Page 39 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
“What?” The boy glances at me without pausing. “What do you want?”
“The apples—you’re going to hit something—”
The words have barely left my mouth when his hand slips and one of the apples goes flying. It knocks over the potted plant on the bookshelf. The clay shatters at once, all the dirt spilling out onto the floor.
“Oops,” he says faintly. “Maybe I can—”
“No—no, it’s okay.” I eye the remaining apples, terrified they’re going to end up hurtling across the room too. “You just . . . stay there. I can handle this myself.”
I push past the sweaty dancing bodies and giggling clusters of friends and head straight for the cleaning cabinet in the laundry room, but one of the football team stars comes staggering out. Jonathan Sok: tall, tan, handsome, and famously terrible at holding down his liquor. He’s swinging an empty beer bottle and straddling our only broom like it’s a horse.
“Look at my horse,” he calls out with glee, galloping around the cramped space in a circle. He’s so drunk that his words are barely coherent. But he keeps talking. “Look at my horse—look at my horse—look at my horse—”
“Yes, I can see,” I say, to humor him. Mostly, I just want my broom back. “If you could please give it back to me—”
“It’s ahorse,” he protests, pouting. “Her name is Wendy.”
I’m too tired to sit around and debate the name of an inanimate object. “Sure, whatever. I really need to clean this mess up . . .”
He prances out of the way. Up until this very moment, I didn’t think people could actually prance. “You’ll have to catch me first,” he says.
“No, this isn’t a game—” I reach for the broom at the same moment he twirls around on the spot, promptly smacking me in the face with the handle.
It doesn’t hurt that much. Not enough to leave a bruise. But the sheer physical shock of it sends me reeling backward, clutching my cheek. It feels like it’s knocked something askew inside me. Or maybe I’m already off-balance; maybe I have been since I grabbed Julius and kissed him, or since I kicked him outside. Maybe this is one of those Jenga block scenarios, where the whole structure is shaking, unsteady, and all it takes is a single wrong move—or in this case, an unfortunate collision with the end of a broomstick—for everything to come crashing down.
“Okay, you know what?” I drop my hand from my sore face. Jonathan Sok gapes up at me with bleary eyes, too dazed to be fully apologetic. “This party’s over.”
“Huh?”
“I said,it’s over.” My voice comes out louder and harsher than I meant, and the conversations around me die down. The air seems to congeal. “I need to clean everything up and there are way too many people so if you could please all just . . . I don’t know.”
There’s a terrible pause. The music’s turned off, and the immediate silence is deafening by contrast. I can hear my own ears ringing.
“Well, fine. Jesus,” somebody mutters. They toss their bottle into a bin, grab their jacket, and turn to go. It’s not long before the others follow in a staggered line, collecting their bags and fumbling around for their phones, the sober ones jangling their car keys. A few stop by to thank me for hosting the party, or apologize for making a mess, but most of them don’t even look at me.
So much for fixing things.
My face and eyes burn. Slowly the house empties out, leaving me with the dirt on the floor, the overturned vases and chairs. It feels like someone’s scraped my insides raw. It’s a feeling worse than crying, because there’s no escape, nowhere for the disappointment and shame to go.
At what point, I wonder, staring at the front door as it swings shut one last time,does something becomeunfixable?At what point is a tapestry riddled with so many holes and loose threads that it’s impossible to patch it up again? That it deserves to be thrown away instead?
“Wow. This place is a mess.”
I jump at the voice, my heartbeat pounding in my throat.
I’d thought that everyone had left, but when I spin around, Julius is there. He’s stayed. There’s an unfamiliar expression on his face, something conflicted, something almost soft, like there’s an ache in him. In the orange glow of the living room lights, he looks far more vulnerable than he had outside, against the shadows and sky.
I wonder if he’s going to make me apologize for kicking him. I’m not sure I’d be able to, even if I do feel a faint pinch of guilt.
But he doesn’t say anything else. He simply rolls up his sleeves and starts smoothing out the cushions on the couch.
I stare at him. “What are you doing?”
He doesn’t glance back up. “What does it look like?”
“I . . .” No words come out. I half expect it to be a trick, but then he crouches down to clean up the confetti on the floor, his eyes dark and clear, his face serious.
Tentatively, I join him. Neither of us speaks, but the silence no longer feels like a death blow. If anything, it feels peaceful. I focus on the repetitive motions, the easy rhythm of the task, the hushed swish of the broom. Maybe it’s because we’ve already worked together before on the bike shed, but we seem to understand each other. He grabs the trash can without me even having to ask; I pass him the water when I notice him reaching up.
