Harper was psyched that she’d brought her bike, since Cape Cod was made for cyclists. Miles of paths, flat and hilly, laced the landscape, offering radically breathtaking scenery. She’d grown up on city streets, where the only nature was Central Park, if you didn’t count the odd sprouts of weeds popping up between cracks in the sidewalk. Strange, but she found riding past the windswept sandy beaches and over grassy meadows a balm for her raw wounds.
She’d read somewhere that if you allow yourself to just empty your head, surrender to the grandeur of Mother Nature, your own problems seem smaller, your pain less intense.
Still waitin’ to feel that way, she conceded.
Her aunt, twice widowed, believed in the opposite: that being frenetically busy, darting from one adventure to another, helped, “Because pain can’t hit a moving target,” she’d counseled.
Harper hunkered down and pedaled faster.
When she’d fled Boston for the summer, she hadn’t been consciously thinking about anything beyond survival. ’Cause if she so much as glimpsed Luke, with or without his new squeeze, she would not be able to breathe. So she’d grabbed on to the first lifeboat she’d found: the Web posting that had led her here.
In a perverse way, Harper almost welcomed the bickering of the housemates, the carping of her campers; didn’t even mind Katie as much as she made out. All the noise helped keep her mind off Luke. And where her mind went, maybe her heart would learn to follow.
Late Saturday afternoon, Harper was riding along one of her favorite daffodil-lined back roads into town. Her cell phone rang, and her stomach twisted. No way would it be Luke, she scolded herself. She had to stop hoping.
The caller ID read MOM.
Harper could swear her mother was a mind reader: Susan could see Harper and know what she was thinking, no matter how far apart they were.
“Where’d I catch you?” Susan asked. “On the beach somewhere?”
“Close. I’m biking into town to buy some stuff.” Her list included orange juice, to make up for the half gallon that Ali had unintentionally taken from Katie. And the locksmith, so Mitch wouldn’t find out that Ali had lost her keys—again.
Her mother wasn’t big on small talk, anyway. Just a few minutes into the conversation, Susan launched into the real reason she’d called: Harper’s heartbreak. “Keeping all that hurt bottled up inside won’t help,” said her mom, “and running away won’t solve it.”
Harper sighed. “So what will help, Mom? You’re the expert.”
Her mother didn’t flinch. “Opening up, talking about how you feel. And time. Getting over him will take time.”
How much time? Harper wanted to ask. How much time had it taken her mother to forgive her father, who’d said, “See ya” before Harper had been born?
When she’d first realized that all her friends had dads—even dads who didn’t live with them—Harper had pleaded with her mom to get her one. For years, Susan had managed to change the subject artfully, to divert her attention, citing all the loving friends and relatives they did have.
Had her mother forgiven her father by that time?
Years later, when Harper was old enough to realize what any onlooker knew in an instant—that the sight of her with blond, blue-eyed Susan meant her father was likely African-American—she pushed harder to know the truth: “Who is he? Why can’t I meet him?”
Reluctantly, Susan agreed to make contact. Days, weeks, then months went by—Harper had counted—with no reply, no news. Suspecting her mom hadn’t made the call at all, Harper demanded to know her dad’s identity.
When she was twelve, Susan told her his name.
Which only made Harper want to meet him more. He was famous! That made her important! And she, a street-smart New York kid, could do this without her mom’s help. But Susan dissuaded her. “He was never a father to you,” she’d said sadly. “I think of him as a sperm donor, that’s all. I’m glad I got you out of it.”
That’s how she knew her mother, for all the time that had gone by, had never forgiven her father for walking out.
The following year, having bulked up on after-school specials and weepy TV movies, Harper had demanded, “Does he even know about me?”
Susan conceded that he did.
“Did he ever try to contact me?” Harper had probed, hoping maybe her father had wanted to but Susan had prevented him.
Susan had taken a deep breath. “Here’s the thing, honey. At first, he tried to send money to help support you—which I’m sure his lawyer put him up to—but I refused it. I signed a waiver promising I’d never ask for anything, and never make it public. Because a scandal is exactly what he would’ve wanted—it would’ve given his bad-boy image some street cred. But I wasn’t playing. I was no one’s victim, and you were no one’s pawn. You were mine.”
Harper had learned all this just when her friends were beginning to date, just when boys at school had begun to notice her. It was a lucky crossroads. She, unlike so many of her teary, brokenhearted friends, knew from the jump not to trust boys, never to be vulnerable, never to open yourself up to that much hurt. She practiced what she believed.
Until Luke Clearwater came along.
“Guess what?” Harper said as she swung into the room she shared with Katie.
Her roommate was at the mirror—how new!—applying lip gloss. “Mmwhat?” Katie said while smushing her lips closed.
“You can float away on OJ. There’s a ton in the fridge with your name.”
Not taking her eyes off the mirror, Katie frowned. “You’re not helping her by cleaning up her messes. Even I stopped tossing away the half-eaten, fly-ridden fruit. I put them in her room instead.”
“How thoughtful,” Harper deadpanned. “I’m sure she appreciates that.”
“That’s not the point. Alefiya’s never going to learn to be responsible for herself unless something impacts her directly.”
This amused Harper. “Speaking of learning, how long do you think it’ll take our Rebel Grllz to figure out your game?”
Katie bristled. “Since you’ve got it down, wanna clue me in?”
“That you could care less about them. That you’re using them for their proximity to rich guys—and access to their parents’ wallets.” Harper hopped onto her bed.
“Your point?” Katie shrugged, continuing to separate and lengthen her lashes with her NARS mascara.
“It’s not right, it’s not moral. The only thing you’re teaching them is how to shop and be manipulative.”
“Who died and made you Oprah? The campers love me, and I’m not hurting anyone, so what’s your issue?”
Seriously, Harper gave herself a mental jab: What was her issue? What did she care what Queen Katie did? It was true the campers worshipped Katie-The-Kick, from her silky platinum tresses to her cutesy designer sundresses. Katie was teaching them exactly what they wanted to learn, what most girls who came into contact with Katie wanted to know: how to be her.
As opposed to Harper’s group, who were learning how to create the perfect protest poster, memorizing the ode to Barbie by Nerissa Nields (“If she were mortal, she would be/six foot five and a hundred and three,”) and learning classic songs like “War, What Is It Good For?” and John Lennon’s “Revolution.”
Back to Katie, she mused. Why did the pocket-size princess need the money so badly? And why was she flinging herself at these random rich guys to get it? Didn’t she have enough of both at home? This was the girl who, to Harper’s amusement-slash-horror, had brought her own toilet paper to the share house! Like the community rolls weren’t good enough to wipe her pampered butt. Katie tore from her own zillion-ply stash!
Harper sighed. Katie was crowding her head. She wandered out to the kitchen for a snack, where, unsurprisingly, more bickering was going on. Mitch was royally pissed at Ali, who apparently had left some chicken out to defrost—and had forgotten about it until the odor had stunk up the room. In related piss-off-iness, he was also questioning the number of guests she’d brought into the house. “What did you even know about that guy who was here last night? He looked homeless.”
Ali shrugged. “He needed a place to crash.”
“But this isn’t a crash pad,” Mitch reminded her. “It’s our home for the summer.”
“Exactly,” Joss had tossed in, though no one had asked him, “our home. Ali’s one of us. She has rights too.”
Mitch looked betrayed. He was about to say something, but never got the chance. An eardrum-piercing, roof-raising series of shrieks shook the house. Mandy. She’d been on the toilet, apparently, when Clarence the ferret pushed the door open with his nose and leaped into her bare lap. Now she was running to her room, screeching at the top of her lungs. Her capris were down around her ankles and, Harper envisioned, pee was running down her thigh.
It was time for a “moment of Zen.”
Armed with her journal and a big bath towel, Harper headed out. The narrow ribbon of sand backing onto the share house could barely be called a beach. It was grassy, and full of weeds. Harper came here often, especially at times like now, at dusk, when she had it all to herself.
She could hear the splashes of birds ducking and fishing in the surf, the rhythm of the waves lapping onto the shore. If the night happened to be clear, she could write by moonlight. That wouldn’t be the case tonight. The sky had been tinny all day, the air thick with humidity. It’d rain soon. The gloom matched her mood.
Her relationship with Luke Clearwater had started as a friendship. Two outsiders bonding over poetry, writing. They’d met at Barnes & Noble. She’d been sitting on the floor, blocking the narrow aisle with Maya Angelou’s inspirational And Still I Rise spread on her knees. People stepped around her, or over her, mumbling annoyed “excuse me’s.” Luke had knelt down next to her, clutching a copy of The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. And for the next hour, shoppers had to avoid stepping on both of them.
It was through the words, then, written by others, that Harper and Luke had scripted their own love story. It had all seemed so organic.
And simple. He got her. Understood her passions because he shared so many of them. He wasn’t put off by her moods—as her mom constantly reminded her, she was either sulky or sarcastic, serious or angry. She trusted Luke with her ideas, her own poetry, her real self. He responded kindly and constructively, admitting that “My Brother” (a poem reflecting Harper’s longing for a sibling) made him cry. He’d helped her with one called “Flat,” wondering if the poem about spiritual death wouldn’t be more powerful if she killed that middle verse.
Harper had taken a big breath, and a bigger chance, exposing her soul to him. It was her first time.
Harper helped Luke, too. He was a senior at Boston Latin High School and delivered pizza after school, but he had the soul of a writer. Unfortunately, he had trouble stitching his profound, but scattered thoughts into a cohesive story. She’d worked on that with him, forcing him to think through what he wanted to say. “If you can think it, you can write it,” Harper counseled.
Dude, she’d done good by him. One short story got published in The New Yorker magazine; an essay got selected for NPR, National Public Radio. Not that any of the kids at school would’ve heard of it. But both the literary magazine and the radio station were big, big deals. With Harper’s encouragement, Luke had just sent a collection to a literary agency, hoping maybe some agent would sign him up.
Their relationship had its physical side. Harper loved the way Luke kissed her—soul kisses that could last for days, as he’d written. And she loved the way he touched her, slowly, lovingly, all over.
He was willing to wait, he’d said, for the rest. He was willing to wait, he’d said, for her to be ready.
Until the day he’d casually said, “See ya,” and walked out of her life.
Stunned, paralyzed, Harper had begged to know why. It wasn’t about sex, he’d assured her.
It was worse.
He’d found another muse. His real soul mate.
A raindrop, or maybe a tear, squiggled down her cheek, dripped onto her open journal, and pooled on the page, blurring an entire paragraph. Harper used the corner of her towel to blot it up, and dabbed her eye as well. Even alone, she did not want to cry over him. It was not, contrary to popular pop-psychology belief, cathartic. In spite of what she wanted, the tears kept coming. She closed her journal, and let them—and the rain, for it was drizzling now—have their way.
Sometime later, over her sniffles, she heard the squeak of the backyard fence open and close, followed by squishy footsteps through the wet grass. Harper froze.
“I looked all over, but I couldn’t find an umbrella in the house. Brought the next best thing.”
Harper turned her head and squinted. Through her blobby-wet eyelashes she saw Joss, a Yankees cap shielding his head from the rain. He was offering her one with a SPRINGSTEEN logo. He was toting a bottle of wine and a paper bag.
He looked so ridiculous, this reedy-thin hippie longhair in his torn jeans, faded Rolling Stones T-shirt, and baseball cap coming to “rescue” her. She started to laugh through her tears.
“Was it something I said?” Joss knelt next to her in the wetly packed sand as she took the alt rain hat from him.
“Just a surreal moment.” She was grateful, and stuffed as much as she could of her springy hair under the cap. “So what, you looked outside and saw me sitting in the rain?” Harper hoped that hadn’t come out as an accusation.
“Pretty much, yeah. And from experience? Girls rarely enjoy getting their hair wet unless there’s a swimming pool nearby.”
“True dat,” Harper conceded. She nodded at the wine bottle. “On your way out?”
“I managed to liberate some libations, a lively little Bordeaux, along with some hors d’ouevres, courtesy of The Naked Oyster. Thought you might want.”
Suddenly, Harper was salivating. “Did you bring a corkscrew?”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife.
“A Boy Scout,” Harper said, making room for him on her blanket. “Who’d a thunk?”
“Never made it past Cub Scouts. I’m not big on anything organized.”
Harper peered into the paper bag. “All right! Real imitation cheese-food. And one hundred percent artificial Doritos. Perfect.”
“Hey, the price was right.” Joss freed the cork from the bottle.
Harper grinned and took the wine from his outstretched hand. She wasn’t much of a drinker; a random beer pretty much summed up the extent of her experience. Time to widen her horizons. She closed her eyes, hoisted the bottle to her lips, took a swig, and nearly spit it out. “Vinegar, much?”
Joss laughed. “You should see your face.” He handed her a cube of cheese. “Can’t be that bad. We charge something like eight dollars a glass for this.”
“Dude, your customers are getting robbed,” she said, wiping her mouth and watery eyes on her sweatshirt sleeve. “But as long as it does its job, I’m all over it.”
“Self-medicating?” Josh guessed.
“I’ll let you know if it works.” She handed it back to him.
“It will—temporarily, at least,” he assured her.
“So, anyway,” Joss said, “I’m thinking you came out here to be alone. I’ll split. Unless you feel like talking. There’s a strict code of bartender-client privilege. What goes in here”—he pointed to his ear—“stays in here. If not, they revoke my license.”
Harper giggled. He was trying to be cute. But on the real, Joss must be privy to a whole mess of sagas. A summer’s worth of lonely hearts confessionals. Boozy babes coming on to him, loser dudes confiding their frustration at “never getting any.” Harper could hear it all now. She would trust him? Not so much. But she was curious. “You like bartending?”
“It’s cool. Between the gig and the share house, I get to stay put for a few months.”
Harper was about to ask what he did when he wasn’t staying in one place, when the loud crash of smashing glass made them jump. It came from behind them—the house. And now Mitch yelling, Ali pleading, and Mandy bursting her vocal cords.
Joss leaped up. “Better see what happened. Be right back.”
Harper thought about going with him, but what could she do? Alefiya’s laissez-faire attitude was going to rile Mitch all summer.
Joss returned about ten minutes later. “It seems, in a gross violation of house rules, the ferret got free—and, as usual, Mandy lost it. One freaked-out ferret, and one large table lamp. You do the math.”
“Equals,” she quipped, “one apoplectic Mitch, one pissed-off bitch, and one Hindu pitching excuses about how the Not-a-Rodent just got scared?”
“That’s rich.” Joss kept the rhyming beat. “Poetry and irony—comes naturally to you, does it?”
Harper squirmed. “And what part did Katie play in today’s episode of our daily domestic drama?”
“Bailed. I saw her duck out the door just as I got there.”
“Typical.” Harper tsk-tsked. “The queen of control doesn’t like when things get messy. Her game is strictly passive-aggressive.”
“I thought you were her friend.”
“Not even remotely,” Harper confessed. “She goes to my high school, she posted a Web ad, and I answered. End of story.”
“So you and Katie are two agendas passing in the night, huh? I’m guessing you didn’t like her much back in high school,” Joss speculated.
“I don’t like her much now. She’s a self-centered, materialistic, lying, manipulative opportunist. A conniving witch in Abercrombie clothing who brings her own designer toilet paper to a crappy share house.”
“But tell us what you really think, Harper,” Joss cracked, taking another swill of the wine.
“Oh, come on, tell me you like her,” Harper challenged. “Word to the wise, if you do—you’re not her type. She’s all about the money, honey. Working slobs need not apply.”
Joss paused, as if crafting his answer required careful thought. Finally, he said, “I don’t really know Katie. But I know her type. She probably feels she has to pretend everything’s groovy even when things totally suck. It’s a hard ruse to keep up.”
Harper mimed playing the violin.
Joss laughed. “Point taken.”
“Katie can fend for herself; girlfriend has got it all under control. It’s Alefiya I’m worried about. Granted, she’s messy, spacey—and forgetful. But she’s good people, compassionate, generous, just real.” Harper looked to Joss for validation. She found it in his furrowed brow. “The others can’t stand her—I’m worried they might drive her out, do something really hurtful.”
“Housemates,” Josh deadpanned. “Can’t live with ’em. Can’t set ’em on fire.”
Harper broke into peels of laughter, slapped the sand. “Good one.”
Joss started to bury the now drained wine bottle. “My money’s on Mitch, for the one with the troubled road ahead.”
“Why? He’s probably the most together of us.”
“That’s what he thinks too—and that’s the problem.”
Harper looked at him quizzically. “Do you know something?”
“Just what I feel,” Joss admitted. “T’ain’t pretty.”
Maybe it was the buzz of the wine, or that Joss actually worried about other people—including herself—sitting out in the rain. But for the first time, she took real note of him. “Where are you from?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“Everyone’s from somewhere,” she scoffed, hoping he’d say New York.
“Mostly, I travel.”
“A real wanderer,” Harper mused, “from place to place, bar to bar, supporting yourself as it comes?”
“Something like that.” Joss pointed to her journal. “And you? Poet? Writer?”
“Something like that.”
The rain, never more than a steady drizzle, had settled for full-out mist, from which moonbeams now poked. And Harper found herself opening up—just a crack—to Joss. She admitted to writing, and yes, poetry was her thing. Why? No concrete reason. There was something about the way he looked at her, and who it didn’t remind her of. Luke had been full of passion. He’d been smitten by Harper, and wore it on his sleeve. Not Joss. Joss seemed genuinely curious. Interested.
She found she was too.