If I wake up in the middle of the night at the right time, New York is quiet.
I hear none of the usual symphony of noises. Police sirens, ambulance blares, and train rattles escape the streets. I don’t even catch the sighs of buses stopping and starting up and down the asphalt.
It’s the perfect silence of a snow day.
Thick layers of flakes cover the sidewalk, a rare treat in a city where all the winter magic turns to gray slush. I’m certain that school will be closed, the snow so high that it blocks Two Bridges’ doors. Still, my school bag is packed and I wait for the morning news to tell me if schools all over New York City have been closed.
Nearby, my sister snores, her face lit by the glow of the laptop screen. A show plays on her computer and I vaguely hear the audio through her headphones, which have slipped to her shoulders. She never sleeps early and judging by the digital display of my alarm clock, she just nodded off.
Ordinarily, I hate being awake at this hour. I don’t like the amount of sleep I lose or the entire process of coaxing myself back to dreamland. It’s inefficient and I end up performing suboptimally in school.
But tonight, I welcome the twilight silence. I want to stay coccooned in the dark, untouched and sheltered. I lie still in my bed and pretend I am nothing. For that hour, I am neither Rich Yan nor Poor Yan. I don’t worry about my image or my grades. A shadow does not have the same concerns as a body.
I step out of myself, shedding the skin of my life. I look at my school uniform hanging over my closet and the dozens of dresses I’ve made to fit in with my friend group. It strikes me how pointless all of this was, outside of going to a fancy private school. I see all of my self-imposed restrictions as one long, tangled invisible string that would cut me if I try to walk past it.
Why had I been so eager to go to Two Bridges? I remember sitting in my underfunded public school, eating reheated frozen slop while students who weren’t raised to behave better clamoured in the background. None of my peers cared about doing well in school like I did. They were just as poor as I was, if not more so, and plenty of them copied my homework and exam answers just to get by. Of course, that didn’t stop a quarter of the students from having to repeat their classes in summer school, which meant that even the students who did copy me were terrible at that.
Not to mention that there was always fighting. That was the good thing about my high school. Everyone was too snobby to lift a finger, preferring to bully each other behind their phone screens and anonymous social media profiles.
It helped that Two Bridges was simply a very good school, the kind that any Asian parent would brag about their kid going to. But I didn’t have to go there, especially with its tuition prices and exclusive scholarship. There were plenty of decent public schools in New York City.
I will never admit this to anyone, but aside from a better education and parental approval, there was one thing I got from going to Two Bridges that made me tolerate the charade of being a student there. It was the indisputable fact that I surpassed everyone who didn’t attend the school that put the air in my lungs.
When any of my peers from my past see the Two Bridges crest on my uniform, they know that I’ve reached a place they cannot touch. Call it arrogance or a false sense of superiority, but I deserve to be at my school more than anyone I’ve ever met. No one works as hard as I do because not a single person in the student body has as little as I have. And I’m fairly certain no one cares as much as I do about seeming smart and beautiful.
Unbidden, the thought of Mikael surfaces in the dark place deep in my mind where I’ve hidden. A pang of jealousy shoots through my core. He never has to worry about the things that I do. He probably couldn’t even conceive of the problems that I have, effortlessly acing his classes and wearing expensive watches gifted by his family.
Yet, he judges the company that I keep. I replay our interaction in English class over and over again until disdain sharpens his eyes and his lips curve into a mocking sneer.
“Snobs,” he says. Like he knew what it meant to have friends. I saw him sitting alone most of the time, save for the few instances he was forced to talk to the other boys in our class. They liked to copy his work, no different than the way Maia and Ainsley would scavenge my notes and worksheets for answers.
I didn’t know if he spoke to the boys beyond that. Maybe he prefers to observe everyone in the class, his eyes the lenses of a security camera. The thought of him scrutinizing our classmates the same way he noticed me makes me feel weird.
I shake the feeling away. As discerning as his eye was, he couldn’t tell what I really was. If he did, he wouldn’t like what he saw.
Or would he? It was entirely possible that I fooled the smartest boy in school. If he was anywhere near as sheltered as my friends, he wouldn’t be able to spot someone lower class, even if he tried his hardest. But my family didn’t like that term and preferred to call themselves ‘lower middle class.’ Not that adding one word to the phrase improved my quality of life.
There was something honest about him, even if we were worlds apart. I got the feeling that even if he knew my secret, he would keep it no matter how much it changed the way he saw me.
But I would never know unless I tell him.
What was it about him that made me want to reveal who I truly was? Aside from being quiet and intelligent, he wasn’t special. Maybe Natalie saw something I could not. They’ve been in school together since they were in diapers, crossing paths in the world’s best schools. Curiously, she felt threatened by me, enough to follow me home and tell me to stay away from him.
He was just a nice boy. She had no right dragging him into the thing between us. I knew better than to seek out the girl who abandoned me.
It would be nice to think about him without thinking about her. I can’t forget how she left me stranded in school by myself. Because of her, I was at the mercy of the ‘snobs’ who were my friends. Who else was meant to save me from my loneliness? She gave me no choice.
I think back to that day in the cafeteria and the choice that I made. Once again, I’m a penguin stuck between the uncertain mountains and the waddle. For a moment, I wish I had chosen the mountains. I would have survived and made it on my own.
The snow continues to fall outside the window, the night sky pale with storm clouds. Airplanes twinkle in the distance, the city smog blocking out the real stars. Maia, Ainsley, and Yuey tell me they will fly back to New York soon, their texts left on read on my phone. Judging by the fat flakes sticking to the glass, their flights will be delayed.
The radiator rattles, hissing out a burst of heat. While my body is warmed and wrapped in blankets, my shadow is outside. The snow is piling up to my knees and the wind blows through my translucent figure.
I float through the air, twirling through swirling flakes. In a few hours, snow plows will drive through the streets in an effort to keep the city running. I lose myself in the snow, numbing into the cold and becoming nothing.
When I wake up, I still think that I’m resting on piles of snow outside. My mother’s sharp voice calling me for breakfast brings me back to reality.
I’m the first to arrive at the small round table in the dining room, which is really just a tiny alcove connected to the kitchen. I normally skip this meal and go straight to school, but a quick glance at the TV tells me that the city is shut down. For once, I’m glad to be stuck at home, eating congee, pickled radish, and canned fish. I didn’t want to escape from myself or deny who I was.
The rest of the day is spent helping my mother clean the apartment. While sanitation workers salt the sidewalks, I sweep and mop the floor.
A ping on my phone tears me away from the routine. I try not to look startled when I see a message from Mikael.
Hey Yan, Mr. Jackson says that you’re my partner for the new science project.
Oh dear. Leave it up to Two Bridges to assign homework even during a snowstorm.
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