One
Its cold to Harmony Knight, so cold she decides that one jacket isn't enough.
She tumbles from the double doors of the school, hugs her chemistry textbook to her chest for warmth, squints at the sun, tries to focus on attracting enough heat to make it to her car. Behind her, she hears Bethany Lambert call her name, and it makes Harmony rush a little quicker. She fumbles in her jacket pocket for her keys. As she pulls on them, she realizes that they've snagged on a thread. Then she drops them and as she bends down to pick them up, someone in a rush shoves her, knocking her textbook from her hand. It slides across an ice puddle in the parking lot and into a snow bank.
By time Harmony picks it up, Bethany is upon her, her lips curled back revealing perfect, straight white teeth, her blue eyes alight with a fifties-sitcom sort of joy, her blonde hair swept back in a neat, tight ponytail. "I called your name, I didn't know if you heard me or not."
"Oh, sorry," Harmony says, stands up, shakes the snow off of her textbook.
Bethany's smile seems a little frozen. She twists the gold bracelet on her wrist, shivers a little. "You never got back to me… about the assignment?"
"Oh, yea… sorry," Harmony says. "Busy week, SATs and stuff,"
"Yeah, I know. I totally understand," Bethany pulls her backpack straps a little tighter on her shoulders. She's doesn't shiver. Then again, her four hundred dollar coat is properly insulated compared to Harmony's thrift shop jacket which had come with a hole underneath one of the arms. "But it is due next Friday. If you want, we can study together?"
Harmony would rather eat nails with no teeth. She can imagine Bethany chirping about homework and finals and colleges and family. Bethany's social circle seems to consist of parents and teachers and she talks like someone who has lived fifty years rather than eighteen. She looks a little desperate, a little eager, for a positive response but it hardly fazes Harmony. She has a date with a video game controller and a box of pizza scheduled for every night this week.
"Nah, I'm good." Harmony says, begins walking to her car. She feels Bethany following her and her mind groans.
"Well, you know, this project is like ten percent of our grade."
Yes, Harmony was aware. The English project, the dreaded Romeo and Juliet translation piece. Turn Romeo and Juliet into modern day teens; translate each word of dialogue into a text message, something readable to someone who's never read Shakespeare before. Harmony had looked at the original text a month ago, when the project was first assigned, and yawned by the second paragraph. Shakespeare was definitely not her thing. Her saving grace came when her teacher, Mrs. Watkins, who looks like she should be guarding a crypt or transforming into a raisin, said that they could choose partners. Everyone had paired up and Harmony was alright with that. She had glided by in the background of high school until recently, sort of. She heard some people call her a bitch and sometimes people walked on the opposite side of the hall from her, but hey, she sort of liked it like that.
Besides, she could have it as bad as Bethany.
Bethany was the only other student not paired up with anyone but that wasn't because she blurred into the background. People consciously avoided the preppy, high strung blonde as if their lives depended on it. Working on a project with Bethany was like trying to drive a car with someone sitting on your lap, giving you directions. At first Harmony decided that she was going to work alone, she was okay with that, but Bethany, noticing her, sauntered over with this huge beaming smile, set her books on the empty desk next to Harmony's, and squealed about how much fun this was going to be, she was so excited, OMG she wanted to get to know Harmony, she knew all about Shakespeare so Harmony would hardly have to work at all, did she mention how fun this was going to be?
Harmony, a little unnerved, decided that it might be smart to pair up with Bethany, exchange numbers, because honestly she was failing English. Well, she was failing most of her classes. Kind of hard to concentrate in class when you're worrying about where you're getting your next fix. Plus, she was dating Scott Soto, this really hot college senior up at Glendale, and he took up a lot of her time, bringing her to the gun range, exploring abandoned buildings, making YouTube videos of his band. Last year, after hearing about how much he dreaded finals week and hated his pretentious professors and could literally kill his snooty classmates, she'd subconsciously decided that college wasn't for her and that's when her grades started slipping. So she didn't necessarily care if she failed English but her mom would throw a fit, and maybe even throw her out, if she didn't make an attempt at this thing.
If they ace this project, it might bring her grade up to a D, and who could complain about a D? Not her mom, that's who.
"I know." Harmony says, trying not to grind her teeth. "I'm a little busy, you know?"
Bethany frowns. "Okay, I totally understand, I'm here if you need to talk about it or anything but… well, I'm going to be completely honest, so don't bite my head off, and I know that you're not the type of person to leave the entire project hanging over me and I know that you said you'd make time to study with me, but my parents promised me a trip to Italy if I kept my grades up."
A trip to Italy? Harmony often wonders if she has enough money for a trip to the grocery store. "Of course," Harmony blurts snidely and then she nearly covers her mouth as the shocked look on Bethany's face begins to sink in but then realizes she doesn't really care what Bethany thinks. Still, she wants this A. "I-I mean, of course, I understand." Harmony says. "We'll work together next week."
"As you may or may not know," Bethany says and Harmony could swear that her tone has dropped a few degrees. "I have this huge swim thing next week and I need to dedicate, like, all of my time toward it. And I would really appreciate it if we could spend a couple of hours today to, you know, get this done."
"Today, today…" Harmony pretends to go through her mental calendar. "You know, I'm pretty much booked for today. I swear, we'll get together next week," Maybe if she talks in Bethany's language, Bethany will understand that she isn't interested in hanging out. "Totally," Harmony adds, sporting a huge mannequin grin.
Bethany's frown deepens. She opens her mouth to speak, and then she seems to compose herself by straightening her back and crossing her arms. "Well," She says in a voice heavy with annoyance. "We don't have to work on this project together, like, at all."
"Okay, awesome." Harmony begins to turn around.
"I'll just, you know, find another partner or something."
Harmony freezes. She turns slowly, chuckles softly. "You're not serious."
"It's not like you've done anything to help me so far. You won't call me back; you avoid me in the hall to hang out with your… friends." Bethany sneers at the word. She may as well have made air quotes. "This is really important to me; I've wanted to visit Italy since I was a little girl."
"You're seriously going to take me off of the project?"
"I'm not trying to be a bitch here," Bethany says, puts a hand on Harmony's shoulder. Harmony tries not to flinch it away. "But I need you to meet me at the Presley Diner in, like, twenty minutes, or you're out. We're going to get this finished today."
She walks past Harmony, to her brand new convertible, probably paid in full by her loaded parents. Harmony closes her eyes, doesn't care if Bethany can hear her groan. Then she thinks that if she just sits back and shuts up, maybe Bethany, with her dominating personality, might do all of the work for her anyway. And what is a couple of hours? It's Friday night and she's got the weekend to play Call of Duty and hang out with Scott.
Just grab the biggest surfboard and ride the wave, Scott says sometimes after an argument. She decides to ride.
~FD~
Harmony spots Bethany's convertible in the diner's parking lot, along with three other cars. She parks on the opposite side of the lot, even though there's a spot right in front, because she wants to avoid all of those egg eating yuppies. Through the windows, Harmony sees Bethany automatically, the collar of a blue blouse sprouting from the neck of a maroon home-knit sweater, her hair out of her ponytail, wavy down her back, the focus on her textbook hard and concrete. An earthquake wouldn't disturb her from her studies. Harmony rolls her eyes, leaves the warmth of her car and enters the brisk March afternoon.
Welling, New York, wears the winter well. The snow that stacked on the buildings looks picturesque, Christmas card worthy. People are huddled close as they walk on the sidewalks behind Harmony, shivering, laughing, and talking about how cold it is. Expensive earmuffs and gloves and scarves and coats make Harmony a little bitter. She lives twenty minutes away, in a small town called Rockford, where the citizens don't look so glamorous in their trailer homes and RVs. The trailer her parents own is probably the cleanest in the row. There's a dying tree that showers leaves and sticks every once in a while and the litter is at least picked up, but Harmony never really invites people over, and that's all well to her, but her mother used to tell her that a closed fist get no honey, or something like that, and because she won't share her life, she isn't sure what the grass looks like on the other side.
She imagines warm homes with fireplaces and working ovens and multiple bathrooms. She imagines smiles full of love, hugs, back rubs, foot rubs, concern and attention. She imagines large clothes closets, king-sized beds for kids, full-stomach thanksgivings and piles of Christmas presents.
Jealousy seizes her when she enters the diner and finds Bethany at the table picking at a large meal. Bethany wears her glasses now and she looks up at Harmony over her frames. She smiles warmly, nodding to the opposite seat.
"I'm just rereading the third act again. These people were so messed up." She giggles, takes a sip of her coffee. "So, where do you want to begin?"
Harmony, drawing a blank on the play, shrugs, drops her book bag onto the seat next to her, rests her chin on her fist. "Tell me where you got first and I'll catch up."
Bethany seems eager to show off her work, talking fast about how she turned fight scenes into angry Facebook rants, how she added group chats and blog posts and emojis. Harmony drones out after a couple of seconds, opening her own copy of the play, pretending to read the Shakespearian dialogue. She hears some shouts from the kitchen ("Order up!", "Hurry with those fries!", "Can you go to table ten, Diane?").
Presley Diner was once the go-to spot, before many of her classmates discovered fake IDs and bars. Their waffles used to be Harmony's favorite when she was a kid, a time when her parents did family things with her, like take her out to eat or actually talk to her. Her brother, Adam, used to love their waffles too. He used to take hers from her plate when she went to the bathroom. It used to annoy her, cause her to yell at him, call him names.
Now, if he were still alive, she'd let him stuff himself with her meal, even if it meant going hungry forever.
There is a small family sitting at the counter on beige barstools: preteen son texting on his cell phone, mother stirring milk into her coffee, father reading the newspaper. It reminds Harmony of the sort of family unit she was beginning to yearn for.
Scott's family welcomed Harmony with open arms when she'd visited last Christmas; they were the sort of people who did things together. Even their arguments were full of love. Ugh. It was so sickeningly cute, she wanted to barf and cry at the same time.
A waitress comes around: bright red hair the color of a pomegranate, hard wrinkles sprawling from exhausted eyes, skin sagging off of thin bones, several necklaces of wooden beads hanging off of her neck. She chews a minty gum, gives a half smile revealing perfectly aligned veneers, although the smile doesn't climb to the eyes, and flips open a small notebook. "What can I get you, honey?" She asks, her voice pours like well trained honey, her eyes not fully focused on Harmony. Her name tag reads Diane.
Harmony looks at the menu, sees a bunch of things she can't afford, then says: "Just lemon water, please."
Diane looks a little bored, doesn't bother to write down the order. "Coming up. Might have to wait a while, considering the crowd."
Harmony looks around. Other than the family at the counter, there's a boy from their school, Clayton, and an elderly man, who Harmony assumes is Clayton's grandfather. The diner is practically deserted. Realizing Diane is joking, Harmony forces a smile. Bethany laughs as if it's the funniest thing she's ever heard. Considering how serious Bethany's parents are rumored to be, it might be.
"Thanks." Harmony says but Diane is already walking away.
Something slams down, a fist on a table, and dishes clatter as they regain their balance. She glances over her shoulder to see Clayton, his expression tight on his red face, as he stares at the elderly man. The elderly man reaches forward, pats Clayton's hand. Clayton's eyes seem to brim with tears. He looks up, as if to see if anyone else had noticed his outbreak. His eyes lock on Harmony's but she looks away quickly. Not her business.
"Ugh, he's got problems, I've heard." Bethany says. Harmony wonders who exactly would share gossip with Bethany, of all people. "There's this rumor going around, like, he's supposed to transfer to this really strict boys academy in Texas, for delinquent youth. His parents are totally evil."
Harmony doesn't care really. She's trying not to let the welcoming aroma of Bethany's meal stir her stomach. God forbid her stomach starts roaring.
She doesn't consider herself a thief when she takes money from her mom's purse. Her mom will just spend it at the casino anyway and it isn't like Harmony is using it to buy clothes or a new nail polish. She literally buys groceries. She's thankful that her mom doesn't pay attention to her finances. She'd taken twenty dollars yesterday and already spent it on McDonald's for dinner. She wishes she took a little more because those waffles do sound better than pizza but she'll just buy a pizza later with her mom's credit card, so it's fine.
Bethany bites her rosy red lip in concentration; her hair tumbles off of her shoulder and she tucks it behind her ear. She looks up, at Harmony, and smiles. She hasn't asked Harmony any questions about the project and Harmony is starting to think that Bethany just sort of blackmailed her for the company, which is sort of sad and a little pitiful but also alright with her because she doesn't want to work. She looks at her watch, six o'clock, and wonders if she'll have enough time to hang out with Scott today.
As she picks up her phone something shatters and she lets out a shriek.
Bethany, shocked, looks up. "Harm?" Ugh, great, she's already giving her a nickname.
Diane has dropped a tray full of dirty dishes. The preteen boy has hopped off of his stool to help her pick up the big pieces, although he doesn't kneel in his well-pressed khakis. Diane mutters her thank you.
It's really cold in here, Harmony thinks as she turns around. Would it really kill them to heat up this place? She slouches a little in her chair, pulls her phone out. No new text messages from Scott.
Love you. She types but she doesn't send. How would he react to that? Love you. She's never said that to anyone before and truthfully, she isn't sure she means it. But she can feel him drifting away from her sometimes when they're together. He isn't as animated when she tells him stories about her classmates or problems about her family. He sits with this look in his eyes, as if a pane of glass is between them, as if she's a room away. She isn't the marrying type. After seeing the shit show of a marriage her parents have, she thinks that marriage is completely out of the cards, a joke. But she can imagine spending her life with someone like Scott Soto, waking up every morning running hands through his long black hair, kissing his tanned skin, cuddling into his thick build.
Its fear that makes her delete the message. If she loses him… she doesn't even think about it.
She looks up at Bethany again, who sets her pencil down, stretches her arms out over her head. "Actually… I've been meaning to talk to you, Harm." Bethany says, as if they'd been in the middle of a conversation. Harmony looks at Bethany, her cell phone still posed in front of her.
Bethany doesn't get a chance to say what's on her mind.
The bus comes out of nowhere. Harmony hadn't noticed it and from the reacts of the others, no one else seems to have noticed it either. It plunges into the diner like a patron, through the front door, shattering glass and crumpling metal, dining headlong into the family and Diane, acting as a wall, separating the diner in two. For a split second, through the smoke billowing out of the front of it, through the windows, she sees passengers screaming over the groans of destruction the bus has caused. The family and Diane were there one moment, and then the next, they were gone. Or at least they were replaced by red, a lot of red, blood that splatters so far, drops kiss Harmony's cheek. She stands at the same time Bethany does.
Bethany is screaming, shrill piercing screams, her hands in fists by her temples, her head and hair shaking, horror forcing her eyes as wide as possible. There are other screams too, the elderly man, Clayton, and Harmony thinks that she can discern those screams from the others but she isn't sure because they're on the other side of the diner. She is in such shock, she isn't sure if she's screaming or not and barely has time to sort it out. The bus doesn't goes straight, as Harmony thought it would, but it begins to turn, its back wheels scraping across the linoleum floor in an ear shattering shrieking sound, knocking down booths and tables and chairs—
A chair flies ahead, knocks Bethany off of the ground, and sends her sliding across the diner like a rag doll. Harmony wants to move, to see if Bethany is alright, but her legs are like icicles and not just because of the cold. In the brief second that ends Bethany's life, Harmony thinks that she sees blood, a lot of blood, coming from Bethany, spurting out like a hose from her chest. Harmony also notices that the chair hasn't exactly separated itself from Bethany, one of its legs vanished above her right breast.
Harmony turns to the bus just in time to see one of the wheels approaching her and its now that she tries to move but she's too slow and the wheel is too quick and even though it seems like everything is happening in slow motion it crushes her feet, fast, and before she can react, her legs begin to bend in the wrong direction and broken pieces of her bones grind together, and her calves are touching the floor even though she's still standing up and the friction tears the skin from her bones and then her knees snap and before she has time to scream it chomps down on her waist, the wheels lifting up little by little as they suck her under, knocking her breath from her body, before destroying her lungs, and her chest is completely flattened, her ribs caving and pushing up to her neck, and she finds it humorous that she's at least four feet shorter than when she entered the diner but the pain is too much, oh my God, somebody stop it, stop the pain, make it stop, MAKE IT STOP and she hardly notices her eyes popping like grapes and her jaw dislocating and only ten seconds ago she was working on a project—
~FD~
"Coming up. Might have to wait a while, considering the crowd."
Harmony blinks. She nearly falls out of her chair, gasps for a breath, and reaches down to feel her knees, where the pain hurt the most before the obliteration of her nerves numbed anymore pain from bulldozing her. And it's like the pain leaves in quick echoes, within seconds, until it's like the pain is a distant memory, a very distant memory.
Bethany laughs at Diane's joke, a little nervously, as if Harmony's reaction had to do with the punch-line. "Thanks." Harmony says to ward off Diane's intense gaze. "Sorry," She adds. She blinks, presses a hand against her forehead, and her palm is met with sweat. Diane raises an eyebrow but walks away anyway.
What was that; a day dream, a hallucination from a lack of sleep or from over sleeping? Does oversleeping even cause hallucinations? She sits back, her breath becoming more regulated, her heartbeat calming. She looks at Bethany, who she saw just get killed, back to her studies. God, I need to take a hot bath, Harmony thinks. Maybe stop playing so much Call of Duty—
A fist slams onto the table behind her. Harmony shrieks, looking behind her. All eyes on the diner turn to her in curiosity. Bethany reaches forward, touches Harmony's hand. "Harm, what's going on with you? Are you sick or…" Harmony retreats her hand, holds it to her body. Now she knows she hadn't imagined that, Clayton slamming his fist onto the table. That had happened in her dream. How was that possible? Her rational mind fought still; people don't have visions of the future. Is that what she's considering this to be, a vision from the future? God, they'll come here with white jackets if she really thought that. She looks over at Clayton, whose eyes are fully focused on her now. They hadn't been before, right? He'd gone back to talking to his grandfather in her… dream… hadn't he?
Bethany follows Harmony's gaze, leans in, and begins to whisper: "Ugh, he's got problems, I've heard."
Harmony stares, her body tense. Please, don't say it, she wants to say, but her voice is caught in her throat. Bethany, unable to read social cues, continues, as if they were two conspiratorial girlfriends: "There's this rumor going around, like, he's supposed to transfer to this really strict boys academy in Texas, for delinquent youth."
Harmony finally finds her voice but her words, from memory, spill from her lips. "His parents are totally evil."
"Hey, I was just about to say that. What are you, like, a mind reader or something?" Bethany smirks, leans back, and begins to study again.
It was surreal, like seeing a horror film you've already seen. Harmony knew what Bethany was going to say. She knew.
And if she knew that…
She springs up, her panic giving her haste, looks at Bethany, then at the others. "We're all going to die." She says aloud but it hardly comes out as a whisper. Bethany and Clayton seem to be the only two that heard her and Clayton seems to have only read her lips because there's an inquisitive look on his face. The preteen boy, who hardly looked up from his phone, also notices and stares at her now, as if she were museum exhibit, probably from the panicked expression she wore. She thinks about their blood, spilled across the counter. When had that happened? How long did she have? It was going to happen, wasn't it? That bus was going to mow them down like grass, all of them.
"What?" Bethany asks, chuckling nervously.
"The waitress… she's going to drop a tray over there." Harmony points. "And then this bus is going to come through and it's going to mow all of us down and we're all going to die and we need to get out of here now," Tears stung her eyes. She whimpers, her breath hitched in her chest.
Clayton hears this, definitely, because he's standing up, approaching their table. The preteen boy shakes his mother's shoulder, nods in Harmony's direction. Harmony hears their voices but isn't able to decipher what they're saying because Diane comes out with the tray of dishes, not paying attention to Harmony, in her own little world, and Harmony realizes that the tray wasn't full of dirty dishes but of the family's order and the mother moves her purse to the side to make room for their food.
Harmony, who feels suffocated and afraid, sees everything in slow motion again. The shattering dishes, the family jump, the boy, compelled to hear what Harmony has to say but a slave to his good manners, rushing down and helping the waitress.
Harmony sprints to the family, brushes past Clayton and Bethany, considers what she could tell them to make them move from that spot, and then makes a decision that will save their lives, a decision that comes out of the blue. She lifts the woman's purse from the counter by its leather straps and begins to run.
"Hey!" The mother says.
The preteen boy, his eyes burrowed in confusion, begins to make a grab at Harmony. She holds the purse to her stomach, hears the father step down from the bar stool, hears the mother's high heels click against the linoleum floor, hears the crunch of broken glass underneath the boy's sneakers. Clayton blocks her way, and she sees concern in his eyes. Bethany looks as if Harmony has lost her mind, and also as if Harmony is the coolest person she's ever met. Harmony wonders how long it'll be until the bus comes and as she looks out of the window, she sees the headlights maybe a block away and the terror that seizes her indicates that that is the bus.
"Hey! Stop her!"
She doesn't slow down. She dodges Clayton, moving around him, kicks a chair into his leg, hopes that it slows him down but doesn't incapacitate him. She needs to get them far away.
As she leaves, she sees the old man looking over his seat, his walking cane leans against the booth and she hears a spatula scrape against a stove top and the thought that she can't save them all hits her like a bag of bricks and it almost slows her, except the headlights are gaining on them, like two bright orbs, brighter than the moon, crossing the street. She uses her back to open the glass door and begins to run, the cool air nipping at the tears on her cheeks (had she been crying?) and she runs to the left, away from the diner, away from the bus, away from the vision and she's maybe twenty feet away from the diner when she feels the arms grab her, slam her onto the pavement where her cheek scrapes the ground and the contents of the purse spill.
She kicks up though, not sure that they're far enough, beginning to crawl. She hears them behind her, the hands turn her around: the father, breathing hard, face beet red, strong arms wrapped around Harmony's midsection. The mother looks annoyed, pissed off, shaking her head so many times Harmony wonders if it's going to snap off. The boy is mystified, not angry like his parents, but curious, as if he's never seen something like this before. Clayton breaths hard, his hands on his knees, and when he looks up Harmony sees concern from him, radiating like heat waves. Diane is on her cell phone, presumably calling the police. Her eyes are hidden underneath her hand on her forehead, as if she's trying to massage out a migraine. Bethany blinks several times, as if uncertain how to move, what to do next. She commits their faces to memory for some reason and she doesn't know why.
The boy sees it first; he looks up and says "Oh my God." And then he grabs his mother's arm, points at the bus that slams into one of the cars in the parking lot, the bus that shows no sign of stopping. Bethany screams. The father loosens his grip on Harmony's waist, stands up, and begins to move past Harmony. The mother and the son do the same. Diane scrambles in the same direction, although she does stop, grabs a handful of Harmony's shirt, as if to try to lift her up, but her fear overrides her compassion, and she continues to run.
"Granddad?" Clayton asks, looking at his grandfather in the window. Harmony hadn't even noticed Clayton's grandfather in the last window, staring at them and then staring at the bus. Harmony forces herself to her feet, the sting of the cut on her cheek forgotten, and she grabs Clayton by the shoulder, then Bethany by the sleeve. Clayton resists a little, until the bus slams into diner in a thunderous howl and one of the wheels detaches, slamming into the booth of Clayton's grandfather, crushing the table into his midsection, diving him sloppily in two, painting the window glass with blood. Clayton stumbles back as if punched in the face. Harmony continues to pull at him, until she can't feel the heat from the fires, until she can't hear the screams of the passengers, trapped, burning alive, and then she falls into the snow, falls into darkness.