Salvation in the Secular Age {MH/GD}

{You're In Your High Tops Anyway}

{HELLO LOVELIES!!!! Going to do I think two more parts in Harper's POV before I move on to present day. Hope everyone is liking this! Thanks again so much more the votes and comments!}

The next few months would signify a pivotal time in my life: the time I grew from child to woman. Perhaps it's precocious to call yourself a woman when you're merely a seventeen year old girl; but I was no normal seventeen year old girl. Perhaps I am confusing maturity with being jaded. Either way, I was not the same after my father died.

It was a week after his funeral, and also the night before the first day of my last year of school. I was back at Aunt Christine's, sitting alone in the dark on the patio, my clove cigarette keeping my company. My mother had convinced me to stay here and finish out high school. I wasn't wanted back at St. Augustine's, and the patchwork quilts, antiques, and mundane routine of Christine and Lenny's house was starting to be comfortable for me.

The summer was a long stretch of heat. I'd spent the first half of it rolling around in the sheets mid-day with Matty while Christine and Lenny were at work, and discovered that he was a fast learner. We were two kids who had nothing better to do than each other, and I was starting to really enjoy his company. Wherever the boys were, I would tag along if I felt the urge to. Ross was funny, George was a goof but sweet, Matty was blossoming into the man he'd become, and Adam was already one of the best friends I'd ever had.

The second half of the summer was spent at my parents house, my father grey and suffering. It was a dishonorable kind of death; no one ever talks about that. How you lose your dignity, independence, ability to even think clearly. My mother, though I almost loathed her, was so exhausted all of the time, physically and emotionally. She had asked me to leave days before Dad died, since we all knew it was coming, but I refused.

I needed to be with him, even if it was awful, I still wanted to cherish those last moments of his life. His misery was over, but mine still thrived.

My father's illness, let alone his death, was something I hadn't mentioned to any of my new friends (other than Adam). To them, I was Harper Halifax, the red-head who was half their size but could outdrink all of them. I wasn't anyone to pity.

Adam's garage opened, and it was well past midnight. From the loud banter, I could tell he and the boys were hanging out. It had been nearly six weeks since I'd seen any of them.

"Harper," Adam called to me, his boots strutting down the driveway, his hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans. "Hey!"

I stood in my high tops, running toward him and leaping onto his gangly frame. He grunted, but smiled sweetly. I had really missed him.

"Hey, Hann," I said, my legs completely wrapped around his torso now. My lips went to his cheek quickly, and when my eyes met his he was flashing me a toothy smile.

"How've you been?" he asked, putting me down back onto the pavement and cocking his head in a request for me to join he and his boys in the garage.

Adam knew about my father, but not signicifant detail. He'd called me multiple times over the past month and half while I was at home, checking up on me. He'wasn't a man of many words, but he knew that I wouldn't have appreciated uneccessary "I'm sorrys" and "It'll be okays." He was the only friend of mine who I had truly poured my heart out onto, taking my words into his mind like thoughts written in a teen agnst journal.

I shrugged, answering his question. "Alright. You?"

"Good," he said, knowing I was lying but not pressing it, instead walking into his garage with me following.

Taking Back Sunday was playing on the set of speakers in the corner, and George and Ross were playing table tennis, both of them very focused, George squinting his brown eyes and Ross pursing a cigarette at the corner of his mouth.