about a boy,
who was lost,
and thought he was found,
until he meets a girl,
the same girl,
who makes him wonder
if there's more to life
than just getting by.
-
[a Jem-centered novella/sequel to The Girl Who Saw Through Jem]
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Chapter Sixteen
Haunt All Of My What-Ifs
Ellis
Like many mornings for the past few years, I changed my outfits three times until I was satisfied with my look. It has become one of my ticks, meticulously debating how to best showcase myself to the world. Though now, the world wasn't watching. A lot less of it is, at least.
As once the novelty of dating a Daybrook has worn off and the press has gotten used to a Daybrook bachelor being taken off the market, the media has moved onto more glamorous and entertaining headlines. They focused their attention on more pressing matters such as the Johnson heiresses stumbling out of nightclubs and barely legal socialites flashing their skirts at the paparazzi. Once they realized I was prim, proper, and boring, headlines with my name in them seemed to taper off.
Heading back to Harvard after being back in suburban Philadelphia made me realize how much being in an Ivy League was truly a bubble. Idyllic and quaint with an old-English charm, the ongoing recession seemed to barely affect the privileged one-percenters that attended my school. While the unemployment rate slowly climbed up and local businesses in my hometown sold out to massive corporations, private-schooled kids flocked around in expensive cars and cashmere sweaters. Their parents were throwing them million-dollar birthday parties and my classmates made headlines outspending each other on bottle service in places like London or Monaco.
I settled into my Shakespeare's Life and Times class after being away for a couple of weeks for Effy's funeral, studying the other coeds, all smug-faced, ivy-league wunderkinds like I used to be. It made me feel sad and brittle, as if disgusted by the display of wealth, then feeling guilty because I was also just one of them. Who was I to talk?
Herein lay a fundamental tension of class privilege: economic elites who were often uncomfortable with the fact of their wealth and the inequality it supports, while also enjoying what it brought.
Seeing Jem again brought up the strangest feelings inside of me. Feelings I couldn't even begin to unpack, feelings I tried to disassociate from as I got back into my Harvard routine and became busy with oncoming mid-terms. But those feelings never seemed to simmer down, especially after seeing his name flash across my phone screen after so many years. It had left me with the strangest feeling of regard for him. As if I had a forgotten string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in him. As we leave and retreat back into our everyday lives, the cord of communion would tighten with force. Eventually, it would snap. And I had a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for Jem, he'd forget me.
When I heard he was getting published, there was a flourishing tinkle of pride in my chest. It was a burst of happiness, like watching someone who hated themselves so much overcome the first beautiful moments of feeling accomplished. Seeing someone take ownership of their own abilities. But at the same time, a tinge of emptiness and being left behind later followed suit. Jem was going to get published and become famous; his name was shoved into the spotlights of millions. As for me, I was still struggling. Struggling to even understand what it was I wanted out of life.
