Chapter 11
ELEVEN
CALEB
“My playlist today,” Harper announces the second she drops into the passenger seat of the Mustang, already reaching for the aux cord like it’s a foregone conclusion.
I squint at her. “Didn’t we do your playlist yesterday?”
Thursday was hers. Wednesday was mine. Tuesday was hers. Monday was—yes, yesterday was definitely hers.
She grins up at me, and something in my chest does this stupid flip-flop thing that I’ve been trying very hard to ignore for the past month and a half.
“Yeah, but I’m leaving soon, so you should let me have it more often. You know, be a gentleman about it.”
The words are casual. Throwaway. She’s already plugging her phone in, completely unaware that she just detonated a bomb in the middle of my carefully maintained equilibrium.
Leaving soon.
Leaving soon. I force myself to focus on backing out of the driveway, even though my hands are white-knuckled on the wheel. Eighteen in three weeks. Three weeks is twenty-one days. Twenty-one days is—
Goddammit. Obsessing over the numbers won’t change it. But my brain keeps ticking away. Five hundred and four hours. Thirty thousand, two hundred and forty minutes.
Not that I’m keeping track.
She’s always been leaving, I remind myself. That’s not news. She ran away the first week she was here. This is just Harper being Harper.
Except it doesn’t feel like just Harper being Harper.
It feels like something ending before it ever really started.
System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” starts blasting from the speakers, and Harper settles back in her seat with a satisfied smile that makes her look younger.
Softer. She tucks her hands into the front pocket of that oversized hoodie she always wears instead of her Westfield Prep blazer, and rests her eyes shut.
I have to physically stop myself from reaching over and—
And what? Trying to hold her hand? Asking her not to go?
I just turned my application in for Harvard, along with a bunch of other Ivys and a few safety schools, also on the East Coast. My future is halfway across the country, one way or another.
Still, I reach down and turn the volume down halfway through the first verse, and Harper cracks one eye open to glare at me.
“You know,” I say, keeping my voice carefully light, “I think you can really get to know a person through their playlist.”
I’m babbling again. I always babble around her because I never know what to say, but I always want to get her talking. So I just say the first dumb thing that comes into my head.
“Oh yeah?” Both eyes are open now, watching me with that sharp intelligence that always makes me feel like I’m being X-rayed. “What does my playlist say about me?”
I take the turn onto the main road, using the movement to buy myself a second. “Well... you listen to a lot of music that has emotion.”
“Emotion?” She scoffs, but there’s amusement in it. “Metal isn’t about emotion. It’s about smart people screaming their rage.”
“Exactly. Rage is an emotion.”
I can feel the weight of her attention like a physical touch. “My playlist isn’t all metal.”
“No, I know.” I just keep filling the space with words because the alternative is sitting in silence, thinking about her leaving soon.
“You also seem to really like intense female vocals. Marina and the Diamonds. Evanescence. Tove Lo. Women with cool voices who seem like they’re going through shit. ”
“Okay, well. Somebody’s been paying attention.” She sits up in her seat. “But it’s just like you said—I like them because they have cool voices. It’s not that deep.”
I shrug carefully, keeping my eyes on the road even though I can feel her watching me. “Maybe.”
The thing is, it is that deep. Everything about Harper is that deep, even when she pretends it isn’t. The way she chose “Chop Suey!” because it’s about feeling trapped and crying for help. The way every song on her playlist is either defiant or devastated, with no middle ground.
She grabs my phone from the console before I can stop her.
“Okay, Sigmund Freud, let’s see what your playlist says about you.” She’s already swiping. “What’s your passcode?”
I glance over at her like she’s nuts. “I’m not telling you my passcode.”
“Oh my god.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s not like I’m going to try to break into your bank account and steal all your money.”
“Right, because you already tried stealing my wallet.”
“You mean I already succeeded in stealing your wallet.”
“And this is supposed to give me confidence in giving you my passcode?”
“Just give me your passcode, dork.”
“Dork? Oh, so now you insult me, and I’m supposed to—”
“Let me guess.” She inputs 1-2-3-4.
The phone unlocks.
My face goes hot. Dammit. The truth is, I’ve tried changing it.
Picked Mom’s birthday. Then the start of the Fibonacci sequence.
Then random numbers. But every time I unlock my phone with anything else, I have to do it four times to make sure it works.
Sometimes six. So 1-2-3-4 it is. Sequential. Clean. One attempt. Mostly.
“Oh my god. Why are you such an easy mark?” She groans, but she’s laughing, and the sound does something dangerous to my nervous system.
She unplugs her phone and plugs in mine, navigating to my music app with the kind of casual confidence that suggests she’s not even slightly worried I’ll object.
Jim Croce’s “New York’s Not My Home” starts playing through the speakers.
My head immediately starts bobbing to the groove. I can’t help it—it’s a perfect song. One of Mom’s favorites. The guitar work alone is—
“Oh my god. What is this?” Harper moans. “Why are you a seventy-year-old man in a teenager’s body?”
She clicks to the next track. Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” drums through the speakers, and I start singing along because it’s Johnny Cash, and if you don’t sing along to Johnny Cash, you’re dead inside.
“Do you listen to anything from this century?”
She clicks through several more songs—Steve Miller Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bob Seger—finally stopping on The Civil Wars “Barton Hollow.”
“Okay, now this I actually like.”
“You should, because it’s a masterpiece.”
She’s scrolling through my whole library now, and I resist the urge to grab the phone back. There’s something weirdly intimate about someone looking through your music, seeing all the songs you’ve collected like pieces of yourself.
Not to mention… Everything’s in order. Alphabetical by artist, then chronological by album. Mom’s favorites in one playlist, Silas’s in another, never mixed. Twelve songs per road trip list because—
Because it matters. I don’t know why. It just does. She’s messing up the algorithm, and my fingers itch to fix it.
“I still don’t see what this is supposed to tell me about you,” she says. “That you like... old man music?”
“It says that I’m classic.” I nod with a cocky smile her way. “I value the good stuff.”
She rolls her eyes—something I’ve noticed she does a lot around me—but she’s smiling when she does it. That smile hits me square in the chest, and I have to remind myself to watch the road.
Focus on the road. Focus on getting us to school safely. Focus on anything except the way morning light catches in her dark hair, or how she smells like cherry blossoms, or how badly I always want to touch her—
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “What did you mean earlier when you said you’re leaving soon?” It comes out too fast.
I try again, forcing calm into my tone even though my heart is suddenly pounding against my ribs. “You planning to run again?”
The idea makes my stomach drop. Harper running—getting picked up by some trucker, getting hurt, getting lost, getting—
“Run? No, I’m not running.” She says it casually, like we’re discussing the weather. “I mean, I turn eighteen in a few weeks, so there’s no running to it. I’ll just be an adult, and Silas won’t have any more claim on me.”
“He’s your dad. He’ll always have a claim.” The words come out defensive, and I take a deep, steadying breath before I try again. “Family is the most important thing we have in life.”
Otherwise, you’re all alone in the world.
The rules I’ve built my life around flash through my head like a checklist I can’t stop running.
The idea of Harper just walking away from the closest thing to a real family she’s ever had makes something primal and desperate claw at my chest.
I know we’re good for her, even if she can’t see it.
I can feel her looking at me, so I glance away from the road for a second.
She’s got this expression on her face—like I’m a child who doesn’t understand how the world works.
Like she pities me for my naivety. But also like she’s confused by me.
Like we’re different species trying to communicate across an impossible divide.
She gets that look sometimes around Mom and me.
Like we’re as alien to her as she is to us.
“Family is the ones who don’t leave,” she says quietly. “And that’s not my dad.”
The words hang in the air between us, sharp and final.
My mind is moving too quickly, trying to process, trying to find the right response, trying to—
A few weeks.
She’ll be gone in a few weeks.
Everything will go back to the way it was. Just me and Mom and Silas. The perfect blended family, minus one.
I try to wrap my head around it. It’s not like I can change her mind. I might still not know her that well, but I’ve seen how determined she gets once she decides something.
It’s fine. Totally fine. Good, actually. I swallow hard. Everything will be back on track for Harvard.
Mom will be devastated, though. She really wanted this to work. She’s been trying so hard to make Harper feel welcome.
And Silas. God, Silas has been walking around like he’s afraid that if he breathes too loud, Harper will bolt. Like she’s some wild thing that might spook at any sudden movement.
But she’s leaving anyway.
Of course she is.
No matter how hard I try to hold on to people, they leave.