Harper Apple
Colt’s not outside, so we sit on the hot metal bleachers, trying not to burn our legs, and talk for a while longer. I don’t tell Gloria the full truth in the words I used with Blue, but I don’t think I need to. She knows Royal. She knows what he’s capable of.
“I just don’t get why you left school,” she says. “I mean, you could have at least told your friends where you went. No one knew what happened to you. I even checked Faulkner High and Cedar Crest, in case you went cray-cray when Royal dumped you, but you weren’t anywhere. I thought you were dead, Harper.”
I never expected anyone to look for me, and I find myself feeling even more guilty. She really was a friend, one I didn’t even know I had. But she doesn’t know the extent of what I went through.
“Not everyone is as tough as you, Gloria,” I say. “I was scared and… And fucking traumatized, okay? I couldn’t have come back to school and held my head high and pretended nothing was wrong like you do. I’m not that good at being fake.”
“I guess I deserve that,” she says with a shrug.
“Look, I know I made a mess of things last year,” I admit. “But I was literally doing the best I could to survive. You might know what it’s like to have the Dolce boys fuck with you, but you haven’t been their enemy.”
“No, but I might have been able to help,” she says. “You didn’t give anyone a chance to be on your side.”
I can’t help but scoff at that. “Oh, you want me to bare my soul and be all honest, but you’re going to tell me you wouldn’t have stuck by Royal?”
“Fine, you’re right,” she says. “I would have.”
“Everyone in this school would have,” I remind her. “It was bad enough that just those three hated me. I’d be dead right now if I’d tried to come back here.”
At the time, there was no way. I was barely able to function, let alone try to learn anything. Not to mention, I’d have had to see the football players every day, thinking they’d all fucked me out there in the swamp. And then there’s the matter of the Dolce boys. Maybe a couple of them even feel remorse now, but it took almost six months. Back then, there’s no way they would have let me come back to Willow Heights like nothing happened. Royal was too pissed about my betrayal. If I’d come back, he would have tried to kill me again.
And who the fuck knows what the twins would have done.
There’s one other person who knew what happened, why I disappeared. And of course he wasn’t going to tell Gloria why I never came back after spring break.
Now he’s dead, so I can’t exactly blame him. I will never tell Gloria that he knew, though. No matter what kind of person he was, she deserves to remember her brother the way she wants. It has nothing to do with her, and now, it never will. She hasn’t said anything to indicate that he mentioned me or what happened. She hasn’t said the cops are investigating his busted up face because it might have been murder.
So, I don’t bring up Dawson, even though I want to know what happened. Gloria made it clear that is a privilege reserved for friends. So, until I earn her friendship, it’s not my place to ask. If she wants to come back to school a week after her brother died and act like nothing happened, that’s her business. Maybe she’s scared someone will take her place, or maybe she doesn’t want to think about it, and being at home makes that impossible. All I know is that I’m not entitled to ask her, and that I don’t want to think about it right now, either. Later, I’ll dissect it and pull it apart and figure out how guilty I need to feel about it.
The lunch bell chimes, and a few minutes later, I hear footsteps on the grass behind the bleachers. We hop down to see Colt heading our way.
“I can’t smoke in front of him,” Gloria hisses. “I can’t even be seen with him!”
“No one will see you but us,” I point out. “I seriously doubt he’s going to spread rumors about you smoking.”
“It could get back to someone,” she growls through clenched teeth. “Or they could see me coming in and guess I’ve been with him.”
“Who?” I ask.
“The Dolce boys, for starters,” she says. “Their girls, the squad, Rylan… Anyone!”
“Hey, darlin,” Colt drawls, strolling across the grass to join us. “Skipping school on your first day, Teeny? I thought you were a nerd.”
“I skipped school on your last day,” I point out.
“Ah,” he says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cigarettes. “Dad did tell me that.”
“Your dad?” I ask, arching a brow.
“Yeah,” he says, tapping out a cigarette and tucking it between his lips. “I had to piece together a lot of the last few months before that from texts and Dixie’s blog. She and my family tried to fill in the rest. I don’t remember.”
“Shit,” I say, accepting a cigarette from him. “Your family must really hate me.”
He lights up and drags on his cigarette, tipping his head back to exhale a series of smoke rings before looking back at me. “So, did we fuck or what?”
“Um, no,” I say, lighting up as well. “Definitely not.”