Page 6 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
“I can. I did. I have.”
“You’re so ridiculous,” she says. I would be affronted if it came from anyone else, but Abigail only teases a very select number of people she deems important. Everyone else might as well be background noise, flies, motes of dust; in her eyes, they simply don’t exist. “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about the group project anymore. You’re done already, I gather, like the unreasonably organized person you are?”
“Of course. You know my policy.” Anytime I receive a deadline, I’ll set myself my own deadline at least a week before it. That’s why I spent the first two days of winter break completing my part of the project on China’s Warlord Era, which includes a four-thousand-word research essay, a hand-drawn animation of the Zhili-Anhui War, and an interactive map of the various cliques. The workload itself was stressful, yes, but I’m only calm when I’m ahead. “I just need my group to give me their summaries, and then we can submit it.”
Abigail glances up and points at my group members, Georgina Wilkins and Ray Suzuki, who are coming over to our desk. “Uh, they don’t look like they’re holding anything. Should you be concerned?”
I frown. Theyareboth empty-handed, and as they squeeze closer past the desks, I can make out the sheepish smile on Georgina’s face.
A bad feeling digs into my gut.
Still, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. “Hey, how are you?” I ask, because it feels rude to demand to see their summaries right away.
But Ray doesn’t seem to have any qualms about rudeness. “We didn’t do it,” he says bluntly.
I blink. He might as well have punched me in the stomach. “I— You didn’t do . . . the summary?”
“Nope,” he says, sticking his hands into his pockets.
“Okay.” I can hear a faint ringing sound in my ears, building into a screech. I do my best to recalibrate. Stay calm. Stay friendly. Stay focused. “Okay. Okay, um. It’s okay if you didn’t finish—maybe just show me what you have and—”
“I didn’t do any of it,” he says.
Another punch, even harder than the last. If I were standing up, I’d be staggering back.
“Right. And is there a reasonwhy, or . . .”
He looks me straight in the eye. “I don’t know. Guess I just wasn’t sure how. Or, like, what we were meant to be doing, you feel?”
“The summary,” I get out.The summary I already wrote out for you, I add inside my head.Word for word. The one I asked you to copy down onto the template that I predesigned and printed and personally delivered to your house in the winter rain on the first day of the midyear break so you could do it when you had time. That summary?“I thought . . . I mean, sure,” I say, seeing his blank stare. “That’s okay. What about you, Georgina?”
Georgina makes a gesture that reminds me of a flower wilting. “I’m sorry,” she says, pouting. “I tried to start, I promise, but, like, my face still hurts from when I hit my nose against the bathroom wall?”
“I thought you said you were fine,” Ray says.
Georgina shoots him a quick, pointed look, then turns back to me, her dark eyes shining with emotion. “I feel worse whenever I have to work on an assignment. It’s, like, super unfortunate. I wish I could do more to help, but . . .”
Stay calm, I remind myself. I clench the muscles in my arm so hard they hurt and then, very slowly, force them to relax again. I repeat this until I no longer feel like committing murder. “It’s not your fault,” I tell her, eyeing the clock. Only eighteen minutes left until the deadline. I have two summaries to write up, which leaves just nine minutes for each. Eight minutes, if I want to take time to double-check everything before submitting. “You know what? I can just do the rest myself. Totally cool.”
I expect more resistance, but they retreat rapidly, as if they’ve just dropped a grenade in my lap.
But no time to worry about them. This ismyproject. This is my grade on the line. One mistake and my whole average will drop, and Berkeley won’t want me anymore. I push my sleeves up as high as they’ll go, then open up my school laptop to find my notes. Just seventeen minutes left. Briefly, as I stare at the tiny words loaded onto the screen, the dozens of tabs pulled open, I feel so overwhelmed I could choke. The words fade in and out; my vision blurs.
Nothing gets in.
Then I notice Julius watching me in my peripheral vision, and it’s like I’ve been zapped. Everything sharpens back into focus. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me struggle. I refuse to.
With deliberate, feigned calm, I pick up my pen and begin copying the summary down.
For those next seventeen minutes, I don’t move or speak or even lift my head until I’ve written down the last word. Then I release a sigh that travels all the way through my bones, down to my sore muscles and stiff fingers. That was too close.Waytoo close. Next time it might be safer to just do everything myself.
“Thanks, Sadie,” Ms. Rachel says as she collects our project. “I can’t wait to read through this one; the Warlord Era is absolutelyfascinating. It was one of my favorite subjects in college.”
I act like this is news to me, a happy coincidence. Like I didn’t spend hours searching her up online and reading through an old interview she did for her alma mater’s student magazine, where she mentioned her interest in the Warlord Era. Like I didn’t choose this specific topic for the very purpose of appealing to her personal tastes.
Abigail would affectionately refer to such behavior as mysociopathic tendencies.
“I’m just going to pop into my office to put this away,” Ms. Rachel tells me, nodding toward the pile of papers gathered in her arms. “I’ll be five minutes. Could you keep an eye on the class for me while I’m gone?”
