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The front gate of the Arkadia Juvenile Detention Center clangs open at 11am, emitting first a high, electronic beep, then a metallic clatter, as the steel bars shake against themselves and the door slides away to the right. Harper steps out slowly, pulls her jacket tighter around herself, crosses her arms against her chest.
The Detention Center sits on the outskirts of town. All she can see from the entrance is a long, straight highway extending out to either side of her, a brownfield across the way and the dead smokestacks of the old Mecha Co. factory in the distance. The weather is cold for spring, despite the stillness of the air, colder than she was expecting—and above her stretches only a gray-brown sky of massive, slow-drifting, rain-heavy clouds.
There's a bus stop set off to the right of the gate, just a bench and a tilted, rectangular sign, but it's a landmark and it will do. She heads over and sits down. At first, she slumps down so low that her shoulders are even with the top of the bench and she's looking down at the thick-soled black boots she's just had returned to her, but the posture makes her feel defeated and mired in the past. Who she was. What she needs to believe now is that she could be anything. She could become anyone.
Today is her birthday. She is eighteen years old.
After a while, the gate behind her beeps again, clangs open again. She doesn't turn, but out of the corner of her eye she catches sight of him: dark brown cargo pants and long-sleeved gray shirt, lanky limbs. Combat boots on his feet, half-untied. He flings himself down on the bench next to her. She's still not looking at him properly, because she knows what she needs to know: he's an ex-delinquent like her, from the boys' side of the building—someone else who’s aged out and now on his own. She won't admit he makes her nervous, but his presence on the other end of the bench still causes her stomach to tighten and her muscles to go taut.
Now she is not simply waiting. She's the object of a gaze; she's on guard. He's got his arm stretched out along the back of the bench, the ends of his fingers inches from touching her.
She flicks her gaze toward him, then away, and crosses her arms tighter, and crosses her legs. His other hand is poised just below his mouth, his thumb running absently across his chin, and when she looks away, he turns too, and stares out at the stretch of still-pale grass out in the field across the way.
He has the sort of face that could be handsome, if he would just grow into it, the roundness of it still reminiscent of a boy's.
"Murphy," he says, after a few moments, and she startles. His voice is a slow, unhurried drawl. Like he's used to taking his time. "Arson. If you were wondering."
She takes a few moments herself, then offers, "Harper." No more than that. She considers it concession enough.
Next to her, Murphy makes a low, appreciative noise, pleased and amused all at once. "You know the bus isn't coming for a while," he says.
"I'm not waiting for the bus."
"Neither am I."
Her whole body is still tense, but this long habit of distrust has been formed in her, is not native to her, and his lazy, laconic air tempts her to put herself at ease. And she is curious. Behind them, the Detention Center is teeming, yet the desolation of the dim light and barren highway makes Harper feel as if she and Murphy were the only two on the wide Earth.
He notices that she has turned to him, subtly, relaxed the rigid, sharp angles of her shoulders. Adds: "My roommate is picking me up." Then he gestures behind him with his chin, and she understands he means his former cellmate, from the Box.
"You?" he asks.
"I'm waiting on a friend," she answers. Good timing, too. Already they can both hear the sound, whooshing closer, of a car traveling down the highway toward them. She flicks her gaze to follow its approach. Even though she doesn't recognize it—a black van, blocky and old and chipping paint, not the truck with the hidden compartment under the passenger's seat, which she was, somehow, still expecting—still she knows it's him. It starts to slow almost too late, then lurches to a stop in front of the bench. The side door slides open with a reluctant creak.
Murphy looks from Harper, to the van, then back, an honest look of surprise on his face. Almost endearing, she thinks, this sudden overtaking of emotion. As if everything before had been an act—an attempt at seeming permanently unfazed.
"This is your ride?" he asks, at the same time as an impatient voice from inside calls:
"Hey kids, are you getting in or do I have to offer you candy?"
Harper stands, smiling, and Murphy follows a beat behind. "Haven't you heard," she asks as she climbs in, "we're not kids anymore?"
"Yeah, right." Miller leans around the passenger seat, looking at them and the scattered bags and boxes stuffed into the empty space in back. "Uh, by the way: Harper, Murphy, Murphy, Harper."
"Thanks, we're all up to speed now," Murphy answers, deadpan, as he follows Harper into the van. The only two seats are up in front. They have to sit together on a large, black trunk, only a few inches of space between them.
"Just being helpful," Miller says, and flashes him a grin.
Murphy closes the door behind them with a long slide and a bang, and from the driver's seat, Bryan briefly pokes his head around to say hi. "Harper, your stuff's over there, by the way," he adds, pointing at a couple of bags squashed between some boxes, behind her, and she nods.
"Thanks."
"Must be nice to have stuff," Murphy says. Only Harper hears him, and she flashes him a look. He smiles, lopsided and apologetic, raises his hands in defense.
The van pulls out onto the road again, accelerates down the empty highway.
Miller's been out of the Box for seven months now, since he aged out, living with his boyfriend and sticking to the straight and narrow, he says, waiting for Harper to get out so they can leave Arkadia behind for real. They used to live together out in a house in the Factory District, with a bunch of other kids with nowhere else to go. Lived there for over a year before it all fell apart. She had a bedroom that looked out on their overgrown backyard, where they'd throw parties in the summer, all of them together and late into the nights that smelled like sickly-sweet flowers and buzzed with fireflies. They turned their music up so loud that they didn't hear the knocking at the front door, at first, on the night of the raid—she remembers she was dancing in the moment they burst in, her arms still draped over the boy's shoulders, that they did not break apart until they were forced apart, clinging to each other more from inertia, or disbelief, than love or fear. Those memories now like a movie she once watched, not her own life. The police were after Miller's thieving ring, and she was never caught up in that, but in their search of the house they found her stash—that was enough.
"Bryan's got us jobs lined up in California," Miller says, now. "He's pretty sure he can hook you up, too, Harper."
"Like ninety-percent sure," Bryan adds.
The back of the van has no windows, and the only light that filters through from the front is washed out and gray. In the dark and shadows, she can see Murphy lean forward with his elbows on his knees, his gaze down-turned.
"Not bad odds," she says.
Hard to shake the feeling that they could be anywhere and any time; when she leans forward to look at the dashboard clock, she sees it's broken, and the highway ahead of them is unchanged, except there are more cars now, and to either side of the road are scattered houses and farmland. She falls back onto the trunk again. When she settles her hands to either side of her, fingers curled around the edge, her right nearly bumps up against Murphy's left, when he sits up again, and lets his hands fall, and she feels all at once too close to him in the warmth and the dark. The flicker of his eyes on her, maybe something she’s dreamed up in her head.
"So if this is a road trip, maybe we should be playing some road trip games," he says abruptly, and too loud. "Like I Spy or License Plates? Something?"
"Are you bored already, Murphy?" Miller asks from the front, with a laugh.
"I think we'd be at a disadvantage if we played License Plates," Harper adds. "Since we can't see a thing back here."
"Okay, point taken." He kicks his feet out in front of him, stares down at the toes of his boots. "What about I'm Going to the Picnic?"
They get through two full rounds before the game peters out, inching along mostly on the strength of Murphy's dark humor. "I'm going to the picnic and I'm bringing airline food, Betelgeuse, and... C.O. Kane's head on a spike," makes Harper laugh despite herself—makes her feel, too, for the first time, truly free.
What would this be—the way their eyes meet while she's laughing, the bump of his shoulder against hers as they run through potholes in the road—if they'd met before? Before lock-up, before the raid? He'd show up at the group house; they'd stand on the back porch, talking to the sounds of clinking dishes and conversation from the kitchen, chirping birds and woodpeckers from the yard. She'd sell to him, or he'd barter: a subtle exchange between hidden palms. He'd make a move and she'd reject him, for being presumptuous, or he wouldn't, and she'd step closer and catch his gaze, and ask him if he was planning on spending the night.
How important it was to her, then, that no one should think: Harper is easy. That everyone should believe she always knew exactly what she wanted, and she was in control.
*
They turn off the highway after dark and roll down the streets of some mid-size nowhere-town, looking for somewhere to eat. Harper kneels between the front seats and stares out the windshield at a line of fast food restaurants, chain stores, strip malls, streetlamps and bright-lit commercial signs. They've driven into and past and through another storm again, and it's pouring steady thin needles of rain by the time they pull into the parking lot of a Burger King.
The booths are patterned in orange-soda and cream stripes, and the fluorescent shine of the lights feels brilliant after the dim interior of Bryan's van. They sit in a corner, by the window. Harper lets Murphy take a long drink from her smoothie, scowls at Miller when he flashes her a teasing grin. Murphy doesn't seem to notice. He hands the smoothie back and their fingers briefly touch, and he looks at her a beat too long when he says "Thanks."
*
Torrential rains follow them from the parking lot to the hotel room door. They have to run, pounding through puddles, with their arms over their heads, then huddle as well as they can under the awning while Miller shouts at Bryan to hurry with the key. "I could pick that lock faster," he yells, over the downpour, as Harper slumps against Murphy's side and closes her eyes.
They've booked a single room to save money, though really it's a splurge: a few hours' respite from the claustrophobic inside of the van. The place is nothing fancy, only two double beds and a narrow bath, a TV and a view of the parking lot and the road. Harper claims the bathroom first. With the door shut and the fan on, she can hear nothing of the outside, neither rain nor voices, nor human movement. She is alone.
Been a long time since she was alone.
When she comes out again, after her shower, she sees that Miller and Bryan have fallen asleep, curled up together on the bed closer to the window. Their dark clothes blend together, so she's not sure where one ends and the other begins. Murphy is sitting in the desk chair, turning himself around absently, while the rush of rain falls with tremendous and unceasing sound outside.
Harper sits on the edge of the second bed, starts to wring out her hair with one of the motel towels. She doesn't look up, but she hears Murphy stand and disappear into the bathroom, the click of the door shutting after him.
The closest she has ever felt to this, lying down on her back on an anonymous motel bed, in a town whose name she does not know, listening to rain water and shower water and the hum of someone else's air conditioner in another anonymous room, was her first night in the Box. When she closes her eyes she is almost there. And then she is almost in her bed in the group house, with her view of the garden, and oh how safe that made her feel, and then almost in her childhood bedroom, before her father died, except all she can remember is the fluttering of gauzy pink curtains in a summer breeze—
The bathroom door opens again, with a hard turn of the lock, and she sits up, and pretends she isn't startled. Murphy's wearing the same clothes he left Detention in, except that his hair is wet and his face is flushed and he's standing against a backdrop of drifting, dissipating steam.
"So where am I sleeping?" he asks. "The floor?"
Harper glances toward the other bed, then back. "Looks like they have plenty of room," she says.
Waits a long beat. Doesn't break. Murphy stares at her, eyes narrowed as he tries to read her impassive face.
Finally he releases a long breath and lets his shoulders slump. "You're serious, aren't you?"
"No, I'm not serious," she answers, and rolls her eyes, and flips back the covers on the opposite side of the bed.
"Funny."
Still he looks impressed, anyway, like he thought she didn't have a sense of humor in her. He watches her, with a narrow-eyed and pleased and curious look, even as he turns off the desk light, then the overhead, and finally the light fixture between the beds.
Harper scrambles under the covers. The other side of the bed depresses, creaks beneath new weight: Murphy coming to lie next to her in the dark. The t-shirt she sleeps in was stolen from an ex-boyfriend, is much too big for her, hangs down past her knees and over the tiny pair of sleep short she forgot she packed for herself, once, looking forward to precisely this moment of freedom and escape. She feels bare-limbed and nearly naked, against the unfamiliar, almost-soft motel room sheets.
Murphy warm and solid and waiting on the other side of the bed.
The streetlights outside and the light in the hall provide a dim and hazy glow, so she can just make out his face, the outline of his body, when she turns toward him on her side. He's propped up on one elbow, watching her.
He reaches out and tucks a strand of still-damp hair behind her ear. Lets the touch of his fingertips linger against the shell of her ear. She takes his gaze and holds it because she needs to know if he's sincere, or at least brave, and the night isn't quiet, but she can hear his breathing, is as aware of it as she is of her own, when he slides his palm down her arm and then lets it drop down to her waist. Steady and possessive, not desperate, but yearning in the way he lets his fingers briefly tighten around her hip.
She slides a little closer, the rustle of her body definite and audible against the sheets, and his hand eases down to the small of her back, and her fingertips rest lightly against his jaw as she leans up and he leans in. She keeps her eyes open at first, but the kiss does not break—his mouth opening to hers, the slow, close crush of her chest to his and her hips against his hips—an inhale of desire and sudden, overwhelming need. Her eyelids flutter closed.
He feels like coming home, familiarity and strength in a vast nowhere, like she's lost at sea and he's the beacon—and then like she is drowning. She pulls away, breathless. His eyes shine in the dark, flicking back and forth across her face.
His lips are parted, like he might be about to speak, but he doesn't. Only catches his breath. Slowly, she slides down onto her back again, and he stays propped on his elbow, his arm across her stomach like it has nowhere else to go.
She watches the pattern of light across the wall as a truck passes by them on the highway. A long, sliding rectangle of light.
"My first name's John," Murphy says, quiet and cracked, from next to her. "John Murphy. If you were wondering."
She smiles a small, half-smile—"Have I unlocked the secret knowledge?“—and he laughs, once, short. Her fingers are picking absently at the edge of his sleeve.
"Yeah. So. What about you?" He sniffs. She catches him briefly running his hand through his hair. "What's your first name?"
"Harper." She glances up at him, smiles a genuine, sweet smile at his confusion. "Harper is my first name. Harper McIntyre."
"Hmmm. You're a woman full of secrets, aren't you?"
"Guess so."
"So—tell me something about you." The corner of his mouth is curled up, and he's watching her like he's trying to read her, yet there's no urgency to the task. She's thinking about kissing him again—his cheekbone, his jawline—no urgency to the fantasy, either. Outside, the unceasing deluge of the rain.
"Something about me? Anything?"
"Mmmm."
"I got locked up for dealing," she says, the first thing that comes to mind, but Murphy's brows furrow and he shakes his head.
"Half the kids in there were caught dealing. Or possessing. Tell me something I couldn't guess."
He means: something from before.
Harper straightens her shoulders against the mattress, looks straight up again toward the ceiling. She can feel the way he's watching her, every slight, small movement, the rise of her chest, the line of her neck.
"When I was little," she says, after a moment, "my family used to spend the summer on my uncle's farm. My older cousin taught me how to shoot, and I thought it was the coolest thing. We'd practice on tin cans out beyond the barn. I used to imagine—maybe I'd prefer that life—"
She cuts herself off. Her own voice sounds like a story she's telling herself. At some point, she's not sure when, Murphy's hand began to travel absently along her body, over her stomach, up to and across her breasts. She closes her eyes. She feels the lightness of his touch; she feels the distance of herself from her own body, and the warm beat of summer sun, and the catch of the tall grass against her ankles—the creak of the old mattress springs whining beneath her back.
She hooks her index finger through the belt loop of Murphy's pants.
He lets his head fall down onto the pillow again, his arm stretched and curled above her, buries his nose in her hair and whispers, "That doesn't sound too bad. The farm life. Honest living."
"But not for you?"
"Mmm. Don’t know. Just know I've been waiting four years for this—"
Hot breath at her temple, lazy open-mouthed kiss caught in her hair. He curls himself closer around her. She wraps her leg over his leg, hooks her ankle behind his knee.
He says, "Haven't thought much farther than this."
This: freedom, life beyond the steel bars of the Detention Center gate, and yet how flattering to pretend that he means her, and hot anguished kisses in the dark, as the storm turns to thunder and violent forks of lightning, and she's breathless, swallowing the low sounds from his mouth—she’s rolling back against the pillows, under him, while her hands grip his back with curled fingers, clutch like talons against his shoulder blades.
*
When Harper wakes, she finds herself splayed out across the bed, turned toward the window. The morning light is pale and gray and dimmed by drifting clouds, and she can hear the shower running behind the closed bathroom door. Must be Miller, she thinks, because Bryan is still asleep.
She rubs at her eyes and turns over, dragging the mess of sheets and blanket around her as she twists, and sees that the other half of her bed is empty. No sign of Murphy in the room.
She finds him outside, leaning against the side of the building between the window and the door, hands in his pockets and squinting up into the haze of sun as it burns through the clouds. He turns his head lazily to look at her. "Morning, McIntyre."
"Hey." She crosses her arms against her chest, leans against the wall next to him. The deep cold of the cement floor creeps up through her bare feet, up her legs, and she has to hold herself tight against the shivers.
She'd thought for a moment that maybe he'd left, ditched them in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. But where would he go? She's not sure what state they're in, even, let alone what town; the motel is a series of low-slung concrete buildings, with a pancake house across the street; spindly trees, with new-red leaves only staring to bloom, form a barrier between the parking lot and the road. Last night's storm has passed but a new one will come. She holds her hand out, and collects a few stray, still-dripping raindrops from the awning above.
"You going to stick with us until California?" she asks, and Murphy shrugs.
"Probably," he says. "I mean. Otherwise I'd have to stop moving, right? I'd have to say, 'I'm here.'” He exhales, toes one unlaced boot against the concrete. “But if you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know when you’ve arrived?”