Tyler was smiling, and when Harper reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, Sarah saw that she was smiling too. She was relieved when the bell rang as it should have forced an end to their conversation, but they continued to talk as they lackadaisically packed up their bags. Unsure why the sight of her brother talking to Harper was getting her so worked up, she jammed her notebook in her bag and made haste to her Art class.
Art was, by far, Sarah’s favourite subject. Although she preferred drawing and painting to the sculpture and design part of the curriculum that came later in the year, she wouldn’t trade a minute in art for any other class. Ever since Sarah could remember, she loved to draw, and doodled on whatever was handy. When she didn’t have a pen or pencil, she’d use her finger to draw imaginary figures on desks, walls, or even in the air. She believed that the world was a landscape of art, and she saw life through its many canvasses.
When Sarah drew, she felt free. Nothing rivaled the way she felt when a work came to life under her paintbrush. When Tyler was out at the mall meeting girls or playing video games with his friends, Sarah would lock herself away in her room and create every piece of art she felt moving within her. Sometimes, she couldn’t sit still when an idea came to her, and it took all the effort in her body not to run from whatever she was doing, no matter where she was, and get that image out of her and into the world. The act of creating was exciting and cathartic. It made her feel alive and complete, and she couldn’t imagine anything else ever feeling that good.
The lesson that day was to learn a bit about art history. Not the most exciting assignment or what she had hoped for, but at least the history of art was better than solving equations or learning about eco systems. She contented herself with drawing flowers around the border of her notebook while Mr Chase talked about art deco and God knew what else for half an hour. Finally, he told them they could draw in their sketchbooks for the rest of the class, and Sarah pulled out a drawing of her hand with a thorn going through it. She’d started it the night before.
After art, came dreaded biology. She hated when teachers let students pick their own seats, and always cringed when a group assignment was given where they were allowed to partner with their friends. A true loner, Sarah didn’t have any friends, and it was always embarrassing for her to find a group of other misfits and ask if she could join them. In biology, they were allowed to pick their own lab partners, and Sarah was the odd-man out in the twenty-nine student class, so she sat at the two-seater, high, black lab table alone. The teacher had told her that he would partner with her on the assignment her first day, but he obviously couldn’t do that every day for the rest of the year. So far, she’d only had a partner once when someone else was home sick.
When Sarah got to class, she took a seat at the table at the back nearest the windows. When the second bell rang and class began, the seat next to her was still empty. Mr Epners looked at her with some discomfort, as if he didn’t want to be her partner either. A knock on the door delayed the start of class.
It was one of the secretaries from the office. Mr Epners went to the door to speak with the woman. He nodded his head and pushed his thick, black glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. The woman from the office left, and Harper Isabelle stepped through the open door. Sarah’s breath caught at the sight of her. Mr Epners said something to Harper, and when he pointed toward her lab table, Sarah’s stomach knotted. Something seemed to flicker behind Harper’s eyes as she took in Sarah and the empty chair next to her. She hesitated long enough to make Sarah wish she could fall into the floor and disappear.
Harper quietly took her seat. “I have a gift for you,” Harper whispered.
Surprised that Harper was talking to her, Sarah looked at her, confused, but didn’t respond.
Harper smiled as she reached into her bag and pulled out Sarah’s copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. “You left it in class. Ms Cox asked if someone would be seeing you again today. I told her your locker was across from mine, so she gave it to me.” She placed the book on the space of black table between them.
She had been in such a rush not to see Tyler and Harper flirting that she’d let the book fall out of her bag, or maybe it had never made it in. Why hadn’t Tyler taken the book for her? Why was Harper here? “What are you doing here?” Sarah whispered.
“I switched one of my classes. Is your lab partner out today?”
“I don’t have a partner,” she answered acerbically.
Mr Epners announced that they would be watching a movie on homeostasis, and turned off the lights. Harper leaned in a little to Sarah. “I’ll be your partner.”
Harper’s words moved through her. She probably should have replied, but couldn’t. Her mouth had gone dry. In the darkness, Harper smiled at her before turning her head to watch the movie, and Sarah got a funny feeling in her centre.
It was a long film, and Sarah found herself using the time to stare discreetly at Harper. Harper had two piercings in her left earlobe and a dark freckle behind her ear, just where her hairline began. Her eyelashes were long when she blinked, and she had a habit of twisting pieces of her lustrous, brown hair between her fingers. When she played with those soft-looking strands, Sarah could smell her shampoo. It was fruity and refreshing, and it made Sarah’s stomach ache.
As if sensing the weight of Sarah studying her—cataloguing the way Harper’s stomach dipped when she leaned forward, the way the back of her shirt rose up just enough for Sarah to spy a half inch of skin before it met her jeans—Harper turned toward her. Sarah looked away. She stared at the TV and used all of her willpower not to look back at Harper. After a few moments, Harper returned her attention to the screen, and Sarah let out a long, steady breath. Then, Harper opened her binder, wrote a note, and slid the binder a few inches so that it sat in front of Sarah.
Don’t you like me?
When Sarah read the note, her heart missed a beat.
I don’t really know you.
She slid it back, unable to believe that Harper Isabelle was passing notes with her again. Before Harper, the last note she’d gotten was on the last day of eighth grade. Luke Avery had asked if she was going to spare her next school the torture of having to look at her by killing herself over the summer.
We should get to know each other then. Tell me about yourself.
Harper passed the binder back. Why the fuck did Harper Isabelle want to know anything about her?
What do you want to know?
Harper grabbed at the binder eagerly, but seemed disappointed with the response.
Tell me something nobody else knows.
If Harper was playing a joke on her, Sarah didn’t want to end up as the punchline.
You first.
Harper read the note and gave her a mock narrowing of her eyes, but there was a smile playing on her crimson lips, and Sarah licked her own in response. Harper tapped her pencil against her teeth before she began to write. After a few long moments, she passed the note to Sarah.
When I was six, I broke my arm in our playroom. I told my parents I fell, but my sister pushed me. She felt really bad though and gave me the Barbie of hers I wanted.
Sarah read the story, and it felt funny to be reading something personal about Harper Isabelle, even if it was inconsequential. This was definitely a weird way to get to know someone. Sarah looked at Harper, then the note, then back at Harper, and wrote her response. She passed it back, watching Harper warily.
I don’t have any friends.
Harper stiffened when she read the message. For just five words, she seemed to spend a lot of time on them. Long seconds ticked by, and the longer she waited, the more exposed Sarah felt. It had been stupid of her to write that. If she’d been worried about becoming a laughing stock, she’d certainly just handed Harper the ammunition.
What had she been thinking? For the life of her, she couldn’t understand what made her open up like that. Harper, the most popular girl in their grade, told her she’d broken
her arm, and Sarah had responded with that? Suddenly, it seemed incredibly inappropriate and stupid, and she wished that she could grab the note back and rip it up. She needed to write something else to erase what she’d said. She put her pencil to the paper and began to write an explanation, but Harper slid the binder away before she could finish.
I want to be your friend.
Sarah thought she must have misread the note, so she read it again, and again. A fourth time confirmed that she really had read what she thought she’d read. Just as the feeling of unexpected elation began to move through her, she put a stop to it. She’d seen Carrie and Never Been Kissed and had watched the protagonists with contempt, wondering how they could’ve been so stupid as to think that the attention from the popular kids had been genuine. She passed Harper another note.
Why?
Harper read the response and stalled. Sarah was becoming anxious again as she stared at Harper, waiting for a reply. She searched out the freckle behind Harper’s ear and let her gaze rest there, somehow comforted by being able to see the now familiar spot. The film must have finished, because Mr Epners turned the lights back on and resumed his lecture.
Sarah blushed when she saw that freckle behind Harper’s ear in the brightness of the classroom. She felt awkward, as if it knew her secrets. Harper tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear as she flipped the page in her binder, dismissing their go-between. Sarah fervently wished that their exchange wasn’t in Harper’s binder but her own. She wanted to grab the page and tear it out to destroy the evidence. Harper began to take notes.
There were only seven minutes left before lunch. Sarah watched the wall clock slowly tick away every agonizing second until the bell rang, ready to bolt from class. A touch on her arm brought her to a halt.
Harper stood there, an earnest look on her face. “Sorry, I didn’t want to miss what he was saying,” she apologized. “What are you doing for lunch?”
Sarah’s heart raced.
“I’m having lunch with my brother.” As Sarah said the words—not entirely the truth as she and Tyler hadn’t discussed this yet—it occurred to her that the real reason Harper wanted to get to know her was her brother. It was Tyler she wanted to get to know, and she was using Sarah as the conduit. Pissed off at Harper for making her feel like an idiot, and mad at herself for not seeing through it like she’d always told herself she would, Sarah pushed past Harper, this time making sure to take all of her books with her before escaping the class as fast as she could.
Once in the hallway, she breathed a sigh of relief. She was free for an hour until their class together in Portable 118, and this time she would be sure to sit somewhere far away from Harper. As soon as the thought materialized, Sarah grew even more annoyed. What the hell was she thinking? She didn’t need to plan her classes around a snobby, popular girl. She’d already spent too much time thinking about Harper Isabelle, and it didn’t make any sense. She didn’t even know her, so why did she feel as though she was constantly seeking her out? It was silly. Just a stupid connection to the in-crowd that she must secretly crave beyond listening to Tyler talk about them.
Instead of going to her locker, Sarah went in search of Tyler. She found him horsing around with Brian, one of his friends from middle school. Brian knew that Sarah was Tyler’s sister, so he didn’t give her any grief when she walked right up and leaned on the locker next to Tyler’s. He even nodded his head in slight acknowledgement of her before bumping Tyler’s fist and moving on down the hall.
“How was your morning?” Tyler asked her.
“Okay.” She blew a piece of blonde hair out of her eye. “Yours?”
He closed his locker door and pulled his backpack up over his shoulders. “Great. I was talking to Harper Isabelle this morning,” he said excitedly.
“So?” Sarah tried to put a quizzical look on her face, as if she hadn’t just been floored by the fact that she had been talking to Harper Isabelle as well that morning.
“So? She’s the best looking girl in our grade, and she’s pretty cool. Girls like that are usually conceited bitches. Her sister is Bronte Isabelle, who’s only, like, the hottest girl in school.”
Silently, Sarah disagreed. Harper was obviously the hottest girl in school. The involuntary thought made her face flush with heat.
“Never mind.” Tyler shook his head with a private smile. “You don’t care about that stuff. I think that’s cool.”
The compliment was genuine, but it made her feel guilty. She’d spent a lot of time that morning thinking about a certain popular girl, which reminded her of the reason she had taken this trip to Tyler’s locker. “What are you doing for lunch?”
“I was going to grab something from the caf, but we can go home if you want.”
Sarah didn’t really want to go home, but she didn’t want to eat alone by her locker again either, especially because there was a good chance that Harper might see her there and catch her in her lie. They headed out the side door closest to their house and started the ten-minute walk home.
They talked casually about their parents and their new classes, but Sarah couldn’t help the feeling of uneasiness that had crept into her stomach when Tyler brought up Harper and Bronte Isabelle back at his locker. Harper’s sister was a senior, and even Tyler knew better than to go after a girl who he had no chance of getting, but Harper was their age. If he thought she was the hottest girl in their grade, then she was on his radar. It would only be a matter of time before he zeroed in on Harper, and for reasons she didn’t care to explore, that didn’t sit well with Sarah.
CHAPTER 3
Lunch was coming to a close, and Harper sat with her friends in the cafeteria, playing with the remnants of her beef patty. She’d eaten the middle part, but didn’t feel like finishing the neon yellow crust. Typically, there wasn’t room for ninth graders at the tables. Most had to sit on the floor out in the hall, but Bronte made sure that there was room for Harper and her friends at their table, cementing their popularity.
“I love high school,” Alexis said dreamily. Harper followed her gaze to Todd Harrison, Bronte’s ex-boyfriend. They were seated at the other end of the table, talking. Todd was one of the most popular guys in school. Bronte had broken up with him over the summer, but said she would probably get back together with him when school started up again.
“Oh my God.” Melissa nudged Alexis. “Stop staring. He’s Bronte’s boyfriend.”
“I’m so sorry,” Alexis apologized to Harper.
Harper shrugged. “They’re not together right now.” She covered the last of the beef patty with a thin paper napkin and pushed it a few inches farther away from her.
“If you’re not going to go after Tyler, can I take a stab at him?” Alexis flipped her long blonde hair. Harper was perturbed, though she tried to hide it by tucking strands of her hair behind her ear and looking away.
For the first time in a while, she really took stock of her best friends. Alexis, like Bronte, was a natural born leader, and she was sure that if her sister wasn’t who she was, that they’d be following Alexis around instead of her. Beautiful, with naturally dirty-blonde hair, sea green eyes, and the smoothest, healthiest looking skin Harper had ever seen, Alexis was an easy ten and a full-on knockout. Melissa, with pale blue eyes, blonde hair, and the height of a Viking could also give a person a toothache if he was into eye-candy, and she had caught the attention of most of their male peers. Jen had light red hair, pale skin, an easy smile, and natural good humour, which made her Harper’s favourite, though she’d never before really considered it. As far as friends went, Jen was the truest, Melissa the funniest, and Alexis the most beautiful, but what did they think of her? What did they see in her? What did they really know about her? Unlike Sarah Jamieson, they didn’t even know the story about when she broke her arm and covered up Bronte’s culpability.
God, that had been a difficult exchange, note-passing with Sarah that morning. She wanted to know more about the girl. It had started before th
at though, in the alleyway behind school with the bird. When Harper had told Sarah that she’d been brave, she half expected her to agree and go on about how great she was, as any one of her friends seated at the table would have done. The fact that Sarah had merely shrugged away the compliment made Harper respect her. She hadn’t been looking for any glory. She’d just been doing the right thing.
When it happened, Harper hadn’t really had time to think in that moment, she’d simply reacted to the scene in front of her. Truth be told, she hadn’t even seen the bird. All she had seen was Sarah in the middle of a group of boys as they laughed at her and threw her bag between them. She hadn’t known at the time that they were boys from her school or that they’d recognize who she was and that Bronte’s reputation would save them both. She’d just seen Sarah in trouble and felt her heartbeat quicken. She hadn’t been thinking of the consequences at the time, but she knew now how lucky they’d been to get out of that situation so easily, and she wondered how many times Sarah found herself on the receiving end of cruelty like that. She didn’t seem too fazed by it, and Harper realized with a twinge of sadness that Sarah was probably accustomed to being treated poorly.
Sarah had written I don’t have any friends that morning. Such a simple sentence, yet how much it mattered to Sarah was etched on her face. She’d looked at Harper, brow wrinkled, as if she expected something from her. How was she, the most popular girl in their grade, supposed to answer that? Thanks to Bronte and some very good genes, she’d never had to know what those words felt like, and she was sorry for Sarah that she did. Was it really possible that Sarah actually didn’t have any friends at all? Sure, her friends had teased Sarah, but what could be so wrong with this girl that no one wanted to hang around her?
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