500 Words or Less

by Juleah del Rosario

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

  whispered, “Where is it, Nic?”

  “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!”

  I called out.

  “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,