Page 22 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
“Overcritical,” he jeers at me.
“Manipulative—”
“Judgmental—Hey, watch it.”
I jerk back and lower the hose, but it’s too late. The water’s sprayed everywhere, soaking through half his shirt and his hair. By some stroke of luck or dark magic, the black strand hanging over his forehead remains unmoved. But everything else about him is disheveled. His sleeves are wrinkled from the damp, his tie unraveling from his collar. As he stands there, dripping wet, blinking fast against the water in his eyes, and wipes a gloved hand over his face, a bubble of laughter lurches to my throat.
“Sadie.” He says my name like it’s in itself a curse, his features tight with shock and disdain. And maybe all the recent drama has messed with my brain, because rather than tripping over myself with apologies or fretting over lost time, I double over, cackling.
“I’m—sorry,” I squeeze out through my giggles. “I didn’t—mean—”
His eyes narrow, but it’s hard to take him seriously when the front of his shirt is plastered to his skin. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you did that on purpose.”
“I swear—it wasn’t—” I clutch my stomach, breathless with laughter, and it hits me out of nowhere that this is the first time I’ve really laughed in almost two days. It’s like my body is a rubber band, stretched too tight in every direction—and now it’s finally snapped, the tension released. I gulp down the cold, sweet air, filling my lungs with it.
Then he grabs the hose faster than I can react and turns it on me.
I yelp.
The violent blast of water is so cold it almost burns. It’s in my nose, my half-opened mouth, the inside of my shirt. I can feel it running down my spine, pooling into my shoes. And the only clear thing in my blurred vision is Julius’s face. He’s smiling now, evidently pleased with himself.
“I’ll kill you,” I decide on the spot. “I’m literally going to kill you.”
I lunge for the hose again, but he holds it up high over his head, out of reach. Taunting me.
“Give it,” I snap.
“No way.”
“I said,give it—” I jump and manage to wrap one hand around the end. He doesn’t let go, though, just pulls it back as if we’re playing tug-of-war, and next thing I know we’re wrestling with it, and the water’s still pumping out, drenching us both. I’m choking and shivering and yelling at him but somehow I’m laughing too, because of how ridiculous this is. Because I haven’t had the chance to do something so ridiculous in a while, to behave like a child.
It’s only when we’re both soaked from head to toe and breathing hard that he steps back. Takes one look at me. Then abruptly twists away.
“What?” I say, confused.
“Our school shirts are made from polyester” comes his bizarre reply. He appears to be staring at the trimmed grass beneath his feet with extreme focus.
“Since when were you interested in textiles?”
He ignores my question. “And white polyester,” he says, his voice strained, “once wet, becomes transparent.”
I’m pretty sure some small part of me dies right there and then. Simply implodes. Disintegrates into ash. My skin is so hot I don’t even register the ice-cold water anymore. I wrap my arms around myself in a futile attempt to cover up and make a frantic dive for my schoolbag before remembering that,of course, my blazer isn’t there. I left it inside my locker, all the way on the other side of campus. Because that’s my life now, apparently.
Just when I’m contemplating whether I should dig myself a ditch, Julius says, “My bag. My blazer’s inside.”
I pause. On their own, the words make perfect sense. But strung together, and coming from him, they might as well be an alien language. There’s no way he’s making an offer—
Except he continues, with some impatience, “The front compartment. Just don’t rifle through any of my stuff.”
I don’t move. Surely, this is a trap.
He sighs. “If you won’t get it yourself, I’m going to have to turn around—”
“No—don’t you dare,” I say hurriedly, even though his head remains bowed, his eyes fixed on the grass. “I-I’ll grab it.”
My hair is still dripping water as I unzip his bag, leaving dark splotches in the fabric. His blazer is folded neatly at the top, ironed smooth. On him, it’s a perfect fit, practically tailored to his frame, the lines straight and sharp at the shoulders. But when I drape it over myself, it falls around me like a cape. I don’t mind it though. It’s warm and dry and it smells like him: like mint and cedar and the beginnings of something sweet, familiar, something that reminds me of summer when we were fourteen years old. Then I catch myself inhaling, hugging the soft fabric closer to my shivering body, and freeze.
There must be water lodged in my brain for me to be acting this way.
