Page 17 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
Your personality sucks, your face sucks, and your existence sucks. I don’t like you very much at all. You should run out in front of a train.
The room’s attention swivels back to me.
I duck my head, my whole face red-hot with humiliation. Even though it’s notmyemail, the reference is clear—and, evidently, deliberate.
“Can somebody tell me what’s wrong with this?” Samantha asks. Nobody volunteers, and for a few incredibly naive, foolish seconds, I think I might be safe. We can get back to that nice lecture on how posting selfies will result in our inevitable murder. But then Samantha looks out at the room. “Participation is important. If we’re feeling shy, I’ll pick someone at random. How about . . .”
So long as it’s not Julius, I pray in my head, my fingernails digging into my skirt.Just don’t let it be Julius—
“You,” Samantha says, and points right at Julius.
Maybe I should run out in front of a train.
“Me?” Julius repeats as our class dissolves into furious whispers. When he rises from his seat, his back straight, hands in his pockets, I’m offered an unwanted view of his side profile. For once, he doesn’t look smug about being called on to answer a question.
“Yes. What’s the problem with this example?” Samantha prompts. “Should someone—no matter how they’re feeling—send out an email like this?”
Julius’s eyes cut to me, quick as lightning, cold as ice. “Well, I don’t think anyone should everwritean email like this to begin with. It’s remarkably immature, and a sign of the sender’s unresolved anger issues—not to mention low self-esteem.”
“But what if the recipient deserved it?”
I don’t realize I’ve stood up and spoken until everyone whirls around to stare at me, the concentrated weight of their attention like a hammer to the stomach. But I’m only staring back at one person. Julius. The tightness of his jaw, the darkness of his eyes.
“So you’re saying it’s the recipient’s fault,” Julius says with a laugh. “Wow. Sure.”
Okay, stop talking, the logical part of my brain tells me.Shut up and sit down right now.
But my mouth seems to have cut ties with my brain. “I’m just saying that maybe if the recipient were alittleless infuriating and wasn’tquiteso adamant on tormenting the sender for years on end—”
“Maybe if someone weren’t so sensitive—”
“It’s called having a normal human reaction. Emotions, you understand. I know that may be a foreign concept—”
“Excuse me, you two,” Samantha calls tersely from the podium. “This isn’t the point of the activity.”
We both do something we would never dare with a teacher—not even an art teacher—we ignore her.
“You didn’t seem to care so much about anyone else’s reaction when you were writing the emails,” Julius says, his voice rising.
“Again, I didn’t mean for them toget out,” I snap. I’m very distantly aware that the hall has gone dead quiet, that everyone’s watching, listening, witnessing this. Someone’s holding up their phone. But nothing registers except the anger pumping thick through my blood, the desire to destroy the boy standing across from me. “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.”
“Think aboutkilling,” I amend, grinding my teeth together. I could kill him right now.
“See?” Julius gestures to me, as if delivering a speech. “This is what I mean about the unresolved anger issues.”
“You mean that you’re the source of them? Because yeah, you’d be correct—”
“Silence!”Samantha yells.
I snap my mouth shut and pull my attention away from Julius.
It could just be the unflattering artificial lights in the hall, but Samantha’s face has turned an awful shade of gray. The veins in her forehead are on open display, so visible they could be used as a diagram for first-year premed students. “Never,” she seethes, “in all my years of visiting schools have I come across students so—sorudeand undisciplined. This behavior is absolutely unacceptable.” She stabs a finger toward our badges. “And you’re meant to be the school captains? This is the kind of example you choose to set for your peers?”
