I Hope This Doesn’t Find You

by Ann Liang

“I’ll have you know,” Julius begins, low and furious, “that I was not named after a Roman dictator.” I’m so disoriented, so shaken still, that I can only say: “You weren’t?”

“Oh, I know you. You’re the other captain, right? My little brother talks about you all the time.”

“Be quiet.” I clamp both my hands over his mouth. “You’re prettier when you don’t talk.”

“I thought you hated it,” he says. His voice is scratchy, like he’s swallowed sand. I frown. Tug absently at the strand. “Did I say that?” “You did. In your email.” And then with his eyes on me, without having to pause or think twice, he recites, “From the bottom of my heart, I really hope your comb breaks and you run out of whatever expensive hair products you’ve been using to make your hair appear deceptively soft when I’m sure it’s not, because there’s nothing soft about you, anywhere at all.”

“Because,” he says quietly, a curious expression on his face. I’ve never seen him so serious. So sincere. “You’re the only person worth paying attention to.”

“And Sadie is the light of my life,” Julius says, his lip curling, even though there’s an odd note to his tone. Something that could be confused for sincerity. “The sun in my sky, the source of all my joy. She’s the reason I wake up every morning excited to go to my classes. Not a day goes by where I’m not grateful that she exists, that she’s there, that I get to talk to her and pass her in the halls and listen to her laugh.”

“You have to understand . . . If you knew the effect you had on me, how often I think about you, the things I would do for you . . . I wouldn’t stand a chance against you ever again. You would have taken everything from me,” he goes on in a rush, like the words are burning him from within, like he has to get it out before the pain becomes overwhelming. “Not just a debating championship or some points for a test or a fancy award or a spot in a competition—but my whole heart. My pride. God, my sanity. It would be all over. You would annihilate me.”

But I kept looking for signs that would suggest otherwise. I kept wondering if it was still possible. Because I’m willing to lose everything,” he says, his eyes blacker than the surrounding darkness, than the sky outside, “so long as I don’t lose you.”