Page 6 of In Harmony

I was right about the dark-haired girl. I avoided her after English, but she caught me coming out of Economics later in the morning. She sidled up, confident in boots, leggings and a slouchy black sweatshirt that read My head says GYM but my body says TACOS.

“Hi. Angie McKenzie, yearbook editor,” she said. I half-expected her to hand me a business card, or flash me identification like FBI agents do on TV. “You’re from New York? What brings you out here?”

“My dad’s work,” I said.

&nb

sp; “Wow, sucky timing, right? Middle of your senior year?”

I shrugged. “I’ll live.”

She grinned slyly. “Look at you with your angel face and Disney princess hair…just a front for a secret badass?”

Despite my best efforts, a smile crept past my lips. Angie was one of those quirky, instantly-likeable girls, damn her. My best friend, Michaela (former best friend, I thought), had been the same.

I got the smile under control. “Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “The hair’s a cover.”

“A Pantene commercial-level cover,” Angie said. “I’m so jelly. Nash, my boyfriend since, like, forever? He keeps bitching at me to grow mine out, but it wouldn’t look like yours.” She shook her hands in her mass of dark curls. “Can you say humidity frizz, children? I knew you could!”

A laugh burst out of me. “You’re weird. I mean, in a good way,” I added. I may have been in self-imposed cryogenic stasis, but I actually did give a shit if I hurt her feelings or not.

Angie laughed along, making her pink hoop earrings bounce. “Girl, weird is my life’s mission.”

We’d arrived at my locker at the end of the second-floor hall. Glass doors led to a small outdoor stairwell with brick walls and metal railings. The gorgeous guy from English class was out there, wearing a knit cap on his head and fingerless gloves, neither of which looked enough to keep him warm. He leaned against the railing, casual as hell, smoking a cigarette. The smoke thickened the plume of his breath as it was caught on the wind and torn away.

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“Isaac Pearce,” Angie said. “He’s all kinds of hot, isn’t he? But forget it. He only dates older girls. And by dates, I mean has epic, emotion-less sex with. I assume.”

A phantom flush of heat swept through me, like the itch an amputee might feel for a limb that’s been cut off. I leaned against the bank of lockers, adjusted my bag, then my hair, then my bag again.

“Oh yeah? He likes older women?”

Angie nodded. “Though it’s hard to imagine him calling someone and asking them out. Like, on the phone. With words.”

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t speak,” she said.

I blinked. “He’s mute?”

She rolled her eyes. “I mean, he can speak. He just doesn’t much. Unless he’s on stage, acting…”

Her words trailed away, and I looked to where Isaac Pearce leaned against the wall outside the doors, braving the cold and smoking a cigarette in plain sight, not caring if a teacher caught him.

“He’s an actor? He looks…” My own words dwindled away, none of them sufficient. Hot. A bad boy. Manwhore. Chews girls up and spits them out. A different girl every night…

“Tough,” I finished.

“He has to be. His father beats the hell out of him.”

My gaze jumped back to Isaac, trying to see if the signs of the abuse were written all over him, or if his worst scars, like mine, were hidden on the inside.

“His father beats him?”

“That’s the word on the street. But no one’s seen his dad in town for a while, so the current rumor is that Isaac killed him and hid the body in their scrapyard.”

I scrunched my face at her. “What? Come on…”