Harper Apple
Blue is sitting on her stoop next door, smoking a cigarette when I pull up on my bike. I’m not the only person who bikes to school, though the other bikes on the rack at Willow Heights probably cost more than Mom’s car. Mine was five bucks at a garage sale because it’s missing most of one pedal.
Unlike FHS, my new school is too far to walk, so I rode home in the soup of September humidity. Willow Heights doesn’t have a bus, since they probably never took into account people who might not have cars of their own. I know how to drive, but Mom had to work the early shift at the gas station this week. Not that she’d let me take the car.
What, you’re too good for our hometown school now? Don’t go getting any uppity ideas in your head, Harper. You think you’re hot shit now, but just wait. You’ll see how they treat the likes of us at that high-fallutin school. Mark my words. They’ll take one look at you and know you’re bad news. That school won’t do one thing to help people like us.
Blue holds up a hand in a wave, and I hop off my bike at the curb and mop my forehead with my arm. Southern Arkansas air is heavy as a blanket you can’t throw off even when you’re burning up, and it traps all the sweat on your skin to make you even more miserable. I pull my damp shirt away from my body and fan myself with the edge before walking the bike up the walkway to lean it against the side of our house.
“Hey,” I call to Blue. “Haven’t seen you in a minute. What’s up?”
“You suspended?” She’s wearing a jean jacket despite the heat, and I wonder, not for the first time, if her mom is even worse than mine. My mother may be a regular gem, but she knows better than to lay hands on me.
“No,” I say, trying to laugh even though I’m still catching my breath. Exercising in this weather is like trying to run through bathwater. “I transferred.”
“Oh, yeah?” Blue asks, turning her head to squint up at me in the afternoon sun as I make my way over to her stoop. “Where to?”
“Willow Heights, believe it or not.”
“What’s that like?”
“I got dick-whipped in the face today.”
She laughs, but it’s not the mean kind, the kind that followed me out of the room, roaring through the café when I jumped up and bolted out of there today. “Sounds about right,” Blue says. She holds out a crushed pack with a few cigarettes left. “Smoke?”
After the day I’ve had, I could use it. I even manage a smile as I pull out one, dropping onto the concrete step next to her. “Thanks.”
For some reason, even though she doesn’t say anything else about it, her reaction makes it bearable somehow. I’ve spent the whole day walking around in a kind of traumatized stupor, but five minutes on Blue’s stoop brings me back to myself. This is who I am. This is where I belong. When I try to claw my way out, look what happens.
Somehow, Blue’s quiet laugh makes me feel better, like I’ll be okay, and it wasn’t that big a deal. Maybe it is a little bit funny. Yeah, what Duke did was fucked up, but I gave back as good as I got. At least I hope he’ll think twice before trying that shit again. I don’t have a dick, but I’m guessing it’s not a pleasant place to be slapped.
“I’d better take off,” Blue says, crushing out her cigarette and tossing it into the rusted tin can on her porch where a thousand butts have drowned in rainwater, turning it the color of swamp water with a thin oil-slick glaze.
“Picking up Olive?” I ask, standing as well.
“Gotta go clean the landlord’s house,” Blue mutters, looking down at her knock-off Converse sneakers and avoiding my eyes, as if cleaning houses is something to be ashamed of. Any job short of selling drugs, your body, or hawking stolen goods is downright respectable in these parts. Hell, even those jobs command some respect. At least those people are resourceful, unlike Blue’s mother, who’s never had a job since we moved in next door.
But it’s none of my business what they do or how they pay for food, I remind myself. For all I know, her mom gets a disability check and food stamps, and Blue has a roll of savings wedged under the musty carpet at the back of her closet that she counts when she’s alone and dreaming of the day she’ll leave this town and never look back.
I don’t know their story any more than Blue knows ours. Maybe if we had enough for ourselves and could spare a little to help the other, we’d give each other more than privacy. Maybe we’d be better friends, and I’d tell her the hollow, shell-shocked feeling I walked around with all day, and thank her for just making me feel better and for being someone who understands what it’s like to live our reality. Maybe she’d tell me why her mother can’t work and if the rumors last year were true, that she fell down the stairs at Faulkner High on purpose because she couldn’t afford a babyoran abortion.
But we don’t do friendship that way, so I watch her walk away, her head tucked down and her hands in her pockets as if she’s trying to make herself smaller, to take up less space than the tiny fragment of the world left for her when the important people were done carving out and claiming their space at the top.
Inside, I fire up the old desktop and root through the fridge for something to eat, since I didn’t get to finish half of my lunch. I find some old heels of white bread and a few condiments and make a mayonnaise sandwich before sitting down at the desk. Just as I’ve settled into my assignment, the dreaded little black box pops onto my screen. I’m not surprised. I’ve been waiting for this with a heavy feeling in my gut just like I waited all day for the Dolce boys to seek revenge.
I know it’s not over with them, and it’s not over with Mr. D.
MrD: How’s your first week of school?
BadApple: As expected.
I realize a second after I type in the words that I should have asked how he knew, but then, nothing he knows surprises me anymore. The guy—or girl, who the hell knows?—is a serious stalker and seems to know everything about me. Considering I’m pretty sure he’s responsible for the move, there’s no use in playing coy.
MrD: Anything exciting happen today?
That crawly, cold feeling moves along my arms, making the hairs stand up. Does he know? Does he go to Willow Heights? Or have spies there?
I start to push the thought away, scolding myself for being paranoid and ridiculous, but am I? The guy has found me on multiple computers, and if he’s powerful enough to get me a scholarship that quite probably didn’t even exist until he decided to add another one to WHPA’s scholarship count for the year, he could definitely have spies. I suspect I know exactly who he is, and if his sons tell him everything that goes on there… It’s creepy as fuck to think about some guys telling their dad how they dick-whipped me, but I’m not sure what other explanation there is.