After that night, Harley stuck to Jack like glue.
She followed him everywhere, which should have annoyed him—it should have annoyed him. But Jack didn't mind her as much as he thought he would. She talked too much and stood too close and her eyes were too fucking blue, but he found that he didn't push her away any more like he used to. And even despite their differences in age, after everything that happened... that didn't seem to matter. Maybe Jack sort of liked that Harley looked up to him and wanted to be around him so much. She was too clingy and too loud and too whiny and too everything else—but she liked him. She wanted to go everywhere he did. She wanted to tell him her secrets. She wanted to know his in turn. She trusted him.
She was the first.
And Jack, for his part, he still didn't talk much—that was one thing that hadn't changed—but Harley (and this was no exaggeration) had the lung capacity of a whale and could talk enough for the both of them, without ever stopping for breath. She chattered incessantly, happy to have someone who listened to her, even if Jack's responses were perfunctory and lacked the ever-present enthusiasm with which she spoke in. When she wasn't talking about school, or things she had done with Miss Lenora, or places she wanted to go when she was older, she was singing or humming—or sometimes talking out loud to herself, making up stories meant for her ears only, but that Jack listened to anyway. He was always listening, even if he didn't mean to be.
Several weeks after the shed incident, in late August, plans for Harley's birthday party were being spun into motion. She would be turning eight.
The fight in the kitchen had been mostly forgotten by Harley. At first she watched her parents for signs of anger or resentment, but they went on as if it the argument hadn't occurred, like she'd somehow imagined the whole thing.
For her party, decorations were bought, a guest list was put together at long last—a painful process for both Harley and her mother that involved more than a few slammed doors and angry shouts—and the date was set for Saturday afternoon, at two o'clock.
Green, pink, and purple streamers were looped through the stairway banister, and others dangled from doorframes like paper curtains. Balloons floated in lazy zigzags around the living room floor every time the front door opened and a breeze blew through, and an array of colorful treats were placed on the coffee table in the middle of the room for Harley's guests to snack on. Pizza bites and Kool-Aid would be served promptly at five.
When Harley's guests started to arrive, she eagerly showed them where to set their gifts and then herded them into the front yard where she had made up a game for them to play.
The girls' parents had gathered in the kitchen where Sharon was serving cocktails and other drinks, and otherwise swapping the latest social gossip.
For once, Harley felt nervous to be around her classmates—whom she had not seen all summer, ever since school had let out—and she was eager to impress them in the hopes that they might grow to like her. She wasn't under any false impressions; she knew the girls had come only because their parents were friends with hers. The all-girls private school she attended could only be afforded by the elite or those with inside connections. That was why befriending the right people was so important. One had to be heavily invested in the game of social warfare to get anywhere in the world. You got in the game and got your name out, or you didn't and you were a certified nobody. That's how it worked—or so Harley's mother had said.
For Harley, she felt as if she were right on the cusp of joining 'the game'. Today was her big day to join the ranks of social acceptance with the other girls. She smiled a bit uneasily as they all looked at her, studied her, like she was some parasite beneath a microscope.
After Harley's idea for a game had been quickly shot down, they were now sitting in a circle in the grass and were talking amongst themselves.
One of the girl's voices piqued above everyone else's, forcing the rest of the chatter from the other girls to a halt.
"Hey, isn't that Allan Bentley's house over there?" She pointed across the street while all of the girls turned their heads to look. Harley felt her insides coil. She plucked a piece of grass from the ground and bit her lip.
"Yeah," she shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. She curled the blade of grass around her pointer finger and looked up.
The girl who had spoken, Abby—a petite blonde with blue-painted nails and glitter eye shadow—looked around knowingly at the other girls. "We all know what happened a few weeks ago. About the shed."
Harley felt her face growing hot.
"So?"
Another girl, Mary, laughed. "Well it's obvious he likes you!" she said with an eye roll so dramatic you would have thought the whole world knew.
Harley's hands drew into fists, and she buried them in the grass behind her back to hide them. Allan had locked her in a shed for two days—without food or water—and these girls had the audacity to suggest he did it because he liked her?
"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Harley said, not caring if she offended them. She uncurled her fists and leaned back on her forearms as the other girls shared disbelieving looks.
"What did you and Jack do the whole time?" Meredith wanted to know. She was sitting Indian-style and was leaning forward on her elbows. Harley studied the pink beret in her hair and watched it glitter in the sun.
"I don't know," she said. Flashbacks of heat, of hunger, of having to go to the bathroom and not being able to relieve herself, of being so hot she could barely breathe rushed through her mind. "I don't really want to talk about it."
"Oh, come on," Abby urged. "We want to know."
"I said I don't want to talk about it."
"Did you kiss?" Mary asked, and despite herself, Harley felt her face grow even hotter than it had been before. She imagined that she was blushing all the way to her toes, and was as red as a cherry tomato. She'd never thought about Jack in that way before. In fact, she really hadn't thought that way about anybody before.
"He's her brother!" Abby exclaimed, and all the girls laughed.
"Not technically," Mary sing-songed.
Harley was about to give both girls a piece of her mind when Cassie showed up, plopping herself in the grass next to Harley with an easy smile, her red hair pulled back in a single braid.
The other girls straightened and seemed to perk up instantly. Cassie was pretty and in high school and therefore extremely cool.
She was wearing a green sundress and sandals decorated with emerald-colored jewels. Her toenails were painted a pretty shade of aquamarine. Harley could tell the girls were all taking mental notes so they could later copycat the look when they went out shopping with their moms.
"What are we talking about?" Cassie asked, matching Harley's posture by leaning back on her elbows, her legs bent at the knees and tucked by her side.
Mary was the first to chime in. "We were talking about Jack," she said, raising her brows for effect, as if the very mention of his name was juicy enough to be featured on the front of every tabloid.
"Oh," Cassie said, eyes brightening. "Is he here?"
She started to get up, wiping the grass from her dress, and Harley whined, urging her to sit back down.
"Wait, don't go," she pleaded in earnest. She didn't want to be left alone with these… monsters. How she could have ever wanted to be friends with them was beyond her.
"I'll be back in a minute, I'm just going to say hi to Jack." With that she disappeared inside the house, and Harley's gaze seemed to follow her on an invisible path, as if she were seeing the house with X-ray vision. She imagined Cassie walking up the stairs, passing Harley's room, and then knocking on the door to Jack's. As if drawn there, Harley's eyes wandered towards his window that overlooked the front yard. She sat up in surprise when she found him standing there, at his window, looking down at her and her group of friends. Her heart leaped into her chest—and she felt a strange, electric thrill at having caught him eavesdropping on her party. She wondered what he was thinking about, if he somehow knew what they were discussing.
He turned away from the window and redirected his gaze only when Cassie entered his room.
Suddenly Harley was reminded of a flashback she rather wished she had forgotten, when she'd caught Jack and Cassie kissing on the couch. The memory made her feel strange, and for some reason her heart beat faster, too. She didn't understand it.
"Earth to Har-ley," Mary sing-songed again—she had an annoying habit of doing that, Harley noticed. She waved her hand in front of Harley's face to draw her attention away from the window.
She noticed all the girls staring at her expectantly, and she realized she was in no mood to celebrate her birthday. Not anymore, and certainly not when Cassie was with Jack and the two of them were very alone in Jack's room. Why did that bother her so much?
For the rest of the afternoon, the girls chattered and gossiped about things with little or no interest to Harley, and when it was time to open her presents, she did so with little enthusiasm. She was given expensive sweaters and gift cards to boutiques she'd never been to and makeup brushes and powders and shadows she'd probably never use.
Afterwards they settled in the living to have pizza bites, and then later cake, where the girls sung to Harley the most artificial and forced rendition of 'Happy Birthday' she'd ever heard. As she blew out her candles, she thought about how the girls could care less whether she lived or died.
They played a few more games after that, and then they all shuffled out to their cars to leave as Harley thanked them at the door, awkwardly offering hugs and murmurs of, "thanks for coming."
When everyone was gone, Sharon came into the living room to inspect Harley's gifts.
"Look at this, Harleen. You'll look so pretty this!"
Harley shrugged.
Nick was sitting on the couch, looking tired but content. Harley noticed he'd been drinking less wine as of late, and his moods these days were strange, but not unwelcome. Harley had never seen her dad so relaxed. She wouldn't go so far as to say he was happy—because Harley felt that no matter what, her dad could never be happy—but he was more jovial and slower to anger. It was like the fight he'd had with Sharon the other night had never occurred. Maybe it had finally resolved things between her mother and father for good?
"Hey Harls, c'mere." Her father gestured her over by patting the space next to him, and Harley wandered over slowly, suspicious of what he wanted to say.
When she was in front of him, she watched as he pulled a thin, but modest-sized rectangular box from behind his back and handed it to her. Harley's eyes widened in surprise, but she didn't wait another second before ripping off the purple tissue wrapping.
It was a new paint set for her art easel.
"Do you like it?"
"Yes!" she squealed, holding it close to her chest. "Thank you!" She hugged her father's waist and closed her eyes when she felt his arms wrap around her torso. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
"No problem, kiddo."
"Harleen," her mother said, "Why don't you help me clean up in the kitchen, please."
Nick pulled away to look into her face. "You paint me a nice picture, okay?"
Harley nodded enthusiastically. "I promise." She meant it, too. This was by far the best birthday gift she'd gotten.
"Harleen," her mother called again from the kitchen. "Don't make me ask you twice."
Harley rolled her eyes and her dad winked at her, nodding towards the kitchen with a kind smile. She stole a kiss on his cheek—flushing a little in something akin to embarrassment because she wasn't sure if that was okay—before racing off to do as her mother had told, her single braid bouncing behind her. Perhaps her birthday wasn't going to be a total disaster after all.
It was as she was carrying an armful of her gifts up the stairs a while later that she saw the door to Jack's bedroom open. Cassie was just leaving. Harley had forgotten she was even in there. She was surprised to see her babysitter wiping tears from her eyes as she closed Jack's door behind her. The older girl startled when she noticed Harley.
"Oh," she sniffled, quickly wiping the tears from her eyes and forcing a strained smile. "I thought you'd be downstairs with your friends."
Harley stared at her babysitter's disheveled clothes. "Everyone left," she trailed off. "Why are you crying?" Cassie's mascara was smudged and her cheeks were ruddy. Harley shifted her weight to her other foot and frowned. She'd never seen Cassie cry before, not since that one time her boyfriend had broken up with her two years ago. She'd gone through two whole boxes of tissues and a 6-pack of strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups.
"Me? Oh, I um... it's just allergies, Harls," she sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, forcing a feeble laugh that accidentally came out choked. Harley noticed she also kept trying to cover up her neck with her hands, and that's when Harley noticed how red it was. Her eyes drifted back up to meet Cassie's, and the older girl suddenly looked like she was going to puke. "I have to go," she said, a bit too loud. She was already halfway down the stairs, the front door slamming seconds later by the time Harley had made it to the top of the staircase to watch her leave.
Cassie hadn't even wished her a happy birthday.
She turned to Jack's room with a curious frown, wondering what he could have possibly done to make her cry. Jack could be mean sometimes, and not in the way that girls at school were mean, or the boys on her street, but mean in the way he looked at you, and how dark his eyes got. Sometimes even the simplest of words pierced her like bullets; his voice could do that to you, and she didn't think he even really tried.
She dropped her new presents on her bed and went to Jack's room to ask him about it, but instead ran into him in the hallway. His cheeks were flushed and sweat-slicked curls were plastered to his forehead.
"Ja—?"
"Harley." He cut her off with two hands on her shoulders, spinning her back towards her room. "I have something to show you."
Cassie was forgotten about in an instant, and Harley's eyebrows shot up in excitement. "Ooh, what is it?"
Once he had steered her into her room, he closed the door behind him and sat her down on her bed, plopping himself next to her and pushing all of her gifts aside—but not before picking up a pink top the same shade of Pepto-Bismol. He quirked an eyebrow at it and Harley spit out her tongue.
"I am never wearing that."
Jack smiled then, just a little, but it was enough to make Harley's heart leap into her throat and her words tangle in her mouth. She met his eyes only for a second before looking away, unsure as to why she felt so bashful all the sudden.
"What did you want to show me?" she asked, smoothing out the crinkles in her blue shorts.
Jack sat up straighter, pushing back the hair from his forehead, and Harley noticed how red his mouth was, and that his breathing wasn't quite right. She thought back to Cassie, the redness around her neck and her tousled clothes. Something was not adding up.
"Jack, why was—" Harley's sentence trailed off when Jack pulled something from his back pocket and offered it to her, reaching for her wrist to force her palm open wide.
The item was silver, small, and compact, and she frowned at it as she turned it around in her palm.
"It's a knife," he said, and she looked up to find that his eyes had a strange glint to them, his voice pitched low. "For protection."
Harley fiddled with it, frowning further as she tried to pull the blade from where it was encased.
"No, no. Here, you flick the switch—" Jack did so "—and then the blade comes out. Careful that you don't knick yourself. Now you try."
Harley did as instructed, eyes wide as she focused on doing just as Jack had told her. She practiced opening and closing it again and again, and when she touched the pad of her finger to the tip of the blade, she was startled at how sharp it was, her hand drawing back instantly.
"Ouch!" she whined, sucking the finger into her mouth to draw away the tiny swell of blood.
Jack stared at her, eyes dark as caves, and then the bed shifted as he got up. Harley watched him pause at the doorway, perplexed by the sudden shift in his behavior. He turned his head in her direction, so only half his face was visible.
"You should keep it with you all the time. Do you understand?"
Harley nodded. "I will," she promised. When Jack's hand was on the doorknob, ready to leave, she added her thanks as well, barely above a whisper.
He nodded to her, and then left.
But not before running smack-dab into Sharon.
"Oh, Jack," she eyed him in surprise. "Everything alright in here?"
In response, he fixed her with a blank stare, as if she were somehow unworthy of a real reaction, and then shouldered past her in the small space the doorway allowed. She stared after him with a frown.
"You two have been spending a lot of time together," she said once he was out of earshot and his door was closed. She kept her tone light, conversational, hoping Harley would take the bait.
"Mhm," she said. "He's my brother."
"Yes. Yes, he is your brother," she parroted, entering Harley's room and sitting in the same spot Jack had been in only moments ago. "But wouldn't you like to spend time with the girls your age? I could arrange a sleepover if you'd like. It looked like you were having a good time with all your friends this afternoon."
They're not my friends. They hate me, she wanted to say. But she didn't, knowing her mother wouldn't understand.
She shrugged instead.
"Well, anyway. I hope you had a good birthday, Harleen." She smiled at her daughter, leaning forward to offer a quick peck to Harley's head, pulling away before Harley even had a chance to wrap her arms around her mother for a hug. "Good night."
Harley stared at the closed door with slumped shoulders, the knife still curled tightly in her fist where her mother couldn't see it.
"Good night."
That summer and the four that followed were some of their best. They did everything together, Harley's mother often commenting on how they were "attached at the hip."
Cassie never came back after the incident where she'd left Jack's room crying, and Harley had all but forgotten about it. Jack would be turning thirteen later that fall anyway, and Sharon decided he was mature enough to be the babysitter now—so long as they both agreed to stay out of trouble.
While spring and fall bustled with activity—there was school, ballet and gymnastics practice on the weekdays and competitions in Blüdhaven, Philadelphia, and Metropolis on the weekends, long evenings spent doing homework, and school parties and fundraisers—summers were good to them. Summers were a time for everything, and they did everything both time and daylight allowed.
Some afternoons, if it was too hot to do anything else, they'd go to the library, and Harley would flip through comics or magazines while Jack read anything and everything that spiked his interest. Other times, if they started early enough in the day, Jack would pay for bus fare to take them into the city, and he'd spend the day showing Harley around. To Harley it was the Grand Tour of Gotham, and she hung off his every word.
He knew everything there was to know: all the hide-aways and secret alleys, those nooks and crannies and the chain-link fences with holes you could squeeze through, all the abandoned warehouses and derelict buildings waiting to be explored, and even a brand new amusement park in Uptown being constructed where they could wander through dark tunnels being built for a new ride, or walk along wooden roller coaster tracks. All this, of course, was done during the day. Harley had been under the impression that they went only during the day since Sharon and Nick were at work and thus wouldn't find out about their trips into the City, and this was partly true, but it was also because Gotham at night could be more terrifying than all your worst nightmares combined. Jack would be an idiot to take a cute little girl like Harley out in Gotham at night, even if she did want to see "all the pretty lights".
Harley was the kind of kid who'd accept candy from a stranger if the candy came in a flavor she liked. She didn't have the kind of street smarts that Jack had spent his whole life cultivating. And Jack's street smarts weren't born out of a desire to actually learn them; it was more matter-of-fact than that. You either acclimated to your surroundings or got shot. Eat, or be eaten. It was that simple.
It took time learning, trying to figure the ins and outs of this crazy livewire city; but you did learn. You learned after years of riding public transport through some of Gotham's worst areas, or trekking back home from school in a walk that was miles long and that Jack had spent months perfecting, trying to navigate through shortcuts, only to navigate himself into several wrong turns, dead ends, fistfights, or otherwise things that a kid should never have to lay witness to. It hardened him, but he'd rather be out there, learning the tricks of the street than at home with his dad.
The city was his personal playground, and letting Harley play in a little portion of his sandbox was fun for both of them.
Another summer, they spent hours at the pool together, where Jack pretended to read while Harley swam, and where he feigned annoyance when she splashed her way to the edge of the pool and squirted water at him from her mouth like she were a fountain.
When they weren't at the pool, Jack followed Harley as she wandered around the neighborhood, looking for trouble while he tried his best to keep her out of it. They spent a lot of time at Miss Lenora's house, too, which had failed on the real estate market and would not sell. The economy had driven Gotham into the ground, and even with Wayne Enterprises—the city's largest commodity—doing its best to create more jobs, no one could afford to live in Gotham, especially outside the hubbub of the city, in the old, quiet neighborhoods like the one the Quinzel's resided in.
Harley, though, was glad that Miss Lenora's house had not sold. In her heart, it would always belong to Miss Lenora, and she could not bear the thought of another family, another body of souls inhibiting the only physical manifestation that Harley had left of her beloved friend.
The house had become derelict as the years wore on, abused by the rain and sun and all the elements in between. The grass had grown nearly as tall as the porch, the garden had withered and died. Vines snaked around the porch railings and poked through cracks, forcing itself upon the house and curling around every available surface it could reach.
The 'Jameston Realtors' sign had long ago been lost to the woods. Harley had watched a woman in a fancy car come by many times to replace it after the kids of the neighborhood kept vandalizing it, drawing crude words and even cruder animations over the pretty realtor's face. Eventually she had stopped coming to replace it. That was about the time the upkeep had stopped as well, when the two men with a trailer of lawn mowers and garden tools and weed whackers had stopped showing up to keep the exterior looking neat and tidy.
Jack followed behind Harley as they waded through the sea of grass to reach Miss Lenora's front door. This was a ritual for them during the summer, after Harley's ballet classes in the morning had ended, and the rest of the afternoon was long and hot and there was nothing else to do. Jack would carefully peel back one of the boards covering the broken window, (it was too heavy for Harley to lift), and then they'd both crawl inside the dark house, their footfalls making the floorboards creak and moan beneath their shoes.
Harley's favorite place was the sunroom, and it was situated just off the kitchen in a small corner of the house. The room was made of all glass windows, including the ceiling which was flat and arranged in long, rectangular panels.
Pale beams of yellow light sliced through the overhanging, gnarled branches of trees outside and filtered into the room, illuminating the dust particles floating in the air. A cloud of dust scattered around Harley when she flopped herself onto the hardwood. Next to her was a tall stack of books, stories that Miss Lenora used to read to her when Harley would ask.
She read through them alone now, imagining Miss Lenora's voice instead of her own narrating the tales of the heroic princess who saved a nation. It was one of her favorite stories.
As for Jack, he sat not far away, only he preferred to remain out of the light and seated in the shadows. He had his own stack of preferred books, mostly nonfiction and of the nature of science and mechanics, which was of no interest to Harley whatsoever. Jack could read for hours, much longer than Harley could, who often grew bored after only a few minutes and had to occupy her hands and mind with something else.
Jack, though, was quietly brilliant, Harley knew this even despite the C's and D's on his report card. Sharon and Nick tried to reprimand him for it at first, and when they paid a private tutor to come to the house to teach him, they were shocked when Jack—with a blank, silent expression—revealed he was smarter than the tutor, writing out the answers to every problem the older boy gave to him. English, science, math, it didn't matter the subject. He excelled at everything, yet his grades at school continued to plummet. Eventually Nick and Sharon gave up all together.
Harley was curious as to why he didn't try in school, how someone so smart could willingly let their grades fall so low. Her teacher Mrs. Lundwin had expressed a thousand times the importance of a proper education and how critical it was so achieve high grades and to strive for perfection; at her private' all-girl's school, C's were unacceptable and were grounds for being expelled. She'd heard that speech more times than she could count.
With a sigh, Harley crossed her forearms atop the opened pages of her book, looking at Jack from where she lay on her belly on the floor. The sun was on her back and in her hair and she cocked her head at the figure across from her, so dark in the shadow edges of the corner.
"Jack?"
He grunted to let her know he'd heard her, his eyes still glued to his book.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?
She was careful in the way she watched Jack's eyes slow across the page, until eventually he stopped and looked up at her.
"I don't want to be anything."
Harley frowned at him. "I don't understand. You have to be something."
Jack grinned, though it was a smile devoid of humor, and in the dark his teeth gleamed like the fangs of a wolf.
"That's where you're wrong, Harley-girl."
"Am not!" she protested, lifting herself off her elbows to snap her book shut in defiance. Dust scattered around her in a flurry of motion.
Jack only looked at her, silent, and Harley's features softened into something like embarrassment. She knew she was acting like a baby. She slumped against the floor and traced a figure eight on the hardwood with her index finger.
"I want to be a ballerina," she told him. "A really famous one. I want the whole city to know my name." She swallowed, fixated on the movements of her finger as she made it dance across her line of vision. "I've been practicing a lot," she said, looking up at him. "Do you want to see?"
Jack's eyes had never once left hers.
He nodded twice, slowly.
Harley felt her cheeks flush a little as she rose from the floor, dusting off the knees of her overalls. She pushed aside her books and a few dead, potted plants to create an open space in the middle of the room.
Once she was standing in the center, now cleared of debris, she seemed to falter. "I'm not really dressed for it," she conceded, not meeting Jack's eyes as she toed at the ground and traced a half moon back and forth, "and I don't have my ballet flats."
Jack shrugged, folding up his book and placing it on the floor beside him. "Do without."
Harley nodded, feeling a little hesitant, and then toed off her sandals, pushing them out of her way.
With a deep breath, she took her stance, standing on one pointed toe with her other leg tucked to her knee to form a triangle, and both arms curled high above her head in a graceful arc.
She maintained position as she counted off the numbers in her head, and at 'one' she pushed off, humming the sweet, melodic tune she'd become so familiar with. It was one of her favorite songs from last year's recital, a tune that had become so ingrained, with steps and movements so familiar they felt like second nature.
And while Harley was firecrackers and nails and sharp elbows and bony knees in everyday life, she became something else entirely when she danced. Her movements became fluid, the way water trickles through a gentle stream, and her expression softened, mouth parted and eyes half shadowed by dark lashes.
She was concentrated but not, so lost in a world all of her own as she spun in circles that made her hair swing and catch the rays of sunlight, blonde strands glittering like gold.
The floor creaked in some parts as she twirled, but that hardly seemed to matter, especially not to Jack. For what felt like the first time in years, he was enraptured, unable to take his eyes away for even a second.
He didn't... like dancing. He didn't find it particularly interesting or pretty to watch, but Harley was something else. He didn't know she could move like this, didn't know she could be so passionate and quiet and graceful.
Jack was quiet for several seconds after she finished, and he had to swallow the weird feeling in his throat to find his voice.
"Do it again," he said, and even though the room was starting to grow dim and the sun was falling, Harley did, retracing the same dance while he watched.
When she finished, her cheeks were flushed from exertion and she felt breathless and a little embarrassed from the way Jack was looking at her, as if seeing her for the very first time.
"I—I know it's not perfect," she explained, a rare show of uncertainty. She pulled at the metal clasps of her overalls. "Miss Lacy said my pirouette is a little shaky, but I'm trying really hard." She straightened then, pushing back her shoulders and regaining that cocksure-confidence she was known for. "I'm going to be the best."
She waited for Jack to speak then, hoping for some kind of praise, or recognition of her talent, or approval, but he did not offer any.
Harley shrugged and smiled at him as she tugged on her sandals, balancing on one foot as she tried to pull the strap up over her heel. "Just wait. You'll see."
And as she skipped past him, singing some nameless tune, Jack did not doubt her words for a second.
Harley was twelve now, Jack seventeen.
In some ways, the years had brought them closer together, and yet, in others, he was more of a mystery to her than he'd ever been before.
There was so much Harley didn't know about Jack, so much he didn't say. He had proven to be an enigma she could not solve, no matter how much she may have tried in the beginning. Eventually she learned to accept him the way he was. She stopped constantly digging for the things he would not tell.
Jack wasn't around a lot anymore, now that he was seventeen and graduating come spring. Harley knew he had a job now and had since he was fifteen, though what he did and where he did it was a mystery. Whenever she attempted to ask him about it, he always shrugged in reply or found some way to change the subject. She never pushed because she knew he wouldn't allow that, and it was a futile pursuit.
On the week days, Jack left school early to leave straight for work, and then didn't return home until well past midnight. On weekends, he alternated between reading and sleeping during the day, and then worked dusk till dawn. Harley couldn't possibly imagine what he could be doing so late at night, and Sharon either didn't know or didn't care.
Sharon's tolerance for Jack had grown extremely thin over the years as he'd matured, and they spoke rarely, mostly because their schedules conflicted and did not allow for it, but also because Jack had proven himself to be more of a problem child than Sharon had anticipated, and when she realized Jack wasn't the shining exemplary beacon for Harley of an honest and focused youth with a bright future, Sharon paid little mind to him and let him do what he wanted so long as he didn't cause any trouble or bring strange girls into the house, now that he was at that age.
That was another thing Harley found curious—Jack never brought any girls home, let alone even talked about them. Jack was handsome—he had shot up the summer of Harley's tenth birthday, when he was fifteen, and with his dark blonde curls and dark eyes, Harley knew he attracted both the attention of giggling high school girls and adult women. And yet he never mentioned a girlfriend, or talked about the girls in his class, or had pictures of girls in his room (except for once when she had found a dirty magazine under his bed, and in a moment of panicked embarrassment, had stolen it from him and hid it in her closet).
Another thing that had changed, or perhaps become more extreme, was that Jack's moods could be precarious. Some days he acted as if he wished Harley would drop dead. Other times, there were moments where he was so utterly gentle and understanding that it rendered her unable to speak. But Harley knew she could be nasty to Jack if she was in the mood for it, too; she wasn't always the nicest. And like any siblings, they had their good days and their bad ones.
But they weren't really siblings, were they? Jack felt as much as a brother to Harley as Nick felt like her dad. Their relationship was different than any other relationship Harley had in her life, not that she had many to pick from.
There were very few girls at school she considered friends, let alone acquaintances, and her only true friend—her best friend—was Guy, whom she had grown very close to over the years after the incident with the shed. She spent almost as much time with Guy as she did with Jack, and if Peter was home, sometimes he'd drive Guy to Harley's competitions to watch her perform. Harley loved it, and she loved hearing about Guy's middle school which was so different from her own, and all of his soccer exploits, and everything else they talked about. Guy was so open with Harley, and it was an openness that she didn't get from Jack. She supposed that was part of the reason why her friendship with Guy meant so much to her.
During the spring and fall months, Jack and Harley were busier than ever, and there wasn't much time to be spent together as there was during the summer, especially now that Jack was in his final year of school, and Harley's ballet in particular was starting to take off. She had joined one of the best child ballet companies in Gotham. It was a private, elite class with only five other girls, in sessions that lasted two and a half hours, five days a week. She also was still doing gymnastics on the side.
But they still made it work, still went to Miss Lenora's house to read or be alone on the weekends if they could, and instead of going to the pool or the library like they used to, now it was the bakery two miles away. Jack picked her up from her ballet classes on the nights that Nick or Sharon would be working late, and instead of coming directly home like they were supposed to, they spent hours at the bakery doing their homework or talking, always sure to make it back before either Sharon or Nick returned home.
At the bakery, they took up their usual table by the large window, the outside world partially skewed by the large, white decal of a loaf of bread. Harley liked to joke that it looked kind of like a penis, smiling with a broad grin that Jack found hard to resist. He rolled his eyes at her instead.
Mostly they did homework, their books stacked precariously atop the table and Jansport backpacks discarded at their feet. Jack guided her through her math and science, pencil in hand as he explained concepts to her that were particularly hard for her to understand.
This was when Jack was most unguarded, Harley noticed, when he spoke freely and confidently and his eyes were open and expressive.
And Harley loved watching him like this, loved seeing this side of him. It was easy to become lost in his voice and the words he was saying. She hardly noticed when his legs bumped against hers under the table, limbs so long they had nowhere else to go.
Afterwards though, when the books were put away, he slipped back into his usual demeanor, quiet and tight-lipped and eyes so searing Harley thought her skin might burn.
That was why making him smile became her new favorite task. She said dumb, silly things, stuck straws up her nose when they ordered sodas at the bakery, tackled him from behind and jumped on his back, forcing him to carry her home while she poked his sides.
"You're so serious, Jack," she whined one rainy afternoon, both of them soaked as they walked back home from the bakery in the rain, which had started to ease up as they neared their street.
"Yeah?" he said, smirking.
"Yeah."
Harley stopped abruptly on the sidewalk, and it took Jack a few seconds to realize that she had, but it was too late. When he turned around, Harley was right there, smearing cold, brown mud across the side of his cheek.
He jerked away and scowled at her.
"Hey!"
"Come on, lighten up!" Harley cheered.
"You want me to lighten up?"
She nodded eagerly, noticing the familiar gleam in his eyes and the slight quirk of his lips.
Jack cocked his head and beckoned her over with his finger. "C'mere then."
She shook her head. "Not uh, I don't think so," she grinned, starting to back away.
She watched him dip his waist to scoop up a glob of mud from the curb. Then he stalked closer. "Come on, Harls, what're you so afraid of?"
As he started to come closer, Harley squealed and flung another piece of mud, which landed in his hair, and Jack caught her by the wrist before she could get away, pulling her forward as she yelped in surprise. When he had her secured in his grip, he slathered mud all over her forehead as she laughed and fought his grip.
"You're cheating!" Harley cried in mock indignation, causing Jack to scoff.
"How am I cheating?!"
"You can't hold me for longer than three seconds! That's not how you play!"
Jack rolled his eyes, gripping her tight and pulling her flush up against him with one arm, using the other to smear more mud down the side of her face. He was laughing. "I don't care about the rules, Harley."
"Cheaaaaater!" she cried, laughing as she pushed him away and ran as fast as she could towards the house, her backpack bouncing behind her.
Jack ran after her without missing a bit, grinning in the rain.
Ballet for the time being had ended, and on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Harley had gymnastics practice—her big performance was in December, which she never stopped talking about—and Jack tagged along after school to sit on the bleachers and do homework. Mostly, though, he watched, much to the pleasure of the other girls, who giggled and blushed and waved to him before the instructor snapped at them to pay attention.
Jack ignored them, focusing only on Harley as she worked her way across the balance beam, or practiced her tumbles and flips. She was good at it, too; it was easy to see that she stood out from most of the other girls, as she had many more years of experience than they did, and a drive and determination unlike anything he'd ever seen.
He was convinced that Harley could conquer the world if she set her heart to it—not that he'd ever tell her that.
After practice they walked home together or took the bus, at least until October, when it became too dark and cold, tiny flurries of snow swirling at dusk, a small precursor of the harsh winter to come.
Nick started picking them up after that, and that's when everything changed.
He hadn't quit his job, as Harley had previously thought when she had overheard her parents arguing in the kitchen that fateful night, but one thing that had changed was that he was working less. Less hours, less cases, less clients—even though there were some nights he didn't come home at all. She didn't know what to think about those, and she didn't think it her place to ask. Besides, she wasn't worried. The idea that he might be doing something bad or wrong had never even crossed her mind. He was her father, and even if their relationship over the years had been strained and uncomfortable at best, he had never given her any reason for her not to trust him.
Besides, she loved spending all this extra time with him lately, and he was always in a good mood. She began to look forward to the car rides home from gymnastics, where he'd turn up the radio and act silly and sing along with Harley, both of them trying to coax Jack to join in.
And at home, he let her show him her gymnastics tricks, or the paintings she'd been working on, and he showered her with praise at how good they were, at how talented she was. Harley helped him put up the Christmas tree, and he decorated it with her, too.
The best part was that he was more affectionate than Harley had seen him in her entire life, kissing her and offering hugs. She had never felt so happy, not since Miss Lenora.
But like all good things, Harley would come to realize, they always came with a catch.
Nothing was ever as it seemed.
It was the night of her gymnastics competition that everything fell into place—but in the worst possible way.
She'd been waiting for this day for months, chattering about it constantly, practicing even when her muscles ached and begged for her to stop. If there were loud thumps in the middle of the night, everyone knew they came from Harley's room and that she had probably landed her double flip—or had knocked over a lamp in the process of trying to do so.
The Big Day was the eighteenth of December, only days before Christmas. There was an excitement in the crisp, winter air that felt palpable to Harley. The neighbors had put up their colorful lights, lined from the rooftops and strung around pretty tress in windows, and that night was the first real snowfall of the year, pretty white flakes swirling through the air. Harley, situated in the front seat, bounced her thigh up and down in anticipation as she watched the snow dance and spin away from the windshield wipers. Jack sat in the back trying to warm his hands.
The only disappointment of the night was that Sharon could not make it to Harley's competition. Harley was bummed, at first, but the real icing on the cake was that her daddy could be there instead. It'd be the first competition he'd ever been to.
Upon arrival, which was promptly at four, Harley was dropped off out front of the large high school where the competition would be taking place. It was the same high school Jack attended, and the one she'd be attending next fall. These, though, were the thoughts farthest from her mind as she grabbed her bag and dashed towards the front of the building—but not before giving her father a quick peck on the cheek.
"Remember it starts at five. Don't be late!" Harley warned.
"I'm just going to go around the corner to get some coffee, I promise I'll be right back. I won't miss a thing." The competition didn't start for another hour, giving the girls an opportunity to practice and warm up, so he had time to spare. "Knock 'em dead, sweetheart."
Harley turned to Jack next, still in the backseat and looking at her.
"Yeah. Knock 'em dead," he echoed, smirking in a way that both irritated Harley and made her heart skip at the same time.
Inside the gymnasium, Harley met with her team and slipped out of her sweat gear, revealing her silver and blue leotard. She stood on her tiptoes—stretching her calves—as she tied her hair into a neat bun at the back of her head. She realized somewhat distantly that her mother often styled her hair in the same manner. She tried not to think about that and focused instead on warming up.
Harley chattered idly with her teammates as they stretched and practiced their balance and flips and landings. The nervous energy in the room felt palpable, making her hands sweat and her palms slip-slide against the blue, cushioned mat spread out across the gym room floor.
She listened to her teammates whisper about the girls from other schools of neighboring districts, gossiping mostly about the way they had styled their hair and their outfits. She tuned them out and focused her vision on the bleachers across the floor, where parents where shuffling in to choose their seats, video cameras at the ready.
With fifteen minutes till five, the instructor called the girls into a huddle, spouting off the familiar pep-talk Harley had heard a million times over. She looked around at her group of girls, her teammates she'd been practicing with for months—some of them had been in her group for years—and could see the nervous determination on their faces, their expression no doubt matching her own. They each put a hand in the middle of the circle, palms down, and on the count of three lifted their hands with a loud cheer. The other teams followed after with their own cheer. Then the announcer came on.
Harley half tuned him out as she took a seat on the bench with her other teammates, waiting for her own named to be called.
On the other side of the gymnasium, which felt miles away, she spotted Jack on the bleachers, his curly blond mop sticking out among the throng of parents, and then her father sitting next to him. When they locked eyes, Nick waved excitedly to her, and Harley waved back with equal amounts of enthusiasm, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt.
"That's my dad," Harley whispered to Alexis, the pretty brunette sitting next to her. She was two years older than Harley and went to some private school Harley had never heard of.
Alexis smiled at her kindly, catching on. "Is this his first competition?" Harley nodded eagerly. She smiled again. "He'll be dazzled by you," she promised, and Harley inched her shoulders up to her ears and blushed.
She moved her attention to the judge's table, recognizing at least two of them from last year, and she realized that she was going to have to dazzle them, too. Lucky for her, she'd learned a lot since then.
The first time her name was called, it was for her Floor Exercise, which was a relief to Harley, as she felt it was the routine she was most prepared for.
At the corner of the mat, Harley dipped her hands in the small bowl they had provided with white powder, and she rubbed her palms together with it, heart beating faster with each passing second. With the lights shining bright, face glistening with sweat, Harley took her stance. Her lips were pulled tight in concentration, chin held high, and her hands were poised at the ready above her head.
In that moment, every eye in the room was on her, and she felt bold.
When her music started—a loud, pulsing beat that made her entire body thrum with adrenaline—she took a deep breath and sprung forward, breaking into her first double flip, and then following with a high rotation, body twisting in the air. She stuck her landing, and the crowd broke into applause.
The rest of her routine went without any major mistakes. She remembered to keep her knees together and thighs tucked tight to her chest during her flips, and her landings were solid. She never once went out of bounds.
When her song ended and she struck her final pose—a split that finished with a graceful arch of her back, neck elongated and gaze directed upwards—the crowd applauded and Harley breathed at last, smiling until her cheeks hurt.
Immediately she directed her gaze to the spot on the bleachers where Nick was sitting, eager to see his reaction.
He was not there.
Her smile faltered as she scanned the audience, thinking maybe he had moved to another seat, or had decided to stand—but every face in the crowd was not the one she wanted to see.
Jack, though, was there, staring with an expression she couldn't read, and she hoped she had at least impressed him.
She turned back to the judge's table just in time to see them scribble down their scores, which she wouldn't receive until after all the other events had been scored and added up.
She jogged back towards her spot on the bench, chest heaving from exertion as her teammates congratulated her on her performance. She tried to smile at their praise, but it was halfhearted at best.
She sat down and nursed her water bottle after pulling on her warm-up gear, still scanning the opposite side of the gym for her father, uninterested in the next routine that had started.
After a while it was time for her balance beam performance, which she also perfected save for one minor slip-up, when her landing was a bit shaky. Afterwards, just like with the first performance, she scanned the crowd for her father, hoping he had come back from wherever it was he had disappeared off to.
He was not there, again, and her heart sunk farther into her chest.
Where are you?
Her last performance involved the springboard. Again, her landing wasn't as perfect as she had hoped, but her coach told her she should be proud, and she smiled when the assistant coach told her she was the best of the night.
When everything had finished, and the awards had been doled out, Harley fingered the medal around her neck with a frown. The audience applauded, oblivious.
The medal was a bronze, and she was the only one from her school to receive a medal at all.
Under any normal circumstances, she would have been thrilled to receive such news. Third place meant she had a lot of work still yet to accomplish, but it also meant she was the third best out of all those other girls who had participated, all thirty of them. But she could not bring herself to be happy knowing that her father had missed her entire performance. She had been practicing so hard, and just for him...
Afterwards, when her teammates finished hugging and congratulating her on her win, Harley gathered up her duffel and stalked across the gym to the bleachers.
Looking up, she realized now that Jack and her dad were both gone, and she stood awkwardly by the bleachers as she scanned the crowds, looking for them.
Off to her right, she stared as a mom and dad squeezed their daughter in a tight hug, both parents smiling proudly. The dad handed the camera off to another parent, who then took a picture of all three of them together, with their daughter in the middle.
"You were wonderful, honey, I am so proud!" her father beamed, a tall man with thick glasses and a warm smile.
The girl hadn't even placed, and yet her parents were acting as if she had won the gold.
Harley despised them immediately, jealous to her bones. She tried not to scowl when they turned in her direction, heading towards the exit, where everyone else was swarming to get out as well.
When Harley turned around, her eyes widened when she saw her dad come around the corner.
"Harley." He looked startled to see her. "We were just looking for you! We thought you might have walked right past us and left, so we went outside to check."
We. He kept saying we.
Harley tilted a little to see the woman who was half hiding behind him, looking terribly guilty, like she'd just gotten caught with her hands in the cookie jar.
She was pretty and had straight red hair, with bright red lips to match. Her grey, knee-length dress was tight, and improperly buttoned. The black blazer she wore atop it looked like it'd been thrown on in a hurry.
Their cheeks were both flushed.
And it took a second, took a second to put the pieces together, but then she knew, she knew what they had done. For a moment, her heart felt like it was made of strings, and each individual thread snapped painfully against her chest as it broke.
Just then, Jack came around the corner as well, joining their odd assembly.
Nick seemed to falter when he noticed Harley staring at all of them. He was able recover in seconds though, weaving a smooth lie out of thin air. Being that he was a lawyer, perhaps that shouldn't have been such a surprise to her.
"Harley, you were amazing! I am so proud of you." He moved to give her a hug.
Harley did not move to reciprocate.
The honesty of his words dulled in comparison to the ones the other parents had told their daughter. Harley knew he was lying through his teeth, and the words stung like a bolt of livewire. He had not watched a single second of her performance and she knew that.
"Who is that?" Harley asked when he pulled away, her expression tired and sad. She wasn't even able to muster enough energy to sound angry.
"This is Donna," he said slowly, like it was very important she understand. "She's a friend from work. She came to see you perform. Isn't that nice, Harley?"
Harley nodded her head 'yes', robotic, and ignored the woman, ignoring the sudden jolt of fear that shot through her veins.
"I didn't see you," she told him, her voice coming out much shakier than she would have liked, tears threatening to spill over as the situation began to dawn on her with more clarity. Do not cry do not cry do not cry. "Where were you?"
Nick feigned befuddlement, and she would have bought it too, if she hadn't known the truth. Donna was blushing too much for it not to be plain as day.
"We were here the whole time, watching you." He pursed his lips into a thin, straight line. He turned. "Isn't that right, Jack?"
She turned to stare at Jack too, who was standing off to the side of 'Donna'. His face was a mask of calm, expression neutral, mouth relaxed. But it was his eyes that gave him away. When they locked with hers, they were as dark and angry as ever. There was a small, almost imperceptible cut on his cheekbone as well. That hadn't been there before.
He did not say a word.
There was an awkward silence between the four of them after that, broken only by the excited and tired murmur of the crowd as everyone shuffled towards the doors to exit. The crowd was starting to thin out, and, by extension, so were Harley's nerves.
He cheated rang through her head, a loud shrill that made her head throb and her heart clench with suffocating force.
Donna was the first to break the silence, clearing her throat with a dainty little cough.
"Well, I better be going," she said, forcing a weak, constipated smile. "Harley, you were great," she added, looking extremely uncomfortable and flushed. She was not the good liar that Nick was. She turned to him next. "I'll um, see you—?"
"—At the office. Yes." He smiled, brief. "Have a good night, Donna."
She nodded and clutched her blazer tighter to her middle, her black stilettos clacking against the gymnasium floor as she disappeared into the crowd.
"So... " Nick clasped his hands together, looking at Harley with a smile. "Who wants ice-cream?"
Harley glanced at the fading red marks around his neck, poorly concealed by the collar of his shirt. Donna had kissed him there.
She shifted her duffle bag around on her shoulder and looked away.
Donotcrydonotcrydonotcry.
"Nobody? Ah, I get it. Too tired to answer. You must be pretty wiped out from that performance. Come on kiddo, let's get going."
He put a hand on Harley's back to guide her towards the exit, and she stiffened, but did not pull away.
It took Jack a few seconds to regain his cool in order to follow behind them. In the car, he unclenched his fingers from his palms, revealing bloody crescents where his nails had broken the skin. Jack wiped the blood against his jeans, then clenched his fists harder.
The ride home was uncomfortable and silent. Harley was desperate to ask Jack what he knew, what he had seen, but in her heart she already knew. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, pretending they were watery from the cold and not from unshed tears. Nobody seemed to notice.
Nick pulled through the drive-thru of McDonald's to get more coffee and an ice-cream for Harley, even though she mumbled that she didn't want one. By the time they arrived home, it was almost ten o'clock. Sharon was already asleep.
The snow had stopped for the time being, and there was a good layer of it on the ground and covering the rooftops. Harley looked up at the sky as she stepped out of the car, dazzled by the sight of it. Above, the sky was dark blue and clear as ever, littered only with white, blinking stars. She glanced around at the snow too, untouched and glistening beneath the streetlights and colorful bulbs from neighboring houses. Christmas was only days away.
She couldn't bring herself to smile at the thought.
The moment they were inside the house, Jack stalked up the stairs to his room. Harley shuffled awkwardly in the doorway as she toed off her sneakers, which were soaked from the snow.
"Congratulations on your medal, Harley," Nick said to her as he began to take off his coat. Halfway through the action, he thought better of it and kept it on, smiling a little, like nothing was wrong and he wasn't trying to hide the hickeys around his neck.
She swallowed the lump in her throat, pushing down the thousands of burning questions she wanted to ask, pushing down the urge to scream until her lungs were raw.
"Thanks," she murmured instead.
"Sweet dreams," he offered, and Harley could not wish him the same sentiment. She trudged up the stairs with her half-eaten milkshake in one hand, straw scraping annoyingly against the plastic lid, and her duffel bag in the other.
In her room, she dropped the duffel by the door and the ice-cream in the trash.
Then she sat on her bed and cried until she fell asleep.