My teachers are sadists disguised as educators. The sheer amount of assignments that I’ve been given this week in all of my classes makes me choke. I can’t keep up, drowning in sheafs of paper and perpetually stained with ink. In my dreams, I cram for exams and make study sheets, unable to find escape in my subconsciousness.
I can make all the soothing study playlists that I want and brew countless cups of oolong tea, but nothing can ease my stress for the midterm season. My readings blur, the letters turning into rows of ants and fading to skid marks the longer I stare at the page. I read the chalk on the board with no problem.
A trip to the eye doctor confirms that I’m farsighted. I ask for contact lenses, but I end up getting rectangular glasses instead because they’re cheaper. Maia and Ainsley tease me over my new look, which I pretend came from Japan. They’re one to talk since the drastic changes on their faces from cosmetic surgery have healed. I recognize them only by the parts that the surgeon’s knife hadn’t touched, such as Ainsley’s lips and Maia’s eyes. Otherwise, they appear to me as Frankenstein’s monsters, byproducts of the uncanny valley.
But that is certainly not their self-image. They think that they are beautiful. All the more power to them, but I’ve seen their inflated egos rise to astronomic levels of arrogance recently. In their minds, the surgeries fixed everything they thought was wrong with themselves. Previously, they aspired to small colleges that their families could pay for them to get into. They used to mock my aspirations of getting into the best universities in the country, but they’ve now adopted those very same goals, chatting incessantly about the strings their relatives were going to pull to get them in.
Nothing changed about their grades or the way our teachers treated them. They had always been entitled to the best things the world had to offer. Designer clothes, Michelin restaurants, and luxury vacations were always granted to them. Why not add Ivy League schools to the list?
If they came from poorer families, I would have told them their expectations were unrealistic. But how far-fetched were they in a student body that could pay for the best tutors and still have money left over to get someone else to take their tests? Maia brags openly about doing both, mooning over her cute college student tutor and showing us photos of the girl she paid to take her SATs.
“It’s like having a stunt double,” she whispers conspiratorially.
Even Ainsley participates in the fraud, spreading lies about other students to make herself look better. Although she told the truth about Natalie, there’s still a chance that she’s behind the online bullying.
Yuey buys fake bags to pass off as real. Mikael encourages his peers to give each other the wrong answer in class group chats. Everyone is a dirty liar.
I’m falling behind because I’m not lying enough. I pretend to go to Japan and wear faux designer clothes, and no one bats an eye. I’ve done what I could to blend in, but no matter how hard I try, I’m not really them.
Whenever I despair deeply, I indulge in the guilty pleasure of reading the verbal abuse on Natalie’s social media profiles. The vitriol ebbs and flows, the bully alternating between incel-speak and petty insults. I imagine the way she must be suffering reading the comments, which she never deletes, either because she’s too lazy or because she enjoys the attention on her profile. Sometimes I catch myself in the middle of schadenfreude and come to my senses. I think about the real danger that she could be in if her bully acted on their words. But then I wonder, who would traffic the daughter of a disgraced former hedge fund manager? It would have to be someone insane, not any of the students here living posh, comfortable lives.
It could be one of the two other scholarship students, whose names I still can’t find because I lost the letter that gave me my financial award. But lately, I’m inclined to believe that the perpetrator doesn’t go to this school.
In the five boroughs, there are five prestigious schools that any student could go to that will let the rest of the millions of students know that they’re smart. Attendance at these schools is an automatic sign of academic excellence. Parents brag, and doors open for the students. Two Bridges is only one of those schools with a cult following.
The rival schools boast similar or higher prestige depending on the year the students are admitted. There’s Grand Army High in Brooklyn, known for their early engineering program, the Bayard Institute in Manhattan, known for its accelerated law curriculum, and which Two Bridges Academy shares the borough with, the Riverdale High School for the Performing Arts in the Bronx, and Queens High School, boasting the best math scores in the state.
None of the schools in Staten Island count since it’s not a real borough.
A seat at one of the five high schools is so prized that students from neighboring high schools transfer in their sophomore year. Some students have even gone as far as pretending that they go to one of the schools or following students from those schools on social media. There was an incident in Grand Army High School where a student attended classes for a week before administrators found out that they didn’t actually go to the school. Rumor has it that they wanted to stalk a girl they had a crush on, which makes me think that Natalie could have a similar tail on her through social media.
But I am worried about the wrong thing. Natalie’s plight is only a distraction. She would not care that I was watching her, digitally or offline. I’ve decided not to take her warning about staying away from Mikael seriously. Unless she could miraculously make him not my science project partner, I would speak with him as I pleased.
It’s not that I want to be his friend, but I am curious about the way he works. To me, he’s an intricate machine and I am compelled to figure out what makes him tick. I want to know what he did to get his rank and grades. What was the magic that made him better than me?
If there’s anyone whose skin I could choose to slip into, it would be Mikael Svensson. Who wouldn’t choose to live life on easy mode?
That is how I ended up on the Manhattan Bridge with him, peering over the edge at mammoth waves and specks of metal ships. One of the things our school was known for was the iconic view of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges overlapping, hence the name of the high school being Two Bridges Academy. It wasn’t uncommon to see tourists on the streets near the school, crowding to take photos, annoying as it was. The Bayard Institute boasted a view of the World Trade Center, but I personally thought our view was better.
We were on the Manhattan Bridge because it was less crowded than the Brooklyn Bridge. He invited me to walk with him when I told him I was stressed again. It was a kind gesture, considering that I wanted to get to know him for the purpose of ruining him. The way I see it, if I sabotage him, there is a chance that I can rise to take his place. I will feel guilt and shame if I succeed, but it was nothing that the other students at our school wouldn’t hesitate to do.
In hindsight, maybe I should have said no to walking on the bridge with him. It was frigid, my cheeks stinging from the cold. My breath fogged up my glasses, making everything blurry. I looked mousey and pathetic in my low ponytail and rumpled uniform tucked into a winter coat my mother had gotten on sale. There was a rash of acne on my cheeks, and the same intrusive thoughts that dared me to jump into the train tracks were telling me to leap off the bridge.
“Your glasses are cute,” he says.
“Thanks. I couldn’t see very well before.” I resist the urge to smack myself for saying that. Why else would I be wearing my glasses in the first place if not to see?
“Are you nearsighted?”
“No, farsighted.”
His eyebrows lift in surprise. “That’s not as common. You can see things from far away, but not things close to you?”
“Yeah. It’s good for looking at the board but I can’t read papers.”
We stop in the middle of the bridge to gaze at the skyline. The gigantic glass and metal structures gleam in the sunlight.
“You’re shivering.” Surprise and concern lace his voice.
“I forgot my gloves.” I try to shake less under his eyes but fail to suppress the way my body is shuddering.
“Take mine.” He eases my cold fingers into the red wool.
“Won’t you be cold?”
He laughs lightly. “Sweden is much colder than New York. This is nothing.”
Slowly, the ice in my hands melted. “Thanks.”
“I should be the one thanking you. Here you are, risking your health to take a walk with me.”
Was there a moment where he wasn’t so … nice to me? He was making it hard for me to compete as an academic rival.
“It’s okay. I like walking with you.”
Warmth glimmers in his eyes. “Yeah? We can take more walks in the future.”
“I’d like that,” I find myself saying. “That would be nice.”
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