Afew weeks.
She’ll be gone in a few weeks.
Everything will go back to the way it was. Just me and Mom and Silas. The perfect blended family, minus one.
I try to wrap my head around it. It’s not like I can change her mind. I might still not know her that well, but I’ve seen how determined she gets once she decides something.
It’s fine. Totally fine. Good, actually. I swallow hard. Everything will be back on track for Harvard.
Mom will be devastated, though. She really wanted this to work. She’s been trying so hard to make Harper feel welcome.
And Silas. God, Silas has been walking around like he’s afraid that if he breathes too loud, Harper will bolt. Like she’s some wild thing that might spook at any sudden movement.
But she’s leaving anyway.
Of course she is.
No matter how hard I try to hold on to people, they leave.
I wonder if that’s what my music really says about me—that so little about me is actuallymine. Just pieces I’ve collected from the people I’m trying to keep. Mom’s nostalgic favorites. The classics Silas introduced me to. Songs my friends sent me on Discord.
What songs will I add after Harper leaves?Aerials?I Am Not a Robot? Will I scroll through metal playlists trying to remember what it felt like to have her sitting twelve inches away from me in this car, arguing about music and smiling like she knows something I don’t?
Is that all that will be left—a few songs I listen to when I’m feeling masochistic?
“So you’re just going to leave first?” I try to keep my voice neutral, rational, like we’re discussing a homework assignment. “Why not stay where you’ve got free rent? And what about finishing school?”
She shrugs, and the casual gesture makes me want to slam on the brakes and shake her.
“There are just more important things. Like my best friend back where I come from. He’s the one I’ve been trying to get back to this whole time.”
“The sort-of fiancé?” The words come out strangled.
I know about Z. Harper mentioned him that first week. But that was before. Before the football game. Before late-night conversations in the hallway between our rooms. Before she started sitting with my friends and me at lunch.
Before I started counting down the hours until our morning and afternoon drives to and back from school, just to have twenty uninterrupted minutes with her.
“Yeah.” Her voice goes soft. “If we get married, then he gets emancipated and can get away from his abusive fuck of a stepdad.”
She’s never opened up to me this much before, and I should be grateful. I should be supportive. I should be the good stepbrother who wants what’s best for her.
But all I can think is:she’s leaving to get married.
“When does he turn eighteen?” I manage to ask.
“Five months. I can’t leave him with Frank that long when I can get him out now.”
Five months. Not even half a year. One hundred andfifty days of living in a place where someone—Frank, Harper’s voice said his name with such venom—can hurt him.
Five months is a long time when you’re in danger. I think about Mom’s cancer, how every day of treatment felt like a year. How time moves differently when you’re afraid.
“So then what are you going to do?” My voice sounds far away, clinical, like I’m interviewing a stranger instead of trying to understand why the girl who’s become the center of my gravity is planning to leave orbit. It’s my go-to mode in difficult conversations.
She shrugs again, and I hate that gesture now.
“Get jobs. Hitchhike to Austin. Be normal people.”
Normal people.