Chapter 11 Harper
Harper
End Of October
“That’s it,” I murmured. I sat back in my chair and hit save on my proposal.
Let’s hope the gods of chemistry are watching, I thought and shut my battered old laptop.
It was a Monday morning, and I could hear Dash and my mother moving around downstairs. I quickly finished getting ready for school, then packed up my supplies and headed down.
“Oh, Harper, there you are,” Mom said, working over pans of eggs and bacon at the stove.
I froze, instantly on high alert. “Don’t you have work at the dentist’s office?”
Mom made a sour face. “I haven’t lost my job already, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Jesus, Mom, I wasn’t thinking that.” Except that’s exactly what I was thinking. “It’s just that you’re usually at the office early.”
“Dr. Hensley is very happy with me but doesn’t need me until a little bit later today, so I thought I would make breakfast for the two of you and drive Dash to school.”
Wow. Mom doing Mom Things. Hell hath frozen over.
I brushed the unfair thoughts away—she was doing her best, after all—and took a seat beside Dash on a stool at the kitchen counter. “So, things are going well over there?”
“They’re going great,” Mom said, setting a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of me. “Dr. Hensley says he’s never had an assistant who’s as on top of things as I am. I may even be getting a raise soon.”
“Awesome.” I toyed with my fork. “Does that mean you’ll be able to cut back on some of the cleaning?”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, sipping coffee from her favorite Pittsburgh Steelers mug. “But a gal can dream.”
“The reason I ask is there’s this big contest at school. It comes with a hefty leg up to my preferred universities and a cash prize. Twenty-five grand.”
“What’s twenty-five grand?” Dash asked. “Like the candy bar?”
“No, buddy. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
My mom put down her mug. “No kidding?”
“Yeah. A winner won’t be announced until April, but I have an idea for an entry, and I think it’s kind of a good one. If they accept it, and I move on to round two, I’ll have to put in some late nights.”
“This is exactly why we came to Rhode Island and Castle Hill Academy,” Mom said. “For opportunities like this. We’ll work something out, right, Dash?” She shot him a wink.
“Harper, I’m going to be a cowboy for Halloween!” he chirped. “What are you going to be?”
“I’m going to be a suffragette.”
He scrunched up his face. “A what?”
“Well, buddy, it wasn’t all that long ago that women weren’t allowed to vote in elections. Suffragettes were women who fought for that right. Have they talked to you about elections in school?”
“Nope!”
“They will,” I said with a grin and turned to Mom. “Remember that costume I made for the social studies project?”
“Of course. You worked so hard making that beautiful dress.”
“I figured I’d put it to good use. There’s a big Halloween festival here instead of a homecoming dance this Saturday.”
“Saturday is Halloween!” Dash wiggled in his seat. “Candy, candy, candy.”
I ruffled his hair. “Just what you need. More sugar.”
Mom smiled coyly. “Any hot prospects for a date?”
Because my stupid brain—and heart—couldn’t leave well enough alone even after all this time, Orion’s face floated into my thoughts.
No, you shut that door. You don’t get to open it, even in your imagination.
“I don’t think so. I’ll probably go with friends from the Math and Physics Club.”
“Well, there’s nothing on the books for cleaning, and I’ll make sure I keep it that way.” She leaned her elbows on the counter, coffee mug in both hands. “Anyway, Dash and I have some trick-or-treating to do.”
He bounced in his seat. “Candy, candy, candy!”
Wow. Another Mom Thing I’d been stuck doing, three years running.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Harper,” she said, then quickly softened her tone. “We’re all going to have a good time this Halloween.”
She smiled apologetically. The Slap Heard Around the World was still hanging heavily between us after all this time too.
Her phone on the counter buzzed a text.
“Oh, it’s Dr. Hensley. He needs me until 5:30 p.m. tonight.” She looked to me as I was shouldering my backpack. “I’ll drive Dash to school this morning, but can you pick him up today?”
I stared. I’d been hoping today could’ve been one of my late nights to finish writing up my NoSci proposal, but I guessed not.
“Sure,” I said tightly. “No problem.”
“Thanks, hon. You’re a gem.”
“Yep.”
I ruffled Dash’s hair again and grabbed a piece of bacon on my way out. “Have a good day, buddy.”
“You have a good day too!”
A gal could dream.
***
As I crossed the quad from the parking lot, Elowen gave me the stink eye as if I’d bullied her in the girls’ bathroom all those weeks ago, but she and Aria had left me alone since.
I suspected that was Orion’s doing, but I’d also obeyed their command and remembered my place in the food chain.
I kept my interactions with him strictly chemistry-related.
Just like I wanted. Right?
Not that it was easy. Sitting next to Orion every day, being in his space, was wholly intoxicating. As if he had something in his very aura that bewildered the senses and turned normally rational girls (like me) into distracted, mushy-headed morons.
That day in chem, as Langford lectured about polymers, my eyes kept straying from my work to steal glances at Orion’s profile. Each time, little jolts went straight down my spine. The fifth such time, he caught me. Or maybe he was stealing a glance too.
God, his eyes. Beautiful dark pools fringed in long lashes…
But Orion’s eyes were tired lately. His smile was not as bright and seemed plastered on. Some days, he joked around with Langford, but that sounded tired too. Like an engine running out of gas.
Because he has no help. No accommodations.
My phone vibrated with a text from Emery Wallace.
Come with me to watch the boys’ row after school?
Under the table, I typed back, Sure but need to be done by 4:15. Have to pick up the little guy.
No prob. CU then!
Emery and I had fallen into a “mismatched friendship,” as she called it. She poured her guts out to me about her terrible home life and her authoritarian father, and I listened.
I wanted to spill my guts too, about Mom, Dash…
certain boys that I could not evict from my thoughts no matter how hard I tried.
But if I spoke Orion’s name out loud, if I let any feelings out of the cage I’d locked them in, it would put cracks in my armor.
I was holding my entire life together by dental floss and prayer, and I couldn’t get distracted.
I couldn’t be hurt or the whole thing would come crashing down.
I risked another glance at the beautiful boy next to me.
Because when you fell for someone, you fell. Especially if it happened between a girl like me and a guy like Orion. There was only one outcome, and that was to hit the bottom.
But by the time the bell rang, all this chaos in my heart and brain was too much, and I decided to ask Dean Yearwood to the Halloween festival.
The sun was unusually bright and beautiful—an anomaly and probably one of the last truly beautiful days before the cold and rains of winter set in.
At lunchtime, most students were taking advantage, eating on the quad.
I sat with Dean on the grass, just him and me.
I opened my mouth to ask him to be my date to the festival, and an entirely different question popped out instead.
“Dean, everybody loves you. You cross the invisible barrier between Richie and Bender so effortlessly. How do you do it?”
“Oh, wow. Wasn’t expecting that, but okay…” Dean chuckled, then leaned back on his palms and tilted his head up to the sun, thinking. He was such a handsome guy, even in a simple jeans and sweatshirt…and I felt absolutely nothing but deep, sisterly affection for him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s because I know that everybody at CHA is facing severe pressure, Richie and Bender alike.” He jerked his chin at a group of Richie girls not far from us: the Mean Girls, and Emery. “You see Delilah Winslow over there?”
“Yeah. The school’s living TMZ.”
“Her family is also one of the Big Five, like Tucker Hill, Gideon Foster, Emery, and Orion.”
I clenched my jaw against the fluttering sensation in my chest that name never failed to create.
“She’s one of the biggest gossips, and I think that’s because she’s insecure,” Dean continued.
“She tries to give people what they want so they’ll like her.
Because when you boil it down, isn’t that what everybody wants?
We’re all wading through academic pressure or athletic pressure or performance pressure, but we really just want to be seen.
I try to keep that in mind, so it doesn’t matter to me if somebody is a Richie or a Bender. I try to see them for them, you know?”
I shook my head. “You’re one of the good ones, Dean. No, one of the rare ones. The rarest.”
“Nah,” he said with a chuckle, as Xander Ford approached and sat down cross-legged between us.
“What are we talking about?” he said, adjusting his glasses with one muscled arm.
Xander was a super genius in an athlete’s body, and in the short time I’d gotten to know him, he’d proven himself to be a good guy too…who happened to be smitten with Emery Wallace.
They’re the best guys in my sphere, and one is taken-ish, and dating the other would be like dating my brother. I’m on a roll.
“I was just wondering how Dean maintains his status as a saint among us mere mortals,” I said.
Xander chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve been wondering that myself.”
“This one here,” Dean said, jerking his chin at Xander, “handles pressure by getting out on the shell and rowing his guts out.”
“Ah, yes. The classic Dean deflection,” Xander teased.
“Bold of you to declare anything about me ‘classic’ when we met”—Dean pretended to check his watch—“a mere six weeks ago.”
“I agree with Xander,” I said. “You reek of modesty, Yearwood.”