Page 29 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
“I can’t believe I didn’t know you had a brother,” I tell Julius.
He makes the same face he’s been making all afternoon—a kind of pained grimace, like there’s something sharp stuck to the sole of his leather shoes. “Yeah, well, most people don’t.” With one hand, he pulls open the glass door to the bookstore and follows me inside. “We don’t share the same family name, and he graduated six years ago. So.”
“Right,” I say, lowering my voice.
It’s very quiet inside the store; you can hear the blaze of the fireplace, the sound of rustling paper, the soft thud of a book being placed back onto a shelf. The displays at the front are lined with the most recent bestsellers—a mix of politicians’ memoirs, brick-sized fantasy novels, and self-help books that contain expletives in the title—and handwritten notes from the staff, gushing over their favorite picks for the season. The cream-colored walls are decorated with recommendations too, as well as posters advertising a debut author’s launch tomorrow.
At the back of the bookstore, past the Mystery and Thrillers section, the aisles open up to a mini café. The aroma of fresh-ground coffee seeps through the air, layered over the distinct, smoky book scent I’m used to smelling in our school library. There are only two tables available, and an elderly woman has already taken the one closest to the window, a plate of half-eaten raspberry cheesecake set down before her.
I sling my schoolbag over the chair by the other table and tug out my phone and laptop to take notes for the interview. Then I sit and cross my legs. And uncross them again.
“What?” Julius asks as he sits down across from me.
I stare back at him. “I literally didn’t say anything.”
“I know you want to say something though,” he presses. “You’ve been all weird and fidgety since lunch. Just get it out already.”
My lips purse. The truth is that I am a little, kind of, just somewhat extremely curious—or maybebewilderedis the better word for it. I’ve always conceived of Julius as a singular, self-sufficient entity, a lone force. I wouldn’t expect him to be abrotherto someone else, the same way I wouldn’t expect the mahogany table to have a sibling. Because that cracks open the door to thousands of other bizarre possibilities: of Julius as a young child, of Julius as a boy who goes on summer vacations and has movie nights and family dinners, who wrestles his brother for the remote control or sulks in his room after a fight or goes on a hunt around the house for his favorite shirt. It makes him feel too real, too human.
But that’s not the only strange thing about this discovery.
“Why . . . are your surnames different?” I ask, then wonder if this is a sensitive topic. Maybe their parents are divorced. Maybe he comes from an incredibly complicated background, where his mom isn’t really his mom or his dad is his brother’s dad but not actually his dad or something. That would explain whyhe’sbeen moody ever since his brother agreed to do the interview with us after school.
“My mother didn’t think it was fair for us to both take my father’s last name,” he says with a shrug. “So when I was born, she gave me hers.”
“I kind of love that, actually.”
He gives me a long, almost defensive look. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“No,” I say, annoyed. “Not all of us are incapable of expressing sincerely positive sentiments, Julius.”
“It can be hard to tell, with your usual tone.”
“What’s wrong with my tone?”
He raises his brows. “Most of the time when you’re talking to people—teachers, especially—you sound like you’re in an advertisement for organic fruit juice. It’s overly cheery.”
“You’re accusing me of beingtoo happy?” I forget to lower my voice this time, and the elderly woman shoots me a glare over the top of her historical romance novel. I mouth an apology and continue in a fierce whisper, “That’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing.”
“Acting too happy,” he corrects me, his gaze piercing. “When I don’t really think you are.”
My chest burns, like the words have squeezed their way inside and peeled the flesh from my heart. But I can’t let it show. “You don’t know me that well,” I mutter.
I expect a sharp retort, a kick to follow the punch, but he sits back. Clears his throat. “Sorry,” he says, looking uncomfortable. “I . . . That was unnecessary. I’m just—” A sigh drags out between his teeth. “Not particularly looking forward to this.”
And that makes two things I didn’t know Julius had before: an older brother and the ability to apologize. The bitter emotion clenched inside me loosens slightly. “The interview, you mean?” I ask. “Why? He’s your own brother.”
“I know.”
“And he sounds really accomplished. Like,really,” I say, opening up my phone to my research notes.
James Luo is so accomplished that he has his own Wikipedia page. It goes through all his major milestones and achievements so far, including how he graduated from Woodvale as valedictorian at the age of sixteen and received a full scholarship to study at Harvard, where he wrote his literary debut within a month “on a whim” and sold it for seven figures before he’d even turned twenty. Or how he won some kind of huge international debating tournament three years in a row but then made the unprecedented move of quitting last minute, because he didn’t find it “intellectually stimulating in a way that was meaningful” anymore.
The most recent update was about his sophomore novel,Blue Crescent Blade. It doesn’t even come out for another three months, but it’s already received countless glowing reviews, an exclusive profile inO, TheOprah Magazine, and is being hailed as a “tour de force,” an “utter triumph,” and a “reckoning”—with what, I’m not sure.Some big celebrity called it one of their two favorite books ever, the other being the Bible.
“Look.” I pull up another article, featuring a glossy, professional black-and-white photo of James in a plain turtleneck. He’s staring out the window with a pensive expression on his face, and the resemblance to Julius is striking. They have the same sculpted lips, the same thick black hair and fine angles. But James is broader jawed, and he’s wearing these square frame glasses that emphasize the hollows in his cheekbones. “It says here his book is the breakout book of the decade.”
“Who says that?” Julius asks without glancing at the article.
