I Hope This Doesn’t Find You

by Ann Liang

“I wanted to talk to you,” he says. My pulse skips. Hope. Foolish, irrational hope takes root inside me. But I wipe my voice clean of it, because there are countless directions this conversation could go. He could be here to talk to me about the math test next week. About weather patterns. About how pretty Rosie is. About how they’ve run out of buckets. If it’s not what I so desperately want it to be, at least I can save myself the embarrassment of anticipating anything. “Why?” He huffs out a laugh. “You’re too smart to act this slow. You know why. We both do.” “What, are you going to accuse me of pitying you? Of being too nice?” I ask. It’s a challenge. This is what we do, I realize. We talk in circles. We give each other riddles, confounding clues, half answers. Everything and anything but the truth. “No— No, I’m sorry for that,” he says quickly. Swallows. He’s never sounded so nervous, so unsure of himself, and I find my anger bleeding out of me. “I didn’t mean to say those things. I shouldn’t have assumed . . . There were only two possible explanations for why you were acting the way you were, and the other seemed too unlikely. And I was—scared.” “Scared?” The last of my frustration vanishes like smoke in a breeze. It’s almost funny; nobody else infuriates me like he does, but nobody else makes it this difficult to stay mad. “Of what?” “Losing,” he whispers.