30 Hope Drops a Truth Bomb
I feel like you’re doing it again.” Noah changes lanes. He uses his turn signal and everything.
“Define ‘it.’ ” We’re on our way to school, and I’m feeling good today. Strong. Hopeful. My hair is a bright raspberry to match my mood.
His eyes shift toward me and then back to the road. “Listen.” He pauses and then, like the words could be dangerous, he approaches them cautiously. “It seems like you’re concocting some elaborate scheme to manip… maneuver people into doing something. But all the data shows that only relationships create transformations. Don’t freak out.”
“I’m not freaking out.”
“Okay, but, generally speaking, any sort of honest conversation ends in you freaking out.”
“That’s because you tend to find pressure points and then poke them.”
“Touché.”
We lapse into silence. After a few minutes I restart the conversation. “This is different. It’s not based on a random glimpse. I did talk to Vindhya—”
“One conversation is not a relationship.”
“And I don’t have a headache.”
“Charity, you can’t turn people into your pet projects—”
“I can’t?! Nice double standard.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ever since I told you about my magic, you’ve been studying me. You treat me like a research project.”
“That’s not true.” He looks appalled.
“Seriously? You’re constantly ‘testing a hypothesis.’ ”
“That’s just what I do.”
“Every time you get a new tidbit of data about me, you get that mad-scientist look in your eye and say, ‘Fascinating.’ ”
“It… it is,” he stammers. “You are. I can’t help—”
“You made a massive spreadsheet about me.”
“You asked for my help. You aren’t allowed to be mad at me for giving it.”
I cross my arms, because even if he’s not wrong, I still feel the way I feel.
He is quiet again, as if turning into the school parking lot requires all his massive brainpower.
But we’re running out of time, and this whole honesty thing has derailed the conversation I was trying to have. I circle back around with “So are you going to help me or not?”
He groans in protest.
“Please?” We pull into a parking spot right in the front. “I’ll forgive you if you help me.”
He turns to me with a look that says cheater, and I take the opportunity to bat my eyelashes. “Pleeeeease?”
“Fine. I’ll help you.” He takes a “serenity now” breath, rolls his window down, and yells, “TREVON!”
A guy walking past stops and turns to see who yelled his name. Noah calls grumpily, “Trevon, get in the van.”
Trevon spreads his arms. “Dude, that’s the creepiest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Noah huffs, “Please.”
With a shrug, Trevon heads toward us. I ventriloquist whisper, “Who’s that?”
Noah is still seriously unamused. “Robotics Club president. You’re welcome.”
Trevon climbs into the back seat with a warning look. “Just for the record, at least three people saw me get in here.”
Well, so far this meeting is going not great. I turn around with a winning smile and hold out my hand. “Hi, I’m Charity.”
He hesitates a moment, then shakes my hand. “Trevon.”
“You’re president of the Robotics Club, right?”
Trevon crosses his arms and leans back. Shields up. “Why?”
“I heard you guys are having a little trouble with your project for the regional meet.”
“So?”
“So, I think I can help you.”
He goes, “Pfft.”
“Okay. Not me exactly. You need your star coder.”
“If this involves groveling to Vindhya Chandramouli, you can take your ‘help’ and stick it up your—”
“Hey now,” Noah interrupts.
I rip off the Band-Aid. “It’s time to make up with Vindhya.”
“Not gonna happen. She made it pretty clear how cold hell will be when she forgives us for the homecoming stunt.”
“If you just say sorry—”
“No way. She’s been a narcissistic skeeze gremlin ever since she turned high fashion.”
I counter, “That’s kind of harsh. I mean, just for the record, glamour and genius are not mutually exclusive. Why can’t Vindhya be both if she wants? Besides, you humiliated her in front of the entire school.”
Trevon is stalwart. “She deserved it.”
I’m itching to nudge this in Vindhya’s favor, but, you know, long-term decisions, wicked witches… yada, yada. I grit my teeth behind my smile. “You need her to win, so you need to get over it. It’s pretty simple logic. You’re supposed to be the smart kids. You’re acting like total assclowns.”
“And who made you the jury? Screw you.”
“Come on, guys. Keep it civil,” Noah protests.
I take a centering breath and nudge him after all, just to de-escalate things. I feel his defenses drop a little and use the window to offer “I’m trying to help.”
“Why?”
“Because Vindhya’s my friend. And she needs to code. And she misses you guys.” Trevon visibly softens, so I go to phase two. “Isn’t there an academic awards assembly tomorrow afternoon?”
Noah says, “Yeah.”
Trevon looks like the dots aren’t connecting. “So?”
I hit him with my most disarming fairy godmother smile. “Trevon, have you ever heard of a Grand Gesture?”
Did I say I needed Noah’s help? He’s actually crucial to every part of my Grand Gesture plan, which goes like this:
Trevon and Noah use their study halls to program a robot.
Noah enlists Carlos and the Mouth—AV Club members with access to the auditorium tech control room—to assist in hijacking the assembly.
Trevon and Noah convince the Robotics Club to participate.
Grand Gesture.
Happy ending.
Which brings us to last period Thursday and the academic awards assembly. As the humiliation happened in front of the whole school, the Grand Gesture has to be equally public. Even though I peel out of my last class and book it to the auditorium tech control room, Noah, Trevon, Carlos, and the Mouth are already waiting for me. Which means they must have been released from their sixth-period classes early. I’m telling you, these honors kids get so many perks.
I give Carlos and the Mouth a nod. “Hey, guys. Thanks for helping us out. Did Noah already explain the plan?”
Carlos grins and gives me the thumbs-up. “It’s cool. We got it. No problem.”
The Mouth says, “Martinez is gonna have our butts in detention for this stunt.” He shrugs. “But, you know, anything for our Most Valuable Playaaaaa!” He holds his fist out toward Noah.
Noah bumps his fist, blushing.
I swallow. “Well, I, uh… owe you one.”
Trevon says, “This is real touching. But are we doing this or what? I got a robot in excessive downtime here.”
Ah yes. The robot. Picture a puppy made out of an Erector Set, with a circuit board strapped to its back, a coiled wire for a tail, wheels instead of feet, and a couple of extra limbs. Okay, so that sounds more like a giant insect, but trust me, it’s a puppy. There’s also an MP3 player clamped on to the top of its head.
Trevon holds out his ThinkPad and walks me through how to initiate RoboPuppy’s new program. Then he makes me repeat the steps back to him, like there’s a good chance I’m not capable of even the simplest technological task. He’s about to have me recite it all a second time, but I’m saved by the band striking up the school fight song to kick off the assembly. Trevon says, “We gotta get in there. Now that you’ve roped me into this, don’t screw it up.”
“I won’t. I can handle it.”
Noah holds an invisible communicator to his mouth. “Stardate 76180.4: Under the command of Captain C. Keller, we are embarking on a mission to alter the course of destiny.”
“Would you just go?” I give him a shove out the door.
Trevon and Noah both head into the auditorium. They have to sit onstage since they’re both in National Honor Society and have perfect 4.0 GPAs. Which is why it’s my job to operate the robot that is—if all goes according to plan—going to execute the Grand Gesture that will melt Vindhya’s heart and undo all the wish damage.
I glance up at Carlos. “This is going to play through the sound system, right?”
He gives me yet another thumbs-up. “It’s all set up on the wireless.”
“Awesome.”
Through the monitors, I can hear Vice Principal Martinez saying, “Please hold your applause until all the names have been called.”
Gotta do this. I slip RoboPuppy out of the booth and into the auditorium. “Be a good boy,” I whisper as I set him in the aisle. Then I slip into a seat in the back row and use Trevon’s ThinkPad to initiate the program (which is actually easy, so there, Trevon). RoboPuppy’s not radio-controlled like an RC car. He will run through a series of preprogrammed commands. So all I can really do now is hope that everything goes as planned. I watch, holding my breath, as RoboPuppy makes his way down the aisle. A few kids on the ends of rows notice him and point him out to the people around them.
RoboPuppy makes a series of ninety-degree turns and forward advances that eventually get him onto the stage with Ms. Martinez and the honors kids. He stops a few feet from the podium. By now the robot has everyone’s attention. Ms. Martinez stops talking and looks around hesitantly. Vindhya, sitting in the front row onstage, cocks an eyebrow.
RoboPuppy slowly raises one of his appendages in an arc until it touches the button on the iPod. Music reverberates through the auditorium:
Baby come back! Any kind of fool could see,
There was something in everything about you.
The crowd seems to hold its breath, wondering what’s happening. Ms. Martinez looks peeved that her boring speech has been interrupted. Vindhya watches RoboPuppy with her lips pressed tightly together. Then every member of Robotics Club stands up and sings along. “Vindhya come back! You can blame it all on me. I was wrong, and I just can’t live without you!”
Vindhya’s stern expression morphs into a tight, closed-mouth smile. She looks down.
Ms. Martinez stomps over to RoboPuppy, flutters her hands around him for a moment, and then presses pause on the iPod. With the music stopped but the room still buzzing, she returns to the podium and says into the mic, “All right, all right. That’s enough. Everyone, please take your seats, and I will announce our National Merit Scholars.”
The assembly proceeds as normal, except for two things: RoboPuppy sits onstage as a constant reminder of the Grand Gesture, since nobody programmed him to leave. And when Vindhya’s name is called for National Merit, the STEMers go absolutely wild, chanting Vindhya’s name.
Her armor cracks, with a smile that says, I can’t stay mad at you. In their seats on the stage, Noah and Trevon do a subtle fist bump. The familiar, heady rush of a happy ending courses through me. There’s really nothing better than this.
When the assembly lets out, I watch Vindhya’s reunion with the STEMers, complete with lots of hugs and high fives. I don’t look away until Noah jogs down the aisle and catches me in a feet-off-the-ground hug. He says gleefully, “Man, I can’t believe we pulled it off.”
I can’t help but snark a little. “Oh, so you like my maneuvering now?”
He sets me down, still smiling. “Yeah, maybe the Grand Gestures aren’t so bad. I concede the win.” He bows to me. Which is bananas, because this moment should be all about him.
“Hey! You!” I grab him by the shoulder and hoist him back up. “You got a National Merit Scholarship. That’s amazing.”
“Thanks.” His cheeks pink up.
Somebody walking past claps him on the back. “Good job, dude!”
He says, “Thanks, man.” Then he turns back to me. “You have Poms now?”
“Yeah.” We join the stream of people pushing through the double doors.
“Want to have dinner together after? I’m already starving.”
“Yes. And I’m buying. It can be your ‘congratulations on being a flipping genius’ dinner.”
He puts his arm around me like it’s normal now, and we navigate the crowd in the hallway. He says, “I know a great little Spanish restaurant where we’re sure to be seen by our voting public.”
“Sounds fabuloso.”
He’s waiting for me outside the gym when Poms lets out. I’m wiped from dancing and still high on helping get Vindhya on the right trajectory, but seeing him leaning on the wall and knowing he’s there for me—it’s an emotional flash bomb. It makes me feel special and cared for and connected… and painfully aware that I’m handing all of this over to Holly tomorrow night. This is her Prince Charming, and all the sweet moments with him rightfully belong to her.
But I hug him anyway. Every girl on the squad gets an eyeful as they file out of the gym. Gotta make these last twenty-four hours count, right? I pretend that’s the reason I hold on so long.
Ten minutes later we pull up to Taco Bell. I give Noah a scathing glare. “Spanish restaurant?”
He fakes an earnest “What?”
I punch him in the arm. “I believed you! I spent the past hour dreaming about tapas.”
He opens his door. “Come on. All-you-can-eat hot-sauce packets. My treat.”
We eat our way through a pile of paper-wrapped imitation Mexican food, rehashing the Grand Gesture and generally pretending that tomorrow isn’t our last day as a couple. I can tell Noah’s trying not to sound like he’s doing research, but he can’t help asking about my re-glimpse of Vindhya. And it’s okay. It’s actually nice to have someone to talk to about it. I answer his questions in between mouthfuls of cheap, greasy taco.
“But ‘destiny’ implies future, and the glimpses are showing you the past now?”
“Sometimes.”
“So what would you say you’re seeing?”
“It seems like a turning point, maybe? With Gwen it was potential—seeing her not for what she is right now but for the best version of herself.”
“Fascinating,” he says. And he sounds just like Spock. He squeezes hot sauce onto his last taco. “That’s a pretty cool superpower, Captain Janeway.”
I’m not sure who that is. I decide to look it up later.
I lick my lips. “Now that I can control it, I could glimpse you.”
He freezes with the taco halfway to his mouth. There’s a beat. And then he shakes his head.
“We could find out what’s going to happen with Holly, or if you’re going to win a Nobel Prize someday.” I try to make it sound like I don’t care about that first thing at all.
“No thanks.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d rather figure it out as I go along. I don’t need a fairy godmother after all.” He crunches into his taco, and I take a pensive pull of my drink. Just as I’m starting to sink into “he doesn’t need me” syndrome, he nudges my side. “Besides, you’re already enough of a know-it-all.”
I elbow him harder. “Takes one to know one.”
He smiles his dorky smile. The one so adorable he should probably save it just for Holly. I dump some ice chips into my mouth and crunch them loudly. Around the ice I mumble, “I gotta get going. I’ve got a test in almost every class tomorrow.”
“Let’s study together.”
My heart jumps around like he just proposed. No one has ever said those words to me before. I should definitely make an excuse to not do that. But my mind is suddenly a blank. So I go with “Um. Sure.”
Which is how we end up back at my house. As I unlock the front door, Noah texts his mom his whereabouts. We walk in, and he glances around the barely lived-in room. “Where do you usually study?”
I point toward my room and then lead the way. Even though Noah has been in my room before, this feels different. Last time I was too sick to care. Now I overthink everything. I really half-assed making my bed this morning—didn’t bother to smooth the duvet or position the pillows decoratively. And my pajamas and towel are in a pile by the bathroom door. Is that a dead spider in the corner?
I tell myself to chill out. I should do what I would normally do if Noah weren’t standing right behind me. I cross to the bed, drop my backpack on it, toe off my shoes, and settle in, tucking my feet under me. Noah stands a few feet from the bed looking indecisive, so I pat the spot next to me. “It’s okay.”
He hesitates and then sits. His backpack goes next to mine. His shoes come off. While I’m taking up the smallest possible amount of space, his long legs seem to cover the whole bed. We unload our books and papers in silence. He opens a physics book and starts reading. I need to tackle trig.
Mostly we don’t interact. He does his work, and I do mine. But he’s there in every inch of my consciousness.
Okay, Charity. Concentrate. I stare at the first problem:
Find the length of side AC of a triangle, given that side BC is 12 cm and angle Aθ = 0.6
I write, sine θ = opposite/hypotenuse
.6 = Noah’s arm brushes against mine for 0.6 seconds as he turns a page.
I crumple my bedspread in my left hand and write = 12/AB
AB = .6/12
So AB = .05
0.05 inches separate Noah’s hair from my cheek. It smells like Curl Commando and Old Spice. Like looking for the glimpse switch but getting lost in him instead. Like a new friend and fake dating, deep car talks and sitting on the porch at midnight. He smells like a dozen sweet hugs that never really belonged to me.
Side x = me leaning in a little.
He turns his face slightly toward me. Not touching him feels like resisting the pull of a thousand fat rubber bands. I clench my jaw and stare at my notebook.
Apply Pythagora’s theorem: x = √.052-122
122 = 144. He shifts, and my knee is touching his thigh. I have 144 goose bumps.
I think I did something wrong. √-143.9975 is an imaginary number. Am I imagining all the tension in the space between us?
I start over. If 0.6 = AB/12, then why is Noah here? Does he like me a little, not for science or to win back Holly? I start to write, “AB =” but I press too hard, and the tip of my pencil breaks off. That tiny sound snaps all the rubber bands at once.
And then we’re kissing. We’re kissing like all the almosts and not-reals we’ve been stacking up are exploding in a chain reaction. My books clatter to the floor. Eyes closed, I devour every sensation. His lips are soft, but his chin is scratchy. His hands are in my hair, fingers pressing into my scalp. I’m sinking and flying at the same time.
Making out with Noah is the new thing I want to do every minute of every day. But this annoyingly coherent thought breaks through the haze of pure sensation—Is he pretending I’m Holly?
I try to throw it away, to cram it down, to smash it. But it keeps coming back with greater clarity.
I pull back a few inches. We study each other, panting for air. But does he see me? Part of me doesn’t really want to know the answer. I just want to keep making out and pretend that it doesn’t matter. I search for what to say, while his eyes ask me questions.
The tablet on my desk chimes. It’s disorienting for a second—a sound from outside the make-out bubble. Then I scramble toward it, half falling off the bed, babbling, “It’s my sister! It’s Thursday. I forgot to call her.”
I get to the tablet and tap the green circle to answer the call. “Hope!” I blurt her name with too much volume and not enough air. My face—complete with red cheeks and swollen lips—pants at me from the upper-right corner of the screen.
“Hey, don’t we have a date?”
I hastily finger comb my hair, still trying to catch my breath. In the selfie box, I can see Noah gathering books and papers behind me. “Yes! Hi!”
“Who’s the boy?”
“He’s, um…”
He crouches next to me and waves at the tablet. “I’m Noah. Nice meeting you.”
Hope says, “Hi.”
I add, “Can you hold on one sec?” I cover the camera with my palm and whisper, “I need to take this call.”
“But we’re going to talk about this later. Right?” He looks too cute to be real, with his disheveled hair, flushed cheeks, and earnest, searching eyes.
“Right.”
He retrieves his stuff, says, “Bye,” and taps the doorframe on his way out. I resist the urge to hang up on my sister and call him back.
Hope comments, “So he’s cute, in kind of a dorky way. Is he a good kisser?”
“Yeah-e-e-s.” I bite my lip.
Now my big sister will ask for all the juicy details. She’ll need to make sure the guy is good enough for her baby sis. Then she’ll dissect every element of the emotional and relational landscape, so that she can draw her little sister a detailed map of how to proceed.
Hope doesn’t. Instead she says, “End it now. Before someone gets hurt.”
I should probably say something like, That’s the plan. But my head is still spinning from Noah’s kisses, and I feel like I just slammed into a Hope-shaped brick wall.
Hope declares, “It’s not going to work.”
And suddenly I’m mad. Because she didn’t ask me one single thing about him. I’m mad that my own sister doesn’t want to hear how I feel. I’m mad that she’s in Thailand instead of right here next to me. So why should she get to tell me what to do? I spit, “You know what? I’m doing absolutely fine making my own decisions. It’s none of your business anyway.”
Hope doesn’t immediately respond. Just when I’m starting to think the screen has frozen and I’ve been picking a fight with dead air, Hope says, “Chay, I see the glimpses too.”
I’m not sure what blindsides me the hardest—the complete and sudden change of subject, the revelation that Hope shares my abilities, or finding out after seventeen years that I don’t know my sister at all. Never mind, I am sure. It’s totally that last one. I eke out, “What. The. Fffff—”
“I should have told you on Tuesday.”
Tuesday? She should have told me six years ago. Or any one of the two thousand or so days in between. I splutter, “What. What the… How? You’re a fairy godmother?”
Her nostrils flare. “No. I see glimpses. I don’t grant wishes.”
“Ever?”
She shakes her head adamantly.
“Why not?” Even though I have sworn off the wish-granting myself, I have no idea if Hope’s reasons are the same as mine, if that’s a recent thing, a permanent thing… or really anything about her, it turns out.
She looks fierce. “Because people are greedy, selfish, ungrateful jerks. That’s why. They don’t deserve our help.”
“Wow.” I press my finger between my eyebrows, recalling a whole lot of recent pain. “But what about the aftermath…? Don’t you get sick from ignoring the glimpses?”
“Why do you think I’m in the middle of nowhere? I was tired of feeling hungover all the time. I probably see three people in a week here. It’s hard to glimpse anything when there’s no one around.” She sounds triumphant, like she’s beaten the system. “Besides, elephants are a whole lot more trustworthy than people.”
I mumble, “I like people.”
“Fine. It’s your life. Do what you want. Grant wishes for everybody and their brother if you want to. But you can’t get involved with anyone. Remember what we talked about? Fix and release.”
She’s telling me something I already know—that I’ve always known. But she’s giving the thing words and substance and making me look it in the face. I sit like a sad mime while she plows forward. “The fairy godmother doesn’t get her own story. She just pops into other people’s stories once in a while. We’re the Universe’s designated side characters.”
I consider putting my hands over my ears and singing the ABC song.
“Think about it. Have you ever heard of anyone in our family transmitting a glimpse? Do nudges work on us? We’re outside the system. You know I’m right.”
I whisper, “I found the switch. I can control my glimpses now. And I know the secret to happy endings—”
“None of that matters. Controlling our magic doesn’t make any difference. Being alone is part of who we are. It minimizes the damage we cause. Trust me. Damage control is all I do twenty-four/seven.”
No. I don’t accept this. Like a cornered cat, I claw at her. “Just because you couldn’t make it work with Kiet doesn’t mean I can’t—”
“This isn’t about only me.” Hope has tears in her eyes, but her voice doesn’t waver. “Chay, look at our family. Do Memom and Mom so much as speak to each other? Do we even know who Mom’s dad is? And how about our parents—they couldn’t even stay within three thousand miles of each other. They can’t even be around for us. You know I’m right. We’re all fixers. It’s always about somebody or something else. How can we ever prioritize our own happiness, our own needs? Anyone we try to hold on to is going to get burned.”
It sucks. And I do not forgive Hope for saying it. But I know she’s right. I feel it in my core. I know it from my own fairy research. Even when I was kissing Noah, I knew it wasn’t real.
I bite the inside of my cheek until I can taste blood. But I nod. “Okay. I get it.”
Hope sighs. “I’m really sorry, Chay. But that’s how it is for us.”
A feeble voice of selfish optimism whispers, Rebel… hold on to him… you could be happy. But the voice of reason is much, much louder. I can either take Hope’s advice, or I can be selfish and destructive. It’s as simple as that.