Page 25 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
Don’t undersell yourself. You make some pretty incredible cupcakes, Abigail writes back.
I snort under my breath.Are they so incredible they’d make you forget someone writing six hundred words about all the ways you’d wronged them in the past?
Okay, fair point, she concedes. She pauses, tapping her pen against the paper the way she always does in tests when she’s stuck on a question. Then the pen stills in her fingers, and her eyes light up.What if you threw a party?
A party?I stare at the words in her fun, loopy cursive, then in my own sharp, tidy letters. I’ve never hosted a party before. I’ve never even held a birthday party. My mom’s offered multiple times in the past, but it always felt too frivolous, too inconvenient.
Abigail smiles.There’s no quicker way to bond than over cheap beer and good music. I’ll make a playlist.
But who would even come?
It’s a party. People will want to come, no matter who’s hosting. Trust me.
Our friendship has always been like that—her leading the way with the big ideas, and me following reluctantly, coaxed into buying that bold red lipstick or cutting my hair or going on a spontaneous road trip or dressing up as girl group members for Halloween.Trust me, I know what I’m doing, she’ll say every time, and she’s never been wrong before. Ididget compliments on the red lipstick the few times I wore it, and our trip to the coast was the most fun I’ve had in years, picnicking on the sand with the salt breeze in my hair and the sun on my skin. I owe some of my best and brightest memories to her.
Still, I’m shocked to find myself actually considering the party. It’s not impossible. My mom and brother are always invited to stay over at our aunt’s house every two weeks or so. Sometimes I tag along, but most of the time I stay behind to focus on my schoolwork. I could host it when they’re gone, clean up before they’re back.
Because beneath my apprehension is the stronger, deeply ingrained need to be liked. To be accepted. To be forgiven. To be recognized asgood. I’ll do anything to redeem myself. The words on the bike shed flash through my mind again, and my chest contracts, like all the air has been sucked out of the room.
“Okay,” I say out loud, suppressing a grimace. “Let’s give it a shot.”
•••
I don’t even have a chance to change my mind.
Abigail jumps into action straight away, spending the next several periods scrolling through all her contacts to pick out who we should invite. There’s some kind of unspoken rule here about who you need to tell first to spread the word, who will go only if this other person is going, whowon’tgo if this other person is going. She tries to explain it to me as her nails click over the screen, tapping out the details, but it just makes my head fuzzy. I wonder if this is how she feels when I’m teaching her stoichiometry.
She’s already placing orders for alcoholic beverages when the lunch bell rings.
“I’ll handle this,” she says, sliding down from the desk and waving me off. “Go to your book club thing.”
“It’s the yearbook committee,” I correct her.
She looks at me blankly. “We still have one of those?”
“Who do you think assembled all the photos and wrote the articles and produced the physical yearbooks that everyone went around signing at the end of the year—” I stop myself. “Never mind. Just—just don’t organize anything too wild.”
Her lips purse. “Definetoo wild.”
“Abigail.”
“Fine, I’ll park the fireworks display for now. And the mini petting zoo.”
I’m worried she isn’t joking, but my thoughts are soon occupied by other concerns. The yearbook committee’s fortnightly meetings are always held in the English classroom during lunchtimes, which means they’re run by Ms. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson, who evidently hasn’t forgiven me for the email yet.
“Sadie.” She sniffs when I walk in. The committee is small enough that you could count all its members on two hands. Most of them are already inside, leaning over to correct a document on someone’s laptop, spreading out flyers over a desk, pulling the cling wrap from their sandwiches as they wait for the printer to load.
Julius is here too. He’s reclining in one of the old plastic chairs like it’s a throne, his long legs stretched in front of him. And he’s wearing his blazer. I’d folded it neatly inside an old shopping bag and dropped it off at his locker early this morning to avoid the awkwardness of handing it directly to him. At the sound of my name, his black eyes flicker up to me.
My pulse skips.
Yesterday afternoon still feels too fresh, too raw, like an open flame between us. The memories smolder inside my head. Him with his damp hair falling into his eyes, the weight of his blazer around me, his slender hand around my wrist.
And it’s irrational, because I’ve seen him almost every day for the past ten years. I should be used to it by now—tohim.He’s as permanent a fixture as the clock hanging on the walls, the view of the emerald school oval from the windows, the dull circular patterns in the carpet. But something feels different. Slightly askew.
“. . . listening to me, Sadie?”
