Page 44 of Seeing Harper

“No. Because I didn’t want you to have to be home alone and I knew Summer was your best friend, so I thought it’d be nice if she stayed home with you.”

Harper looked at him again, then again, before she pressed more firmly on the accelerator, intent on getting them to her home more quickly.

“Harper…”

Harper held up a hand almost in his face to silence him each time he started speaking. She pulled into her drive way, killed the engine, and just sat there. Finally she looked over at him. “How could you? You took the entire landscape of our teen years and bashed them to nonexistence without a thought of how it would affect us. You had no right, Clay. If we’d been the only ones, I get it, the protection. But I have no doubt that it was every girl, all the time, because that’s what happens in locker rooms. And honestly, as I say that, I know that it’s wrong for anyone to be a subject of that kind of conversation anywhere, even a locker room, but are you aware what it did to my confidence that no one even seemed to notice I was alive? How many times I wondered what was wrong with me. As my mother tearfully asked, why I was always the odd one out?”

“I didn’t know any of that,” he answered quietly.

“I even believed that the reason no one would even stand next to me or Summer in the lunch line was because of me. They blackballed her from any kind of social activity because she was my friend and that made her unworthy of inclusion as well. It’s hard enough being an awkward teenage girl, and you made it so much worse than it had to be.”

“I’m sorry, Harper. I really am. That’s not what I wanted to happen. I just wanted them to…” he stopped talking and seemed to fold in on himself. “I don’t know. I was selfish. There’s no excuse.”

“Why was it so important to you?” she asked. “What could have triggered you to make threats of violence unless they all treated us like we had leprosy?”

He shook his head slowly. “I threatened death.”

“Clay!”

“I was a stupid kid. I had no idea the effect it would have on you. I still didn’t know the extent of it until you just explained it me. But I’ve felt bad about it for years. I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I didn’t want them coveting you. I couldn’t imagine anyone else touching you, or spending time with you when I couldn’t even spend time with you, and no one but me should have been spending time with you!”

“Are you saying that we’re…”

The front door of Harper’s family home opened and Libby walked out onto the front porch. “Harper, baby, Summer’s on the phone,” Libby called.

“I’ll be right there, Mom,” Harper said.

She sat in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead as her mother went back inside. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“Forgive me. Please. I’m not that kid anymore.”

“I know, but damn, Clay. My school years could have been so different.”

“I was selfish, but it was from a place of not wanting anyone else to be with you. I cared about you even then.”

“Then you should have told me.”

“Like you’d have gone out with me. You didn’t acknowledge I was around most of the time.”

“Because I cared about you, too.”

He looked at her. “You did?”

“Yeah.”

“I was an idiot,” he said. “I should have taken the chance. I just knew you’d turn me down.”

Harper sighed. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t exactly tell you I cared either. But I didn’t go around threatening everybody that looked your way.”

“We’re all kinds of screwed up,” Clay said.

Harper started laughing. “You are.”

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Travis said, walking in front of Harper’s car. “Must have gotten a lot done for old man Bigsby today.”