I Hope This Doesn’t Find You

by Ann Liang

“I trust that you’re the right person to do it,” she’d said with a wide smile, her gnarled hands folded neatly across her desk.

“Cold?” “Nope,” I say through chattering teeth. “Not at all.” “Your skin is blue, Sadie.” “Must be the lighting.” “You’re also shaking.” “With anticipation,” I insist.

From that point on, Julius Gong became the bane of my existence. The issue is that nobody else seems to share my frustrations, because he only ever bares his fangs at me.

Obviously this has been communicated well, because the communication at this school is flawless. Now, have you seen our drinking fountains? We have a great filtration system . . .” Or why there’s a construction site next to the cafeteria.

Julius is also there. He’s standing before the aunties, his styled hair glinting in the rising orange light, with his perfect skin and perfect uniform and perfect posture. Just seeing him makes me want to put my fist through something hard—ideally, his jaw.

I latch on to these little pieces of validation, how much I want to be liked, to make everyone happy. Sometimes I think I would give them one of my own arms if they asked very nicely.

“That boy’s really making it his life mission to get on your nerves.”

“You go around smiling and charming the teachers and agreeing to anything anyone asks of you like you’re some kind of angel, and then you go back and write your secret little emails about how much you hate my guts and wish to strangle me—” “It’s called being nice,” I cut in.

“You know what I think?” he murmurs, drawing so close his mouth skims my ear, his cruel face blurring in my vision. My breath catches. Goose bumps rise over my bare skin. “I think you’re obsessed with me, Sadie Wen.”

“I was just venting—” “Have you ever heard of a diary, Sadie? It might be a worthy investment.” “Don’t disgust me. I would never write diary entries about you—” He cocks his head. Smiles with his lips but not his eyes. “And yet it’s clear I’m all you ever think about.”

A video is playing on loop over the screen. A fan-edit, to be exact, of Caz Song—that popular actor all my cousins in China have a major crush on. We watch about five seconds of him running his hand through his hair to special flash effects before Principal Miller abruptly retracts the phone and scrolls down. “Sorry,” he says, turning the screen around again. “Not that one. This.”

I’m already around Julius Gong way too often—I can’t imagine spending even more time with him. I don’t think I’ll be able to without losing my sanity or leaving his body in a ditch.

I’m supposed to be the reliable child in the family, the person most likely to succeed and turn our lives around. My mom and my brother are counting on me.

“What?” “Nothing. I’ve just . . . never seen you with your hair down before.” I feel myself bristle. “And?” “What do you mean, and?” His mouth puckers. “It was only an observation.”

“What is that?” I frown at him. “Why on earth are you wearing gloves? We’re not here to rob a building.” “Protecting my skin. I have very nice hands—as you have already observed in the past. It would be a shame to ruin them.”

It’s what I’ve always done, or tried to do. Fix the back door in the bakery. Fix the error in the math worksheet. Fix the seating arrangement for student council. Fix the gap in my family, the holes in my life, patch everything up, smooth everything over.

Because beneath my apprehension is the stronger, deeply ingrained need to be liked. To be accepted. To be forgiven. To be recognized as good. I’ll do anything to redeem myself.

“Hi,” I say, my mind spinning, struggling to place it. “I’m Sadie Wen, calling from Woodvale—” To my surprise, he laughs. “Oh, I know you. You’re the other captain, right? My little brother talks about you all the time.” I falter. Beside me, Julius has gone very still, his complexion pale. “Your . . . little brother?” “Yeah,” James says breezily. “My brother, Julius Gong.”

“And he’s always going on about how intimidatingly smart you are. How hard he has to work to keep up with you.”

His smiles really do feel like miracles. Especially when you’re on the receiving end of them.

“I’m sorry, did you just compare me to a serial killer?” “No,” she says, with too much emphasis. “Although, just to put it out there, even if you were a serial killer, I would absolutely stick by you and sharpen your knives.” “How sweet.” “I’d also clean the blood off your bathroom floor,” she adds brightly. “I was reading this fascinating article the other day about how to use basic laundry detergents to do just that. You wouldn’t have to worry about leaving behind any evidence.”

“You look how you always look, Julius,” I manage. His eyes are wary. “And how is that?” “Completely pretentious,” I say. I shouldn’t elaborate any further, but something about the stiffness of his posture, the rare vulnerability in his face, makes me add: “In a nice way though.”

I accepted long ago that my definition of fun tends to differ from the general teen demographic. Fun is baking a new batch of egg tarts, or beating my previous record for the two-hundred-meter dash, or adding my grades to my academic spreadsheet. It’s not roller coasters or getting wasted on a beach or participating in a game that requires you either embarrass yourself or expose yourself to a number of people. But I’m clearly the only one with reservations.

Julius touches a finger to his lips like he can’t quite believe it either. Then he straightens. Cocks his head, his eyes black with cool amusement. “You call that a kiss?” he says on a scoff. His voice comes out lower than usual, and I can see the effort in the movement of his throat. “That was barely anything.”

“What about this, then?” I challenge, and before he can reply, I grab the collar of his shirt and pull him to me. This time, when our lips meet, I don’t back away. I deepen the kiss, letting my fingers slide up his neck, curl into his hair. For one moment, I can feel his shock, the tension running through his frame like a heated wire, and I think: I’ve won. I’ve proven him wrong. Then he kisses me back, presses me closer, and something inside me slides off-balance.

Julius isn’t just a boy. He’s my enemy. My equal. My point of comparison. He’s the one I’m constantly trying to outrun, to outsmart, to impress. He’s the ever-moving target in my peripheral vision, the person I’ve mapped all my plans around, the start and finish line and everything in between. All my dreams and nightmares are about him and only him.

“What’s wrong with you?” I finally choke out. “If you didn’t want to kiss me, you could have just refused.” “You think I had a chance to? You grabbed me—” “You stood up too,” I cut in, my voice trembling with fury. “You kissed me back—” “It was a natural reflex,” he says. “Not that I expect you to know, but—” “Who’s to say I wouldn’t know?” That shuts him up.

“That . . . wasn’t your first time kissing someone,” he says. A half question. “Of course not.”

“Who?” he asks. A full question now. I lean over the railing, my head turned away from him. “Why do you care?” “I don’t,” he says heatedly. “But I want to know.”

“Does he go to our school?” he presses, then corrects himself. “No, that isn’t possible. I’m sure I would have heard rumors about it.” I stay strategically silent. “On vacation, then? At camp?”

“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.”

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.

“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.”

At what point, I wonder, staring at the front door as it swings shut one last time, does something become unfixable? 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?

the teacher had explained to us how memories are formed. What kind of memories stick with us over the years. It’s not always the ones you think matter the most, the typical milestones.

“I really can’t stand it when people are angry at me. Like, I know it might be simple for others, but I can’t focus on anything else. I can’t just forget about it and go on with my own life. It’s like there’s something hard wedged inside my chest. I’ll always feel guilty. I’ll always want to make amends.”

Because having one parent is enough. Until it isn’t.

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

He makes a faint, incredulous sound that’s muffled by my palm, his breath tickling my skin. His expression doesn’t change much, but I can sense his surprise, how it flickers beneath the surface. “Did you just call me pretty?” “When you don’t talk,” I emphasize. “Which you’re doing at present.” “So you admit it.”

“It’s so soft. Even softer than it looks,” I murmur, playing with a dark lock of it between two fingers. He’s gone very still before me, his pupils black and dilated. I can feel the air ripple with his next expelled breath, almost a pained sigh. “I always did like your hair.”

“How do you . . . remember all that?” I ask. “I have all your emails memorized word for word,” he says, then instantly looks like he regrets having spoken.

“Well, Julius Gong. It sounds like you’re the one obsessed with me.” He rolls his eyes, but the skin of his neck turns a deeper shade of crimson.

Why do you always single me out?” “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.”

“Glitter is, without a doubt, the worst thing humanity has ever invented.” For reasons that escape me, I decide that the best response to this is: “What about weapons of war?” “Excuse me?” “Nothing,” I backpedal.

“All of this is to say that Julius is lovely,” I say quickly. “And Sadie is the light of my life,”

“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.”

“Not even if they did this?” he asks quietly, and he leans forward. All at once he’s too close, overwhelmingly close. I’m frozen to the spot as he pauses on purpose, his mouth bare inches from the base of my neck, so I can feel his breath trembling against my skin. “Do you need me to demonstrate further?”

You literally need a helmet and a harness just to climb into bed.” “Which definitely solves the hooking‑up problem,” he says. “Don’t sound so certain. Some people are into that kind of thing.”

“Wow. I never pegged you as the type.” “Shut up,” I grumble. “I was just making a point.” “So was I.”

“Let’s go back to the drawing board.” “Your wish is my command,” he says sweetly. Sweetly enough that I stare up at him and stumble over my thoughts and fall headfirst into his trap. He starts laughing again as my face overheats. “You really like that, don’t you? So you are the type—”