He clicks his phone shut – there are too many “good luck on the test!” texts, enough to promise him a sound sleep. This is the third time he has flown from his hometown to this big city to take the test. Without a score high enough this time, the college application season will be a tough one. He doesn’t want to remind himself of his upcoming “last shot,” and occupies his mind with other thoughts as he walks from the cool air of the airport into the warm, damp, semitropical wind, taking the old bus with the test-taking group to the hotel.

“This feels like another field trip,” his friend, Frank, joked as he turned over on his bed, stretching across the quilt to turn off the lamp. He yawns, glad of the sign of sleepiness. The sharp taste of his extra-mint toothpaste has faded as he slipped in a few extra hours to study last-minute vocabulary before bed. Behind him, the hotel curtain hides a night of glowing lights and rushing cars. The city invites him, but he isn’t here to have fun – he’s here to take the test.

The ceiling stares down at him as he stretches on the bed. He feels overwhelmed, as if he’s enclosed in a narrow box. He decides to get some sleep, but can’t. Earlier in the day, one of his classmates shared a document with him of “possible test answers.” He’s heard that many people have already secretly shared the file. But he refused the offer without a thought, texting his classmate, “You’ll regret it, and I will too.” But now, in the long hours of the night, he stays up thinking about the document lying quietly in his phone. He knows all he has to do is open his phone and scan through the answer key – and nobody would be the wiser. A few weeks later when scores are released, his father won’t be all anxious and sighing, and his mother wouldn’t look at him while trying to hide her disappointment. Although they never blame him for his scores, their consoling words still make him uneasy.

He lies in the dark, his breath more intense now as he pulls up his quilt, fingers tracing the patterns on the sheets. He sits up, lies back, then sits up again. His friend in the bed next to him mumbles something and turns around in his sleep. He stares at Frank as his rhythmic breathing rising up and down in the dark, envying how quickly he fell asleep.

He met Frank in high school, and he remembers all of the tutoring classes they took together. Every weekend, they would have a barbecue and his friends would order super-spicy foods and get all teary. “Make it through tomorrow and we’ll try out a new barbecue place this weekend,” Frank reassured him before going to sleep. But he hates him now, kind of. Every time Frank does better than he does. When he’s struggling and wondering over the right answer, Frank would have usually handed in his exam. Even today, as they reviewed a set of reading passages, Frank laughed and exclaimed, “This isn’t that hard!” He, on the other hand, had several questions that he was unsure of. Although knowing that this was childish and selfish, he didn’t want Frank to do better than him. While he’s been studying for this test for such a long time, Frank has already done better than him after just two short months. He watches Frank sleep, knowing he wants to score higher than him. He wants to see Frank as disappointed as he was the last two times just so that he can also say, “This isn’t that hard.”

He cannot sleep. The bed is too hard, and it squeaks when he tries to turn. Too many people have scores that meet the standard already. In his selective school, where many students go on to the Ivy League every year, scores mean everything. “Your score is not that competitive in this applicant pool,” his counselor would say. “We’ll talk again once you have a better score.” Asians are smart, and they get high scores. That’s the stereotype that he can’t escape. He remembers the sweat and intense heat of summer in the office as he watched others with high scores planning their personal statements with their counselors. He wants to be like them; he doesn’t want to sweat with panic anymore.

Finally, he leaves his bed, stumbling a little as he makes his way to his bag. Where was his phone? He searches in his bag for a while before feeling it underneath a zipper inner pocket. His hands shake: he has never done this before, but the tantalizing thought of a high score erases his inhibitions. His bag is a mess from his rifling, but he leaves it. His heart beats so loud that he fears it may wake Frank up. The cold light from his phone screen instantly envelops his sweaty face. Damn it, it’s already one o’clock? He can picture himself yawning during the test tomorrow as he opens the document.

He wakes up, forgetting how he fell asleep, to the sharp morning call and loud squeaks of the bed as Frank sits up and hangs up the phone, saying “I do have some butterflies.” But he doesn’t. He can’t wait to sit in the test center now. He is about to have a good score like everyone else, thinking to himself as he quickly texts his mother back that he “slept well.” The sky brightens as he dips his bread into his coffee. It seems that the sun will be here any minute as they wait in line to enter the test center. He breathes deeply to calm himself down. His puts aside his guilt and anxiety from yesterday – anything is worth it as long as he gets his high score. “Candidates, please take out your test IDs,” the examiner calls. He turns to open his bag – but it’s empty. Last night in his frenzy, he poured everything out looking for his phone, and forgot to repack his things when he left the hotel this morning.

The students behind him are getting impatient, but he stands there in line, his mind blank. Outside the sun has fully risen, casting pink, babyish light onto the new day.