Pursing her lips, Bee tilted her head to one side. “Seriously, Harper, what’s wrong? You look really bad. No offense.”
I rubbed my hands over my face. “I told you,” I said from behind my fingers, “I started feeling sick.” I put my hands down and tried to smile brightly, but I had a feeling I looked demented. I felt demented.
Bee was still squinting at me when Abigail took the crown from her hands. With a big smile, she reached up and plonked the crown on my head. “Well, there you go, Your Majesty!”
I turned and looked in the mirror. My face was still gray, my eyes were still huge, and the crown looked fake and stupid. Plus it was crooked.
I burst into tears.
All four girls wrapped me in a group hug, and at first I thought they were comforting me, that somehow they understood that I’d had a terrible night, and that I had thought I’d killed a guy, but actually, I was just going insane, and seeing that effing crown on my head had been the final straw.
But then Abigail squealed, “Oh, sweetie, I know! It’s, like, a dream come true!”
“What do you know about schizophrenia?” I mumbled against Ryan’s mouth. He raised his head, his eyes hazy, his hand still hovering around the hem of my dress. “Huh?”
We were sitting in his car, parked in my driveway. It was after midnight, but still bright in the car, thanks to the truly obscene amount of security lighting my parents have. Somebody tried to break in a few years back, and ever since then, my dad has been more than a little paranoid. But, I mean, if we didn’t have this big brick, ivy-covered house that pretty much screams, “HI! THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE ARE TOTALLY LOADED! PLEASE TAKE SOME OF THEIR STUFF! THEY’LL JUST BUY MORE!” he wouldn’t have to worry so much.
My crown was on the floorboard. I’d taken it off as soon as we’d left the school, even though Ryan had joked that he expected me to wear it 24/7 from now on. And then Brandon had made a joke about how I should wear it during sex, and said something about properly “saluting” the Queen, which, A) didn’t really make that much sense, and B) was dumb anyway.
“It’s just something I was thinking about,” I said to Ryan now. “Didn’t you write a paper on it for AP Psychology last year?”
Ryan blinked. In the dim light of the car, his hazel eyes were nearly black, and he’d loosened the hunter green tie around his neck and shed his suit coat. Normally, seeing Ryan all rumpled and disheveled sent a little thrill through me, but tonight, I was way too preoccupied to appreciate his hotness.
He slid off me and back into the driver’s seat, running his hand through his hair. “Um . . . yeah. Well, I mean, to be honest, I used one of Luke’s freshman psych papers.” Luke was Ryan’s older brother, currently off at the University of Florida. When I frowned, Ryan gave me one of those lopsided grins that usually made me smile in return. “Is this about the Committee for Academic Honesty?” he asked. “Because I’d hope dating the committee chairwoman, like, exempted me from that.”
“No, it’s nothing to do with CAH,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I just . . . wait, Ry, you used someone else’s paper? For an AP class?”
He sighed and leaned forward, folding his arms on the steering wheel. “It was right in the middle of basketball season, and I didn’t have time to write a paper on crazy people. And it wasn’t anyone, it was Luke, and since we’re brothers, that makes that paper, like, half mine anyway.”
He was joking, and I wanted to laugh, I really did. I rolled my lips inward, trying to stop the next sentence from coming out, but it was no use. “Ryan, playing basketball on quite possibly the worst team in Alabama is not going to get you into a good college.”
“Oh, God,” he muttered, slamming his head back against the headrest.
“However,” I continued, hating myself, but, as usual, totally unable to stop, “cheating in an AP class will most definitely keep you out of Hampden Sydney. Colleges take academic honesty very seriously.”
He snorted, but didn’t look up. “Can we not do this right now, Harper? I know you’re perfect, but—”
“I am not perfect,” I muttered, crossing my arms and settling back into my seat. I had hallucinated killing my teacher with a shoe. That would probably do a lot more to keep me out of a good college than Ryan’s stolen paper.
“Yeah,” Ryan said, raising his head, “you are. Or at least you try to be. I mean, I love you, but why do you have to be queen of everything? Why can’t you just . . . chill?”
Last year, my mom took me to see a therapist after she found me making decorations for the Spring Fling at three in the morning. Dr. Greenbaum said that my “obsessive need to overachieve” was due to a “fear of being out of control” and that, like Ryan said, I needed to chill. Only she used some fancy term for “chill” and also suggested I start taking Lexapro to help facilitate said chilling. I managed to get out of the meds by wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt to my next therapy session, where I drew pictures of myself crying in a tornado. That seemed to make Dr. Greenbaum happy and she decided I didn’t need the drugs after all. And the next time I did school stuff in the middle of the night, I just did it in my closet with the door locked. Honestly, what is wrong with this country when striving for excellence means you need antidepressants?
But then I remembered I actually was crazy now.
“Forget it,” I said to Ryan. “I don’t want to fight about this again. I’m just having a really rough night.”
“Are you bummed you missed the crowning ceremony?” he asked, leaning down to pick up my tiara.
Leave it to my Perfect Boyfriend to give me the perfect out. Of course Ryan would assume I was bummed about missing the crowning.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to look more wistful than freaked out. “I know it’s stupid, but . . .”
“Hey,” he said softly, “It’s okay to feel disappointed. Here.” He took the crown and gently placed it back on my head. “Harper Jane Price, I officially crown you Homecoming Queen.” Then he leaned forward and kissed me. It was a sweet, soft kiss, and one for its own sake, and not as a prelude to something else.
That was one of the many great things about Ryan. Just a few minutes ago, we’d been fighting, but once I’d said I was sorry, he was over it. I could be a champion grudge-holder. Briefly, an image of David Stark flickered in my brain, but I pushed it away. David had been nice to me tonight—well, nice for him—so maybe it was time to bury the hatchet. Besides, it was creepy to think about David while I was kissing my boyfriend.
Ryan pulled away, and I smiled at him, laying my hand on his cheek. “You are the greatest boyfriend ever, you know that?”
He shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.” He scooted closer and kissed me again, but this time, it was definitely a prelude to something else; something I was most definitely not in the mood for.
Gently pushing at his shoulders, I said, “It’s been kind of a crazy night. Can we maybe . . . not?” I hoped I sounded regretful and not irritated.
Ryan sighed, ruffling the hair that flopped over his eyes, but then he turned to me and smiled. “Sure.” Then he glanced down and frowned. “Oh, crap, babe, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
He reached out and touched my leg. “Your skirt. I must’ve accidently ripped it.”
I felt the hysterical tears/laughter start to rise again as I looked to where his finger was slowly running up and down the tear in my skirt. The tear I’d made when I’d kicked Dr. DuPont.
But it was impossible to have that tear, since the whole thing had been in my head because I was crazy now.
Right?
But . . . a little voice whispered in my head, if it had all been imaginary, then why did I still have that Pop Rocks feeling in my chest? Why did I still feel a tremor running through all my muscles, like I could tear off Ryan’s car door if I really wanted to?
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to sound normal even though all I really wanted to do was run inside the garage and try to lift my dad’s SUV. You know, for scientific purposes.
We made out for another ten minutes or so, but neither my head nor my heart were particularly in it. Ryan could probably sense that, but he didn’t say anything. Finally, he walked me to my door, gave me one last kiss, and then I was breathing a sigh of relief as his taillights disappeared down my drive.
But I didn’t go inside. Instead, I sneaked around the back of the house to the tall wooden fence that surrounded our backyard—if you could call the half-acre of landscaped gardens a “yard.” The fence was eight feet high and covered in thick, thorny pyracantha bushes. Leigh-Anne had dared me to climb it once when I was six. I’d gotten maybe a foot off the ground before the thorns tore up my palms. I still have a thin white scar at the base of my right thumb. Needless to say, I’d never made another attempt to scale the fence.
But now I stood in the dark, my heart pounding in my ears, and a shivery feeling coursing through me.
Just try it, I thought.
It wasn’t real, the larger, more sensible part of my brain screamed. There were no bodies! No collateral damage! Not even a freakin’ paper towel!
I looked down at the tear in my skirt. Sure, it was possible I’d been kicking and punching at thin air because I’d finally gone full-on schizoid. But, I thought, what if . . .
I was done thinking. I slipped off my pink, teacher-killing heels, threw them over the fence, and felt my muscles tense.
And then I jumped.
Chapter 5
I grabbed the top of the fence, my hands tangled in the pyracantha bushes, my feet dangling off the ground. Okay, so far, no proof of my superhero-ness. Sure, it had been a great jump, but I was a cheerleader; jumping was not new to me. At least I’d missed the thorns this time.
I took a deep breath. Whatever happened next meant I’d know for sure whether or not what had happened tonight was real. Either way, I figured, life was about to get pretty different.
Slowly, I curled my legs up to my chest and lowered my forehead to the top of the fence. Then I pulled with all the strength in my arms until the top of my head was resting on the gate. My arms didn’t even tremble as they held all my body weight.
I uncurled my legs and pushed until I had both arms fully extended and both legs straight up in the air. My dress fell down over my head, so if any of our neighbors were up and about, they saw more than just me going all Russian gymnast on our fence.
Then I brought my feet down to rest on the top of the fence by my hands, so I was basically doing the world’s most extreme backbend, a move I’d never been very good at despite all of my years of cheerleading. But now I did it with no problem, feeling like my body was almost out of my control, the same way I’d felt fighting Dr. DuPont. Planting my feet, I let go of the fence with my hands and pulled my torso up so that I was standing, looking down into the garden, my dress falling back down around my knees.
“Well,” I murmured, “that answers that.” But just for good measure, I did a front flip off the top of the fence.