In Harmony(6)

Willow



“Please give a hearty Mason Mavericks welcome to Willow Holloway. She comes to us all the way from New York City.”

I smiled blandly at my new classmates. The jocks in the letterman jackets, a clear agenda behind their friendly smiles. The girl with the dark curly hair and the freckles across her pale skin who was no doubt going to pounce on me the second the bell rang. The rebel-without-a-cause badass whose seat I’d taken…

Everyone was easy to ignore except for him.

Holy hell, I’d never seen a more stunningly gorgeous guy in my life. At least six-two with broad shoulders, lean muscle, and a movie-star face. Impossibly perfect features. High cheek bones, bristly chiseled jaw, thick brows, full lips. His eyes were gray-green, like the sea off of Nantucket in winter.

All of him was stormy and cold, with an undertow of danger. His black leather jacket smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and I wouldn’t be surprised if he kept a switchblade down his boot. Even the way he looked at me felt dangerous. My body reacted instantly, all over, as if his scrutinizing gaze went deeper than skin. He looked at me like he could see me.

You’re overreacting, girl. Like, a lot.

I fixed my eyes on the window and its bleak landscape of gray skies and dirty snow. This was all wrong. The first day of school was supposed to be at the end of summer, when the heat hasn’t quite given in to chillier autumn breezes. Not the middle of winter with snow blanketing the ground and only a few months remained before graduation.

It would’ve sucked, if I still had the capacity to give a shit if I made friends or not. I was trapped in my own perpetual winter. Sealed in a cube of apathetic ice, like one of those mummies they show on the Discovery Channel. They looked so life-like but on the inside… Nothing.

I used to like school. I looked forward to the day. My friends could be moody and dramatic, but they were my friends. The workload was either overwhelming or mind-numbingly boring, but I took pride in my grades. In the months after the party, I hated watching my GPA sink lower and lower, taking my college prospects with them. I hated how I worried my parents, even if it was a peripheral kind of concern.

I looked around the classroom, safe in my ice coffin. I wanted to be friendly. But friendly led to friends. Friends led to phone calls and texts and late-night talks under the covers. Warm, dangerous conditions that made icy barricades melt and terrible secrets were liable to pour out on a torrent of never-ending tears.

Forget it. These kids could like me or hate me or ignore me—my preferred option—and I wouldn’t feel the difference. Even James Dean next to me. He could have his damn chair back tomorrow. I didn’t need him and his stormy green eyes digging under my skin.





I was right about the dark-haired girl. I avoided her after English, but she caught me coming out of Economics later in the morning. She sidled up, confident in boots, leggings and a slouchy black sweatshirt that read My head says GYM but my body says TACOS.

“Hi. Angie McKenzie, yearbook editor,” she said. I half-expected her to hand me a business card, or flash me identification like FBI agents do on TV. “You’re from New York? What brings you out here?”

“My dad’s work,” I said.

“Wow, sucky timing, right? Middle of your senior year?”

I shrugged. “I’ll live.”

She grinned slyly. “Look at you with your angel face and Disney princess hair…just a front for a secret badass?”

Despite my best efforts, a smile crept past my lips. Angie was one of those quirky, instantly-likeable girls, damn her. My best friend, Michaela (former best friend, I thought), had been the same.

I got the smile under control. “Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “The hair’s a cover.”

“A Pantene commercial-level cover,” Angie said. “I’m so jelly. Nash, my boyfriend since, like, forever? He keeps bitching at me to grow mine out, but it wouldn’t look like yours.” She shook her hands in her mass of dark curls. “Can you say humidity frizz, children? I knew you could!”

A laugh burst out of me. “You’re weird. I mean, in a good way,” I added. I may have been in self-imposed cryogenic stasis, but I actually did give a shit if I hurt her feelings or not.

Angie laughed along, making her pink hoop earrings bounce. “Girl, weird is my life’s mission.”

We’d arrived at my locker at the end of the second-floor hall. Glass doors led to a small outdoor stairwell with brick walls and metal railings. The gorgeous guy from English class was out there, wearing a knit cap on his head and fingerless gloves, neither of which looked enough to keep him warm. He leaned against the railing, casual as hell, smoking a cigarette. The smoke thickened the plume of his breath as it was caught on the wind and torn away.

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“Isaac Pearce,” Angie said. “He’s all kinds of hot, isn’t he? But forget it. He only dates older girls. And by dates, I mean has epic, emotion-less sex with. I assume.”

A phantom flush of heat swept through me, like the itch an amputee might feel for a limb that’s been cut off. I leaned against the bank of lockers, adjusted my bag, then my hair, then my bag again.

“Oh yeah? He likes older women?”

Angie nodded. “Though it’s hard to imagine him calling someone and asking them out. Like, on the phone. With words.”