Page 67 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
“And since when did mytonematter to you? Last time I checked, you didn’t even want to look my way.”
“Are you kidding? I—” His sentence dissolves into a muffled curse as my canoe slams against his, the sudden impact jolting both of us out of our seats. “Seriously, Sadie, watch out—”
“I’m not doing it on purpose,” I interject, pushing myself upright with a huff. “Maybe if you gave me more space—”
“I can’t control the speed of this,” he says. A shameless lie. He just doesn’t want to risk losing to me.
“Well, then, neither can I,” I say, paddling faster.I’m winning, I think. We’re more than halfway there, the opposite shore close enough for me to see the shine of damp on the stones, the grass tall enough to reach my knees.I’ll make it before him.But then my paddle gets caught on something in the water. A weed, maybe, or a net. I try to yank it free, but I lose control, and it’s like everything unfolds in slow motion. I can only stare in horror as my paddle swings out sideways—as Julius attempts to duck, but leans too far backward, and crashes into the water, sending a great wave rushing toward me—
And my stomach drops, gravity slipping out from under my body as my canoe flips upside down.
The water tastes absolutely disgusting.
Like fish and seaweed and mud. It pours into my mouth when I gasp, choke, flounder in the cold. My bones feel like stone, heavy, clumsy, and my clothes are cemented to my skin. It’s hard to move, impossible to breathe. For a few moments I can’t see anything except the darkness stretching down, can’t feel anything except the chill of the lake and the silt sticking to the back of my teeth—
And then I break through the water, gasping, blinking hard. Color rushes back to me first: the stark blue sky, the aureate sun melting into the clouds. Then sensation in my fingertips. Then sound. My pounding heart. The distant yells from the shore, telling us to stay put or swim, Ms. Hedge’s shrill voice rising over the others. But we’re too far away from them to wait for their help.
Julius is already pulling himself back into his canoe. Water leaks from his hair, onto his cheeks, and I make the most absurd observation: that his hair is even more intensely black when it’s wet. He’s breathing hard when he collapses safely over the canoe seat, soaked all the way through, leaves sticking to his shirt. Then he turns to me, his dark eyes narrowed.
I kick hard against the water, seized by the sudden fear that he might not help me up. That he’ll just watch me struggle and thrash like an utter fool from the comfort of the canoe. I wouldn’t put it past him.
He pauses. His expression is inscrutable, the sharp planes of his face giving nothing away. One excruciating second passes. Two. Three—
He extends a hand.
Both shame and relief fill my lungs. I take it, or try to, my fingers slipping against his. But his grip is firm, secure, and in one movement, he drags me up, out of the water. The only problem is that our combined weight pulls me over the side too fast; I crash gracelessly against him inside the canoe, his body pressed to the seat, mine pressed to his.
“Sadie,” he manages, with a small, breathless sound, a suppressed groan. “Sadie—you’re—”
“I know, I know, sorry,” I say, my face warming as I struggle to rise. My hands keep sliding over the wood, failing to find purchase.
“Won’t youhurry—”
“You don’t think I’m trying?”
“I think you’re awfully close to me—”
“Not by choice,” I protest shrilly, even though he is right. We’re far too close, the space between us nonexistent. I should be freezing right now, but his skin is shockingly hot, burning underneath my chest.
He squeezes his eyes shut. The muscle in his jaw stands out. “This is your fault—”
“Myfault?”
“I told you to be more careful. You didn’t have to go that fast.”
“We were racing,” I say, by way of self-defense. It’s the one thing that we’ve always been able to agree on, the one principle we’ve always stuck to: Nothing matters as much as winning.
I can feel the thud of his heartbeat beneath me when he demands, “Haven’t you beaten me enough times already?”
“No,” I say, my voice fierce. “No, it’ll never be enough.”
He shakes his head. Mutters under his breath, “You make my life so difficult.”
I finally manage to sit up. The cold air immediately encircles me, and I almost miss the warmth of his body.
“Aren’t you going to give me a hand over here?” he asks, still lying back in the seat, the lower half of his body pinned down by my knees. “You were the one who pushed me into the lake to begin with.”
I scoff. Deliberately place my hands on my hips. “For the record, I didn’tpushyou—”
