is no fate,” I say. “There’s what you do and what you don’t do.”
I don’t want to have this argument again. Though it would make sense, in a twisted way, for Jake’s proposition to be a sign from God. Just more proof that if He indeed exists, He hates my guts.
Laney isn’t having it. “Don’t even,” she chides. “This is nothing short of divine intervention and you know it.”
“Whatever.” I pull the phone away from my ear and double-check that my door is shut all of the way. The last thing I need is Aunt Helen eavesdropping on this particular conversation. “There has to be another way.”
That’s what I said last time, I know. But the idea of driving cross-country in a van with a boy I don’t know is too crazy. Even for me.
“Hang on a second …” Laney pauses, working it out in her head. “You didn’t tell him we’d do it?”
“Of course not. We can’t drive to California with him. We don’t even know him.”
“Are you kidding? This is perfect! This is exactly what we’ve been hoping for! He has everything we need.”
Okay, I’ll admit. Turning it down does feel a little like kicking God in the balls.
I sigh. “It’s too easy.”
“You know I love you, Harper, but seriously? That’s a really lame excuse.”
The worst is that Laney’s right; this is potentially kind of completely perfect. Minus the fact that Jake refused to answer any of my questions, no matter how hard I pushed, and he apparently holds a grudge against me for no reason I can figure out. But what other choice do I have? No good one. And I totally believed him when he threatened to blab to Aunt Helen.
Rock, meet hard place.
“All right, all right. I’ll talk to Jake.” I sigh in defeat. “I guess we need to start planning. Figure out when we should leave.”
“Do you have a target date?”
“As soon as possible. Preferably.”
She laughs. “I hear you. Exams are over, thank God, and Mom and Dad are going on a weekend trip to visit some friends in Pittsburgh—so maybe we should leave then? If it’s okay with Jake.”
“Oh, I’ll make sure it’s okay with him.”
“What are you going to do? Threaten bodily harm?”
“I’ll think of something.” I pause. Outside the door, I can hear the sound of someone coming up the stairs. “Hey, Laney, let me call you back.”
There’s a knock at the door. It’s Mom—it has to be. Aunt Helen doesn’t knock. Clearly she does not understand both the symbolic and literal implications of a closed door. What if she caught me smoking? Or undressing? Or, like, masturbating or something? Not that I really do that, ever—but it’s the principle of the thing. If she caught me doing that, she’d probably have a coronary.
I make a mental note to ask Laney for tips on where to acquire a vibrator. Maybe I can stow it in my nightstand, because I’m pretty sure when I went out for coffee, Aunt Helen searched my room. Imagine if she found something like that. Heads would be rolling.
Ooh, or maybe condoms. Or birth control pills. Now that would really freak her out.
I sit down on the bed and put the phone down. “Come in.”
Mom opens the door, standing with it halfway ajar. She doesn’t make a move to fully enter, just stays there, looking. But I can tell she’s not really seeing me, is lost somewhere in her own mind. We’ve barely spoken over the past few days—we exist parallel to each other.
“Hi,” I say, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them.
“Hi.” Mom hovers in the doorway, her hand on the knob. She leans on it like it’s the only thing keeping her upright. Maybe it is. “Helen invited me to her morning church service this Sunday. Not just me—you, too. She thinks it would be good, for the both of us.”
“Helen thinks?” I bristle. “No, thanks.”
“Harper.” She pauses, breathing in and out through her nose a few times, one hand pressed to her temple as if to prevent the onslaught of a migraine. “I don’t appreciate your hostile attitude. She’s trying to help—”
“Well, maybe she’s trying, but she’s not helping.”
“She’s helping me!” she snaps. Her chin quivers with the threat of tears. “I need someone right now. It’s not like your father has been of any help, if you’ve bothered to notice. Helen is the only one who’s here for me. I can’t do this on my own. Do you not understand that? Does that not make any sense to you whatsoever?”
So that’s how my mother sees it? That she’s all alone, save for Aunt Helen? My presence means nothing. I’m invisible, or worse, a burden.
“Helen says I need to surrender,” she continues. “That I need to let God in, let Him take control. And I think it might help you find some peace, too, if you came with me.”
“Let me think about it,” I lie, because I know already that I will never step foot inside that church, know that come Sunday I’ll be long gone from this town.
Why should I stay? Aunt Helen hates me. Mom doesn’t need me. I can’t do anything right. Really, I’m in the way. This just makes my decision all that much easier.
Mom nods once and starts to close the door. For a second, I want nothing more than for her to come back, to cradle me in her arms like when I was a kid and had badly scraped a knee, to smooth her palm across my forehead as if checking for a fever, to do something—anything—to remind me of the days when knowing that she was my mother and that she was there was enough to make the bad things better.
It’s weird because I don’t really want her to comfort me; I just want her to try. But that yearning is only a dull ache in my chest, the kind of phantom pains amputees get where their missing limbs should be. It isn’t anything real.
The next day I take the bus across town to the Oleo Strut. The bus stop is three blocks from the store, and even though I have on a T-shirt, it’s another blistering day, and by the time I arrive in front of the brick building, the thin cotton is stuck to my back with sweat like a second skin. No one notices when I enter. Jake’s brother—I don’t know his name—is behind the counter, arguing with a man in his forties dressed in a skuzzy, spiky leather jacket and a pair of dirty corduroys.
“Punk is not dead,” Jake’s brother is insisting emphatically. “Look at—”
“Who? Green Day? Avril Lavigne?” the other man sneers. “That’s just manufactured pop bullshit. You’ve got all these poser bands out there, cranked out of big-name labels, pretending to be part of the counterculture when they’re just another cash cow for the capitalist, consumerist machine. It’s a gimmick. Kids these days think they can go out and buy punk self-identification through massmarketed band apparel from Hot Topic.”
“Yeah,
