A Safe Bet

“Harlow, don’t play with your food.”

Harlow sighed, brushing her blonde hair over her shoulder and letting it fall behind her back. She stabbed a carrot with her fork before placing it in her mouth, taking each bite hard in a sense of her own personal therapy.

“How was your day, girls?” Mr. Peterson asked, smiling at his twin daughters in front of him. He was dressed in grey slacks and a black button down shirt. His eyes were aging but were the same shade of blue as his daughters’, and his blonde hair was slowly turning grey.

Elena was silent so Harlow sighed, “It was fine. Nothing special,” she said simply, taking a bite of her salad.

“And how about you Elena? How was your day?” Mrs. Peterson asked, staring intently at the older of the two twins. Her brown hair was falling in a bob around her shoulders and her green eyes looked almost lifeless these days.

Elena shrugged her shoulders and used her fork to pick at the food on her plate, causing Harlow to roll her eyes, ‘Harlow don’t play with your food’. Typical. “It was fine,” Elena began. “I got a C on my history test.”

“Well that’s great honey. We’re proud of you,” Mrs. Peterson responded feigning excitement.

“What’d you get on it, Har?” Elena questioned, stuffing food into her mouth.

“I got a B minus,” Harlow replied simply, before looking up into her mother’s disappointed eyes.

“You could have gotten an A,” Mrs. Peterson stated simply, taking a sip of her wine.

“Sorry,” she responded meekly, ignoring the chuckle from Elena’s malicious lips.

This was how all family dinners went—hell, how their lives went. Elena was the golden child even though she really was a mess up completely, and Harlow, well, she was never good enough.

Harlow knew she was the ‘smart one’. She was the one that was expected to get into Harvard—whether she wanted to go there or not. Her parents had already planned her life on the East Coast for her while they kept Elena close to home. It never used to bug her at all when she was younger, but as she grew up she only took one things from their plans: they wanted her far away.

It hurt when she had once figured it out the most. But now she was so used to it. She was the child that they got when they tried for Elena. When she was little they were fine—they were the adorable little Peterson twins. But somehow as they grew up they grew apart, and it was apparent.

Elena partied. Elena was a cheerleader. Elena always had a boyfriend. Elena was that girl.

And Harlow, well, Harlow wasn’t. Harlow was the one hiding in the background of the senior panorama. Harlow was the one who on a Saturday night would sit home and read a book or watch a sappy love story with her best friend. Harlow was the one who had never been kissed.

“How was therapy today, honey?” Mrs. Peterson questioned.

Harlow’s eyes darted over to her sister. They may not have been the best of friends but they still had twin sense, and Harlow could tell when he sister was upset.

“It was okay,” Elena said softly, her eyes staring at the table cloth in front of them.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Their father asked, looking at the girl with sympathy in his eyes.

Elena shook her head quickly, a blush on her cheeks, “Can I be excused please?”

Harlow’s eyes looked onto her sister’s plate of food that was hardly touched. Her sister stalked up the stairs quickly not even waiting for a reply. The rest of the family sat in silence and Harlow’s parents exchanged silent glances. Harlow cut a piece of chicken with her fork before shoving it into her mouth.

“I bought a cake for desert,” her father spoke softly after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. “Chocolate, your favorite Har.”

Harlow smiled at her dad before her mother wiped it away off her face with a simple comment, “And I bought you a gym membership for after that.”

Harlow looked down immediately to her size four waist. She was extremely healthy—in no way was she fat. She could hear people talking about how nice her body was in the halls but she ignored it—but sometimes they were the only people that kept her from wanting to throw up all of her food into trash cans because of her mother’s comments.

Harlow looked at the woman who had just cut her deeply again and tried her best not to feel rage. Her mother hadn’t been the same for about a year now, not since Elena was hurt. And since that night Harlow’s sister was the priority. Harlow was to get good grades and look pretty—but nothing else.

No, she wasn’t worth anything else.

*

“I think I agree with Freud,” John said trying to hide the smirk behind his lips as he drew the girl away from the book she was reading.

Harlow slipped her reading glasses down her nose and rubbed her temples, “What?” She asked gently, telling him she wasn’t listening to him.

“I agree with Sigmund Freud. I think human consciousness is driven by our sexual repressions,” He laughed.

He watched as she rolled her blue eyes at him, hiding a small smile on her lips. “Of course you do,” she chuckled.

This was how tutoring had gone for the past week or so. John would make a sexual or flirty comment and Harlow would just play it off, but it was still progress. He could tell she was slowly becoming more comfortable with him and that was step one. She just needed to like him a little bit before he turned on the O’Callaghan charm.

“What are you reading?” John asked, pressing his fingers to the tan pages of her book. He looked at the font and was amazed at how small it was—who would ever want to read a book like that?

“It’s called The Pact,” Harlow responded simply, bending the corner of her page over and closing it.

“Is it good?

She chuckled, “Uh no, I just like reading crappy books all the time, John.”

He laughed, rolling his eyes at her sarcasm. He liked this side of Harlow; the sarcastic girl. It was cute to him. “Well, what is it about?”

Harlow shrugged and placed a piece of her blonde hair behind her ear so that it was no longer hanging into her eyes, “You know a tragic love story, the usual.”

John placed his elbows on the table in front of him and rested his chin in his hands, looking at her interestedly. He liked the way her lips puckered when she talked to him and the way that she looked right into his eyes. He liked her high cheek bones and the soft pink that grazed them; he was almost desperate to reach out and feel her smooth skin under his fingertips. He wanted to hear her moaning his name.

“John, stop leering at me like that.”

He shook his head quickly, realizing that he had been staring at the girl for a few moments too long. He chuckled nervously, running a hand through the ends of his long hair and messing with the bracelets on his wrist. “I—I um, what’s the book about?”

Harlow looked at him with a small smirk on her lips, before placing mindlessly with the corners of her book in front of her. “It’s about this couple who had known each other since forever, and in the prologue the girl commits suicide but the boy is holding the gun. So, he’s being charged with murder. And basically it just goes through the entire book and tells the events that lead up to the prologue, and by that time you find out all these secrets and if the boy really did it or not. It’s basically about how secrets ruined them.”

John gulped, trying to stay calm. Secrets. Well, he had a very big secret from her right now—that was for sure, was she trying to do that thing where she hinted that she knew something? Or was this just really what the book was about? He decided to change the subject quickly, “That sounds cool. Anyways, I don’t understand negative and positive reinforcement can you explain it to me, please?”

Harlow smiled softly, “Sounds like you actually read this packet…huh?”

“Well, I mean, if you’re spending all this time helping me I may as well help you out a little bit, I guess,” John replied meekly, kind of enjoying the fact that she seemed well—proud of him.

“You are helping me though, you’re giving me stuff for my college applications,” she shrugged, fingering through the pages of the yellow packet Ms. Hastings assigned.

“What colleges are you looking at?” John questioned, noticing that her smile disappeared once she heard him.

“I’m applying to Harvard—that’s about it. Yale is my backup school that my parents helped pick.”

John would be lying if he said he wasn’t impressed. He knew she was smart, but God, that’s really smart. He was just hoping to get into ASU and compared to Harvard—that was well, not comparable at all. “Why do you want to go there?”

Harlow looked at him confused, “What do you mean?”

“Well, you said your parents helped you pick…and so I only assumed that they helped pick Harvard as well, and when I asked that questioned you just look—I don’t know, almost sad.”

“Are you psychoanalyzing me, O’Callaghan?”

John smirked slightly, “Maybe I am. What are you going to do about it, huh Har?”

She lifted her eyebrows at him, “Harlow.”

He rolled his eyes, “Harlow, anyways, why do you want to go so far away?”

Harlow took her bottom lip in between her teeth and looked away from him and shrugged, “It’s hot in Arizona.”

“That’s not exactly a reason to pick up and leave everything behind though is it?” John questioned, trying to get out her real reasons though he was sure by now he already knew them; her parents wanted her to go there and she wouldn’t be one to disappoint.

“You wouldn’t understand, okay John?” Harlow said softly, and he could tell she wanted to end the conversation.

He knew this and that’s why he almost couldn’t understand why he was still pushing it. “Why would you want to leave Arizona though? It’s so fun. The people are cool—and just, I don’t see the issue.”

“Have you thought about your future at all, John? Where is Arizona going to get you in life?” Harlow said shortly.

John narrowed his eyes at her, “We don’t have it all planned out yet Harlow. We can’t all be as good as you, you know. From your perfect family to your perfect grades—not all of us are that fortunate.”

He watched as Harlow scoffed and gathered her books, shoving them into her bag, “You know nothing about me.”

“Oh yes I do,” John began, venom in his voice. He hated when people who had it all together wanted a pity party. Not everyone had it as well off. “You’re Harlow Peterson, the girl that is better than everyone else. You’re number one ranked in the class for GPA and on your way to being the valedictorian. You’ve never been to a party. You probably listen to Britney Spears or whatever else is on the radio because you don’t have individuality. You would rather read a book than talk to real people because no offense, you’re kind of a standoffish bitch.”

Harlow raised her hand quickly and John honestly wasn’t surprised when he felt his cheek harshly. “You have no idea who the hell I am, so I just suggest you shut the fuck up. Okay?”

John watched as she stormed out of the room and his cheeks became hot. Why the hell did he say that to her? Sure, he may have thought some of the things about her but he should have never of had said them to her face like that—that would never help him win this bet.

John sighed and rested his hands on the table in front of him, closing his eyes.

He needed to fix this—and he needed to fix it soon.