Chapter 5 Harper
Harper
Friday morning.
I paced the primary bedroom of our little house—my bedroom, technically—feeling the minutes stack up. Mom was in the attached bathroom, showering, running late for work, which was making Dash late for school, which was going to make me late for school.
“I know, I know,” Mom said, finally coming out in a towel and a cloud of steam. “It’s all yours.”
I gritted my teeth and took my turn. I had about three minutes of hot water.
“One more day,” I muttered, dragging a comb through my hair while frantically looking for something to wear. “Just one more day, then two glorious days off from the madness.”
Dressed and packed, I raced downstairs, thanking the gods of foresight that I made lunches the night before.
“Dash, let’s go.”
“I’m ready,” he chirped from the door, backpack and shoes on, bless his little heart.
“Mom, don’t forget,” I said, grabbing my keys from the hook on the wall. “I have the bonfire tomorrow night. It’s kind of a big deal. My new friends will be there.”
“I remember, baby,” she said, shouldering her own purse. “The little man and I will watch a movie. Now scoot. Have a good day.”
I heaved a breath. A good day wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
I was late to Calculus, where Emery Wallace kept shooting me weird looks, as if she was trying to work up the nerve to talk to me.
The same thing happened in English class.
I couldn’t take Emery’s stare any more, or any more Richie bullshit, so while Ms. Alvarez was busy getting organized for the day, I asked Emery flat-out, “Can I help you?”
“I’m sorry.”
Okay. Didn’t expect that. But after all the shit I’d been through in the last three days, I wasn’t about to let her off that easy.
“For?”
“You know what for,” Emery said.
Nope. Sorry, honey.
I arched a brow, waiting, which she seemed to appreciate.
“I’m sorry for talking shit yesterday,” she said. “And for not speaking up when my friends talked shit.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Do you want to hang out sometime?”
I glanced at her twice. “Are you serious?”
“One hundred percent. Maybe we could go to a movie sometime or grab a coffee milk.” Emery bit her lip. “I mean…if you want. No big deal.”
I was on high alert, positive she was fucking with me. She hung out with Aria, and her boyfriend was Tucker Hill, both Parking Lot Assholes.
“Why?”
Emery recoiled as if I’d slapped her. “Never mind, forget it.”
“No, I mean, why do you want to hang out with me? You don’t have enough friends?”
She shrugged shyly. “You seem cool.”
I studied her, searching for signs this was another Richie prank, but Emery wasn’t good at keeping her mask up.
Her eyes burned with a desperate desire for me to say yes, and I had exactly one friend so far—Dean Yearwood.
And while he was a good guy, he was also a guy.
I missed having a girlfriend to talk to about guys.
One guy in particular…
“I’m very cool,” I said. “I’m so cool, in fact, that I go all the way off the charts and come back around to uncool. But…okay.”
Emery’s relief was so great it was almost sad. “Great!”
Great, I thought as Ms. Alvarez got down to business, though great wasn’t how I’d describe anything about my time at Castle Hill Academy so far.
At the bell, Emery gathered her things, shy again. “So, should we exchange numbers?”
“Unless you can speak to me telepathically, yes,” I teased. “Haven’t you done this whole friend thing before?”
She gave me a nudge. “Shut up. Not with someone new. Not in a long time.”
“Me neither.”
We exchanged phones, and I plugged my number into Emery Wallace’s—much newer—iPhone.
This is surreal. Just a bit.
“Great!” she said, as we headed for the door, then laughed sheepishly. “I say that a lot, don’t I?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I say fuck a lot. Yours is safer in mixed company.”
She laughed, this time for real. “You have a good sense of humor.”
“Thanks,” I said, glancing around the crowded hallway for her Parking Lot BFFs. “Um, I should get to my next class.”
“My friends can be bitches, but I don’t care what anyone thinks, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Emery said.
I managed a smile. That was the thing about privilege. You could afford not to care. Some of us didn’t have that luxury.
“My class is all the way in the back in the STEM Wing,” I said. “Don’t want to be late. But we’ll talk later?”
“I’d like that,” Emery said sincerely.
“Great!”
“Oh, ha-ha.”
I started down the hall and she called after me, “Hey, Harper.”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck!” she shouted, then clapped her hands over her mouth.
I laughed. “Thattagirl.”
Okay, Dash. That’s two.
***
In chem, half my attention was on Dr. Langford’s lecture about oxidation and ionization, and the other half was on Orion. I hated how aware I was of him. As if my senses were trapped in his gravitational pull against my will.
He’s friends with assholes. How’s that?
The thought wouldn’t take.
It was an exercise in self-restraint to keep my eyes on my notebook when his left hand was inches from mine. Then I noticed he had his phone out, recording the lecture. A strange look was on his face, almost as if he were half asleep. Not bored or lazy, but something I couldn’t quite place.
He shot me a cocky smile. A mask-smile. I was starting to tell the difference.
“What am I doing wrong now?” he whispered.
I nodded at his phone. “Didn’t know that was allowed.”
“You don’t approve?”
“No, just seems…easy.”
“Easy. Right,” he said, his smile tightening. “It listens better than I do. And I told you, my handwriting is like a secret code, except not even I can crack it.”
“I don’t care,” I whispered. “You do you.”
“You don’t care? The Harper Bennett doesn’t care about something school related? Bollocks.”
“Okay, so I walked into that one,” I whispered back. “But no, as your lab partner, as long as you get the material down, I don’t care.”
He narrowed his eyes playfully. “I don’t believe you.”
I started to retort then shut my mouth. Damn, this boy. Everything about him was maddening. Impossible to ignore. Impossible to dislike. Impossible to miss he had something intangible behind his eyes that his charming smile couldn’t conceal.
“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” I said. “It’s the truth.”
Watching me squirm, Orion’s amused smile deepened, and I felt my cheeks heat. I started to retort again when he leaned close, rested his cheek in his fist, his beautiful dark eyes boring into mine. Dammit if my heart didn’t skip ten beats.
“So Bennett, you do think—?”
Dr. Langford stopped his lecture. “Orion, Harper, you seem very chatty. Do you have something to add?”
I jumped. “No, sorry.” I’d forgotten there was anyone else on the damn planet but Orion and me.
This boy…
This boy was going to ruin my focus, my plans, my everything if I didn’t get my shit together.
Enough with the fawning and blushing and melting like a fucking moron.
Langford peered closer at Orion’s phone. “Mr. Mercer, is this how you take notes?”
Orion shifted in his seat, his smile dimming to a second-rate knockoff. “Yep. I’d be bloody heartbroken if I missed a single word of your fascinating lecture.”
Langford burst out laughing. “Clever, Mr. Mercer, but not surprising. I expect great things from your NoSci contest entry.”
Orion had the decency to look sheepish at such a blatant nod to his family’s legacy, but if the Mercers were Big Five, then they were all but signatories on Langford’s paychecks. I might be competing for second place, and I hadn’t even come up with an idea yet.
What did you expect? Fairness? At a school like this?
The thought helped me build up the defenses Orion had a knack for bulldozing right over.
The bell rang. Over the bustle of twenty-four students packing up, Langford announced our homework.
“I expect both you and your partner to have a full grasp of oxidation and ionization, as we’ll be putting those to the test in the lab tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
I inspected my notes to ensure I’d taken down Langford’s definition of the terms accurately. My hand had cramped trying to get it word for word.
Orion turned to me and flashed me that beautiful smile of his, instantly disarming me, setting my insides fluttering and turning my thoughts to mush.
Fucking stop it. This can’t happen. Nothing can happen, nothing will happen…
“I was going to say before we were so rudely interrupted,” he said. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot this week. We are, after all, stuck with each other all semester.”
“I’m stuck with you, you mean,” I snapped, the words flying out like a slap. An automatic defense cultivated by a lifetime of good things in my life that never lasted and that taught me to never get my hopes up because they always came crashing down in the end.
I instantly regretted it—instantly hated that I’d said it—but it was too late.
Orion’s beautiful smile vanished. A cold sliver of silence slipped between us. Then he put on his jacket, shouldered his bag and nodded at my notes.
“Oxidation is the loss of electrons, while ionization is the removal of electrons from a neutral atom to form an ion, which is a type of oxidation that requires an input of energy.” He shot me a cold look. “I do things the easy way.”
Then he walked away.
Dr. Langford’s definition. Word for word.
***
My shame chased me into history class and all the way to Advanced Piano, where Professor Wolfe decided to show up for a change. At least, we assumed class was happening; the door to the auditorium was unlocked and there was no cancellation note, so we all filed inside.