but then I saw the thing
that would wring it all out.
On the refrigerator
hung a letter
with an orange and black crest
that I knew too well.
It began as all the letters
I had imagined would begin,
all the letters I imagined finding
in my in-box,
in my mailbox,
on my own fridge.
We are delighted . . .
it said, and I didn’t need to read
any further.
Jordan Parker had Princeton.
Jordan Parker had fucking
everything.
Jordan Parker had
me.
Deferred
Dear Ms. Chen,
We received a record number of early-decision
applications this year, many of which are of great
quality, yet we only choose to admit a small
percentage of students from the early-decision pool.
Your application will be deferred, and reviewed
again in the regular-decision pool.
Expect to hear a final response in late March or early April.
Warm regards,
Princeton Dean of Admissions
Counting Christmases
Xiaoling had been with us
for two Christmases
and she had already mastered
how to power shop
on Christmas Eve
at the Meydenbauer Mall,
how to discreetly buy me a present
and slip it into her purse
before I could even see
what it was.
For two Christmases
I had eaten home-cooked meals
with a family different
from the one I started with
seventeen years ago,
and maybe this was because
I used to have a mother
who drank a bottle of Riesling
and passed out under the tree
while Dad and I ate pepperoni pizza
three Christmases ago.
What I knew about my mother’s disappearance
I knew she packed one rolling suitcase.
I knew she cleaned out her half
of the bank account.
I knew the police were never called.
I knew Dad filed divorce papers.
I knew Mom signed them
somehow.
How . . . ?
What I suspected
She ran away with another man,
because
I could hear her
talking to someone,
in a voice that sounded
like a growl
on the nights
when Dad
worked late.
What I also suspected
was that Dad
knew exactly
where she was.
But no one
seemed to care
that I
did not.
What I sometimes thought
She didn’t love me.
How could she,
if she hadn’t even called
or written
or come back
for her daughter?
I felt things falling
Like ornaments slipping off
branches on a Christmas tree,
when glass baubles
hit the floor
and shatter,
like I’ve lost.
PART II:
Acceptance
Second Semester Senior Year
I thought we would all catch
senioritis.
But the kid in front of me
in AP Calculus
quietly banged his head
against the desk
as our teacher explained
a particularly challenging problem set.
“That’s not going to help you
on the exam,”
Miranda muttered.
I desperately wanted
the epidemic
of senioritis
to sweep through the halls
of Meydenbauer
and put us all
out of our misery.
Deadlines
Laurel and Austin and everyone
who wanted an essay
“Where’s my essay, Chen?”
when I took a seat next to them
in class.
Miranda leaned over
and whispered.
“It’s January, Nic.
Applications are due
in two weeks.”
“Stanford, Nic. Stanford,”
Miranda reminded me,
as if I didn’t know.
“I will destroy you
if you fuck this up.”
She leaned so close
the words permeated
my skin.
Miranda’s essay was finished.
All of them were,
beautifully written.
It was inevitable
that in writing
with so much truth
pieces of me
would be woven
between the lines
of each essay.
To hand them over
would be handing over
pieces of myself,
and I wasn’t quite ready
to let go.
A Draft of Miranda Price’s Essay
Nobel Laureate and Professor of Physics Stefan Stanovnik once said, “We used to see chaos in nature, until we found new tools that showed us order. Our perspective on randomness has shifted dramatically.” Tell us about a time your perspective changed and what has shifted in your understanding of the world.
I raise my hand high in all my classes, especially in science and math. I have been elected to student government all four years of high school. I used to not understand the concept of a “glass ceiling” or an “achievement gap.” I used to think that I was not any different from my male peers. I used to believe we were all equals—high-achieving, driven, and confident.
Then I went viral on YouTube.
Perspective changes when one’s face is streaming online with more than forty thousand views. Parents look at you differently. Their eyes are a constant source of disappointment. All the guys at school stare at you differently. The girls, they don’t look at you. They talk about you.
What happened that night was me at a party, dancing in an outfit I liked, laughing with friends I adored, and admittedly wearing heels that were too high and too precarious for feet that are prone to clumsiness. I fell flat on my face, and that is the extent of what happened.
If the video were simply me tripping over my own feet or something equally careless, I could laugh it off and nothing would have changed. But it’s not.
Somewhere out in the crowd someone was filming me. With the music and editing and snippets of me saying things out of context, this isn’t a video of a clumsy girl falling. It is a gut-wrenching portrayal of how others—specifically, my male peers—see me.
The video is textbook “male gaze,” as coined by Laura Mulvey. I know this from the film studies course I took at the university the summer after sophomore year. I wrote an entire paper on the use of the male gaze in contemporary horror films, analyzing the way camera angles fetishized women, even in their death. I understood the male gaze that summer, as it related to film theory, but I did not comprehend the insidious way it could impact my life.
Now I do. When I watch the video of myself, I see me, but I am forced to experience the moment, not as I remember, but instead through the misogynist and scopophilic perspective of my male peers. There’s an ass shot. The video lingers on parts of my body. You can hear guys talking about me, critiquing me, my dance moves, and scoring my eventual fall.
As much as I feel like an equal, I am not. I cannot turn the camera ar
ound on those guys, shoot the same video with the same shots and upload it to YouTube, expecting the same results. I am so frustrated and at times so angry, but I am still so driven and confident.
I still serve on student government. I raise my hand in all my classes. I still go to parties and dance and wear heels too high. But it’s different now. There’s a part of me that wonders if I will ever be seen as who I am.
It was still senior year
I stood alone
in front of my locker, staring
back at those
fucking letters.
Someone had decided to write WHORE
on my locker
again.
Ben had moved on.
Yet I didn’t get to?
My reputation didn’t get to progress
to something more favorable?
Like maybe, just maybe,
could someone write
SMART
or
INTELLIGENT
or
TALENTED
in bright orange lipstick
on my locker?
A figure darted
down the empty hall.
Of course.
“Jordan!”
He paused.
He saw me.
He slumped his shoulders
and disappeared,
like the way he disappeared,
along with Ben,
after his party
last summer.
How had I become
the girl
who everyone
runs away
from?
“Nic, don’t.”
Kitty materialized.
“Don’t what? Call out to him?
Chase after him?
Sleep with him
again?”
Jordan didn’t call.
He didn’t text.
He did nothing to acknowledge
what happened
between us,
again,
that night
over winter break
when
the rain pattered against the window
and the wind grabbed hold of the trees,
when I crawled into his bed
and he wanted me.
“I didn’t . . . ,”
Kitty began.
I didn’t stick around
long enough to hear
what Kitty had to say.
Foot over foot pounded
the glossy linoleum floor.
But in the distance
I could hear her say,
“What the hell, Nic?
I’m your friend.
“That means something.”
But I was too far gone
to let those words
sink in.
“Jordan!”
“Jor—dan!”
It was like
his name echoed incessantly
in my brain—rattling around.
Bouncing off walls.
Ricocheting.
But it wasn’t in my head.
It was loud and clear
for everyone to hear.
I was
that girl.
The one calling after her—
what?
What do I even call Jordan?
My friend?
What kind of shitty friendship
was this?
Definitely not my lover.
This wasn’t fucking love.
It was—
and I stopped.
As all the doors around me closed,
one finally opened,
and a boy stepped into
the hall.
Ben
“I transferred back, Nic.”
No.
I closed my eyes. Squeezed them hard.
Willed everything in my brain
to smother the image of Ben.
He was still there
when my eyes opened again,
nodding and standing
in front of me.
It was like reality
had shape-shifted
itself into this horrible
creature
with three heads
and tentacles
wrapped around my chest,
compressing what little
sense of self
I had.
My heart wanted to crawl
into bed with Ben
and entangle every
ventricle with his.
It wanted to spill red
on this linoleum floor
and bleed and bleed and bleed.
It wanted to stop pounding
for a moment
and just
be still.
“I missed this place,”
Ben said.
He glanced around.
“Jordan said nothing
has changed.
“He was right.”
“Except us,”
I said.
“Yeah—I mean there’s that.”
Ben stood there,
cocking his head,
with eyes that gazed
right through me.
He could have melted my heart
in a million different ways,
but this time
he broke it
like I was porcelain
falling on a marble floor.
Again
The world felt like it was on fire,
but it was raining
again.
The halls were abuzz
With Ben.
I heard his name
in hushed tones
during class.
He darted past
my line of sight
on more than one occasion.
Ben was back,
and I thought
that would mean
my life could go
back to normal.
But now
Ben was back,
and nothing really changed.
People jostled me,
they knocked into
my book bag,
they looked up
occasionally
and muttered,
“Sorry.”
As the bell rang,
I saw a hundred people
pass me by
and I felt
so alone.
“You look
like the saddest
damn puppy
in the pound.”
I took a deep breath
of the stale hallway air
and turned to Ashok.
“Second semester
is rough,”
was all I could muster.
He nodded.
“Shit just got real,
but let’s go crush this class.”
There were no extra seats
In AP Bio
for our newest classmate,
our transfer student,
our Ben,
who sat in the back
at a lab table
among the pestles and pipettes.
From the back of the room
Ben could stare
into the back of my head,
watch as I took notes,
or pretend I didn’t exist,
that the months we spent
with interlaced fingers
never happened.
Maybe he had to.
Maybe we both did.
Jordan walked in late,
per usual.
He slid into his seat
without catching my eye.
I didn’t know what happened
or what was happening
or what would happen
between Jordan and me.
We were both furniture
with missing bolts,
wobbling just enough
that when you got close to us,
you would know
&
nbsp; something
was not right.
Minutes hurled us forward
like an airplane
on a runway,
wheels on the ground,
never quite lifting,
never aloft,
as we approached
college application
deadlines.
January 14
Texts hit me like a hailstorm.
Yo. Where’s my essay?
Nic, are you still writing my essay?
Can you send over that essay
I PAID YOU FOR?
You realize applications are due
TOMORROW.
I sat on a glossy floor
in an empty hallway
before school started,
laptop resting on my thighs,
ready to cue up the essays
and send a series of e-mails.
Then Ben walked by.
“ ’Sup, Nic.”
He head-nodded.
And before Ben was even
out of sight,
I had forgotten all about the texts,
all about the essays,
all about the deadlines,
all about anything
and anyone
in this world
except
a boy
with floppy brown hair
and eyes
that looked like
storm clouds
and choppy waters
and torrential downpours
soaking into my heart.
At home alone
I had to keep writing. Compulsively.
I found myself typing
and feeling
and typing
and feeling
too many things all at once.
I found myself stringing
words I had written
together.
Words that would mean
something to someone.
Words that could
feel
too many things all at once.
I found myself
attaching documents
to e-mails,
attaching aspirations
to essays,
and clicking send
over and over again
as I dulled
in the bright white light.
In response
To the essays
I had painstakingly crafted,
Miranda sent an e-mail
that read,
About fucking time,
Chen.
A single sheet of paper
Slipped out of my locker
and fluttered down to
the linoleum floor,