Page 30 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
I scan through the page, but even though a dozen other celebrities are name-dropped, the quote isn’t attributed to anyone. “It, um, just does.”
“One can only assume it’s universally true, then.” He says it in a brisk, offhand manner, but his tone is sour.
Then he catches sight of someone over my shoulder, and his grimace twists deeper, as if the sharp thing in his shoe has transformed into a lethal scorpion.
“Hello.”
I spin around to find James Luo striding up to us, his palms spread out, his mouth stretched into a wide grin. He looks exactly like he does in his author photo, with his slicked-back dark hair and square glasses; he’s even wearing what appears to be the same turtleneck. But he’s taller than I expected. When Julius stands up, a few inches of distance remain between them.
“I can’t believe you didn’t ask me about the interview right away,” James is saying as he thumps Julius on the back so hard you’d think Julius was choking. “You know how happy I always am to help you out with your cute school projects, even when my schedule is packed.”
Julius’s expression darkens. “It’s not really a school project. The principal signed us up for this.”
“You’re right.” James nods sagely, his eyes sweeping the room. I swear they light up when they land on a pyramid of his books placed right in the middle of the shelves. “School projects are very important.”
Julius scowls but doesn’t say anything.
“And you.” James suddenly turns his attention to me. “You must be Sadie Wen. You’re practically a household name.”
I conceal my surprise. I’d thought he was grossly exaggerating when he told me on the phone that hislittle brother talks about me all the time. But then I notice the crimson color creeping up Julius’s neck, and the only logical explanation for it is that whatever he’s said is either terrible or wonderful. “What has he said about me?”
Julius looks horrified. James, however, looks delighted.
“Oh, you know. When you beat him in that biology test last month he wouldn’t shut up about it fordays—”
“Stop,” Julius mutters out of the side of his mouth. He refuses to meet my gaze.
But James continues with good cheer, “And he’s always going on about how intimidatingly smart you are. How hard he has to work to keep up with you.”
Intimidatingly smart.I hold on to those words, examine them up close. I’ve never thought of myself as intimidating or scary, yet it feels like the greatest compliment. A confirmation of my wildest hopes. Julius Gong takes me seriously. He isn’t just competing because he thinks it’d be embarrassing to lose. He’safraidof losing to me.
“You know,” James says, “he got really sick last summer, but he wouldn’t even rest. He brought all his textbooks back to his bed because he could barely stand and insisted that, like, if he didn’t study hard every single day you’d pull ahead—”
“Wait.” My gaze swivels to Julius. “You were sick?”
That doesn’t make sense—Irememberlast summer. On the very first day, he’d sent me an incredibly difficult equation from some kind of advanced university paper as a challenge. I’d solved it just to spite him, and dug through all the papers available online to find something even trickier, and sent that back. We’d then fallen into the habit of exchanging questions every morning. We never said anything else. Just the screenshot and the answer. One blow traded for another. He would respond each time without fail, and we’d kept it up all the way until school started again.
How could he have been ill?
“It wasn’t that serious,” Julius says, running a hand through his hair. “And even with a fever, my brain still works better than the average person’s.”
“That’s not how you acted.” James raises his brows at me. I’ve seen Julius make that exact expression so many times it’s like looking at a mirror image of him. “When he wasn’t studying, he was sulking.Kept asking our mother to make him his favorite soup, luo song tang—”
“I thought you said you only had twenty minutes to do the interview?” Julius interrupts loudly. He sits back down and pulls out the Moleskine notebook he always uses to take notes. “Shouldn’t we be getting started?”
“Ah, of course.” James beams, and I find myself thinking,Their smiles are different.James smiles like he has an infinite number of them, like it costs him nothing. But Julius’s smiles are sharp, sudden, sometimes ledged with mockery or laced with poison. His real smiles are so rare that each one feels like a miracle, like you’ve won something. “What do you want to know?”
I want to know if Julius was afraid of the dark when he was younger. If he ever believed in ghosts or Santa or the Loch Ness monster. I want to know where he studies, whether it’s by the light of the living room window or alone in his bedroom, if he keeps the door wide open or closed. I want to know what he would dress up as for Halloween, what song he picks out at karaoke. How early he rises, how late he sleeps. What dishes their mother cooks for the Spring Festival, what he talks about on long car rides. I want to collect these pieces of information like ammunition. Part of me wants to embarrass him, and part of me is simply, overwhelmingly curious.
But we’re here to interview James about his career, not his brother, so I restrain myself and ask him instead about where he draws his inspiration, how much time he devotes to writing each day, what the drafting process is like.
“For me, you see, the words are like sparrows,” he says, rubbing his eyes. I blink hard, but I’m not imagining it. His glasses are, apparently, frames only; his fingers pass right through them. “I could spend the whole day chasing them, but they’d only startle and fly away from me. It’s more important to stay still, and let the sparrows come on their own.”
“Mm,” I say, hastily tearing my gaze away from his fake glasses to write down his response. “That’s very interesting.”
“Now, obviously, there are days when you do have to coax the sparrows down with a bit of birdseed,” he continues. “Certain types of birdseed work better than others. And sometimes you think you need the premium brand, but it’s in fact the organic brands, or not even a particular brand at all—only the berries you pluck in the wild—that are the most effective.”
“Um. Sorry.” I pause. “I’m sort of getting lost with this analogy. What . . . are the birdseeds meant to be?”
