Page 2 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
Plus five points for hitting a fundraiser goal.
Plus six points for coming first in the school basketball tournament.
Plus eight points for winning a class debate.
As of now, Julius is at 490 points. I’m at 495, thanks to the history test I came first in last week. Still, I can’t be complacent. Complacency is for losers.
“They better arrive soon,” Julius says, checking his watch again. The vaguely American curl of his words has a way of making the disdain in his voice more pronounced. For some time now, I’ve suspected that his accent is fake. He’s only ever set foot in the States for campus tours; there’s no logical reason why he’d sound like that, except to seem special. “I have no interest in freezing.”
I roll my eyes.The world isn’t made to serve you, I want to snap at him.But the world must have been made to laugh in my face, because right on cue, as if he’s manifested them into existence, four cars roll into the parking lot. The doors click open, one by one, and an auntie steps out from each vehicle.
Auntieis the most accurate descriptor I can think of. I don’t mean it in the blood-relative kind of way (though my own aunts are definitely all aunties), but as a state of mind, a particular mode of existence. It can be felt, it can be seen, but it can’t be strictly defined. It has its unique markers: like the massive perms, the tattooed eyebrows, the Chanel bags, the valuable jade pendant tied together with a cheap red string. But there are also noticeable variations among them.
For instance, the first auntie to strut up to the gates is wearing six-inch heels and a neon-green scarf so bright it could function as a traffic light. The auntie in line after her is dressed in more subdued colors and has naturally stern features that remind me of my mom.
I’m not surprised that the parents interested in sending their kids to our school all happen to be Asian. We make up at least 90 percent of the student population at Woodvale Academy, and that’s just a conservative estimate.Howit came to be this way is sort of a chicken-and-egg question. Are the Asian kids here because their parents wanted them to attend a selective high school for gifted students? Or were their parents drawn to this school because they heard there were a bunch of Asian kids here?
I know for my mom it was the latter. A week after my dad left, she withdrew me from the practically all-white Catholic primary school I was in at the time and moved us to the other side of town.It’s good to be surrounded by community, she told me, her voice so weary I couldn’t think of anything except to go along with whatever she wanted, that day and every day afterward.People who will understand.
Julius shifts beside me, and I jolt back to the present. When he moves forward, I step out faster in front of him, my model-student smile snapping into place. I practice it in front of the mirror every day.
“Ayi, shi lai canguan xuexiao de ma?” I say in my very best Mandarin.Are you here to tour the school?
The first auntie blinks at me, then replies in smooth English, with an American accent that could put Julius’s to shame, “Yes. I am.”
Heat shoots up my face. Without even having to look, I can sense Julius’s quiet glee, his delight at my embarrassment. And before I can recover, he’s already made his grand entrance, his spine straight, chin up, the smug curve of his lips broadening into a warm grin.
“Hello,” he says, because he never has any problem greetingotherpeople. “I’m Julius Gong, the school captain, and I’ll be showing you around campus this morning.”
I clear my throat.
He raises a dark brow at me but adds nothing.
I clear my throat again, louder.
“And this is Sadie,” he says after a beat, waving a loose hand at me. “The other captain.”
“School captain,” I can’t help emphasizing. My smile is starting to hurt my face. “I’m school captain. I’m also set to be valedictorian.”
“I honestly don’t think they care,” Julius murmurs into my ear, his voice low enough for only me to hear, his breath warm despite the freezing weather.
I try to act like he doesn’t exist. This is made somewhat difficult by the fact that all four aunties are busy scanning Julius from head to toe, like they’re trying to pick out their future son-in-law.
“How old are you?” one of the auntie asks.
“Seventeen,” Julius says readily.
“You look very tall,” another auntie says. “What’s your height?”
Julius regards her with all the patience in the world. “Six foot one.”
“Thatistall,” she says, like this is an impressive feat on par with curing cancer.It’s just genetics, I’m tempted to point out, though of course I restrain myself.He literally didn’t even have to do anything.“And you’ve been at this school for how long now?”
“Ten years,” he replies. “Almost my entire life.”
I press my tongue down against the sharp edge of my teeth. This part I could answer for him. By either curse or coincidence—and I’m increasingly leaning towardcurse—we entered Woodvale Academy in the same year. I had been the quiet girl, the shy one, the new kid nobody really wanted anything to do with, whilehewas interesting, mysterious, effortlessly cool. He had acted as if he already knew he would one day rule the place, taking everything in with that calculating black gaze of his. Then in PE, we were placed on opposing teams for a game of dodgeball. The second he had the ball in his hands, his eyes slid to me. Pinned me down. It was like those David Attenborough animal documentaries where you watch in slow motion as the serpent closes in on its prey. I was the rabbit; he was the snake.
Somehow, out of the thirty-something kids in that sweaty, poorly ventilated gym, he had pickedmeas the person to beat. But I was exceptionally good at dodging, light and fast on my feet. Each time he aimed at me, I swerved out of the way. In the end, it was only the two of us left. He kept throwing. I kept ducking. It probably would have gone on like that until the very last period, but the other kids in our class were getting tired of standing around, and the teacher had to step in and call it a tie.
