I’m halfway through theRiot!album when a figure finally emerges from the shadows. Black joggers. Faded black hoodie. Worn leather jacket on top.
“About time,” I say as Hayes climbs into the driver’s seat. “I was just about to file a missing person’s report.”
“Sorry.” He laughs, starting the engine. “Couldn’t find my hair gel.”
“Oh no. Sounds like a real crisis.”
“You have no idea,” he says, throwing the SUV into drive and pulling out of the school parking lot.
I switch the music to his favorite Muse track, and soon we’re scream-singing “Supermassive Black Hole” at the top of our lungs while Argy snores in the backseat. Hayes is obsessed with Muse. He dragged me all the way to the Forum in LA last spring to see them live.
Not that I minded.
I’d go anywhere with him.
We take the winding coastal highway home, the SUV hugging cliff edges above the Pacific Ocean. I roll the windows down, letting the cool, salt-laced air whip through my braids. Overhead, the full moon rises—huge and molten orange.
The Harvest Moon.
The name always makes me think of that old ’80s horror flickChildren of the Corn. The one where the kids in a creepy small town kill off all the adults to guarantee a successful harvest. Hayes and I watched it together in junior high. I remember Kora joking afterward that a good harvest is worth a few sacrifices.
She was kidding, of course.
At least, I think she was.
It was one of the few times I remember Hayes’s mom talking about her past. She grew up in a small farming village in Eastern Europe with her mother, working the land from a young age. She talked about the harvest like it was sacred.
Kora rarely mentions her childhood.
No talk of siblings. No extended family. No funny uncle stories or crazy aunts. I don’t even know what happened to her mother. It’s like Kora moved to Athens, met Hayes’s father, and that was the end of the narrative.
Hayes’s father is the same. No talk of where he’s from, no relatives, no roots. It’s as if the two of them just appeared one day—fully formed, incredibly successful, and inexplicably private.
In that way, I guess Hayes and I aren’t so different. Neither of us comes from big, sprawling families.
“On a scale of one to ten,” Hayes says, grinning as we pull off the highway, “how pissed do you think Ambs is that I bailed on her tonight?”
I laugh, the sound catching in my throat.
“Eleven.”
He tosses me a wink. “Your sister wants me—bad.”
“A little full of yourself, aren’t you?”
He pauses, the mood in the car shifting just slightly. “You think she’s serious this time? Or just playing games again?”
“No clue.” I shrug. “She says the breakup was a mistake,but… who knows. Still—do you really think getting back together is a good idea?”
“Aw, no need to be jealous,” he teases. “You know you’ll always be my number one girl.”
I punch his shoulder, maybe harder than necessary.
“I’m not jealous, you moron.”
“Sure you aren’t.”
“I’m not! I couldn’t care less about you and my damn sister!”
