The water tastes absolutely disgusting.
Like fish and seaweed and mud. It pours into my mouth when I gasp, choke, flounder in the cold. My bones feel like stone, heavy, clumsy, and my clothes are cemented to my skin.
It’s hard to move, impossible to breathe. For a few moments I can’t see anything except the darkness stretching down, can’t feel anything except the chill of the lake and the silt sticking to the back of my teeth—
And then I break through the water, gasping, blinking hard.
Color rushes back to me first: the stark blue sky, the aureate sun melting into the clouds. Then sensation in my fingertips. Then sound. My pounding heart. The distant yells from the shore, telling us to stay put or swim, Ms. Hedge’s shrill voice rising over the others. But we’re too far away from them to wait for their help.
Julius is already pulling himself back onto his canoe. Water leaks from his hair, onto his cheeks, and I make the most absurd observation: that his hair is even more intensely black when it’s wet. He’s breathing hard when he collapses safely over the canoe seat, soaked all the way through, leaves sticking to his shirt.
Then he turns to me, his dark eyes narrowed.
I kick hard against the water, seized by the sudden fear that he might not help me up. That he’ll just watch me struggle and thrash like an utter fool from the comfort of the canoe. I wouldn’t put it past him.
He pauses. His expression is inscrutable, the sharp planes of his face giving nothing away. One excruciating second passes.
Two. Three—
He extends a hand.
Both shame and relief fill my lungs. I take it, or try to, my fingers slipping against his. But his grip is firm, secure, and in one movement, he drags me up, out of the water. The only problem is that our combined weight pulls me over the side too fast; I crash gracelessly against him inside the canoe, his body pressed to the seat, mine pressed to his.
“Sadie,” he manages, with a small, breathless sound, a suppressed groan. “ Sadie— you’ re—”
“I know, I know, sorry,” I say, my face warming as I struggle to rise. My hands keep sliding over the wood, failing to find purchase.
“Won’t you hurry—”
“You don’t think I’m trying?”
“I think you’re awfully close to me—”
“Not by choice,” I protest shrilly, even though he is right.
We’re far too close, the space between us nonexistent. I should be freezing right now, but his skin is shockingly hot, burning underneath my chest.
He squeezes his eyes shut. The muscle in his jaw stands out.
“This is your fault—”
“My fault?”
“I told you to be more careful. You didn’t have to go that fast.”
“We were racing,” I say, by way of self- defense. It’s the one thing that we’ve always been able to agree on, the one principle we’ve always stuck to: Nothing matters as much as winning.
I can feel the thud of his heartbeat beneath me when he demands, “Haven’t you beaten me enough times already?”
“No,” I say, my voice fierce. “No, it’ll never be enough.”
He shakes his head. Mutters under his breath, “You make my life so difficult.”
I finally manage to sit up. The cold air immediately encircles me, and I almost miss the warmth of his body.
“Aren’t you going to give me a hand over here?” he asks, still lying back in the seat, the lower half of his body pinned down by my knees. “You were the one who pushed me into the lake to begin with.”
I scoff. Deliberately place my hands on my hips. “For the record, I didn’t push you—”
“You hit me with your paddle—”
“The paddle went right over your head—”
“Only because I ducked,” he argues.
I roll my eyes, but I mirror his motion from earlier and offer him my hand. He shifts into sitting position, then drops my hand quickly, like it burns him. Stares out instead at where my canoe is still overturned, bobbing over the lake surface like a dead body, my paddle floating farther and farther away from us.
The water laps against the side of the boat, casting intricate silver patterns over the cedar.
“This wouldn’t have happened if we were on the same team,”
I say. I mean for it to sound like an angry jibe, an accusation, but my voice decides to be a traitor and wavers violently.
His gaze swivels to me. He studies my face for a long time.
Too long. “You’ve never wanted to be on my team before.”
I wring the water from my hair, twist it a few more times than necessary, just for something to preoccupy my body with.
“I would have liked the option.”
Silence swells between us like a solid thing. The shouts from the shore have died down too. I can hear only the rippling lake, the drops of water splashing onto the wood, the birds chirping from far away. My own volatile breathing.
“Why are you doing that?” The sudden sharpness to his tone startles me.
“I’m not,” I say, confused. “I’m not doing anything—”
“You’re acting nice all of a sudden,” he continues forcefully.
“Smiling at me on the bus. Acting like you would rather be on my side for this ridiculous race than your own best friend’s.
Defending me last night—” He shakes his head. Stares down at his own hands.
My heart is beating painfully fast, my breath snagging in my throat. He’s found out. He must have detected it. He knows I like him and he’s appalled, furious, disgusted—
“You don’t have to pity me,” he says in a low voice, and my brain goes blank. “This is why I didn’t want you to meet my brother, and you shouldn’t have been listening to our conversation to begin with. You shouldn’t take any of the stuff he says seriously, especially the stuff about you. I really—” His fingers form closed fists. “There’s nothing— nothing I resent more than when people feel sorry for me. Because I don’t need it. I’m fine.
I’m perfect.”
“Oh my god,” I say. In my shock, I forget that I’ve just been in the lake, and rub my eyes with my wet palms. Now I’ll probably walk away from this cursed conversation with both a headache and an eye infection. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” he tells me without looking up. “I would much rather you go back to insulting me than tiptoeing around me—”
“You want me to insult you?” I actually laugh. I laugh so loud the geese circling us overhead squawk with alarm and fly higher.
“Oh, well, that’s easy. You’re so self- absorbed , Julius Gong. You really think you know everything— You act like you’ve got me all figured out—”
“Don’t I?” he says, and he sounds perfectly confident in himself, his skewed judgment. “You’re so fixated on being nice, aren’t you? The obedient girl who needs everyone to love her.”
Mockery drips from his every word like acid rain. “The perfect student who never says no to anything, who goes out of her way to cater to everyone’s needs, who would dance on flames just to keep everybody entertained. You just have to be seen as undeni-ably good; you have to do the right thing all the time, or at least appear to. That’s your whole personality— I get it. All I’m asking is for you to spare me.”
It feels like I’ve fallen headfirst into the water again. I’m choking, suffocating, the cold flooding through my blood, freezing my bones until they’re so brittle they could break with one touch.
Neither of us is even attempting to steer the canoe. It’s drifting on its own over the lake, directionless, the water and sky stretching out wide around us. I’ve never felt so small.
“Take it back,” I tell him quietly, amazed by my self- control.
What I really want is to shove him out of the boat, to throttle him with my bare hands. “I’m going to give you one chance to take everything you said back.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t say anything.
“God, Julius—” I cut myself off, bitterness creeping over my tongue. There’s something so presumptuous, so condescending about it, that he would twist my sincerity into some sort of charity. That while I’ve been trying to see the best in him, he’s been assuming the worst of me. “You know what? I hate you,”
I breathe, because it’s easier to say I hate you than you hurt me.
Because both options might shatter my heart, but at least one of them leaves my pride intact. And maybe because I simply crave the sharp, perverse pleasure of hurting him back.
His gaze snaps up to me. Something flashes across his face, and he leans in abruptly, his eyes fierce and dangerous and on fire. I can feel the heat of his breath against my lips when he says,
“I hate you more.”
“That’s impossible.”
His smile is a sneer. “I promise it isn’t.”
I’m shaking, I realize dimly. My teeth clenched with the effort of restraint, of holding back from him, of refusing to shrink away. His eyes could cut me open as they drift down lower, linger on my parted mouth. They darken, turn wholly black, until I can’t tell the pupils from the irises.
For a shameful second, I think he’s going to grab my face and kiss me, the kind of kiss you feel down to your toes, all heat and hunger and wild intentions. And for a split second, I need him to, I’m dying to, if only for a chance to sink my nails into his skin, to find a spot of vulnerability somewhere in his body.
But he stays still. The light reflected off the lake bleaches his skin and sharpens the cruel lines of his face, and right now, in this very moment, I can’t believe I’d ever imagined him capable of softness. Julius is who he’s always been, who he will always be: selfish, ruthless, conceited. To expect anything else of him is like expecting flowers to bloom from a blade. Like walking into a snake’s embrace.
“You’re the worst,” I tell him, my lips bare inches from his, neither of us retreating. It’s torture, blistering agony. It feels like I’m being burned alive. “You make me sick. You make me so violently angry sometimes, I could—” I want to continue, but the burning sensation spreads to my eyes, my nose. I won’t cry. I won’t be weak in front of him. My fingers curl hard into the collar of his shirt, to make the sentiment clear where words fail me, and I see him swallow, the rising bump in his throat. Go on, I urge myself. You have the upper hand now. But all I can get out is,
“You’re so mean to me.”
It’s laughable. Pathetic. It’s an exchange between children on the playground. It’s not what I meant to say, not at all, but something about it unravels me. My anger abandons me, my last remaining weapon against him dropped, and I press my lips together to stop them from trembling. Blink rapidly to stop the tears from falling.
His expression morphs into something else at once. He jerks back, his brows furrowed. Lifts a hand, the aim unclear. “Sadie,”
he says. Tentative. Tender, even. “ I— I didn’t mean to—”
“Start paddling,” I say stiffly. “We should go back.”
Then I duck my head so he can’t see me cry.
Neither of us speaks on the way back.
There’s no point; we’ve already said too much. The instant the canoe bumps against the shore, I’m jumping off, barely noticing when the water splashes my legs.
“Had a little fall, did we?” Dave says, grinning, somehow oblivious to the tension simmering between us. “Don’t fret. it happens pretty often—”
“You both need to change,” Ms. Hedge interrupts, looking far less amused. She’s even set her cocktail- mocktail down. “Go shower and put on some warm clothes— god forbid someone gets pneumonia on this trip. You can meet us back here after.”
“Thanks, Ms. Hedge,” I say, genuinely grateful for the opportunity to escape. But as I walk past Abigail, she catches my wrist and pulls me a few steps back, out of earshot from the others.
“What happened out there?” she whispers. “Have you been crying? Did you tell him you like him? What did he say?”
I almost laugh. “No. I told him I hate him, and he told me he hates me too. So that’s that.”
“What?” Her jaw drops. “But I thought— That wasn’t the plan—”
“It was a terrible plan,” I say. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Okay, wait. Wait. Just— hang on.” She shakes her head. “I’m still trying to understand how you went from wanting to confess to him to fighting with him—”
“I guess old habits die hard.” I try to make it sound like a joke, like it’s already behind me. But maybe it’s true. Maybe, by this stage, we’ve both been hardwired to hate each other. Maybe it’s a fundamental part of our internal coding, and there’s no way to reprogram it without self- destructing, setting everything on fire.
Maybe it’s for the best this way.
“Are you okay?” she worries. “Do you want me to punch him for you?”
“No, no, I’m okay.” My mouth strains into a smile. “Really.”
I am okay. Completely okay. I’m okay when I stomp up to the cabin bathrooms and stand under the hot spray of the shower, letting the heat melt the ice from my bones, scraping the mud from my skin with such force it leaves behind angry red nail marks. I’m okay when I slather my hair with too much shampoo and close my eyes against the water like it’s pouring rain; when I sob into the palm of my hand, alone where nobody can hear me.
And I’m definitely okay when I towel myself dry, change into a faded knit cardigan and skirt, and head back to the lake. Julius Gong is dead to me, I vow silently. If I think about him again—
If I so much as look at him, then I deserve to be pelted with ice.
I deserve to be pelted with ice.
In my defense, I manage to hold it together all throughout lunch and after it too. The teachers split us off into our two teams for the afternoon activities, which means I don’t have to worry about stumbling across him. We’re taken to the other side of the lake to fish and bird- watch and color in illustrations of the mountain ranges. Everything’s going well.
But later, we all gather back inside the warm air of the cabin and dim the lights, and my self- control rapidly deteriorates from there.
The screen unfurls. The projector flickers on. Around me, people are lying down, getting comfortable on faded cushions and beanbags and pink wool blankets. Someone’s snuck in a bag of gummy worms, even though we’re technically not allowed snacks, and the candy is passed discreetly from hand to hand like drugs.
Abigail saves me a pillow, and I lean back next to her, dropping my head on her shoulder. That’s when I notice Julius on the other end of the room. The sharp line of his shoulders. The glint of his hair. The cold planes of his profile. He’s changed his clothes as well, discarded his button- down shirt for a dark V-neck that exposes his collarbones.
“What are you looking at?” Abigail whispers. “The movie’s starting.”
“Nothing,” I say hastily, ripping my gaze away. Stop it, I tell myself. I think we’ve established by now that it’s a bad idea.
“It’s not scary by your standards, I don’t think,” she adds. She knows my incredibly low tolerance for blood or gore. She, on the other hand, likes to fall asleep to horror films. Claims she finds the suspenseful music relaxing. “But if it is, you can use my arm to cover your face. Just don’t pinch me too hard like you did last time.”
I shove her with the pillow. “I told you, I couldn’t help it—”
She pushes the pillow back. “There wasn’t even any blood. It was just one dude kicking the wall—”
“Aggressively,” I supply.
The movie’s some kind of tragic romance dating back years ago, and Abigail’s right: It isn’t scary at all. I think there’s a dog involved. And maybe a boat. I don’t really pay close attention, if I’m being honest. As the colored images move over the screen and the soundtrack plays, my eyes are drawn back to Julius. Like instinct. Like always.
It’s easier to watch him while he’s watching the screen.
Though I’m not sure how much of it he’s actually absorbing; he doesn’t laugh or gasp when the others do. He just stares ahead, his expression blank.
I study his features carefully, hungrily, like I’m piecing together a puzzle. I can’t prevent myself from drinking in the sight of him. From hating him and wanting him all at the same time, one point of tension bleeding into the other until it’s impossible to separate the two. The blue glow of the projector sweeps over the curves of his cheekbones, and even though I’ve sworn against it, I feel a rush of fierce, reckless longing. I imagine going to him now, after all the ugliness from this morning, after he made me cry. I imagine stroking his hair, his cheek, his collarbones, the way the shadows do, then wrapping my hands around his throat.
Without warning, he turns his head a fraction, his eyes cutting to mine like the crack of a whip.
I flush. Look away. But I can sense his gaze on me for the rest of the movie.
It’s the longest movie I’ve ever seen.
