She must be having a bad day.
At least, that’s what I tell myself when someone has been unkind to me. I try to give people around me the benefit of the doubt, having been on the worse end of many bad days. But when everyone is at their worst, I reach my limit.
It starts with Maia in English class. The teacher has us read paragraphs out loud about the Roman Empire. She likes cold calling the students to make them earn their participation points. I didn’t mind working for my grade, but these things make Maia nervous. She twitches and stutters through sentences, slowing down time. The hand on the analog clock gets stuck in the molasses of her voice. Someone in the back of the class laughs and she trips over her words.
Later, she tells us it’s because she’s ugly that the faceless classmate would even think to react that way towards her. We reassure her that it isn’t true, with Ainsley coming to her defense first, armed with kind words she repeated many times before. But Maia refuses to believe them. She was adamant that she was ugly and thought there was one way to fix this.
“I’m going to get a nose job on my seventeenth birthday.”
“You don’t need one,” I quickly say. “I like your face the way it is.”
“Well, I don’t. I’ve already discussed this with my father. He agrees that it might help me find a husband in the future.” She utters the latter bitterly, upset that was what had convinced him.
“Would you be able to get other operations?” Ainsley looks up from reviewing her class notes, mildly intrigued.
“Not until I’m eighteen. Even then, my family will decide if it's appropriate. I’m excited. After winter break, I’m going to undergo a metamorphosis. Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.”
I stare intently at Maia’s face. I memorize the contours, realizing that I’m going to miss the roundness of her nose.
“Whatever makes you happy,” I say diplomatically.
“The downside is that I won’t be able to buy designer handbags for one month. What a tragedy!” She pretends to faint on the study hall table.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. It was hard to take her feelings seriously, especially when she was rarely satisfied.
“I would get double eyelid surgery,” Ainsley says. “I’d make sure to go to a clinic that gave me a package deal. Rhinoplasty, lip injection, and shaving my jaw would have to be included. It would have to be subtle enough that I could tell my future children that I naturally grew into my features. And I’m definitely going to Gangnam for all the other beauty treatments!”
“Gangnam? My family knows a doctor in Dubai,” Maia replies.
“You don’t need any of this,” I cut in. “You’re both pretty already.”
“Yan, you’ve always been too nice. Everyone could be prettier. What’s the harm in getting a few improvements? You could use some breast implants. Trust me, you will see a world of difference once you try to be more beautiful.”
I bite my tongue in frustration, hating that Ainsley’s words stung. “If you say so.”
I always knew that I looked plain. It was hard not to notice the way people’s eyes passed over my face or the way boys never stared at me. But I also knew that I was smart. No one could take my brain away from me. I was never going to marry my way into a better life. Through sheer effort, I planned to carve a better life for myself with the same pristine line of A’s that got me into this school. For the future that I wanted, I couldn’t afford to be stupid.
“Just look at Natalie,” Ainsley continues, rubbing salt in the wound. “The boys in our class are nice to her because she’s pretty. They know that she’s poor and that she doesn’t belong here. But she could easily become rich again if she sleeps with the right man.”
I exchange a look with Maia, disturbed by how eerily similar she sounded to the online bully. We glance at Natalie from across the study hall, who was huddled over a workbook with Mikael.
“The Svenssons aren’t super rich,” Maia counters. “And isn’t she just using him for his grades?”
“His family has a good reputation. They make their money from funding green energy companies. If she ever married him, society might overlook her father’s white collar crimes.”
I picture Natalie sitting in my apartment, her pristine, ironed uniform out of place in the cluttered living room. A girl like her used to the best things in life money could buy wouldn’t want to stay poor for long. But that wasn’t the only reason she stayed by Mikael. She liked him and vied for his affection, enough to mark her territory with me. Her feelings had to be real enough for her to follow me into my home.
“She has a crush on him. It’s normal for her to want to be around him,” I find myself saying.
“Natalie just so happens to have a crush on the smartest boy in school whose family recently made a generous donation to the school library?”
At that exact moment, Natalie makes eye contact with our group. Her pupils dart between Maia and Ainsley before settling on me. Her lips curve up in a taunting smirk. I glare in return. This was the girl who could ruin my life with two words. Scholarship student. Why couldn’t a piano conveniently and cartoonishly fall over her head?
Next to her, Mikael smiles innocently at us, unaware of the tension brewing from our eyes meeting. He waves at us before turning back to the book.
“Isn’t he the same boy who was with you at the sophomore bash? Didn’t you guys dance together? Go get your man,” Maia teases.
“I don’t like him. I already told you this.”
“He’s your special little friend,” Ainsley joins in. “Aren’t you afraid that he’ll be more special to Natalie?”
It was the natural way of things. The sky was blue and boys liked pretty girls. But my friends pressuring me to fit societal beauty standards and date boys rubbed me the wrong way. I was already losing sleep trying to keep up with my rich girl alter ego.
“I want to beat his ranking.” I press down hard on my pencil, snapping the lead tip off.
Maia didn’t get the hint. “Grades aren’t everything. Sometimes you have to live life. Slow down. Smell the luxury perfumes.”
“A shopping trip won’t buy me an Ivy League degree.”
“You sound like my mom. We go to school at Two Bridges. There are already spots waiting for us in the world’s best universities.”
Only if you can pay your way into them. I’m poor! I can’t blow thousands of dollars if I’m not smart enough to get in! I can’t even buy myself nice things if I’m sad! I just suffer!
Obviously, I don’t say any of these feelings aloud. I’m tempted to give Maia a lecture worthy of my immigrant mother about the virtues of hard work, but I refrain. My words would be wasted on a girl who never worked a day in her life.
“Yan just wants the best things in life,” Ainsley says, speaking for me. “She cares about her grades and probably wants to go to Harvard.”
Indeed, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do well in school. It’s how I normally deflect when my friends ask about my future and I can’t fill in the blank with a trust fund or an arranged marriage. It was better that I came across as ambitious instead of poor.
But there’s something in Ainsley’s voice that irks me. I wouldn’t care if Maia were the one saying those words. She can’t help but be a ditz; her brain was an afterthought when the universe created her. But Ainsley knows what it feels like to want more. We both share an understanding that grades are more than numbers on a paper. To hear her say my dreams so flippantly almost makes me want to cry.
I take a deep breath. Why did it feel like the whole world was laughing at me?
My chest aches with loneliness. Everyone in the study hall seems empty to me, their bodies merely surrogates of superficiality. I fear that I would explode, splattering my substance on their hollow vessels.
I want to tell my friends the truth. For a split second, I’m ready to face whatever consequences await me, eager to rid myself of any control Natalie had over me.
My courage flashes before my eyes before fizzling away into cowardice.
If things were to go well for me, my friends must never find out about who I truly am. With my luck, I would be happy to graduate as a fraud. Unseen, unknown, and unheard.
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