If You Could See the Sun (37)

Secrets, I’m realizing, are their own kind of currency.

But even better is earning real currency, the satisfaction of seeing the numbers in my new bank account rise:

70,000 RMB.

100,000 RMB.

120,000 RMB.

More money than I’ve ever seen in my life. But even then, I know I could still earn more. I have to earn more. I still need another 130,000 RMB if I want to stay at Airington until I graduate.

Ten more tasks, I tell myself, and I’ll be able to make that much. Twenty more tasks and I’ll be able to pay for not just Airington, but an entire year of college.

It’s addicting. Intoxicating.

Who cares if I’m so busy I can barely breathe?

“Maybe you really are a ghost,” Chanel jokes to me one morning, when she sees me in the exact same position at my desk as the night before: head bent over my Chinese textbook, shoulders almost hunched to my ears. “The kind of invincible ghost that like, doesn’t need to eat or sleep or pee or anything, just runs on willpower alone. Seriously though,” she adds, peering at the tiny annotations and Post-it notes covering my textbook page. “How the hell are you keeping up with all your subjects?”

I don’t reply to her at the time, but the answer comes almost two weeks later, like some sort of sick joke.

And the answer is: I’m not.



* * *



When I hurry into history class on Friday, I freeze.

All the desks and chairs have been rearranged. Spaced out around the classroom in neat, single files, instead of the usual messy clusters that are meant to inspire “group work.”

Most of my classmates are already sitting down, zipped-up bags tucked away under their seats, faces set in solemn lines as they methodically place their pens out in front of them. Someone sighs. Someone else mimes slitting their throat.

There’s a palpable tension in the air.

“What’s going on?” I say aloud.

Mr. Murphy, who’s handing out a thick stack of papers, pauses and gives me a small, odd smile, like he thinks I’ve just made a bad joke. “The thing you’ve been waiting for all week, of course.”

I blink at him. “The thing...?”

The smile slips from his face. He frowns. “Surely you haven’t forgotten about today’s test, Alice? I mentioned it in class a week ago.”

At the word test, panic seizes my chest with such intensity I almost stagger back a step. A stone forms in my throat.

“What? But I didn’t—I—” I swallow, hard. People are starting to stare at me now, Henry amongst them. My face heats. My fingers fumble for the planner in my bag, for proof that there is no test, there can’t be, that this must be a mistake. I have a perfect, color coded system, developed over my five years of school here. Foolproof. Red for important things and events, blue for homework and assignments, green for extracurricular activities.

But when I flip open the pages to last week’s entry, there’s red everywhere. Almost all of it is Beijing Ghost stuff, but squeezed right in between the lines find out if Vanessa Liu’s been bitching about Chung-Cha behind her back (waste of time tbh—Vanessa bitches about everyone) and find Daniel Saito’s locker combination, written so small I have to squint to decipher my own handwriting, are the words: Chinese Rev history test: next Friday.

The stone sinks to my stomach.

No.

“Alice?” Mr. Murphy looks at me, making very little effort to hide his surprise. His disappointment. I want to cry. “The test is starting soon...”

“Y-yes, of course,” I choke out, forcing myself down into the closest empty seat. I duck my head and search for my pencil case with shaking fingers, but not before I catch the expressions on my classmates’ faces: variations of pity, amusement, smugness, and most pronounced of all, shock.

A few summers back, some director at LinkedIn was invited to our school to talk about the importance of “personal branding” in the twenty-first century, and I’ve devoted the past five years to developing and strengthening mine. I’m Alice Sun, the type A, straight-A student, the sole scholarship recipient, the perfectly programmed Study Machine, the girl who will help you get full marks on your group project. I do everything that is expected of me and more. I never underperform in important unit tests, much less forget when they’re taking place—until today, that is.

My gut roils.

So much for personal branding.

Just when I think I couldn’t possibly feel any worse, Mr. Murphy comes around to my desk, hands me a blank test paper and says, very quietly, “Even if you forgot about the test, Alice, you’re a smart girl. I’m sure you’ll still do well.”

He’s wrong.

Because even though I’m smart, I’m not that smart. Not the kind of prodigy-level smart you would expect to find at Harvard, the kind that would allow me to skip all my classes and still rank first in every test, that would make everything come easily. I don’t say this in a self-pitying way, either; I’ve long acknowledged and accepted my limitations, and done my best to compensate for them with sheer willpower and hard work.

But without hard work, I doubt I can scrape so much as a B+ on this test. Even if I could, I’ve never been able to perform well when I’m panicked. And I’m panicking hard right now. My heart feels like it’s about to explode in my chest, my fingers shaking so badly I almost drop my pen.