Below, read the second excerpt.
When pressed about her parents Julia would turn down her lips and drop her head.
It was so long ago, she would murmur.
It was all so unclear.
Though Julia did remember her parents, recalled their details very well, actually.
He then moved on to vodka.
Seeing Julia, her mother had startled but continued to walk toward the house.
And then, at the last minute, she returned to the tree and loosened the knots.
“you’ve got the option to’t even manage that.”
Afterward, Nina quit her job at the factory and refused to leave the house.
Nina cried and cried when Karl died and couldn’t understand why Julia didn’t.
“But he was your father,” she bayed, as if Julia needed reminding.
Yet Nina only grew more hysterical.
A week after the body was found, she came to Julia’s bed and pulled down the blanket.
When Julia didn’t react, she did it again, harder, until Julia yelped.
“So youcancry,” Nina said.
She sat and covered her mouth.
“My God, what’s wrong with you?”
She began to weep and ran from the room.
They moved out of the house and to Mytishchi, where they temporarily settled with Nina’s parents.
Julia could feel her grandmother’s eyes upon her as she moved through the apartment.
“Only cares about herself, no matter that this show is our favorite.”
Besides Julia, Nina had other troubles.
At night, Julia heard the voices:
“you’re able to start over.
You are still young.
There are places,” Zora urging.
“I could never!”
Over the years, Julia would recall this exact line.I could never.
The fervor with which her mother had said and believed.
How easily anyone could set aside their convictions, given the right levers.
It began with a trial.
This was how Nina rationalized it, Julia knew.
That the fact she could bear to leave her own child must mean it was a major emergency indeed.
Announcing such in a loud voice, as if afraid Julia might contradict her otherwise.
“Here are your food and clothes.
I’ll be back on Friday.”
Still stunned, Julia didn’t respond.
“You’ll share this space with Raisa,” the woman said.
A girl slightly older than Julia lay prostrate on the other cot.
At the sound of her name, she turned.
“Raisa,” the woman said.
“Be nice.”
Raisa propped herself up on an elbow and smiled.
Her eyelashes were so light as to be nearly transparent, and her teeth were yellow and uneven.
She had an appealing expression, like that of a friendly dog.
She pointed to Julia’s bag.
“You want me to move it?”
Julia sat on what she assumed to be her own bed, across from Raisa.
This isn’t so bad, Julia thought.
On impulse, she asked, “You want?”
“Thank you very much.”
Raisa’s voice was high and tinny.
She rose and Julia saw she wore a blue smock down to her ankles.
As she watched, Julia became aware of a boy observing them from farther down the wall.
Still keeping eye contact, she jammed a finger down her throat.
As she retched, the regurgitated bread and cabbage spilled onto her smock and bed.
She then began to eat again.
“She’s doing it to taste the sweetness,” the boy commented.
Seeing her look, he blushed and repeated himself.
“She does it sometimes.
She likes to eat candy, but we never have it.
So she does that instead.
I’m Misha.”
She was fascinated by his lip and didn’t bother to hide her staring.
It was as if by entering the institute she had automatically shed some outer layer of civility.
“Is this where we sleep?”
The thought was dawning that the bed by Raisa had been available for a reason.
And I won’t switch with you.
Besides, you look big," he added, eyeing her appraisingly.
“you’re free to manage Raisa.”
“I don’t care,” she said airily.
“I’m used to it.”
“She also does it with poop,” Misha offered.
She shits and then wipes.
Mostly on the walls, though she will also do it on beds.
Sometimes other people, if she can catch them.
We have not been able to predict when or why.
Sometimes she is having a good day, and then still does it."
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you want.”
On Wednesday, Julia prepared herself for the possibility that Nina might not return.
It would be fine, she thought.
Wasn’t she adaptable?
At home, Julia concentrated on being personable.
But her mother passed the set without comment.
And the same problems remained.
On Monday, Nina returned her to the institute.
This time Julia didn’t offer Raisa any of her food.
Last week, there had been five.
Now Julia counted three.
She asked if Sophia might help her call Nina.
“What for?”
Pretty Sophia, with her singsong voice and clear complexion and plaited yellow hair.
“I want to ask what time she plans to arrive.
“Your mother is busy, you know?
Best not to bother her.”
Who had donated the slippers?
What kind of life did some little girl have, that she could just give up such shoes?
“If I don’t bother my mother, you think she can find a job?”
Sophia ceased her sorting.
“She has crapped out?”
she asked, still not looking at Julia.
“Does she have a man?”
Well, perhaps now.
Maybe a job, too.”
“Huh,” Sophia said again.
Another pause, and she returned to her excavation.
“Well, it is always best to think positively.
Someone once told me our country’s a mess because we are negative thinkers.
So now I always give a shot to believe good things will happen.”
Over the following days, Julia tried to live by this counsel.
She had done it, Julia thought.
She had willed a positive event into existence.
And then Friday came, and Nina didn’t come back.
Julia was in shock, the first few weeks.
She lay fetal, drifting through her memories, where her grandmother’s apartment now hovered as an oasis.
I don’t belong here, Julia thought.
I have to get out.
There were only a few routes she knew of.
The problem: How to be selected?
In the end, it was the phone that saved her.
The institute had one telephone, a beige handset in the administrative office.
But still Julia found herself drawn to the machine, its thin yet unassailable connection to the outside world.
I am a spy, she told herself.
I am gathering secrets.
Julia did not consider Maria a hypocrite because she did not pretend to be soft, merely efficient.
Maria dialed and after a few seconds glared at the keypad in frustration.
She dialed again and pressed the phone to her ear and swore.
Julia decided to chance it.
“It’s 4598555,” she called out.
“Not 4598755.”
Maria swiveled her head like an owl tracking prey.
“You have the fifth digit wrong.”
“Do you dare spy on me?”
I’m just telling you."
“How did you know the number I wanted?”
“You always call your mother at this time.
You greet her, and ask about her health and what she has eaten so far.”
“And how did you know about the wrong digits?”
“You called yesterday.
I could tell what the numbers were by where you placed your hand.”
“I’ve always been good at recalling numbers, long strings of them.”
Also a lie, or at least, untested.
Maria set down the phone.
But instead she held a folder.
“Yes I am.
I went to school.”
“I can write, too.”
“Any other skills?”
“Do not lie.”
Julia had just been debating which special talent to fabricate.
The director returned to the folder.
“Interesting,” she murmured, a finger to her lips.
“A successful system could bring an extra two thousand a month .
Julia knew it was important to be useful.
To always be useful.
“We want to attack Tangerine,” said Leo.
Julia said, even though she’d heard clearly.
“The SPB is in the early stages of planning an intrusion,” Leo repeated.
“Are you certain you’re clear?”
He meant was she private, unmonitored.
“It should be simple,” Leo went on.
“We’ve identified a vulnerability in the back end of your email servers.
We need you to download the source code so we can complete the intrusion.”
A roiling heat rose and burred itself in her side.
We’d be able to pull up the emails of your users en masse.
Why wouldn’t we take advantage?”
“Haven’t I done enough?”
Julia demanded, with the feeling that had been creeping in as of late, that she was under-appreciated.
Over the phone there was the rustling of paper.
“kindly respond this week with an estimate,” Leo said primly.
“As to when you’re able to procure the code.”
“I’ll be blamed when the attack is discovered,” she warned.
“The product is associated with me.”
“Why does it have to be discovered at all?”
“Because I can’t cover our entire security organization.
We have teams of engineers scanning the system’s integrity.
I’ll be lucky to survive a week before the attack’s discovered.
And then the other executives will call for my head.”
She pressed the nib of her pen against her notebook.
“So I’m just to besacrificed?”
“You will survive.
It is expected that occasionally you may take hits to your persona.”
Julia didn’t like this at all.
“you’re free to’t keep pushing,” she warned.
“You’ve already asked for dozens of names, and then the server downloads, and now this.
If you keep escalating, I could be caught.
Do you understand the potential damage if the public learns Tangerine Mail was compromised?
That their affairs, emails to friends, applications for jobs were exposed?
It would endanger my position.
It would risk my work!”
“What did you say your work was?”
She threw her pen against the wall.
After they hung up, Julia sat in her office, rage ballooning.
She checked her screen: sixty-five new messages in the last half hour, all on Tangerine Mail.
She went to the employee database.
After a second she found the phone number of Jon Fall, her VP of engineering.
Jon was there in minutes.
He knocked and she motioned for him to enter.
Average height, green eyes.
Younger than her by a few years.
“There’s going to be an attack on our web connection,” she said.
Jon wasn’t the sort for small talk.
“Targeting Tangerine Mail.”
“A test?”
We were informed by some government sources."
Not technically a lie.
“I’m not certain.
But they’ve identified a zero-day exploit in our code.
Can you find it?”
As she waited, Julia yanked at the hem of her dress.
“I’m sure.
But I’ll need some time.”
“I’ll also want to shore up our defenses.
Install some employee safeguards, especially for those with developer access.
All of their emails, browsing, needs to be vetted.”
“Do we publicize?
Or do it quietly?”
“Keep it quiet.
Do it internally, with a small team.”
“Will do.”
“Very good,” she said.
Impressed by his confidence, pleased because she knew it came from ability and not showmanship.
He was actually handsome, she thought.
“Keep me informed.
Only in person, not email.”
There was a chance Leo would find out, Julia knew.
He might discover she’d defied him, and then what would he do?
How many hours of her life had been spent testing, tweaking Tangerine Mail?
After Jon left, she doodled a series of circles into her notebook.
She thought again of his face, how much she liked it.
Yet there was something about Jon that tugged.
It was the way he held himself, how his body had an assurance of gentleness.
He reminded her of Misha.
“You have to learn how to preserve what you have, work hard.
Like migrants, do you understand how hard they work?”
And then, with a sigh, passing her one of his bars of milk chocolate.
Sometimes she thought if she knew too much of him, her heart would break.
When she descended into these spirals her stress spiked; she rocked in her chair and concentrated on breathing.
She spread her fingers and summoned their heat.
Pressed her hand in harder.
The baby kicked back.
Especially the important individual.
Better not to be Cameron Ekstrom.
Back home, opening her laptop halfway, she had pressed the power key until the screen went black.
And had not logged in to God Mode again.
She exited the freeway.
She parked at the curb and entered the house to find her father watching the news.
Lincoln was usually watching TV; it was like white noise, but for his waking hours.
“Where’s Mom?”
As with the rest of the house, the living room was barely altered from her childhood.
“Outside,” Lincoln answered.
He smiled at her and then made a pushing motionYou’rein front of the TV.
Alice went out back, to the small patch of green buttressed on the other end by their carport.
“We were neverinthe house before,” June said, not bothering to turn.
“Now we don’t work, we stay in.”
She stood and shook the dirt from her hands.
“Besides, we go out now, don’t we?”
They went to Alice’s Honda, each carrying a large cooler.
Alice sank into the chair.
It was unsupportive but wholly pleasurable, like a waterbed at a sleepover.
She pitched back and shut her eyes.
Last night Cheri had returned home at three a.m. after some undoubtedly lavish party.
Awakened by the noise, Alice had rolled onto her side, pressing her ear to the bed.
Alice was dreaming now.
She was at a party.
A civilized one: low music, cheese on platters.
A man took the empty seat next to her.
He was Chinese and earnest and clear-skinned.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m embarrassed.
I think I love you.”
There was noise coming from the outside.
She tried to block it out, hang on to the dregs.
Her mother stood before her.
“What are you doing?
As Alice struggled to rise, she could see June’s expression downgrade from curiosity to a mild disapproval.
“I’m only resting.”
She swatted away a fly.
“Has it started?”
It is nine fifty.”
June’s hair fell evenly over both sides of her face like the curtain on a short window.
It was newly cut, and lay in blunt layers at the neck.
Zeni’s work, Alice suspected.
Alice clasped her hands behind her head.
“If we have ten more minutes, I’m going to sleep.”
“You are not getting enough rest.
Why do you come?
I don’t need you.”
“I came to help.”
“But you look like a slug.
If you want to nap, maybe you could move by the sidewalk.
In the shade, so you do not get hot.
Really, I do not need help.
How long did I manage the cleaners?
Almost twenty years!”
Alice stood with a groan.
“I’m your only child.
I thought you’d want to spend time together.”
June regarded her flatly.
“What do you think of the noodles today.
June sniffed the air.
“There’s something strange about the texture.
Maybe I didn’t wait long enough for it to settle.
Talk, talk, talk.”
“you’ve got the option to tell him to call me at work.”
Tangerine is not paying you to do this!
You must concentrate!”
“Okay,” Alice said quickly, though June still looked agitated.
She had to keep her job at Tangerine, Alice thought.
She needed to stay the hell away from User 555 and God Mode.
A bell clanged; the market had begun.
Alice stood and helped June arrange noodles into the plastic sauce cups they used for samples.
A mother and her toddler approached.
“Are these spicy?”
Her son wore a hat with a propeller on it, like Dennis the Menace.
“A little bit,” Alice said.
“I don’t know if it’s best for kids.”
Although she had eaten far spicier in her grandmother’s kitchen.
“I want it!”
“They are spicy.
“But Iwantthe noodles.”
“Now, Oliver,” the woman said, kneeling.
“What did we say about being polite?”
“Give me the food!”
The woman grabbed a handful of samples.
“I’ll rinse these at the fountain.”
June smiled at them as they left, as if she thought they might return.
Alice watched the crowd.
They rarely recognized her, and when they did, were overly cordial.
Alice was about to sneak away for some empanadas when a couple strolled near.
He wore a plaid shirt and his brown hair was long and curling against his neck.
It was another person.
He turned, and Alice knew that it was.
It had happened when she was eight.
Afterward they returned to the cleaners, where Alice was installed inside in the back.
“One thousand pieces?”
Alice asked in alarm.
“Yes, you’re able to do it for a long time.”
When Alice got new clothes, they were always at least a size or two larger.
Alice inspected the box, slowly reading.
“World War Two planes?”
“It was on the sale table,” June said.
“Barnes & Noble.”
Alice was piecing together the left wing of the Messerschmitt when the door chimed.
She looked at the clock, which read 6:30 p.m., exactly closing.
“Drop off,” Alice heard June confirm, in her accented English.
She could tell her mother wanted a quick transaction; no query about alterations or shoe shine.
“kick off the register.”
The voice was young and male.
“Don’t you fucking understand English?
pop pop the register and hand over the cash.”
And then another voice: “Lie on the ground.”
For some reason, it was the second voice that carried with it an escalation of danger.
Alice clutched the puzzle piece in her hand; suddenly she had trouble breathing.
She recognized the sound of the register opening.
Then the murmuring of voices: “That’s all?
“My husband,” June replied nervously.
“My husband, he take the rest.”
So instead June resorted to the library and its R-rated titles.
“Sexually harasswhat the fuck?
Like I’d enjoy that,” one said, and they both laughed.
Alice loved the bangle, which was bright green and whorled with flecks of cream.
“Shit,” said the first voice, now higher.
“Why’d you do that?”
“I don’t know.
I hate how they talk.
“She’s not moving.”
“It wasn’t that bad.
She’s faking, right?
Whatever, f–k it, let’s go.”
After they left, the store was silent.
Alice forced herself to count to twenty.
She recalled a character from one of her books, a girl detective, having done the same.
She felt a dampness on her pants and thought perhaps she’d been murdered.
When she ran out, her mother was on the floor.
Her mouth and the side of her face were a smear of blood.
Alice thought she was dead.
Oddly, she did not scream or cry but instead moved to action, as June had always taught.
She began to drag the heavy stool from the back, to reach the telephone on the high counter.
Go find a big person.”
June’s eyes were open.
“What happened?”
Alice was crying now.
Go ask for help.”
Alice ran next door, to the convenience mart.
The shop, not a chain but an individual bodega, had been there as long as the cleaners.
The store was owned and operated by a man named Aman.
Alice passed through the automatic door.
She saw Aman recognize her, and then his gaze moved to the dark patch on her leg.
“My mother,” she said, and he came swiftly from behind the register.
The voices were caught that night.
She rested a finger on Vince’s blond hair.
After a few seconds she skipped forward, to Logan Schiller.
It was Vince who eventually explained what happened.
They began at Safeway, Logan dropping two unlocked bottles of Stoli into his backpack.
There was so much blood, Vince said.
And it all occurred so quickly.
It really scared them.
They hadn’t known what to do.
As he spoke, his voice grew soft and he began to cry.
Why a dry cleaner?Lincoln had asked.
June silent in the chair next to him, her jaw still in braces.
She had eaten gummy candy for dinner and then crept to the living room to eavesdrop.
It was just an impulse, Vince explained, based on the cleaners' appearance.
The faded roof paint, something with the sign’s font: it was clearly owned by a foreigner.
Their clothes were bad and when you went to their house the furniture always had a weird smell.
Words words, pause.
But each time, no one else said anything.
He was coming toward them now, led by the woman.
“What’s this?”
June glanced at Alice.
It was usually her job to speak to anyone under fifty.
When Alice was silent, June prompted: “Chinese noodles.
You’ll like.”
“Do they have gluten?”
“Yes,” Alice said.
“Why are you asking?”
Logan said, turning.
“You don’t have an allergy.”
“I just want to know.”
“Do you like it?”
“The kids certainly won’t have it.
But it’s fine.
Reminds me of Tokyo.”
“I’ll get one,” Logan said.
He grinned, the easy smile of someone used to having his overtures returned.
He paid and then he and his wife slid past, the plastic bag dangling from his fingers.
Alice knew she shouldn’t say something.
That actually it would be hideously selfish to say anything at all.
“Do you know who that was?”
Yet there wassomethinga flick of the voice.
June opened another box of noodles and began to ladle out more samples.
It was the kid.
From back in the cleaners.”
June wiped a splash of sauce.
“The kid?”
“The one whohityou.
Who went to Magdalena.”
June shook her shoulders.
“I don’t pay attention.”
Alice dropped into the chair.
“Why you down there?”
“You tired again?”
Alice shook her head, waving her away.
To her great shame especially since she’d never seen June do so, aftershe had begun to cry.
“You sick?”
June sounded concerned now.
Alice dropped her head into her hands.
“Why didn’t you ever do anything, back then?”
“What to do?
The police, they do their job.”
Logan and Vince had each attended a weekend class and completed twenty hours of community service.
“You could have asked for something.
You couldn’t work after surgery for weeks!
They never even paid your medical deductible!
They were obviously wealthy.”
June knelt to face her.
“Are you needing money?”
she asked in a serious voice.
I was asking for you.
Look at their families!
“People like that, they will get a lesson later.”
She sighed, and June made the rare gesture of placing a hand on her shoulder.
“I want you to be a happyperson,” she said.
Alice could feel the tears again.
She had spent so long polishing her shame; she had so much anger and didn’t know why.
Alice knew that all June and Lincoln wanted was for her to do better than they had.
They sold out earlier than usual.
“Maybe I can get your father to help, even though he is useless in the kitchen.”
When she arrived home, it was early evening.
After the breakup, however, Alice had stopped being invited to dinners.
F–k it, she thought.
She poured herself a glass of water and took it into her room.
And then opened her laptop and signed into God Mode and entered the name Logan Schiller.
From IMPOSTOR SYNDROME by Kathy Wang, published by Custom House.
Copyright 2021 by Kathy Wang.
Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers
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