Harms Done to Others

By Dave Cherry

"In an innovative plot from a skilled storyteller, Cherry conjures up a secret society based on a highly intricate, tightly woven system flanked on all sides by anonymity devoted to ridding the world of serial offenders... In this world, emotion is anathema. [Their leader]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781643145068

Dave Cherry

Dave Cherry is a graduate of the Great Books Program at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. Harms Done to Others is his second novel, following Ivy League Killers. With the benefit of 32 years' coaching experience, Cherry is also the author of Sweep Rowing-The Short Story, a handbook for oarsmen, coxswains, and coaches. He was born in New York City and now lives and writes in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Other Books by Dave Cherry

Most Likely to Succeed—Ivy League Killers, an e-novel written under the pen name Blake Carver. In print form, simply Ivy League Killers

Sweep Rowing, an athlete’s textbook

Copyright © 2021 by Dave S. Cherry

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Photographs, Scott Schexnaydre Graphic Design, Ellie Nigretto

ISBN: 978-1-64314-505-1 (Paperback)

978-1-64314-506-8 (E-book)

AuthorsPress

California, USA

www.authorspress.com

For Michael Anderson

Who placed such great value upon my life

Contents

Part One

I The New Kid 3

II Southern Hospitality 9

III The Family You Choose 15

IV Chosen 21

V Falling 25

VI Consequences 31

VII Out 35

VIII Alive 41

IX Change 47

X The Taken 53

XI Jackpot 59

XII Revelation 67

XIII Execution 73

Part Two

I From Amends to Freedom 85

II Julia 91

III Elise 99

IV Rage 105

V Irrevocable Things 113

VI The Other Shoe 121

VII The Conversation 127

VIII Acceptance 133

IX Deployment 139

X Professionals 151

XI Debrief 159

XII A New Beginning 167

XIII Deception 175

Part Three

I Lost Dreams Awaken 187

II Getting Clean 201

III Neutrality 209

IV Regenerative Power 221

V Drinking 231

VI For Life? 251

VII Hard Beats Cold 259

VIII The Mitchells 267

IX One Too Many Elements 273

X Three Years Later 277

XI Denouement 287

XII Last Trip Up the Ladder 295

XIII Gas Man! 305

Part Four

I No Escape, No Survivors 317

II An Abysmal Success 325

III Hunting Blaine 333

IV Two Girls and a Rifle 343

V Explaining to Do 361

VI Redeployment 371

VII Full Breach 373

VIII The Family You Choose Expands 385

IX Vera’s Idea 391

X Re-pairing 411

XI Spectacular Indeed 423

XII Christmas Dinner 437

XIII Dick, Lucianne, & Emma 1982 451

Music from Harms Done to Others 457

Acknowledgments 461

Part One

I

The New Kid

Mira felt the school bus jounce to a halt and closed her book to look out the window at all the students milling about on the high school’s lawn. She was reading Taming the Tiger Within, by Thich Nhat Hanh, studying anger. Mira was not an angry person herself, nor were her parents, but she encountered so many of them, angry people, curiosity made her give it a hard look.

The bus would need to crawl forward a few lengths before letting everyone out. She waited patiently, and didn’t bother getting up, though everyone else did. Through one earbud she continued listening to the courante movement of the second Bach cello suite, D minor.

She got her turn, and as she stepped off the bus, she was startled by a sound that compelled her to turn and look. It sounded like gears turning at high speed, and then the pitch dropped sharply and was accompanied by a descending burbling noise, clearly an engine but not like one she’d ever heard before. Raucous was the only word that sprang to mind. And it was raucous as it was decelerating.

Mira pulled out her earbud and stood still, waiting for the reveal. There she saw the car pulling around from behind the line of buses to the stop sign at the end of the lane. It was the flattest car she’d ever seen, and possibly the widest. Beneath a tall aerofoil on the tail, there was the word Esprit, and on top of the auditory performance, it was Italian racing yellow. Her dad liked to watch racing on cable, and Mira had seen the color on the odd Ferrari. She couldn’t imagine how ostentatious a person would have to be to drive one, but at the same time she was ashamed of herself that the sound of it was such a visceral turn on.

As she entered the lobby, there was a teacher she didn’t recognize monitoring the arrival of the students. He looked right at her to smile and give a little nod. She could tell the gesture was sincere on his part and took it as a good omen.

Having received her schedule in the mail a week ago, she already knew that she was in Mr. Herzog’s homeroom in 111, second hallway on the left. Two-thirds of the room had already arrived, and Mira took a desk at random somewhere in the middle. She never could figure out why it took forty minutes just to take attendance and listen to the morning announcements. Whaddayagonnado she thought. It’s everyone’s lot in life to be herded around through school. She wondered if grownups felt the same way at their jobs. Do we all just push around like robots? Forever? Again she pulled out the tiger and flipped through the pages to find her place. Page 31.

Anger is born from ignorance and wrong perceptions. You may be the victim of a wrong perception. You may have misunderstood what you heard and what you saw. You may have a wrong idea of what has been said, what has been done.

An unusual girl walked in and helped herself to a desk in front of Mira and just to the right. She was really tall, wore Levi’s and a simple white T-shirt and had the face and body of an adult; conspicuously missing teenage traits except for the way she wore her dirty-blond ponytail through the hole in the back of her navy baseball cap. She put her bookbag on her desk and sat with a confidence as though she’d sat there a hundred times before.

Mira said, Hey. And the girl responded in kind.

Before she had a chance to turn away, Mira put out her hand at full length and said, My name is Mira. Mira Coraima.

Jo. I appreciate you saying hello Mira; being new can be lonely. Jo had pronounced it correctly—Mee-dah. Mira was flattered.

Where are you from?

We’ve come from Nashville, but originally I’m from Galveston. Houston pretty much.

You move a lot? What brings you to Birmingham?

Just the two moves. It’s my dad’s work. Big company with offices in major cities. You from here?

My parents came from Florida, but I’ve lived here as long as I can remember.

Mr. Herzog finished taking attendance. He didn’t have to ask who Jo was. She was the only new face. The announcements had begun over the school-wide PA system, but there was nothing interesting outside of a welcome to the new year.

Mira said, Lemme see your schedule, and I’ll tell you where your first class is. Mira was a junior and assumed Jo must be a senior from her looks.

Jo said, I have it memorized. My first room is 117. I figure it’s not far.

Mira’s brow furrowed just a little out of confusion. Mrs. Alton’s AP biology?

Uh-huh.

No kidding. I had you pegged for eighteen.

Twenty, actually.

How’d that happen? Mira caught herself a moment too late. I’m sorry. My mouth just went off before my brain … I didn’t mean to pry.

The first bell went off, and there was the roar of all the chairs scraping backward.

It’s okay. It’s a long story, but I’ll tell you sometime.

The two grabbed their stuff and headed out down the hall and around the corner. Naturally they sat together. A casual affinity was building.

Mira was a good and attentive student, always had been. But as Mrs. Alton began describing the direction the year would take, Mira found she couldn’t hear her over her own thoughts about Jo. She already liked her a lot. After five minutes of daydreaming, she managed to get her head back in the game and concentrate.

Jo had no such trouble. She was taking in the scenery, trying to determine if she was going to be happy here or not. The first thing she noticed was how nice everyone was. It seemed like everywhere she’d been so far, girls were saying hello, introducing themselves, and offering their welcome. It was sweet, but had started to feel a little strange—Stepford-like.

As the day proceeded, Mira and Jo found they had four out of five classes in common. It was obvious that Jo really was a junior, and Mira’s curiosity intensified. What would a person have to do to be a twenty-year-old junior in high school? she wondered. She’s way too bright to have been left back a bunch of times. She couldn’t wait to get an explanation.

At the end of the day, Jo disappeared in the direction of the parking lot, and Mira waited for the bus to take her home. From there she’d ride her bike to her parents’ grocery to do chores followed by homework in the back room. It had been her routine since grammar school.

The routine provided a lot of structure, but she was still free to hang out with friends when the opportunity arose. The problem

with friends, she thought, was that she didn’t really have an inner circle. In fact she hadn’t even had a best friend since middle school, and that girl moved away. Friends today were fun in the moment, but outside of the moment she never felt herself drawn to foster a more intimate relationship with anyone. Jo had a lot of potential, she thought. She thought it again and again.

Jo wasn’t oblivious to the connection either. Mira was a very attractive thing, mature beyond her years from the sound of her. Wise somehow. And beautiful, no discounting that, though young.

No sooner than Jo had stopped thinking about Mira, she started thinking about her again. She couldn’t shake it. Despite the glove-like feel of the Lotus, one with the machine, there was a gut-level experience with the best anthem—Eternity, the Adam Young mix by Paul van Dyk. Still and all, thoughts of Mira persisted over the roar. Interesting.

To be honest, Jo admitted that Mira was hot. Her voice was seductive in that Latin sort of way. Not too hard and none too soft. Magnetic you might say, without meaning to be. Her brown eyes, a beauty difficult to describe, perhaps because of the flecks of green.

Jo tried to shake it off. Why fixate on some kid she met in homeroom? Honestly. But the idea of her just kept coming. Again and again.

II

Southern Hospitality

School began on a Wednesday at Vestavia Hills. Now it was Friday, and Jo had easily ascertained that most kids came from money. Judging from the way they dressed and the cars they drove, nobody was straight poor. The parking lot looked like a BMW dealership.

She guessed there was probably a magnet corporation around here, such as an IBM, drawing a lot of talent. Maybe more than one corporation, which provided high-pay employment for a slew of people. The privilege she observed among her classmates bespoke new money. They were too impressed with their own toys, iPhones, and high-end stereos in their cars. Old money would take such things for granted.

What Jo couldn’t account for was the striking graciousness of her schoolmates. Everywhere she went, in every context, people were extraordinarily generous in their manners and with their time. Could this just be a feature of Birmingham? That seemed possible; perhaps the living fairytale of the Deep South.

Still the niceness seemed queer, especially for new money. In other places she’d lived, Jo observed that teens with access to money and fine things were rather class conscious, snooty even. Not here, though. People were so overtly friendly it was like going to school with a bunch of flight attendants in training.

Jo found Mira in the same seat she’d staked out in homeroom. She dropped her bag and faced Mira by sitting backward, astride her chair. Mira, she said, continuing to pronounce it correctly, I’m ready to know about the niceness. There has to be a reason.

There is a reason. You can’t guess it, though, it’s too far out. And we can’t start this conversation right before the bell rings. I’ll fill you in at lunch.

Is it bad? Does the office administer canings to the rude? Jo laughed and Mira didn’t. She just looked like she was at a loss. No, it’s not canings. We’ll get into it at lunch.

Jo realized she’d pushed some kind of button, but she couldn’t imagine what could be so serious. She let it go. After what she’d been through in her life, she knew the difference between serious and not serious. This would probably be more amusing than anything else.

After biology and English, Mira and Jo both had what’s called First Lunch, meaning that they were in the first round of students to eat. It also meant eating at 10:45 in the morning. Jo was beginning to doubt the necessity of having breakfast at all.

Mira sat alone at the end of a sixty-foot string of lunch tables. The other two-thirds of it were populated, but she was by herself. After a long wait in a slow-crawling line through the kitchen, Jo regained her freedom and came to sit across from her. So, she said, ripping the plastic off of her spork, let’s hear it. I’m guessing ‘most likely to succeed’ has been replaced with ‘most likely to become a stewardess.’ I’m right, aren’t I?

That was pretty good, Mira thought; she was able to laugh at that. Then she began. This isn’t easy for me. There’s no way to tell someone gradually or softly. Jo looked for Mira’s eyes, but Mira was looking at her milk and slowly rotating the carton at its base. For fourteen years in a row, a student has disappeared and never been found.

Jo’s expression scoffed. It’s more than one, Mira. Every state has lots of unsolveds.

"Chica, I’m not talking about Alabama. I’m talking about our school."

This time Jo’s face froze with a piece of lettuce and carrot strands hanging out of it. She regained herself and pulled the salad inside. Munching, she said, You were right. That’s far out. I wasn’t gonna guess that.

Silence ensued while Jo finished chewing.

Don’t you have any questions? Mira asked.

You damn skippy I got questions. That’s one hell of a run, man—for any serial killer. Are the police catching him on the installment plan? Do they get a little closer every year … one measly piece of evidence at a time?

"There’s never any evidence. Not even trace evidence. The victims vanish, and the last ones to see them are either teachers and coaches here at school or parents at home. Often their cars are found but never any place sinister—the movies, the mall. I didn’t find out about any of this until I was a sophomore last year.

I thought it was a school-wide joke to convince all the incoming freshmen of this scary thing and then laugh at them. Then Scottie Gordon disappeared after Thanksgiving last year. His parents went on the news, and I realized it was true.

"So hold up for a second. I thought the whole reason we got into this was my nice question. Why’s everybody so nice?"

"Yeah, it is. The one thing all these kids had in common was they were mean. Like meanspirited. They bullied and cheated and beat up on people. I heard a couple guys were accused of raping girls. I don’t know what else. Like I said, I just clued

in last year. Some people have older siblings who remember farther back."

So you’re telling me that everybody’s nice here because that’s the garlic they wear around their necks? Fer real, fer real?

For real. Nobody wants to be the one.

Jo ate quietly for a few minutes, pondering the nature of such a serial killer. It could be something simple, like the guy was bullied mercilessly as a kid. Or it might be something more sophisticated. For a guy to get away with it for that long, it could be something far more sophisticated. She remembered Barney the orderly recounting Dr. Lecter’s reference to the free-range rude. She didn’t doubt at all that intelligent, refined killers existed.

So everybody knows about this and doesn’t talk about it?

No, they talk about it; I mean students do. I think teachers are told not to talk about it. Maybe it would encourage fear or panic.

And why shouldn’t people be afraid and panicked? I’m surprised people don’t send their kids somewhere else. Or move.

A bunch of kids did transfer after Scottie didn’t turn up. Probably happens every year.

Well, we’re gonna find out, aren’t we? No way this guy’s gonna stop. I’m sure he takes glee in not getting caught. I’ll bet he’s proud as hell about it.

You’re gonna dwell on this, aren’t you? I didn’t even like telling you about it, but I thought you had a right to know.

"I get it, honey, I’m sorry. I’ll stop making you talk about it. That would be the ‘nice’ thing to do, wouldn’t it?" Jo amused herself. Again.

And again Mira didn’t think anything was funny. She was intimidated by the facts. Not that she would be a candidate for disappearing. She just worried that the killer must be right in among them. A teacher, a coach, a janitor. How else would a person get close enough to so many students that he could single out the bad apples? She felt sick just thinking about it.

III

The Family You Choose

Though they spent all day around each other, Mira couldn’t get enough of Jo. She felt easy around her, and it felt so good to feel easy. Her home life was strict and rigidly structured without a lot of wiggle room. Jo was so transparent about everything. She just said whatever was on her mind and did as she pleased. Mira admired that freedom. It assured her that Jo must really like her; there was no way she would feign friendship. And Mira welcomed the idea of having a real friendship, one with intimacy. She decided she would take some action to invite Jo into her life.

About two weeks into the semester they were lunching in the cafeteria, and Mira asked, How would you like to study later, do homework? I have to get some things done at the store, but if you could wait ninety minutes, then I’m free the rest of the night.

Jo said, I’ve got a couple of hours after 5:30, but I prefer 9:30. I’m one of the night people. Is that too late for you?

Mira was excited but kept it to herself. Selfishly she knew that homework wasn’t really a priority. She wanted closeness with Jo. Right off she felt guilty about this, but she was already envisioning doing all of her homework between 5:30 and 9:30 so they could relax and hang out together. If the scheme worked out, she could confess about the ruse later.

What Mira didn’t know was that Jo was thinking the same thing. Jo couldn’t help it that she was a cool customer; she liked Mira more than she’d let on, and she welcomed the chance to be more forthcoming. She likewise planned to get her homework done before heading over. A conspiracy to commit friendship.

That night Jo found the store and the parking in the back as Mira had described. Out front there were mountains of fruit and vegetables. Jo stood there for a moment treating her nose to the experience. It reminded her that she was alive and that life was temporary.

She headed in and saw a portly man, presumably Mira’s father, slicing ham on one of those big stainless machines with the spinning circular blade. Jo watched him for a moment rocking the ham back and forth as the slices piled up on the cutting board beneath. The way he moved himself made the task beautiful somehow. Life becoming art.

Mira’s mother spotted Jo from behind a counter and came quickly around saying, Ju are Jo. I know ju are. Mira must have given a pretty good description, she thought. The woman shook hands with her right hand and held Jo’s forearm with her left. She continued, I am Sara, Mira’s mother.

Jo. Thaller.

Please, come back through here, Jo, Mira is right here. The two went to an office room in the back, and Mira was sitting there at her father’s desk listening to the Andante Cantabile movement of the Spring Quartet, pretending to be head down in a textbook, but really squirming with anticipation.

Jo said, Hey, as she hung her black leather jacket over the back of a chair and sat across the desk from her. She unzipped her bookbag but didn’t know why. In truth she just wanted to listen to Mira talk. Her Spanish accent took sharp words and made them smooth like carefully written poetry, even when she was saying something perfectly mundane. It was soothing. They relaxed and Jo provided a few prompts to get Mira going. Meanwhile Sara reappeared with a mug of coffee for Jo. Light with one teaspoon of sugar—exactly the way Jo took it. If the woman was clairvoyant, she was shameless about it.

Jo learned that Mira’s father was from Catalonia in the northeast of Spain, and her mother’s people were Venezuelan, from Maracaibo. The two met in Florida and enjoyed love at first sight. This despite something of a language barrier; Spanish in the rest of the world is not the same as the Spanish with people who grew up speaking Catalan. Cas, which was short for Carlos, came from a family with a little money and was able to buy a modest grocery store. When business rents got too high in their part of Florida, he and Sara—Sarafina—decided to move to Birmingham. How he chose it, no one knew.

Mira had had a happy childhood. She adored her parents and said she thought that was a big difference between the Spanish and American cultures. Her people were generous with love and affection. And teenagers didn’t go so easily into that phase of hating their folks.

Based on her own experience, Jo couldn’t disagree. She told about how alone she’d been since even before she was a teenager. Love was expressed in terms of money and things. As she talked, Mira took in her simplicity—her white T-shirt and Levi’s, and the fine tattoo on the back of her right wrist. A beautiful, greenish Celtic design that wrapped around on either side like a bracelet. Mira said, "You don’t seem like you come from money." She seemed more like James Dean with a ponytail.

Jo replied, Money extends privilege in some ways and not in others, man. I’d trade it all away if I could’ve had parents. Available parents.

What do you mean? Where were they?

"Well, my dad is way high up in a huge corporation, a board member, higher than any executive. And he’s the happiest slave I’ve ever seen. Seventy-five-hour workweeks, plus weekends,

even holidays. Most nights he doesn’t even bother coming home. His offices are in the same building as a luxury hotel, so he’s got his little home away from home over there. He loves his life, but he loves it without us. I can’t understand why he ever got married, or had a child."

Jo continued, My mom is a slave too …

Another company?

No, my mom’s a slave to alcohol.

Oh nooo.

"Oh yeaaah. I feel for her. It’s so debilitating. I know she loves me, but the alcohol shuts off her ability to do anything with love. She can’t think of anyone but herself."

I don’t understand. Who took care of you growing up?

"That would be me. My mom’s been locked in the same routine for almost ten years. She wakes up late in the morning, has a breakfast of ice-cold vodka, cleans up, and heads out to their country club, Greystone. Then she drinks until 2:30 in the morning or whenever they kick you out of that place. How she gets home in one piece in that giant SUV is a mystery to me. Not even a DUI so far. She’s a low-bottom drunk. Which means a mountain of terrible things have to happen before the person can even see that there is a problem."

Jesus, Jo. I can’t even imagine. You’ve been running your life by yourself? For years? Alone in your house for so long?

I found other playmates and playthings.

Mira tried several times to get Jo talking about herself, about her inner life, but she just couldn’t make it happen. Jo would

artfully sidestep or answer a question with a question. Mira tried not to be offended, but she was hurt that Jo wouldn’t open up. She decided not to press. She told herself that they’d only known each other for days, not months. She could wait.

A day at a time she did feel like she was getting closer to something. And Jo did reciprocate in other ways. After school one day, in the fourth week of the semester, Jo said, You know, you don’t have to ride the bus home and go through the whole thing with your bike. I can take you to the store.

Mira was delighted. After the last bell, they walked out to the parking lot. It made Mira feel like a real upperclassman to be headed away from the line of buses. They walked all the way to the very far end of the lot. Jo squeezed the button on her key fob, and the Lotus blinked its lights.

"Carajo, Jo! Te lo dio! Your dad gave you this?"

I wouldn’t call it mine, but it’s all I’ve got to drive.

"All? Are you kidding me?"

I don’t feel like I can see out of my mom’s SUV, and besides, if we traded she’d be driving drunk with more than 300 horsepower.

They got in and Mira felt like she was in a spaceship. She had never seen scissor-wing doors before, and Jo had to show her how to put on four-way restraints instead of a conventional seat belt. Mira said, I’m embarrassed man. Aren’t you embarrassed? Jesus, don’t let my parents see you dropping me off in this thing. I don’t know what they’d say.

Relax, you have to pretend it’s a Ford Fiesta and nobody’s ever seen one before.

You surprise me, Jo. I never would’ve thought … never.

Take it easy, you’ll get used to it.

When Jo dropped her off at her parent’s store, Mira got out but poked her head back in to ask, Are you coming by later?

Yeah. I’ll be back. Right after 9:30.

IV

Chosen

The mystery around Jo’s background continued, specifically how she came to be a twenty-year-old junior. And Mira continued to let it go. She thought Jo did an exceptional job at raising herself. She carried herself well with good manners and got along effortlessly with students and teachers.

She didn’t spend half the time studying that Mira did, but she always had her homework and did well on quizzes and tests. She seemed to be one of those intuitive people who didn’t need to study much. She got most of what she needed from class itself.

They soon began to share their passions. Jo knew that Mira had three days per week when she stayed late at school for band practice. She didn’t know that Mira was the first-chair violinist and sometimes soloist. This was what Mira had an intuition for. She was not merely a skilled technician but also had something you couldn’t practice; she had feeling and could participate in the interpretation of music. The way she considered a piece thoughtfully made the listener stop breathing in places. Jo realized that she had better stop calling it band practice.

Jo, it turned out, was an accomplished artist. Art was the one class they didn’t have in common. Mira found out about her talent by walking right past a still life in pencil hanging on the wall by the front office. Mira had paused to look at it because it was so good, and then saw the signature in the lower right-hand corner—Jo T.

Mira asked her about her art, and Jo showed her a nearly full five-subject, spiral-bound notebook. This was not doodling.

Each page was devoted to a separate piece; inventions of all sorts. Some in pencil, some charcoal, colored pencil, and ink.

Quite a few of them were designs for tattoos. Occasionally, the theme of one tattoo blended seamlessly with a neighboring design. Mira marveled at the imagination it must take to see that way. Jo had such a facility with light and dark that she could make a pencil or charcoal drawing appear to be in color. It was such a cool trick.

Mira asked, Is this what you do with your time after school?

Yeah, partly. Sometimes largely. I have a room at home set aside for painting and serious stuff. Most of the time I just use notebooks like this one.

So are you gonna go to art school?

I’m not going to college.

Jo, are you kidding me? You have to go.

"Well, in a way, that’s my whole problem with college and what it stands for. My parents would also say I ‘have to go.’ First of all, what right do either of them have to any particular expectations of me? They never invested much in me, and I don’t think I owe them anything. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t even have the right to an opinion.

"In your case, I could understand if you wanted to honor all the love and support your family gave you by going as far as you can go. For me, I don’t have to do anything. I don’t need to go to college in order to be whole. I don’t need that in order to be a real, viable person."

Yeah, but what about the limited possibilities you might have? Jobs and whatnot? Besides, if anyone’s college material, it’s you.

People like me make their own opportunities.

But being older you could take it so much more seriously and get more out of it.

Jo couldn’t brush that off; that was perhaps a grounded argument. She thought for a second. Well, it could be that I need some time to get over my anger at my parents. I can imagine considering it, later maybe. I’m not sure I could deal with being confined for another four years. I’ve got some living to do.

"I’ve got living to do too, but I plan to be living and going to school at the same time. Maybe I want it a lot because neither of my parents was able to go. I don’t know if they would’ve wanted to, but I want to."

I hear you and I’m not saying you should be like me or feel like I feel. The world’s big enough for both of our futures.

What is your future? What do you dream of?

I don’t know yet. I still feel kinda new to the world.

Mira felt it again. That sense that something had happened in Jo’s past. Something that had somehow hit the reset button, and time was lost. Reluctantly, she began to wonder if it was jail or something like that.

Mira asked, You’re older than eighteen now. What stops you from dropping out of high school?

There’s stuff I still need here. Basic stuff. I read a lot on my own, but I can tell there are fundamental things I need to be exposed to, particularly in math, science, and English. I don’t want to be full-on ignorant, y’know. For example, I’ve read James Joyce, which is good, but I can tell I’d appreciate it more and differently if I’d read some of what came before him.

That’s a fact. I don’t think Mozart’s sophistication could’ve grown so quickly if there hadn’t been a Haydn. The same is true of Beethoven. Maturity on the shoulders of giants. You might be like that Jo; I’m serious. I’m not trying to win an argument when I say that; I’m not trying to sell you on college.

I know, and I want you to know that I’m listening. An important part of my sanity is taking suggestions from people like you.

Mira thought to herself, There it goes again. Why does she talk in terms of ‘people like her’ and ‘people like me?’ We’re separated by something. But what? She left it alone. Again.

What Mira knew about the practice of Buddhism she had learned from Thich Nhat Hanh and videos of the Dalai Lama on this new thing called YouTube. She often wondered how it was that she had to study Buddhist principles while Jo seemed to intuitively know them. She likewise questioned whether anyone else appreciated this about Jo.

Jo had other friends in school, but none so close as Mira. Mira was proud of the fact; she felt chosen. And chosen by someone who was so worthwhile. They continued in their routine of school, homework, then hanging out, enjoying each other’s company.

Mira was too naïve to realize that Jo felt chosen by her. She had something that Jo wanted. She represented good choices, discipline, and order. Jo wasn’t wild, not anymore. But these attributes weren’t things a person just knew; they were things Jo had to learn and practice.

Jo felt flattered that Mira had ignited their relationship from the beginning, and she was eager to see it go to the next level. Apprehensive, but eager. Having such a track record with loss had its obvious downside. The upside, though, was that she wouldn’t be easily hurt if things didn’t go well in the future.

V

Falling

Jo continued to come around the store after 9:30. It became more frequent until it was nearly every night. The closeness that developed was emotional rather than functional. Mira continued to smolder with wonder about Jo’s private life before they met. But she asked herself, What would you rather have? Would you rather know everything about her, or have the emotional intimacy that you already have, that you’ve always wanted? It was a lot easier when she thought about it that way. She didn’t want to put anything at stake by prying.

Mira had been quite happy in her own right before she met Jo. She always knew that she was different from other girls. She didn’t make friends as fluidly as they did. But that was okay because she didn’t covet the quality of those friendships. She didn’t find it necessary to go about collecting people the way some did on Facebook—deliberate nonfriends.

She hadn’t imagined the level of happiness that was possible with Jo as a part of her life. She enjoyed a feeling of belonging she had never had before. She laughed at herself when she thought of it as a sense of community. After all, it was just the two of them. Perhaps it was better to say two of a kind in some way. She made a resolution that if she never learned one more thing about Jo’s first nineteen years of life, then she could leave it alone and be grateful for what she had now.

Jo was not oblivious to the curiosity Mira harbored, and she knew it had to be painful for her to be kept in