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“I’ve just been thinking.”
“Anything in particular?”
She tilts her head up so her eyes meet mine, then inhales a deep breath as she moves from my chest to her pillow.
I roll to my side so we’re face to face and give her all my attention. “What’s on your mind?”
She scoots closer again, eyes downcast, focused on her hands as she toys with my shirt. “I was thinking about today, about walking into that gym…”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “And thank you for sitting through practice like you did.” She didn’t have to come back in, and I didn’t expect her to stay—not after the way I saw her when she was standing outside the gym,alone, struggling for air. Forcalm. “I totally understand if you don’t want to do it again. Or if you can’t be at my games or whatever. I won’t be upset. I swear.”
“I want to keep trying,” she says, adamant. “I guess I just wasn’t expecting to have the reaction I had, and I wasn’t prepared.” She clears her throat, scoots closer again. I settle a hand on her waist but don’t speak, because I feel like she has more to say. “After my brother died, my mom threw away everything of his. Every sign that he had existed. She said the constant reminders were just too hard to deal with, and we didn’t even try to stop her—Dad and me. She was so far out of her mind that anything we could’ve said would’ve just angered her more. Harley was the only one who could calm her, and he… he was no longer around to do it.” Tears well, cling to her lashes, and she closes her eyes when I press my thumbs to them, wipe them away. When she opens them again, she adds, “The last time I was on a basketball court was at my old school. They put on a ceremony to retire his jersey. It was the last time my parents and I put on a united front. It was easy when Harley was alive. We all went to his games together, supported him together. He was the glue, and the moment he died, we all came undone.” She attempts a smile, but it’s sad.Sosad. “At least I still have my dad.”
“Yeah,” I agree, but it doesn’t seem like enough. Harlow deserves more. She deserves better.
She laughs now, a strange sound among the darkness that surrounds us. “When my dad would come home after a long haul, he’d film himself stepping through the front door, and he’d yell,‘Kids,I’m home!’Every time. Even as we got older, he’d do it. Anyway, Harley and I, we’d always race to be the first to hug him. We’d run from wherever we were and fight to get to him.” She smiles now, genuine, and I hold her closer. “We’d shove each other out of the way, or he’d pick me up and move me behind him, and then I’d jump on his back to slow him down. It was a whole thing… Dad—he still does it when he gets home, except he sayskiddoinstead ofkids, and even though he says that, I still expect Harley to come bolting out of his room and push me out of the way.” She pauses a breath, lost in her thoughts. “I think I have all thesewithheld feelings still. Like grief, but not really. I don’t know how to explain it.”
I don’t think she needs to. At least not to me. I pull back slightly. “Can I ask you something about him?”
“Anything.”
“Do you think he would’ve liked me?”
“He would’ve hated you at first, for sure,” she’s quick to say, laughing quietly, and I find myself laughing with her. “But then, once he got to know you, we’d be fighting for your attention.”
“Yeah?” I ask, eyebrows raised. I don’t know why it’s so important to me, but it is. Regardless of whether or not he’s around, having his approvalmeanssomething.
“I’m positive,” she assures, her eyes brighter now, and it does something inexplicable to my insides. Swear, Harlow almost took my breath away the moment I saw her. Beautiful from afar, but up close, she’sextraordinary. I reach up, shift her hair behind her ears, and her eyes drift shut at the touch. “I love when you do that,” she says, and I make a mental note to do it more. After a moment, she asks, “Can I askyousomething?”
“Anything.”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“Okay.”
“When you think about your parents, do you have vivid memories of them?”
For a long moment, I stay silent, pondering her question. “I didn’t for a long time,” I answer truthfully. “Then when we were out at the spring, Jonah mentioned something about them, and then I started remembering more… I don’t know if I’d unknowingly blocked the memories or if too much time had passed, but… they’re not distinct—the memories. They’re more like…” I trail off, thinking.
“Snapshots?” she finishes for me, and I nod.
“Yeah,snapshots.” Flashes of them, sometimes in stills. Sometimes with movement. I rarely get audio though. Like, I know they’re speaking, but their voices are distorted, as if they’re speaking underwater. “But it’s weird,” I continue, my mind in a haze, “because I rememberthe day it happened—the cops at my school and my grandpa sitting me down to tell me they were gone. That all plays out like… like, um…”
“Slow motion?” she offers, and I nod again.
“Yeah. Slow motion…”
“That’s exactly how I remember Harley,” she says. “His life in snapshots, and his death in slow motion.”
42
Harlow
“So you can build a computer from scratch?” I ask Jace, my back to the door as he pulls his van into our driveway after school.
“With my eyes closed.”
“Can you build a website?”