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.
You’re out of the house now, said a voice like Grandma’s. Doing your best. That’s something.
I took some comfort in that and was rewarded with the picture-postcard sight of downtown Harmony. Garlands of Christmas lights were still strung along the Victorian-era buildings, their large facades fronting more than one shop. We passed a laundromat, the five-and-dime, Daisy’s Coffeehouse and a beauty parlor. The neon sign of Bill’s Hardware blared red beside the marquee of a one-screen movie theater. Snow had been shoveled into neat piles and a few people strolled along the sidewalks.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured.
“Yeah?” Angie craned over her dash as we waited for the town’s one and only light to change. “Yeah, I guess it is. Have you seen much of Harmony? I know it’s buried under snow but we’ve got some cool stuff here for being a speck on the map.”
“Like?”
“There’s a cool hedge maze just north of us.”
“A hedge maze?”
“It’s not tall or complicated enough to lose a tourist in, but at the center is a cozy little shack with a windmill. Purely decorative.”
Or romantic, whispered a thought.
“West of town, there’s a really cool cemetery that dates back to the Civil War. And we have an outdoor amphitheater where town events and festivals are held. If you need outlet stores or fast food, Braxton is ten minutes north. And if you need a real city, Indy’s twenty minutes beyond Braxton.”
She pulled her car to the curb, alongside a building with a sign reading The Scoop.
“Here’s your typical, John-Hughes-style, high school hangout,” Angie said, shutting off the engine. “Be warned: it’s a burgers, fries and ice cream place. In case you’re a salad-and-sprouts kind of gal. I am not, if that wasn’t readily apparent.” She slapped her rounded hip with a laugh.
I followed her inside the restaurant. It was bustling with what looked like George Mason students, plus a few families with small children.
“Ah yes, I see the cliques—such as they are—have taken up their usual posts.” With her chin, Angie indicated various groups clustered around tables or crammed into booths.
“There’s my tribe,” Angie said. “I hope you don’t mind that I invited them.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, scrambling to recall the names of people Angie had introduced me to at lunch this afternoon. Her boyfriend, Nash Argawal—a sweet-faced guy of Indian descent. Caroline West, a petite brunette. And Jocelyn James, the towering blonde, captain of the basketball team.
“If I had to Mean Girls-classify us, we are the Greatest People You Will Ever Meet,” Angie said. “The quirky, diverse science geeks and persons of undeclared sexuality.” She leaned into me as we neared the booth. “We’re all straight on paper, but Caroline once kissed Jocelyn at a party and in the immortal words of Ms. Perry, they both liked it.”
I’d already classified Angie’s crew as effortlessly likeable and Nice with a capital N. The kind of people it’d be really damn easy to get close to. The kind whom if you told certain ugly secrets, they wouldn’t brand you a slut or ask you why on earth you sent a topless photo to an older guy. Or why you let that same guy into your bedroom. They’d even be horrified to find out you didn’t remember allowing him in, in the first place.
“Hey all, you remember Willow,” Angie said as she slid into the booth next to Nash. Caroline scooted closer to Jocelyn to make room for me. “I’m claiming her as ours before the cheerleaders grab her.” She looked at me uncertainly. “Unless you want to be a cheerleader?”
She nodded at a table where a bunch of pretty girls with long hair and sparkling lip gloss talked at each other over their phones. Guys in letterman jackets sat at the next table, their eyes on the game blaring from a TV in the corner.
“No, I’m not a cheerleader,” I said.
Not anymore.
In my old life, I’d not only been a cheerleader, but co-chair of the Junior Prom Committee, Class Treasurer and a member of the debate team. A whirlwind roster of activities that now all seemed like faded memories belonging to someone else.
“It’s okay if you are,” Angie said. “Our Plastics aren’t all that Plastic.”
“Everyone’s pretty nice, actually,” Jocelyn said, waving at a girl across the restaurant. “When you grow up with the same people since pre-school, it’s pretty hard to be bitchy.”
Nash smiled at me. “If you know the Homecoming Queen used to eat paste, she doesn’t exactly have a lot of leverage.”
“Still, they might try to steal you from us,” Angie said. “You’re so shiny and new.”
“Steal me from what?” I asked.
Angie exchanged glances with Nash. “I may have ulterior motives for calling the gang together. Motives that have nothing to do with Greek tragedy.”
“She wants you for our yearbook staff,” Nash said, and flinched as Angie elbowed him in the side.
“You didn’t let me sell it,” she said.
“The play starts in forty-five,” Nash said. “We don’t have that kind of time.”
Angie rolled her eyes and dug into her bag. “Fine.” She pulled out a yearbook from last year and slid it across the table. “As we discussed earlier, college apps are the thing now and you need extra-curriculars, right?”
I nodded, flipping open the glossy book of photos. “My dad commanded it, so it shall be.”
“So?” Angie clapped her hands. “To paraphrase The Breakfast Club, are we not exceptional in that capacity?”
“Maybe,” I said, flipping through the pages.
I had zero interest in being on the yearbook staff. Or a cheerleader again. Or obeying my dad’s edicts at all. I looked at the faces in the photos—students laughing together, working on projects, singing in talent shows and winning ribbons for science fair exhibits. An entire book dedicated to normal kids doing normal things. I knew many of them—probably more than I could guess—had their own horrible shit to contend with, but they looked so much better at moving past it than I was.
I wasn’t moving at all.
A waitress took our order, and I went back to browsing the yearbook while the others chatted around me. I turned to a page of Harmony community activities. And there was Isaac Pearce onstage. Frozen in a dramatic black and white shot. I leaned closer.
“Why, Miss Holloway,” Angie said. “We’re becoming awfully curious about Mr. Pearce, are we not?”
I ignored her and scanned the photos of Isaac with captions beneath each: Angels in America, Buried Child, All My Sons.
“He’s been doing this a long time?” I asked.
“Since grade school,” Angie said.
“Oh, I see,” Nash said with a roll of his eyes. “Tonight isn’t arts appreciation, it’s inducting a new member into the Isaac Pearce Fan Club.” He looked at his girlfriend. “I hope you told New Blood she’s barking up the wrong tree.”
“I’m not barking up any tree,” I said, a deep ache clanging in my heart. The idea of being with a guy, ever again, was repellent. Having him stand close to me. Being in the closed confines of his car for a date. Being kissed. Or touched. A boy’s body pressed close to mine and not knowing its intentions. Or its power.
I shut the yearbook with a snap, cutting off both the visual of Isaac and the thoughts that could send me into a level-10 panic attack.
“He’s pretty to look at,” Jocelyn was saying, “but a serial college-girl screwer. He won’t even look at us children.”
“Children?” I said. “He’s our age.”
They all shook their heads.
“No?”
“No. His mom died when he was eight,” Angie said. “He stopped speaking for, like, six months or something, and had to be held back a year.”
I frowned. “He stopped talking for six whole months?”
Angie nodded. “Maybe longer. He was in our third-grade class. Before he got pulled it was weird to see a little boy—what…? Eight years old? Not saying a word?” She shook her head. “Poor guy.”
My mind conjured a little blond boy with smoky green eyes having the words punched right out of him by his tragedy. “What got him talking again?”
“Miss Grant, the fourth-grade teacher, directed a little show and convinced him to be in it.” Angie raised her hands. “The rest is history.”
I nodded slowly. She gave him someone else’s words to speak.
“But he lost a year of school,” Nash said.
Caroline nodded. “He’s eighteen. No, wait…” She counted on her fingers. “He’s probably nineteen by now, right?”
“That’s got to be hard,” I said.
Jocelyn shrugged and dipped one of her fries in ketchup. “It’s paid off. His acting is going to make him famous.”
“Speaking of which,” Nash said, checking is watch. “We should get going. Oedipus isn’t going to gouge his eyes out all by himself.”
Angie whacked his arm. “Hello? Spoiler alert?”
“I know the story,” I said, unable to keep from smiling. Unable to not like Angie, who linked her arm in mine as we strolled down the sidewalk. I flinched at first; I wasn’t a fan of being touched, but Angie was warmth to my ice and I let her, as our breath trailed clouds down the twinkling winter streets.
“So, any thought about my offer?” she said. “Yearbook is heading into crunch-time and I could really use the help.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think it’s my thing.”
She pouted. “You sure? Because—”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said, my voice hard. I forced it to be soft again. “Sorry. We just moved nine days ago. I’m still getting my bearings.”
“OMG, of course,” Angie said with a wide smile. “I’m pushy as hell—”
“You think?” Nash muttered under his breath.
Angie scowled at him over her shoulder and leaned back into me. “You do your thing, Holloway,” she said. “Whatever that is. But my door is always open. Always.”
“Thanks.”
Angie’s words warmed me too, for the rest of the walk to the Harmony Community Theater.
Do your thing, whatever that is.