Page 38 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
I stay strategically silent.
“On vacation, then? At camp?”
He’s right.
It must show on my face, because he presses in, “It was at camp, wasn’t it? One of those outdoor adventure camps?”
The idea that I would attend a camp to learn fun little skills like woodcutting and weaving and marshmallow baking instead of something academically rigorous is too offensive for me to swallow. “Coding camp,” I say, then see the satisfied curve of his mouth. He’d been baiting me. Of course. He knows I wouldn’t be caught dead wasting my summer on a camp like that when I could be getting ahead of the coursework.
“So a coding camp,” he says, turning this information over on his tongue like it’s something sour. “What’s his name?”
My shoulders hunch in self-defense. “You seem awfully invested in the details for someone who doesn’t care.”
“I already told you, I don’t.” He pauses, his lips sculpted into a sarcastic smile. “I’m curious to know who would have such—peculiar taste—to have dated you. Unless, of course, you’re making it up—”
“I’m not,” I snap, pushing off from the railing and whipping my head around. A misstep. He looks dangerous in the darkness, the scattered lights sharpening the hollows of his cheekbones, the bladed look in his eyes. “His name was Ben. He asked me out after our second seminar together. You can look him up, if you want. He was a swimmer, and he tutored kids during spring break. Everyone said he was attractive.”
I leave out the part where he broke up with me only two weeks after our first date. The night before that, there’d been a game of trivia, and my team had beaten his. I’d gone to him when it was over, holding up the plastic trophy and beaming, expecting him to be impressed, but he hadn’t even congratulated me. When he dumped me outside the lecture room, he’d said it was because I was too intense.Everything’s a competition with you, Sadie, he’d accused, rubbing a hand over his face.You only care about winning. It just gets really exhausting being around you all the time, you know what I’m saying? I want someone who can, like, chill out.
It’s funny, thinking about it now. Because Julius has also accused me of plenty of things in the past, but he’s never faulted me for being intense. For being too much of anything. For wanting to win. He’s part of the reason why winning is worth it.
“Did you . . . think he was attractive?” Julius asks. The words sound forced out.
I consider this. Yes, I could understand on a general, biological level why others found Ben attractive. He had a swimmer’s body, thick lashes, a smile like the sun. Every time I think about him I associate him with summer: salt air and warm sand and open waves. Nothing like Julius, with his cold glances and sharp edges. Julius is the dead of winter, ice on your tongue and white frost and the ghost of your breath in a dark hall.
But I don’t tell him that. “Yeah,” I say, lifting my chin. “Of course. And he was a great kisser too.”
He’s silent.
It makes me nervous. “What? Are you jealous?” I say it only to provoke a response out of him, to annoy him.
What I don’t expect is for his cheeks to flush. For his hands to bunch into fists. “Why would I be jealous?” he demands with a sneer, distaste written all over his face. “I would rather die than kiss you again.”
Shame burns my skin. It feels like my whole body has caught fire. The flames shoot through my bloodstream, fill my throat, scald the inside of my lungs. It hurts. It hurts so much that the only way to distract myself from it is with rage. The need for revenge, to hurt him back, hurt him more. I lurch forward and do the first thing I can think of: I kick him. Hard, right in the knee. The sound of impact is even louder than I anticipated, a terribly satisfying thud that vibrates through my own bones.
He lets out a hiss, part pain and part surprise. “Have you completelylost your mind, Sadie?”
“You deserve it,” I say hotly, my blood pounding in my ears. My head is buzzing. Nothing about this night feels real.
“Sadie—”
But I’ve wasted enough time. It was an awful idea to follow him out here in the first place. What had I been looking for? What had I expected from Julius Gong? So when he calls me again—maybe to demand an explanation, maybe just to throw out another insult—I ignore him. I toss my hair over my shoulder and march back into the house, slamming the door behind me so hard the glass panes rattle.
The house has descended into complete anarchy.
For a few moments, I can only stand there and take the scene in, my mouth agape with horror. Someone’s pouring liquor into one of my mom’s favorite porcelain vases and using it as a giant wineglass, the citrus scent of alcohol wafting into the air so strong I can almost taste it.Threecouples are making out on the couch in one row, as if they’re in a competition to see who can make the most disturbing sounds or flash the most skin. The dining table has been pushed back to make room for a noisy game of beer pong; all the chairs are stacked up, the fruit bowl set down on the floor. Every now and then, a yell of frustration or delight is followed by a chorus of cheers. There are wrappers everywhere, half-empty plastic cups, glitter from god knows where. Even worse, I’m now noticing that people are wearing their outdoor shoes indoors, leaving muddy marks all over the beige carpet.
I try to take a deep breath, but I end up choking on it.
This is a nightmare.
And this is entirely my fault.
I’ve never felt so foolish, so helpless. I shouldn’t have hosted this party. Ben was right about me. I’m not the kind of girl who canchill out, the kind of person who invites the whole year level to their house and sits back to let the destruction happen. I need to get everything under control. “Can you please set those down?” I ask the boy closest to me. He’s on the baseball team, and he’s currently juggling five apples at once.
But the music has been turned up to full volume, the heavy bass shaking the walls. My voice is all but drowned out.
“Hello?” I try again, louder, straining my vocal cords. When that doesn’t work, I tap his shoulder.
