Chapter 3 Harper
Harper
“So? How is it?” Vanessa Gerard asked over the phone. “Gold toilets and a personal butler to walk you to class?”
“Not quite, but you’re not far off either,” I told my best friend back home. I tapped my pen and looked out the window from my desk. Only a few scattered lights from my neighborhood. The forest was quiet and dark. Lonely. “I miss you guys.”
“Please.” Vanessa snorted. “We’d all give our right tit to go to the gleaming castle on the hill.”
She sounded bored. Or pissed off. Almost eager to get off the phone, and we’d been talking for a grand total of four minutes.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Yeah, it’s a great opportunity, but—”
“Great opportunity? Bitch, you practically have a golden ticket to MIT or NYU or wherever the hell you want to go. The rest of us are wallowing in the dirt, hoping for community college at best.”
I swallowed a sudden rock in my throat. “I thought you were happy for me.”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m PMSing like a fiend. I am happy for you, Harp. We all are. Just jealous as fuck. Anyway, tell me all the things. Any hot guys? Any hot, rich guys?”
On cue, Orion Mercer’s face floated in front of my vision.
“I suppose.”
“Rich as hell, I bet,” Vanessa said. “Way better than the scuzzy guys hanging out at the E-Z Stop parking lot.” The bitterness was back in her voice again. “Any prospects?”
“I don’t know. There’s this one guy who’s sort of infuriating—”
“Oh shit. Speaking of E-Z Stop, I promised Micah and the gang I’d meet them in ten. I gotta go. Call me later, okay?”
“Oh. Sure.” Before I could say another word, the line went dead. “Okay, good talk.”
I stared at my phone, part of me wishing I could crawl into it. Go back to Pittsburgh and hang out with my old friends. The guys too, but that had to be the homesickness talking, because I’d sworn them off forever. Or until I could have something meaningful and real, which felt like the same thing.
I’d never had a real boyfriend. I’d been too busy studying and taking care of Dash and doing life to be able to focus on a boyfriend and so had only awkward, uncomfortable, fumbling encounters in backseats or hangouts in parking lots.
No dates, only hookups. Doing things—doing all the things—because it seemed like that’s what I was supposed to be doing.
Not necessarily because I wanted to. No real connections.
Never rounding emotional bases, only physical ones.
Never again.
I’d compromised myself one too many times and vowed not to do casual ever again. The next time I was with a guy, it was going to be serious.
Not that I had time for serious. Not with the NoSci contest dropped in my lap and the schoolwork and the pressure I was under.
I’d been hoping to talk to Vanessa about it all, and maybe about Orion too. But I guess those would all sound like first-world problems. I may as well have been a Richie in her eyes.
Maybe she’s right. This is a tremendous opportunity, and I should suck it up and get to work.
So I bent my head over my desk and got to work.
***
The next morning, I parked in the student lot. No sooner did I step out of my car than a group of seniors—three guys and a girl—surrounded me. My heart clanged in my chest, but I inhaled deep and lifted my chin.
“Hey, Bender,” one guy said. Big, beefy, blond. “This your sweet ride?”
“Obviously,” I replied.
He and a dark-haired guy with black eyes and an equally wicked-looking girl hanging off his arm grinned. “We wanted to let you know that this is our parking lot. The Bender lot is down there.”
He pointed to a rocky patch of dirt on the other side of a chain-link fence where the school’s industrial arts and stagecraft classes dumped their old lumber and metal. My cheeks burned.
“I’ll try to remember,” I said, pushing past them.
“First warning, Bender,” the big blond called after me. “Park here again and there will be consequences.”
I ignored him and the snickering that chased me into the Academy.
Forget it. They’re losers who have nothing better to do than hang around a parking lot being dickheads.
Still.
It was ten minutes into Calculus before the knots in my gut loosened. Beside me, Emery Wallace was drowning in derivative equations. Given the shit I’d just taken, I was inclined to let her, but…
You’re not doing so hot either, you know.
Vanessa was going to stop returning my calls and texts, the connection between us attenuating until it snapped. I could use a friendly face. Some kindness. Who said Richies didn’t too? I could cross enemy lines. What did I have to lose? Be the change, and all that.
I leaned over. “Hi, I’m Harper. If you ever need help—?”
“I’m good, thanks,” Emery snapped back, fixing me with a syrupy sweet smile that didn’t touch her eyes.
Okay, then.
My cheeks burned as if I’d been slapped. My eyes wanted to sting too, but I didn’t let them. No fucking way.
And because no good deed goes unpunished, when we left class, a bunch of her friends fell in step behind me like a wake of vultures, picking apart my clothes, my hair, and the fact I was a Bender.
Emery picked at me too.
Fuck them, I thought lifting my head up high. Fuck all these Richies if they think they’re going to get the better of me.
But goddamn. This was day two.
“You’ve been through worse,” I muttered, remembering ten-year-old me trying to drag my drunk mother off the kitchen floor to put her to bed. Surely I could handle my best friend ghosting me with a side of bullying. I was a “tough cookie” after all.
“You’re a tough cookie, Harper,” Mom would say after a rough night. “That’s what I love about you.”
But that’s the thing. Being resilient is overrated. I don’t know anyone who wants to be tough. I’d have liked to have been a soft little girl playing with her dolls, but you make the best with what you have.
In English, Ms. Alvarez had us analyze a poem by Sylvia Plath—“Mad Girl’s Love Song.” A poem about a boy who seems so perfect, the speaker must’ve made him up inside her head. One who didn’t seem real.
Don’t go there… I warned my brain, but it conjured up Orion Mercer. Because of course it did. This boy with a smile that turned my insides to mush and who slid into my thoughts like a burglar.
“A bandit,” I murmured.
Emery said something quite beautiful and profound about the poem. It nearly made me soften to her—she obviously had a lot going on inside she was keeping locked away.
The old me would have left her alone, but I was raw and bleeding and not going to keep taking any shit.
I was a tough cookie, after all.
I leaned over to Emery and whispered, “That was really good.”
“Thanks—”
“Too bad you’re a total fake.”
As soon as I said the words, I wanted to snatch them back. They didn’t make me feel any better about being mocked. I’d only spread more bad vibes, like a sickness.
If Dash had heard me…
Shame burned my cheeks. I could do better. Be better than that, and not let this school dig roots down into me and plant more rotten fruit.
***
The Academy had a ton of student-run clubs and extracurriculars that would all look good on a college application.
At midmorning break, I went to one of the many patios and found the booth for the Math & Physics Club.
It was manned by a handsome guy with dark hair and green eyes.
Also a Bender, if I had to guess by his plain clothes and worn-out shoes.
“Dean Yearwood, secretary,” he said, introducing himself.
“Harper Bennett.”
“Pleased to meet you, Harper,” he said, handing me a clipboard. “Answer me these questions three.”
That rang a bell. Sure enough, the last question was the quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I answered the other two correctly.
“Congrats,” Dean said, shaking my hand. “Welcome to the Math and Physics Club.”
“Thanks,” I said, relief flooding me. As if I’d been shipwrecked, clinging to a piece of driftwood until Dean hauled me onto dry land.
“New here?” he asked. “How are you liking our humble school so far?”
“To be honest, it’s a lot.”
“I get it. It can feel overwhelming, especially for those of us not quite as privileged as our fellow students.”
Dean’s gaze went a group of Richies, Orion among them, gathered on the deck, talking and laughing. Orion had at least three girls hanging on his every word. His smile was as brilliant as ever, his laugh quick and easy, just as it had been with me.
Why wouldn’t it be? I wasn’t anything but a new recipient of his charm. With Orion was the big blond guy, the sinister-looking darker guy, and his girlfriend from the parking lot this morning.
So he’s with that crowd. Good to know.
I used the info like ammunition. Or fortifications against him for chemistry and history class, and piano, if the teacher ever showed up.
“They’re practically blinding, aren’t they?” Dean asked with a laugh, and I realized I was staring.
I jerked my gaze away. “I almost wonder why they let us Benders in here at all,” I said. “Oh, shit, sorry. I don’t mean to presume—”
Dean chuckled. “It’s okay. I’m a Bender through and through.” His eyes dimmed slightly. “I may be the bendiest of them all. But we’re all one big happy family.”
As if to illustrate his point, Orion’s group of Richies caught sight of Dean and waved. I quickly looked away.
Dean waved back. “That’s Tucker and Orion, my boys on the crew. Both Big Five.”
“Big Five?”
“Their families give the most money to the Academy. Kings of the school.” Dean smiled. “But they’re good guys. Most everyone is, once you get to know them. Give it time, and you’ll feel at home.”
“If you say so.”
I must’ve sounded more pathetic than I meant to, because Dean put a hand on my arm.
“Come find me at lunch,” he said kindly. “You can meet the rest of the club, and you’re welcome to sit with us anytime. There’s safety in numbers.”
I smiled gratefully. “Thanks. I’ll do that.”
“And you’re coming to the bonfire this Saturday, yeah? It’s the first big social event of the season. The whole school will be there.”
“Not sure that’s the selling point you think it is.”