” She gesticulates wildly.
I’m not even pretty. Does she need to see us side by side in the mirror?
“There is no ‘thing.’ He’s not in my life.”
“You’re lying. Stay away from him or I’ll tell your friends about how you really live.”
I feel my face harden, jaws clenched and eyes daggered. How dare she come into my home and threaten me after abandoning me a year ago? Perhaps she did deserve everything that was happening to her.
“Get out.” I stand up, ending the conversation.
“Promise me or everyone will know that you are the other scholarship student.”
“I promise.” I spit the two words out through clenched teeth.
Satisfied, she leaves my home for what I hoped was the last time.
66Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEcrJNarx3f
and then Add to home screen.