The part where she probably looked six shades of awful was distracting, and she tried not to think about it because it felt so good to have Harper there. Too good. It was wrong how amazing it felt just being in her presence. Harper would probably think her perverted if she knew how much she had enjoyed the feeling of her lips on her forehead, how every part of her relished just the nearness of her. It wasn’t right…this feeling. There was a word for it. A bad word. No matter how good it felt, she had to fight it, but when she peered into Harper’s captivating eyes, her resolve softened, and all of the fight went out of her. It was all so strange, and the fuzziness and grogginess from her fever wasn’t helping.
The pressure of Harper’s body was hot against the side of her right leg, and a fire grew inside of her. Unnatural. That was the word. Sarah groaned. She was miserable for a completely different reason now. The way she was feeling, it had to be wrong.
I chose you. Harper’s words echoed in her head. She had chosen her to be her partner. She had chosen to come here and work with her. No one had ever chosen her for anything before. When Harper had mentioned the group assignment, she was waiting for the part where Harper told her that nobody wanted to be in her group, and she’d been embarrassed, knowing that Harper would know.
Why did Harper have to come over when she looked like absolute shit, and why had she been asking her about her beliefs? How could she explain that, for her, faith wasn’t a choice? Had never been a choice. She’d always simply believed. When Harper asked what made something wrong, Sarah had to mull that one over. She was always so dismayed that others had decided how she should act, look, think, and dress, and now that Harper showed it to her in a different perspective, wasn’t she guilty of the same thing? She felt another headache coming on.
“Are you okay?” Harper took a sip from one of the glasses and put it back down on the bedside table. “I…maybe I should go.”
“No!” Sarah said much too quickly and loudly and desperately. “I mean, we should do the assignment, right?”
Harper nodded. “So, who do you want to argue for then, the prosecution or the defence?” She picked up their law assignment as if the conversation had never veered from their homework.
“The defence, I guess.” Sarah tried to prop herself farther up in her bed. Harper looked absolutely stunning. Her hair was perfect, as always, and her clothing fit her body exactly as it should. Harper slid her tongue over her sultry red lips while reading over the assignment, and something deep inside Sarah quivered. She forced herself to look away and focus on the paper. Harper was outlining a heart in her notebook.
“Harper? Are you going to write it?” Sarah asked. She needed something to distract her.
“Oh.” Harper looked at her, then down to the piece of paper she’d been drawing on. She yanked the page out of her notebook and scrunched it up. She got up and looked around. She was searching for her garbage bin, and when Harper saw it across the room, Sarah grabbed her arm and pulled her back forcefully.
“Don’t go over there!” Sarah said, and Harper raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I k-killed a spider earlier. It was huge and there’s guts all over the garbage.”
“Ew, okay.” Harper looked around, then shoved the scrunched up paper into her bag and sat back down, moving even further away from Sarah than where she’d sat before. Had Harper noticed the way she’d been staring at her lips? “I don’t want to get sick,” Harper said weakly. “Since I’m writing the part of the Crown, I’ll start the trial with my opening argument, and then you can do yours.”
Before Sarah could answer, Harper got to work on writing, and Sarah tried to think about the assignment, except she still felt the warmth of where Harper had been pressed against her thigh just moments before, and that overrode all other thought. Now, Harper had one leg tucked up under her and the other dangling to the ground, her body half-turned toward Sarah. Harper even made sitting on a bed look cool.
She couldn’t remember ever being this nervous before. She’d never had her consciousness so heightened in someone’s presence. Never been so aware of every part of another person’s body and where it was in proximity to her own. It was like a war raged in every part of her, battling between wanting to be closer to Harper, and knowing that if she got too close, something explosive might happen, and she didn’t know if she was ready to find out what that was.
Harper held out the notebook to her. She was finished. When she took it from Harper, her arm slid against hers, and it burned like it had been scorched by fire. She was glad then for her fever, as she was sure that her colour couldn’t have deepened any more. She looked at the page without seeing, unable to keep her thoughts from that touch. She handed it back to Harper. “It’s good,” she said, hoping that it was.
“Okay, now your part. Opening arguments. Go.” Harper held her pencil at the ready.
“There’s no case for armed robbery today here.” Sarah jumbled up her first sentence, and Harper took pity on her.
“You really are sick,” she said with a slow, sympathetic smile. “How about I help you along a little? Let’s start with, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.” Harper wrote as she spoke. “What is a crime if there is no evidence? How can my client be guilty of something that the prosecution cannot, in any certain terms, prove ever happened? The only thing my client is guilty of is being in a rich area at the same time that a high powered businessman’s wife realized that her diamond necklace and matching earrings were missing.
“When my client was picked up, he didn’t have the items on him, and furthermore, there is no evidence that these items were stolen at all. There was no sign of a break-in, and the defence would argue that Mrs Frobisher simply lost the items and was too afraid or embarrassed to tell her husband. The cost of these items must have been great, but cannot be considered to be greater than the cost of my client’s freedom.”
Not only was Harper gorgeous, but she had a beautiful mind as well. It was too much. How could someone be so perfect?
“What do you think?” Harper asked hopefully.
“I think you’re brilliant.” Is Harper blushing? “I think you just won the case for me.”
Harper’s smile turned sly now. “That’s because you haven’t heard me examine the witness yet. I have an ace up my sleeve,” she said with a mischievous grin.
The courtroom drama played out on the page, and although Sarah found it a bit unfair that Harper was doing the majority of the work, she loved watching her come up with new arguments and seeing her excitement grow as she made the case more convoluted with each one, only to be completely blown apart by the following cross examination. She had never seen anyone so excited by homework before. She’d only known that kind of thrill from making art.
“You’re really smart,” she said and worried that she hadn’t quite kept all of the surprise out of her voice. “You should be a lawyer.”
“You mean a liar.”
Sarah was confused, and her face must have shown it.
“Both my parents are lawyers,” Harper explained. “All they do is fight, and argue, and lie to us about it.” Harper put the pencil down. “I think they’re getting a divorce.” Harper’s voice was sad and hurt, and Sarah wanted so badly to comfort her, but she didn’t know how to.
“Why do you think that?” She chastised herself for her cowardice in not saying what she really wanted.
“I heard them fighting the other day, and my mom said my dad better sign the papers because she didn’t want to stay with him another minute longer than she had to. I think she’s going to leave, and I don’t know if she wants to take us with her.” Harper’s voice broke at the same time as Sarah’s heart. She shoved off her pillows and pulled Harper into a tight hug. For a moment, Harper seemed surprised, but then her arms encircled Sarah.
“It’s okay,” Sarah said, unsure of what else to say. She didn’t want to make empty promises about the outcome of her parents’ relationship. Instead, she spoke the only truth she knew. “I don’t kn
ow how anyone wouldn’t want you.”
Harper’s arms tightened around her back, completely closing the space between them, and Sarah let out a slow breath.
Harper’s body was flush against hers, and it was soft and warm. It felt good. Too good. She was ashamed of herself for taking advantage of Harper’s weakness and drawing pleasure from it, but she couldn’t help it. Subconsciously, this was what she had been craving since the first time she had laid eyes on Harper.
“Thank you.” Harper cleared her throat as she slowly pulled away from the hug. “I guess this is about finished,” she said with a sad smile, and Sarah wanted so badly to kiss that smile. Her heart stilled. She didn’t want to kiss Harper. She couldn’t. Harper was practically going out with her brother. Harper was the most popular person in their grade. Harper was a girl.
They both turned at the sound of the front door opening and closing. Tyler called out to his parents that he was home. Sarah closed her eyes and rolled them behind their lids. This was either perfect or awful timing. She didn’t want Harper to go see Tyler, but then again, going to talk to him for a few minutes might take some of the heat off her before Harper figured out that Sarah’s body was still ablaze where every atom of hers had touched Harper’s. The warmth of her presence threatened to completely consume her.
“I better go. I hope you’re at school tomorrow and feeling better.” Harper quickly gathered her things. She left before Sarah could even say goodbye.
“Hey,” Tyler greeted Harper at the top of the stairs. “I didn’t expect you to be here still.”
“We had an assignment to do together.”
“Oh, well I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for taking Sarah’s homework to her. I had a great game of pick-up. We won,” he said proudly.
“That’s great.”
“So, do you want to stay for a bit? I’m not really allowed to have girls in my room, but my parents think you’re with Sarah, so…”
“Oh, yeah, no. I have to be home for dinner or my mom will freak. It’s my turn to do the dishes. Sorry.”
Sarah was relieved, comforted that Harper left without spending time with Tyler. She needed sleep. Sleep and to forget about Harper Isabelle.
* * *
It had been two days since Harper’s visit to her bedroom, and despite Sarah’s self-admonitions for her errant thoughts, she was in serious withdrawal. She wanted to see Harper—and be seen by Harper when Sarah didn’t look like a banshee—which meant that she needed to get out of bed, clean herself up, and go to school, even if she still felt awful.
On her walk to school, Sarah started to question her decision to go in that day. Her excitement at being able to see Harper was quickly being overshadowed by how dreadful she felt, and she lost steam after only five minutes.
“Are you sure you should come to school today?” Tyler asked with concern. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m okay,” she said. “I shouldn’t miss any more class.”
“The teachers will understand. Mom and Dad will write you a note.”
She shook her head. “I’m fine. I just need to sit down. I’ll feel better when we get to school.”
That lie haunted her for the rest of the morning, especially when she got there and heard that Harper was out sick. Her heart sank. Not only had she dragged her half-dead body to school for no reason, but she had made Harper sick as well. All of her classes crept by slowly, in a haze, and there was a sullen emptiness in every course that Harper should have been in with her. By the time lunch came around, Sarah felt like she’d been hit by a bus. She needed to go back home and stay there. Harper had taken their Law assignment home with her, so she had nothing to hand in for their class presentation anyway, and there was no way she could make it through math and society. She hadn’t done her homework for those classes either, or even picked a tribe for her society assignment.
The walk home seemed to take forever, and she felt like a bag of bricks when she dropped herself into her bed after barely dragging her body up the stairs. Her fever was worse, and her mom told her to go and rest while she fetched the thermometer, which was followed up by hot tea with honey, chicken broth, and more of that God-awful cherry poison that her mother insisted was medicine.
Around two o’clock, things were a little less hazy, and her thoughts drifted back to Harper, who was home sick too. Harper’s phone number was somewhere in Tyler’s lair of a room.
Sarah crept out of her room and into Tyler’s, where she searched frantically for Harper’s number. Suddenly, it became the most important thing in the world, and she spent the next ten minutes turning everything upside down, but she still couldn’t find the number. She was tired and angry and so frustrated that she felt like crying. She had to talk to Harper. She had to hear her voice or…or she’d die.
“What are you doing in your brother’s room?” her mother asked from the door, looking stricken by the mess Sarah had made.
“I-I-I thought I left something in here.”
“You should see yourself.” Her mother studied her. “You look like a wild animal. Get back into bed and stay there until you’re better this time. I’m going to call the school and tell them you won’t be in the rest of the week, and if you’re not feeling any better tomorrow then we’re going to the doctor.”
As much as she wanted to argue because Harper might be back in class the next day, she kept her lips zipped. Her mother had let her off the hook without too many questions about what she was doing in Ty’s room, and she had enough common sense to be grateful for that.
Tyler wasn’t so kind when he got home.
“What the hell were you looking for in my room?”
“Nothing,” she said defensively. Why was he yelling? Her head was pounding.
“You sure as hell were looking for something. It looks like a tornado went off in there.”
“It already looked like that,” she argued.
“Whatever the fuck you were looking for, next time, ask.” He dropped her homework on the floor and slammed the door closed behind him.
It must have been a few hours later when her mother came into her room. It was dark outside, and Sarah was groggy and disoriented.
“Hi, honey,” her mother said from the doorway. “How are you feeling?”
“Not so good,” she said, her voice gruff.
Her mother nodded her head understandingly. “Your friend Harper is on the phone for you, but I’ll tell her you’re sleeping.”
“Harper?” Sarah mewled like a cat that’d had its tail stepped on. “I’ll talk to her.” She cleared her throat a few times and reached out for the phone. Her mother handed it to her warily.
“Don’t talk to long,” she warned, to which Sarah nodded her agreement.
She held her hand over the receiver until her mother left and closed the door. “Hello?” she said when she was alone. Harper laughed, and her whole body warmed at the sound.
“That was some noise you made. How are you feeling?”
It was so good to hear her voice. Relief rushed through her, and her entire body relaxed into her bed as she allowed the sound to wash over her.
“I’m okay. I went to school for the morning, but I left at lunch. I’m sorry if I made you sick.”
“That’s okay.” Harper let out another small laugh. “I’m not going to complain about missing classes for a few days.”
“Me neither,” Sarah said. But I am missing you. She blushed at her thoughts. “Do you have a fever too?”
“I think so, but our thermometer is broken. We had one of those really old ones, and I broke it last year when I put it up to the lamp to fake a fever to get out of a math test. It exploded and there was mercury everywhere. My mom was so pissed.”
Sarah laughed. “I guess you need someone to check your temperature for you then,” she said with a lilt in her voice.
There was a painful silence before Harper spoke again. “But you’re not here.”
The words slid right through Sarah,
and the thought of putting her lips to Harper’s forehead made her stomach do a little flip. A sound came out of her throat, but it wasn’t a word. There was something in Harper’s voice that she hadn’t heard before, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.
“I think we better reschedule our trip to the art gallery.” Harper sighed, finally breaking the silence. “I don’t think I’ll be up to going out this weekend with this cold.” She sneezed then, as if to seal the deal.
“Yeah, okay,” Sarah said despondently. She’d never thought it would happen anyway, but she had hoped it would. She thought there was a click on the line before Harper spoke again.
“I guess we’re not going to do so great on that law assignment if we’re not there to hand it in.”
Sarah was both disappointed and relieved that the subject had been changed.
“I can hand it in.”
“Tyler?” Sarah asked, aghast at the sound of his voice. She wanted to yell and scream at him but didn’t even know what to say. She knew she’d heard someone pick up the phone a moment before. “Why are you on the line?”
“I heard mom say that Harper called, and thought it was for me.” Something in his voice made Sarah think that wasn’t the whole truth, but it did make more sense that Harper would be calling for Tyler than for her, and she felt stupid because she was the one intruding on the call. “I can swing by your house and pick it up tomorrow morning if you’re not coming to school,” he said, clearly addressing Harper.
“That would be great, Tyler.” Did Harper sound hesitant, or did Sarah just want to think that? “Would it actually be possible for you to come by tonight? Bronte’s ditching tomorrow, so she already told me she wouldn’t take any of my stuff in, but I don’t want my parents to know that. If you come by tonight, it’ll look less suspicious for Bronte.”
“Sure, let me just ask my mom if it’s okay.”
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