What If It's Us (What If It's Us #1)

by Becky Albertalli

I’m thirsty, so I get up and go to the condiment bar. While I’m pouring some complimentary water into a plastic cup, I check out this bulletin board with tons of flyers for campus internships, a Resist poster, some phone numbers, dog walker job listing, random ads and— My face. My face is on the bulletin board. The water spills over the cup and I don’t even have the common sense or decency to immediately wipe it because that’s my face on the bulletin board. What did I do? What am I wanted for? Wait. No. This isn’t some police sketch or shady security camera snapshot. My face is cropped out from that picture where I smashed a snowball in Hudson’s face. Is this from him? I almost call for Dylan, but I’m still speechless because there’s a memo too: Are you the boy from the post office? I feel super awkward right now, and I can’t believe I’m doing this, but here we go. We talked for a few minutes at the post office on Lexington. I was the guy in the hot dog tie. You were the guy mailing stuff back to your ex-boyfriend. I loved your laugh. Wish I’d gotten your number. Want to give me a second chance here, universe? Arthur.Seuss@gmail.com Um. My heart races because the universe has got to be fucking with me. I tear down the flyer from the thumbtack. That’s definitely my face. This is for me. I’m supposed to find this. I just found this. This . . . this doesn’t happen. Yeah. This doesn’t happen.