Page 9 of In Harmony

Yes, Your Majesty. <3

I gave her my address then texted my parents.

Going to eat with friends then to the play at the theater. Be home 11-ish.

My mother wanted to know whom I was going with—she’d already formed the opinion that Harmony was entirely populated with rubes and hicks. Dad insisted on an eleven o’clock curfew and ‘not a minute later.’

I ignored both of their texts as I got ready. It was none of Mom’s business and I hadn’t been asking Dad’s permission.

Willow

Angie honked from the driveway at ten to seven. I came out, bundled in my white winter coat and pink knit hat. Angie was craning her head out of the driver’s window of her green Toyota Camry to stare at my house.

She let out a wolf whistle as I climbed into her car. “Chez Holloway ees verra nice-ah,” she said in a terrible French accent and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Your dad’s in oil?”

“Good guess,” I said. “He’s a VP at Wexx.”

“Oh shit, yeah, we got those gas stations all over. Even Isaac’s deadbeat dad runs a station at the edge of his scrapyard. So what’s out here for you guys?”

I shrugged. “His boss told him to head up the Midwest operations. So, he did.”

“You sound so okay with it.” Angie drove carefully but not timidly along the winding, snow-drifted Emerson Road, which connected my neighborhood with downtown. Snow drifts piled on either side. “I’d be flipping out if I had to move senior year.”

“Not like I had a choice. Have you lived here your whole life?”

“Born and bred,” Angie said. “But I’m not staying. I’m applying to Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley—basically any school in California that will take me. I want sunshine and beaches, you know?” She pursed her lips at my silence. “What about you? Where are you applying to?”

“Nowhere,” I said.

Angie slowed for a stop sign. “For real? You’re not going to college?”

“No.” I shifted in the seat. “I mean, I haven’t applied anywhere yet. But I will. Soon.”

“Girl, you gotta get on that. Clock’s-a-ticking.”

“I know,” I said, gritting my teeth.

That was the bitch about life: it kept going even if you desperately needed it to slow down and wait a minute while you tried to piece yourself back together.

“You’re going to be a Yale gal, right? Or Brown?” Angie said as we came to the bottom of the bend to see the lights of downtown Harmony straight ahead. “I picture somewhere posh and New England-y.”

“Maybe.”

“Hey, you okay?” Angie gave me a sideways glance. “I realize I don’t know you very well—hashtag understatement—but you seem a little… I-D-K, down. Dimmer than earlier today.”

“Oh, I took a nap and it left me kind of drowsy,” I said. “And did you just say I-D-K?”

“I’m a child of the technological age.”

“Is that what you want to do for a living?” I asked, mostly to keep the attention off myself, but curious too. “Something in tech?”

“Indeed,” Angie said. “Robotics is my thing. I want to build prosthetic limbs for amputees. My dream is to be on a team that creates limbs like Luke Skywalker’s hand, you know? Realistic on the outside, Terminator on the inside.”

“You watch a lot of movies, don’t you?”

“Geek: one hundred percent, certified fresh.”

I smiled a little, but it faded just as quickly as I thought about Angie and her dreams. She was noble and kind, with ambitions of Stanford and doing some good in the world. I yearned to have that same spark. Some fire that fueled me toward a future with a career and goals and purpose. Some goal beyond making it through one more sleepless night.