sjsprWriting

The summer of 2014 my friends gave me that nickname except in 2015, all the new students thought otherwise. Once again my good Royal friend, Rebecca, created her ingenious group chat, except this time the chat was not meant for 30 kids but for 100. So my alias was of course Nikki and coincidentally my profile picture was of a beautiful girl and me. Just because of that, everyone assumed Nikki was the girl; no one cared who the guy was. Problem was, Nikki was nowhere to be found. It was so early in the morning. The lecture room was big; it had a stage with massive LEDs as the background, two projectors on each side, a piano, and three seated sections with various rows that extended to the far back. Students searched all over the lecture room piled with students from all around the world: Brazil, England, America, Indonesia, and Malaysia. We all wore the same uniform, a yellow shirt with a small dragon logo on it. It was impossible to distinguish us apart from one another, other than the different languages that were spoken between each of the groups. After all, we are all Chinese; a huge wave of yellow water with hints of red sat in the Lecture room – the red hints as our camp teachers. It just so happens ‘Asian Mafia’, our original group, was like “let’s keep this to ourselves and for now Nikki is real”.

Then I a felt sudden pull on my shirt. A short, cute girl with a ribbon in her hair asked me in a British accent “ Are you Nikki?” I turned around with a stoic face intimidating her. I sadly played along and said no. She looked frustrated and pulled out her phone and pointed at the profile picture. Clearly you can see me on the left smiling next to who everyone thought was Nikki. In my head, I was wondering, “Is the jig up?” Then the ‘Asian Mafia’ covered for me. My two American friends from the previous year, Angela and Wendy, told the confused girl that Nikki was hot and that they had met her the night before. They also mentioned that she was probably amongst the other American students in the back. The British girl looked to the back with curiosity, introduced herself as Camilla, and ran off.

The lecture began. It was hot, boring, and worst of all, a majority of us did not understand Chinese. Several students passed out during the lecture. Others paid attention, and some just whispered among themselves. I was sitting next to a nice, tall girl from Nebraska who was also interested in KPOP like myself! Her name was Xindi. She took notes down, writing in Chinese, so I assumed she was studious. Turns out, she was a year younger than me, and already accepted Yale! I was like “What!? And Whoopi.” Literally, all the students around sitting in our section were passed out. Then I realized the new group chat was blowing up with notifications. “Where’s Nikki?” “I hear she has a nice body” “Yea! Nikki and I go way back” “Who is this Nikki?” It was hilarious to see my old friends keep the conversation going. All I had to do was occasionally respond. All I would do is laugh or giggle and Xindi would ask “What’s wrong with you?” So, during this whole incident, I contacted the real girl, who everyone assumed to be ‘Nikki,’ who was not actually attending the program. I told her about the situation, and to be honest we had only recently met a month prior to camp. It had been 11 at night for her while it was 11 in the morning for me so I could understand why she reluctantly decided to send some profile pictures of herself, which I then used to change my own profile picture to in the group chat, to keep up the charade. And more questions were arising. Was I Korean? Did I get plastic surgery? Am I single? Oh wow, it was an experience. I obviously answered the inquiries to my liking and even had my friends who knew, insult me in the chat. Some thought it was a war between Nikki and a British girl we all call Sushi. It was a strange experience to see guys defend me. My new friend Simon, from Missouri, said that Nikki was a chill girl. Henry from Michigan said that she was super nice. Initially I was not personally up for the plan. It had been Rebecca’s. I took screen shot of the group chat conversation and sent them to the girl who had been impersonating ‘Nikki’, or the girl I was pretending to be, thinking she would feel better about herself from all the compliments. I couldn’t tell whether she was happy or not.

The day was long from over, and not until 5 days later of excursions and lectures, did people realize ‘Nikki’ never truly existed and that I was ‘her’ all along. I became really close to the prime detective, Camilla, after the whole occasion and was able to join another group within the program called Parliament. It consisted of Camilla, Alvin, and Sushi, who were British, while Simon, Charles, Frank (my roommate) and I who were the Americans. The funniest part was that some people still did not realize the fact that I was ‘Nikki’ until the two weeks of camp were over.