sixteen
Harper Apple
The last week in August feels like a countdown, the days ticking down to when it’s over between Mr. D and me. We both know everything shifted when I left, and maybe it did again when I came back. I’m more awake now, too awake to be his doll. I try to still my hammering heart when I think about going back to school, but I hold onto the determination, one of the only feelings I can manage.
The day before I plan to return to Faulkner, Mr. D is quiet all through dinner and our visit to the garden. He cuts a huge sunflower blossom and lays it on my chest where I’m reclined on the chaise lounge. Then he sits down beside my legs, his back to me. Crickets chirp in the golden field below. The air is heavy and dense, that late August heat that lays thick on the day like a weighted blanket, threatening to smother you even after the sun has sluggishly drifted below the horizon.
I pick up the flower, stroking the soft petals between my finger and thumb.
“Thank you,” I say. “Is this a sun to brighten my first day of school tomorrow?”
“You know why they’re called that?”
“Because they look like suns?”
“Because they follow the sun,” he says, pointing up at the half dozen tall stalks towering over us. They’re all facing west, where the sun just disappeared.
“Every day?”
“Every day.”
“What if it’s cloudy?”
“Even when it’s cloudy, when they can’t see what matters, they never waver in their path.”
Is he talking about the Dolces, about revenge?
He turns to me, pulling his knee up beside me, and watches my face like he expects a response. “Maybe they should,” I say, because I know what revenge does to a family, what it costs those who seek it and those in their path. “Things change.”
“At night, at their darkest point, when the sun is furthest from them, they turn back to the east,” he says. “They wait for the sun to come back. They know it will.”
I swallow hard, my chest tightening as I search his eyes. He’s not talking about revenge. He’s talking about living again.
“Are you my sunflower?” I ask, my words barely more than a whisper. “Or am I yours?”
He takes my free hand in his, lacing his elegant fingers through mine. “You’re a sunflower, but you’re not mine,” he says. “I’m not anyone’s sun anymore.”
“You could be,” I say, my throat tight.
He shakes his head, the corners of his mouth pulling down. “No, Harper. You don’t belong here. You never did. We both know that.”
My eyes blur over, and I have to blink a few times. I don’t want to let go of his hand, to leave this cocoon with only brass knuckles for protection. I crave the oblivion, the weightlessness of life in his pristine world. “I can’t thank you enough for… Everything.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” he says. “Just promise me one thing.”
I tense, ready for the demands. I know what he wants, but I don’t want to be part of that world anymore. I have no fight left, not even for the boys who destroyed me. “I can’t.”
He squeezes my hand. “Find your sun, Harper. That’s all I want for you.”
A tear spills down my cheek, and I reach for his face, my fingers faltering before I make contact. “Can I?”
He stiffens, but he doesn’t move. I carefully untie the silk ribbons that hold the silver mask in place and lift it off.
My breath catches, but I force myself not to drop my gaze, not to look away. His skin is tight, red, and angry, over half his forehead and down one side of his face, the side with the unseeing eye. His eyebrow and lashes are gone, his eye slightly skewed and smaller than the other. My fingers shake as I reach up and touch the edge of the mark.
“Some people like playing with fire,” I whisper, remembering Colt’s words.
He doesn’t look at me, but I know it’s over. He wouldn’t have shown me if he thought I’d come back. I should say something, tell him it’s not so bad, but I don’t want to lie to him.