“Come in.” Sarah called from the other side. Hesitantly, she opened the door and slowly walked into the room, pushing the handle closed behind her.
“What are you doing here?” Sarah’s eyes widened and she jumped out of bed. She swayed a little, as if woozy. Sarah looked as embarrassed as Harper felt, and Harper flushed and looked away as if Sarah were naked.
“I’m sorry. Your mom sent me up. I brought your homework.”
Sarah shuffled around and jammed a black hoodie over her head.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
Sarah really was sick. Her hair was a little matted from sweat and sleep, and her nose was red from having been blown too many times. “Your mom wants you to take your medicine.”
“It tastes awful,” Sarah whined, and Harper laughed.
“You sound like a little kid,” Harper chided with a smile. She dropped her school bag on the floor and moved to Sarah’s bedside. “I’m sorry about the party.” She picked up the cough medicine and kept her eyes down, examining the bottle. It was cherry flavoured. She’d had this particular brand of poison before. “I didn’t mean what I said about no one caring what you do, and I keep thinking about it and how awful it sounded. It came out the wrong way. I hope you know that.” She lifted her gaze and met Sarah’s. “I was just jealous that you have something that you love so much.”
They were both silent a moment before Sarah nodded, and relief washed through Harper’s entire body.
“Have a little.” Harper opened the cap that doubled as a measuring cup, and filled it halfway with the sickeningly sweet, bright red liquid. She held it forward to Sarah, who took it reluctantly, swallowed, and made a face. “Good girl. Now get back in bed. You don’t have to impress me.”
Sarah got back into bed with a low groan. “Why didn’t Tyler bring my homework?” She asked suspiciously.
“He wanted to go play some sport with his friends, so I said I would take it to you.”
Sarah was propped up on two pillows, more lying down than sitting up. Harper sat down on the side of the bed and pulled her school bag over to her. She reached inside it for a stack of papers and dropped them unceremoniously on Sarah’s lap, who let out another groan at the weight of the work. Harper winced, biting her bottom lip. “Sorry.”
“I bet you regret inviting me to that party,” Sarah said.
“No.” Harper shook her head. “The most fun I had that night was with you.”
Sarah’s face was flushed.
“You look like you might have a fever.” Harper raised the back of her hand to her forehead. “I can’t tell, but I think my hand’s a little sweaty.”
“My mom always tests with her lips.”
Sarah’s words sluiced through her, down into her core. Uninvited, she leaned forward, slowly reaching for Sarah’s forehead with her lips. Sarah’s skin was warm, and though she only let her mouth lightly touch the surface of it, when she pulled back, she tasted salt on her lips. The contact, brief as it was, sent a jolt deep inside. No one had ever affected her the way that Sarah did. Not even Joanne’s sister when she had done the same thing to her years ago. She had been just a child then. Now, she wasn’t sure what it meant.
“You’re burning up,” Harper whispered, but it was her own cheeks that were on fire. Sarah sharing how her mom checked her temperature probably hadn’t meant she wanted Harper to do the same, but she couldn’t stop herself. In Sarah’s presence, she found that she wanted to try to touch her any way that she could, and the temptation to put her lips to her forehead was too much to withstand.
For a moment, she could think of nothing other than what she had just done could be considered a kind of kiss, and a whirlpool of emotion opened inside her chest. Why did the feel of Sarah’s forehead have her head swimming, when Tyler’s kiss had done nothing but shut her down?
“Harper?” Sarah asked, her face touched with concern.
“Do you need anything?” Harper cleared her throat. She couldn’t allow Sarah to see how much what she’d just done was affecting her. Sarah shook her head, and Harper said, “Do you think you’ll be in class tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged and settled deeper into her pillows.
“Okay, well I don’t want to bug you for too long, but I need to explain some of this stuff to you.” She was rushing into things now, but she couldn’t help it. She was slightly terrified by whatever was happening to her up in Sarah’s bedroom. “This is your homework for English.” Harper took the top sheet of questions on To Kill a Mockingbird from the pile and moved it to the other side of Sarah on the bed. “Here is your math homework,” she said with an empathetic groan. “For biology, you just have to read the next chapter after the one we went over today.” She looked at the next stack of sheets in the pile. “Oh yeah, this is your society homework. You need to research an indigenous tribe and explain how they have kept their culture separate from today’s society, and also list some of the ways that they have adapted to western culture. It’s not due until the holiday break though.”
She handed the papers to her. Sarah looked at them, but quickly put the stack down on top of the others that Harper was laying aside. “For art, you missed a talk on Rococo, and Mr Chase wants you to see him when you’re back so that he can go over some of the points with you. He also said that you should have a new drawing in your sketchbook for every day of school that you miss. For law, we were given a group assignment.” Harper handed her the final piece of paper. “We have to partner up and put together a mock trial about the crime our group was given, and then the classroom will act as the jury and choose which is the better argument. We’re not supposed to know if the accused is guilty or not, cause he doesn’t want us leading the arguments with that.”
“Who’s my partner?” Sarah’s attention was focused on her bedspread. Apparently, there was a fascinating loose thread on it.
“I am.” Harper pulled her notebook out of her bag. “That’s the crime we’ve been assigned.” She pointed to the sheet in Sarah’s hand. “We got stuck with burglary. Some of the other ones were a lot cooler, but we didn’t get to choose.”
“How did that happen?” Sarah asked, an expression of disbelief on her face.
“He just handed the assignments out randomly once we chose our groups. Some groups got three people, so they get to put the accused on the stand, which is kind of cool.”
“No, I mean how did we end up being partners?”
“Oh.” She dug around for a pencil in her bag. “I chose you.” Harper finally stopped fidgeting, and met Sarah’s gaze.
“Why?”
Well, she couldn’t tell her that she chose her so that Sarah would be forced to spend time with her, so she decided on a reasonably less complicated answer.
“I was already taking your work home for you, so I figured it’d just be easy for us to do the assignment together. This way, if you don’t come back to class the next couple of days, which I don’t think you will with that fever, I can hand it in for us. That means we need to start working on it now though. Are you okay with me staying awhile?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.” Sarah cleared her throat and ran a hand through her matted hair. “I just wish I had known you were coming so that I could have showered or something.”
“Don’t worry. You look cute when you’re sick.”
A smile curved on Sarah’s lips.
“Geez, it’s hot in here.” She felt very much like she was the one with the fever.
Just then, Sarah’s mom opened the door, and Harper had never been so happy to see anyone in her life.
“Thought you girls might like something to eat.” She placed a tray on Sarah’s bedside table. Harper moved some of the other things over so that Sarah’s mom could put down the plate of cookies, two bananas, and two glasses of iced tea.
“Please, join hands,” Mrs Jamieson said. Sarah gave her mother a pleading look. Mrs Jamieson took hold of her left hand, and Sarah tentatively grabbed her right. Sara
h’s hand was warm, and although a little clammy, the feeling of it sitting in her own made Harper hot all over.
“Heavenly Father, we thank you for this food. We thank you for my husband’s job in your service that allows us to humbly afford it, and this house, in which we are able to receive guests. We thank you for the visit of Sarah’s friend, and ask that you bless her, and show her the teachings of the Lord, so that she may be saved and not tempted by the ways of evil. Amen.”
During the prayer, Sarah and her mother had their eyes closed, and Harper was completely out of place. She was surprised by the look of devotion on Sarah’s face. Sarah’s mother released her hand first, and Sarah followed, removing hers more slowly from her grasp.
“Thank you, Mrs Jamieson,” Harper forced herself to say. She followed her to the door and closed it behind her when she left. “What was that?” she asked, and leaned against the door.
“I don’t know how much Tyler has told you about our family.”
“Nothing really. I haven’t talked much to Tyler about anything, to be honest.”
“Oh.” Sarah tucked a strand of matted blonde hair behind her ear. “My dad is the minister at Our Lady of Worship, the Christian school where we went before. My family is pretty religious.”
“All of you?” Harper asked carefully.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Tyler not so much anymore, but he was always given a little more freedom from the church than I was.”
“So you believe in all that stuff?”
“It’s not stuff.” Sarah shifted, looking uncomfortable. “I know you don’t believe in it–”
“How do you know what I believe?” Harper walked back to the bed and resumed her seat on the edge.
“I don’t. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”
“Why do you believe in it?”
Sarah looked down. “I’ve just never questioned how I feel, I guess.”
“How do you know that there’s someone out there, watching us?”
“You make it sound creepy.”
“Maybe it is,” Harper said flippantly.
Sarah shook her head. “It’s not about being watched. It’s about feeling like a part of something.”
“When do you feel like that?”
“I guess…I guess I feel it most when I draw. If you look around you at the world, at the sky and the trees, animals and lakes, if you stop for a minute and remove yourself from everyday life, there’s this peace that flows through everything like a stream. I feel that current run through me when I draw or paint. I feel connected to something, to everything, on a different level. It’s hard to explain.”
“No.” Harper shook her head. “I think you’re doing a pretty good job of it. I wish I felt a part of something like that. You make it sound so beautiful.” She swallowed. “But what about the other part?”
“What other part?” Sarah looked at her skeptically.
“You know, the part where you’re not allowed to do anything. The part where you have to feel guilty about everything, just because you’re human and you make mistakes.”
“God forgives our mistakes,” Sarah said automatically.
“What if…what if it’s something you don’t think is a mistake?”
“If you don’t think it’s a mistake, why would you worry about it?”
Harper blinked. That was a good question. “What if other people thought it was a mistake?”
“I guess I don’t see things like that,” Sarah continued. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do is draw, and my beliefs don’t keep me from doing that.”
“What if you ever started to want…other things? Would you give up something you wanted because a book written two thousand years ago told you to?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Well, it sounds to me like you believe in something that doesn’t let you have what you want.”
“Maybe sometimes the things that we want aren’t good for us.”
“Like what?” Harper asked carefully. It was beyond wishful thinking to imagine that Sarah’s mind had gone where hers had, to the feel of her hand in hers, and the way she felt her stomach flutter when she looked into her eyes.
“Drugs…drinking…I don’t know.”
She should stop, but something inside of her kept pushing, as if arguing with Sarah could bring some kind of reprieve to the inner turmoil she’d been feeling since meeting her.
“What if what you want isn’t bad though? What if it feels really good, and people just think it’s bad?”
“I’m getting confused.” Sarah shook her head. “If something is wrong, then it’s wrong.”
“Who’s to say what’s right and wrong for someone else?”
“I don’t know, Harper.” Sarah sounded tired. “I guess I haven’t thought about it as much as I should have.”
Hearing her name on Sarah’s lips did something to Harper. As she was today, without her layers of black makeup, Sarah looked different. Delicate almost. Her features were softer than she had taken them to be with her makeup on, and the bottom of her pale pink lip was split in the centre, blood red from where the dryness of her cold had cracked it. She pictured those lips gently touching her, and flushed all over again as warmth and shame spread through her.
She turned away, unable to look at her. Kind, religious Sarah, who would no doubt want to see her crucified if she knew the salacious inner workings of her mind. Just because she was having these feelings didn’t mean that Sarah was as well, and like she’d just said, who was she to decide what was right or wrong for Sarah, just because these feelings felt right to her?
This wasn’t just something she’d been imagining. She felt things when she was around Sarah. The tug in her abdomen when Sarah smiled at her. The need to be near her, to touch her. She’d never felt wants like these before. Never felt herself on a razor’s edge just being close to someone. It was all familiar in a way though. It was the way Bronte described feeling when she was around a boy she liked. It was the way Alexis acted when she set her sights on her next victim. It was the way Jen had gotten shy around Jason last year. It was the way she’d heard it described so many times before, but never felt herself.
She didn’t have to wonder what the hell was wrong with her anymore. It was what she’d suspected when she had been unable to stop herself from putting her lips to Sarah’s forehead, and what deep down she’d known from the first time she’d barreled over her outside the portable. She liked Sarah Jamieson more than she should, more than she had ever liked anybody, and more than she ever wanted anyone to find out about. Especially Sarah.
CHAPTER 8
Sarah picked up a cookie but didn’t eat it. This was one of the most awkward situations that she’d ever been in, and she was torn between wanting Harper to leave so that she could stop feeling so weird, and never wanting Harper to go. Ever.
The whirlwind of emotions whipped through her in that moment, and the fact that her head was cloudy and her mental faculty fuzzy wasn’t helping. When Harper first walked into her room, she could not at any time in her life remember feeling as mortified as she was then, in her Jesus Saves T-shirt from childhood and a pair of red and black plaid pajama pants. Sarah didn’t understand what Harper was even doing there, and why was she being so kind to her? She was willing to accept that maybe Harper hadn’t meant to be hurtful that night at the party, after all, nothing else she had said since meeting her had given her the impression that she was a mean girl like the rest of them, but what was all this about? Was it so that she would tell Tyler about it later and earn points with him so that he would like her more? If that was the case, she should tell her she didn’t need to try so hard, Tyler was already a goner when it came to Harper, but if she told her that, would she leave? Thinking about it all made her head hurt. Then again, everything on her seemed to hurt since she’d gotten sick.
Had it been just three days since the party? How had she gone so long without seeing her? When Harper said that talking to h
er was her favourite part of the party, Sarah’s breath caught. Did that mean she had enjoyed her company more than kissing Tyler? She relived watching the kiss and a familiar ache filled her chest. The thought reminded her of what she had done the night of the party, when she had gotten home and crushed her lips to Harper’s in her drawing. She couldn’t understand her feelings, and she looked at the trash can in horror. A piece of the sketch paper was sticking out from when she’d ripped it in half and stuffed it in there. Why hadn’t she let her mom empty it when she had wanted to? Instead, she was keeping a pile of dirty Kleenexes on the other side of her bed, which, thankfully, Harper had not discovered yet. She didn’t want to throw away her drawing of Harper, nor was she willing to take it out and piece it back together.
Harper was like the ripped drawing. Two different people. One, the beautiful, popular, and fearless leader of the in-crowd, and the other, this kind and sweet girl, willing to sit with Sarah and be her partner in class, knowing that for most people it would be considered social suicide. The tear in Sarah’s drawing reflected that dichotomy. Praying that Harper would somehow not see the drawing, she decided that after she left, she would retrieve it from the garbage and tape it back together. She couldn’t bear the thought of not having it anymore, of not having something around that reminded her of Harper. Harper was here now though, in her room, and she’d practically kissed her. Sarah’s cheeks flushed.
She’d held her breath when Harper placed the back of her right hand against her forehead, trembling at her touch. Her hand was a little cool and felt so good against her skin. When she had said that her mother tested her temperature with her lips, it was as if she heard the words out loud before it registered that she had been the one to say them. By then, it was too late to take them back. It had been the most mortifyingly childish and inappropriately intimate thing she could have said, and she wanted to fall through her bed and die. To her astonishment, Harper only tilted her head to the side for a moment, then leaned forward and gently pressed her lips to her forehead. Her lips weren’t cool like her hand, they were warm and soft and wonderful and soothing in a completely different way.
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