And I wonder if maybe the music isn’t entirely out of my reach.
Fourteen
For a handful of secondsafter I dial Harper, she is still alive.
When I amble up the porch after work, I hear my aunt and sister’s chatter filtering through the screen door, but I linger on the steps. The wood is halfway to rot, and I struggle to find a sturdy spot to sit.
Harper’s name is still at the top of my favorites list. I press the call button.
“Hey, you’ve reached Harper!” The familiar, steady tone wrenches me back in time, to cafeteria benches and late nights over music sheets. “I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, I’ll totally get back to you. Or maybe I won’t, but you should probably have texted anyway!”
I’m surprised and relieved to find the mailbox isn’t full and that her parents haven’t shut the phone off yet. I picture them sitting at the dinner table, paying a phone bill for a dead girl.
The phone beeps at me, and I inhale.
“Hey, Harper. It’s been a while.” I lean back into the top step, tipping my head back. It’s a clear night, and thousands upon thousands of stars wink down at me. “God, you wouldn’t believe the view here. Do you remember that summer you came with us? We slept in tents out back and tried to find the constellations. Which neither of us knew a thing about, so it was a lot of pointing out lines.”
The memory shifts, darkens, as I imagine my or Harper’s face on one of the missing people posters. We were out here, basically unattended, ripe for the snatching.
Three years ago. The year Finn disappeared.
Ice rushes up my spine, and I jerk up straight.
“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, Harper. There are all these missing kids, and three literal ghosts haunting my aunt’s house.” I press my eyes shut until fireworks dance in the blackness. “I know you’d be all over it. You’d probably already be knee-deep in some investigation with Sloane and Aisha. You’d have gotten answers.
“But you’re not here. It’s me. And me was never really enough to begin with, was it?”
Silence hangs heavy in the warm evening air.
An automated voice breaks the monotony.
“If you are satisfied with your message, press one. To erase, press two.”
With a sigh, I jab the number 2. The voicemail shrieks a beep, and before it can prompt me again, I hang up the phone and shove it back into my pocket.
If she were here, Harper wouldn’t let these kids—and not just the three in this house—fade into nothing. She would have tried to find out what happened, why they ended up here, even if she knew it was pointless. Even if a seventeen-year-old girl would never have the resources the town’s task force has already exhausted.
She would have tried. She wasn’t particularly amazing at one thing, but she was good at most things, because she fought to be. When she didn’t make the soccer team, she practiced two hours a day all year and landed a spot the next season. When our art teacher told Harper that painting may not be her thing, she spent all her babysitting money on canvases until her still lifes almost looked lifelike.
She had a drive I’ve never had. She was the hero, and I am still a sidekick.
The hairs prickle on the back of my neck. The sensation of being watched isn’t new in the house, but my understanding of it is. I crane my head to find a sheepish Sloane standing on the doormat.
“Hey. Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”Sloane palms the back of her neck. She clears her throat.“Sorry.”
“Eavesdropping is kind of part of the gig, yeah?” I ask.
Sloane snorts. She crosses the porch and settles on the step beside me. Her fingers wear at the hem of her T-shirt.
“Harper is the one who…”Sloane doesn’t say it, but I nod. She nods, too, more out of discomfort than agreement. “You never talk about her.”
“And you would know, because of the…”
“Eavesdropping, yeah.”Sloane grins. The sharp curve of her mouth is like a coat of armor she wears, but behind it there is a maturity beyond her years. Maybe she’s always seen everything before she literally could.“Why don’t you?”
“Talk about her?”
She nods.
