by Siera Maley
She smiled at me again, almost slyly, and then nodded. “Okay. I might take you up on that, Harper.”
“Okay. Cool.”
I watched her go, and then, when she was back inside her home, I clambered back into my car and let out a heavy breath. I reached up and gripped the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turned white, and immediately berated myself. I’d spent so long keeping to myself, and the first person other than Robbie that I’d reached out to was a girl who’d be dead within the year. She had to be sixteen years old already. She looked my age, and I was seventeen.
Robbie was going to be disappointed in me.
* * *
“What exactly do you think you’re going to accomplish?” he asked me just a few hours later.
“I don’t know,” I murmured. “It just came out. I just word-vomited all over the place. I saw a cute girl and turned into an idiot. I didn’t even notice her number at first.”
“Who does that?” he countered, looking confused. We were on break again, and it was so hot out that I could see sweat dripping from the tips of his dark, shoulder-length hair. “You have the power to see when people will die, and you met someone and didn’t immediately look to see?”
“She had nice eyes,” I mumbled, and only felt dumber when he raised an eyebrow at me.
“Seriously?”
“And I’d almost run her over, too, so I was a little distracted, okay?”
“Her number was 16 after you almost hit her?”
“Yeah, clearly she wasn’t meant to be killed by me,” I told him, rolling my eyes. “Obviously it’s something else.”
“Something else that’s happening soon,” he reminded me. “The smart thing to do would be to not get attached.”
“I’ve never been that smart,” I said.
“Just don’t be dumb,” he told me. I nodded, understanding. No initiating contact. That was mostly fine with me. I didn’t want to befriend a cute girl months from death. That sounded like a tragic Nicholas Sparks novel waiting to happen…. but only if she somehow found me attractive.
“She was probably straight, right?” I asked Robbie, half-kidding. He smacked me on the arm in response and rolled his eyes at me. I smiled back, and it helped. And then I tried my best to forget about Chloe, because if I thought about her too much, I’d wind up dwelling on the fact that she was a real person with a real life who had real parents that were going to be devastated when she really died.
As long as I didn’t think about her, and as long as I didn’t see her, I’d just hear about her death through neighborhood gossip, and maybe my dad and I would talk briefly about how unexpected and sad it was, and then we’d move on. Life would go on with or without Chloe Stephens, after all. It waited for no one. It never had.
* * *
My dad was a lanky, black-haired man with thick-rimmed Harry Potter glasses and a timid voice that all but confirmed he’d been kind of a dork growing up. On rainy days back when I was younger, I’d sometimes liked to sit on the couch with him and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and we’d joke around about how he and Giles would’ve been best friends were Giles a real person.
Dad got even quieter after we lost Mom. He worked from home now, so he spent most of his time during the day in his office on the computer. But he did come out to make dinner most nights, and occasionally we’d watch an old movie together. I knew he loved me, but I also knew he didn’t like being a single dad.
I didn’t look much like him. I had Mom’s brunette hair, only mine was a slightly darker shade than hers, and a little less naturally wavy. I also had her dark brown eyes. Dad used to like to joke that he couldn’t tell my pupils from my irises, but he’d stopped when he’d realized it was making me insecure. But everything had made me insecure back then. For a while, I’d been obsessed with being perfect. I’d thought that maybe if I was flawless, I’d live forever. Ten-year-old logic, huh?
During dinner maybe three days or so after I’d met Chloe, Dad perked up out of nowhere and told me, “Oh, right. I can’t believe I forgot. A girl stopped by looking for you today while you were at work. It was just half an hour or so before you got home, actually.”
“A girl?” I repeated quietly, although I obviously knew who it’d been. I hadn’t talked to any girls other than Chloe lately. Or ever.
“A very cute girl.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me, smirking, and I rolled my eyes at him.
“Dad, c’mon.”
“She seemed very eager to see you. And she brought a dog along. I didn’t know you’d made any new friends; does she work with you?”
“No, she’s new to the neighborhood. I nearly ran over her and her dog the other day.”
His eyebrows pulled together, and he studied me, concerned. “I thought I told you that if you were using my car you needed to be careful.”
“I was! She ran out into the street! Besides, she’s obviously fine now. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Well, just make sure you’re not texting and driving, or whatever it is you kids do now.”
“What did she want specifically?” I asked, rolling my eyes again. “Like, what did she say?”
“Well, she asked if you lived here. I told her yes, but that you were working and would be home soon if she’d like to wait. She suggested I just tell you she stopped by, and I said that I would, and then she left.”
I looked away from him and picked at my food with my fork. “Okay.” There was a long silence, and then I asked him, “Do you think I should spend time with her?”
“Of course. You could use a new friend. Especially with it being summer. You have to do something with your free time other than working with that older guy – who I still have yet to really get to know, by the way. And that doesn’t mean I don’t think he seems nice, but I don’t like the idea of your only friend being in his twenties. You’re seventeen.”
“Yeah, but…” I trailed off, and then shrugged my shoulders. It wasn’t like I could just tell him what I knew about Chloe. There was no telling how quickly my life would spiral out of control if I did. It just wasn’t ever going to be an option. I’d made a few comments about it when I’d been much younger, and the adults had laughed it off back then. They thought it was funny that I was convinced I had a special power. Now I was old enough to know that I’d never tell. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “What if we don’t click or something?”
“Well, you’ll never know unless you try.”
“What if we do click and we become friends and then it ends badly somehow?”
Dad was quiet for a moment. I think, to some extent, he understood what I was getting at, because when he finally spoke again, he’d softened and reached over to take my hand with his. “Harper, I know that things have been rough. We’ve both been through a lot. Loss is… it’s hard. But that’s no reason to cut yourself off from the rest of the world just because you’re scared to lose someone again.”
“If you could do it all over again with Mom,” I asked, looking up at him, “would you?”
“Of course.”
“What if she’d died earlier? Like, giving birth to me or something?”
“That doesn’t change my answer,” he replied simply.
“What if you’d only been friends, and she’d still died ten years earlier?”
“Harper, people are not milk cartons,” Dad sighed out. “You don’t pick and choose the ones you think will last the longest without going sour. If it feels right, you just go with it until it doesn’t feel right anymore. And sometimes when something goes wrong, it hurts. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it in the first place.”
I sat back in my chair, my eyebrows furrowed and my eyes on my lap, and let out a quiet sigh. Dad cleared his throat and stood, moving to clean off the dishes on the table.
“Spend some time with a girl your age who wants to get to know you. Even if it’s just friendship, and even if it’s just for summer. You could use the company, and I think it’ll be a reassuring expe
rience for you when nothing bad happens and you make a great friend. She seems like a nice girl.”
“I don’t know, Dad,” I mumbled, reaching up to rub at the back of my neck. “We’ll see.”
* * *
Chloe Stephens, as it turned out, was persistent.
She came around the following Saturday, Baxter in tow, and rang our doorbell three quick times in succession right around noon. Given that it was a Saturday and my dad was in his office, oblivious to the world around him, I was forced to stumble out of bed and zombie-walk my way downstairs to the front door.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that it’d be Chloe at the door, mostly because I was still half-asleep and hadn’t really been doing any thinking at all. But as it was, I leaned forward to open the door, my hair a mess, my eyelids droopy, my body barely covered by shorts and a tank top, and then found myself face to face with her on the other side.
Both of her eyebrows shot up at the sight of me, and I was suddenly wide awake. And beyond embarrassed. She looked really cute in her pink V-neck, cut-off jean shorts, and navy blue Converse, and I looked like I belonged under a bridge.
“Whoa,” she said at last, speaking first. I could see her trying to fight off an amused grin. “Not a morning person?”
I blinked at her, silently hoping my cheeks didn’t look as hot as they felt. “Hi. Can you give me like two minutes?” I asked her.
“Sure.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I debated for a moment whether to invite her in or just leave her on my front porch, and, after an uncomfortable pause, I left the front door open, gestured awkwardly to the living room, mumbled that she could come in, and then left, taking the stairs two at a time back to my bedroom.
I changed quickly in front of my bathroom mirror and tried my best to clean myself up. Chloe probably didn’t like girls, and I had no intention of developing an interest in her, given the number on her forehead, but she was still a cute girl, and cute girls made me self-conscious.
A few minutes later, I was headed back downstairs with my hair in a messy bun and with clothes on that were actually appropriate for the public: a long T-shirt and athletic shorts. Chloe was in the living room. She’d shut the front door behind herself and was playing with Baxter on our living room couch. When she heard me coming, she took him into her arms and tried in vain to get him to settle down. Once it was clear he couldn’t calm himself, she sighed and set him on the ground. As she straightened up, her gaze shifted to me and she smiled.
“So, hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I said, and we stood in silence for a long, uncomfortable moment. I made myself focus on her face instead of her forehead.
She cleared her throat before things could get too awkward, and then gestured to the front door. “Well, I just thought that since it was the weekend and you don’t have to work, you’d maybe wanna take a walk with Baxter and me? I don’t really know the area. If your offer still stands, I mean.”
“Okay.” I nodded, feeling flustered. It seemed like the longer I stood in her presence, the more nervous I became. It’d been a while since I’d had any sort of extensive social interaction with someone other than Dad or Robbie, let alone a pretty girl. “Just let me tell my dad I’m going out.”
I left in a hurry, my cheeks mildly hot, and burst into my dad’s office. It was starting to sink in that Chloe had shown up at my house unannounced twice now, asking for my company. She was really set on spending time with me, which either meant that she was desperate to make a friend… or something more. I didn’t have much of an ego, so I assumed the former, but both options were still terrifying.
“Give me an excuse to stay home. Please?” came bursting out of me before I could think about it. Dad spun around in his chair, an eyebrow already arched in questioning amusement. “I’m too nervous to do this.”
“Is your friend back again?” he guessed.
“She’s not my friend.”
“Well, it seems like she wants to be.” I pursed my lips together, and his amusement only grew. He spun away from me, facing his computer again, and casually tossed out, “Have fun. Be back before dinnertime.”
“She could be a serial killer. Or the bait for a serial killer.”
“Then I will miss you dearly. Goodbye, Harper.”
I let out a sigh and spun on my heel, marching out of his office. By the time I was back with Chloe in the living room, I’d plastered a polite smile onto my face and the color had drained from my cheeks. She was cooing at Baxter, distracted, and gave a small start at the sound of my voice.
“Dad says I have to be back before dinnertime.”
She recovered, reddening slightly, and smiled. “Cool.”
* * *
I took her around the neighborhood first. We walked quickly to keep up with Baxter, who pulled heavily at the leash in Chloe’s hand and refused to let her rein him in.
“So what do you do for fun around here?” she asked. “I bet there’s a lot to keep you busy.”
I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to make the best tour guide. “Oh, uh… I mostly just stay pretty local. There’s a movie theater down the street, near where I work. And Robbie’s got this place he really likes a couple miles away; it’s basically a video game arcade with a whole special section for laser tag. They also have really good pizza.” I felt like a dork as soon as I was done talking. Laser tag? Video games?
“Is Robbie your boyfriend?” she surprised me by asking. I laughed.
“Oh. No. He’s, like, twenty-two.”
“Ooh, an older boy.” She grinned at me. “What’s he like?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I insisted, and she laughed at my reddening face. “Seriously. He works with me; he’s a cook at this fast food place where I work the register. He’s a great guy, but… not my type.”
“Because of the age or the geekiness?” she teased.
“I don’t know.” I avoided the question, shrugging. “He just isn’t.” I changed the subject. “So what do you wanna know about San Francisco? What are you into? Art? Music?” Glancing to Baxter, I added, “Animals?”
“All of the above. And I’ve never tried laser tag, but I bet I could be into it. I just wanna see everything. I’ve wanted to live here for so long.”
I remembered she’d said that on the day we’d met, too. “Why?”
She shrugged, but I could tell she was the one avoiding my question now. “It just always looked fun and sunny and free. I grew up watching a lot of Full House. I don’t know.”
“Ah.” I nodded, feigning understanding. “I watched a lot of Spongebob Squarepants as a kid. Must be why I have this strange urge to live in a pineapple under the sea.”
She shot me a look, biting on her lip to hold back a smile, and I was momentarily pleased with myself. “Very funny. I just wanted to, okay?”
We reached the end of the street that led to the front of the neighborhood, and I glanced up and down the street. “Hmm. If we take a left here, the movie theater’s about a mile up the road. We can’t take Baxter inside, but we could grab, like, tiny five-dollar ice cream cones from the concession stands inside. Or, alternatively, we could take a right and risk our lives when the sidewalk dead-ends in about five-hundred yards or so.”
“So my options are death or inhumanely expensive ice cream?” She frowned. “Alright. Ice cream it is. But only ‘cause I brought money and you’re pretty.” My lips parted in surprise as she veered left and let Baxter tug her along down the sidewalk. She glanced back at me and winked, then called back, “Are you coming, or do you have a boyfriend you should be with right now?”
She turned around and continued on without waiting on my response, and I glanced down to her left arm; the one not outstretched and gripping Baxter’s leash. It hung at her side, swinging with every step she took, and as my gaze reached her forearm, I saw what I’d missed when I’d first taken in her appearance at my front door: a thin handmade bracelet encircled her wrist, repeatedly bearing, in orde
r, the six colors of the rainbow.
I blinked a few times, sure I was imagining things. And then, when I was finally done and the bracelet hadn’t vanished, I swallowed hard.
This was going to be a long summer.
Chapter Three
Once we had our ice cream, we sat together at a picnic table outside a restaurant next to the movie theater. Chloe licked at her chocolate cone and I tried not to stare as she declared, “You can totally tell a lot about a person by the ice cream they like.” She eyed the vanilla cone in my hand judgmentally. “I have this theory that people who like vanilla ice cream are super safe and unadventurous.”
I had no idea what to say to that. I was just allergic to chocolate. At last, I settled on, “Oh. I’m sorry to disappoint you…?”
“I forgive you. Would you ever go skydiving?”
“No,” I answered instinctively, cringing at the thought of my parachute failing. She grinned.
“See? I’m right.”
“What, you would?”
She nodded. “Of course. In fact, my dad says he’ll take me soon. I’m a total adrenaline junkie. My parents took me bungee-jumping once when I was ten and it was amazing.”
“Your parents trusted a springy cord with your life when you were ten?” I asked, appalled.
“I think the professional bungee-jumper that helped us might’ve taken some of the responsibility,” she joked. “But yeah, my parents are pretty awesome. They’re super into, like, the whole living your life to the fullest thing. They watch a lot of ‘inspirational’ documentaries, which is totally cheesy, but I can appreciate the sentiment. We’ve lived in six different states and two different countries since I was born. We’ve gone on vacations to Europe every summer up until this one, and my dad’s got this long bucket list with every roller coaster he wants to ride before he dies and—” She paused, cringing. “God, I sound really obnoxious and pretentious right now, don’t I?”