“Do they know we’re coming?” Harlow asked, not looking up from her phone.
I was slightly annoyed that Harlow felt comfortable enough to take charge of the conversation. To ask questions and insert herself without any shred of discomfort. But that was Harlow. Her parents, like my mother, were professors at Bellwether University. While my mother was the reserved, serious type of professor who dressed mostly in all black and was constantly carrying a café latte, Harlow’s parents were the classic bohemian-style professors. They regularly served Tofurky and kombucha at dinner and always encouraged Harlow to speak her mind, teaching her that there wasn’t a single topic of conversation that was off-limits. This led to Harlow being the type of person who had never encountered a situation where she wasn’t immediately chatty and unguarded.
I guess you could say Harlow and I were opposites in that way. And usually I was fine to let her do the talking, but this situation felt different.
“Why? Who’s asking?” Julian joked.
Harlow didn’t respond. She was completely sucked into her phone.
Julian cleared his throat again with a cough. The action of someone who was not used to being ignored. “Who are you texting?” Julian’s tone was light, but it reeked of adult desperation. I was embarrassed for him and I squirmed in my seat. “Your boyfriend?” Julian continued to tease. I cringed and stared down at my ragged fingernails.
“Girlfriend,” Harlow snapped.
“Oh,” Julian said.
“Oh?” Harlow looked up from her phone.
“Nothing,” Julian said. “Good for you.”
“Good for me?” Harlow let out a fake laugh. “You’re such the prototypical middle-aged white dude.”
“Whoa!” He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “Shots fired.”
“I’m calling it how I see it,” she answered, and gazed pointedly out the window. The fading sunlight glinted against her nose ring, which was new. Quinn had talked her into it. And as much as I wanted to begrudge it because it was yet another New Thing That Came from Quinn, the piercing suited Harlow. It gave her a glamorous edge.
But as I watched her, my feelings of affection slowly slipped to anger. It was strange—I’d felt totally fine ragging on him about his reaction to the Nina Simone song, silently judging his desperation vying for attention moments ago, but listening to Harlow lay into him made me irritated. He was my dad to judge and criticize. Not hers. Though I couldn’t really argue with her—he was pretty much the definition of a middle-aged white dude, albeit with the black skinny jeans.
“Kids these days,” Julian said. “You guys are all language police.”
“Just because we want the world to be more equitable and less oppressive doesn’t make us the ‘language police,’” Harlow said.
“Yeah, but if you’re constantly outraged about everything, how will you ever know when to be really upset? How will you know when something is really worth fighting for?”
“I think I’ll manage,” Harlow whispered in the way she only did when she was actually very pissed off.
I pondered Julian’s question for a moment, and I wasn’t really sure. I was used to feeling lots of things, but I still hadn’t learned how to categorize and weigh them. That felt like a task I would master years later when I was forced to wear a tweed skirt and cream-colored pumps to my office job. As far as I was concerned, my job at sixteen was to feel things. To really feel them.
And feeling seemed good enough for now.
“I think you’d really like Harlow’s girlfriend’s band,” I said, trying to broker a peace offering between the two of them. But really maybe I was trying to broker a peace offering between Harlow and me. I wanted to fix whatever was broken between us, but the problem was I didn’t know how to fix something that neither of us had admitted was broken. “Really?” Julian said. “I’d like to hear it. But I’d also like to hear one of your songs.”
I ignored his last comment and turned to Harlow. “Put on one of Quinn’s songs.”
Harlow looked at me nervously. A few moments ago, she had been all bravado, triumphantly calling Julian out on all of his failings and microaggressions, and now the tips of her ears were turning red and she was nervously flipping her phone back and forth between her palms. “I don’t know. He probably isn’t interested in hearing it.”
“Wait. Is it another Broadway tune?” Julian asked.
“Hell no,” Harlow said quickly. And then she looked at me and added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“You guys are lame. Hamilton is a true masterpiece,” I groaned.
“You’re right. And you know I like it, okay. But I’d still rather listen to ‘Kiss Off’ over and over again than hear George Washington rap,” Harlow said.
I rolled my eyes as Julian exclaimed, “Yes!” and raised his hand and tapped the car’s ceiling excitedly. He craned his neck back to flash Harlow a grin. “The Violent Femmes are the very best.” He stuck his hand out to high-five her. “Now you’re giving me some hope for the future of the youth of this country.”
“‘I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record,’” Harlow sneered-sang.
“‘Oh, yeah? Well, don’t get so distressed/Did I happen to mention that I’m impressed?’” Julian sang back.
I was already starting to feel like a third wheel on a date when Julian peered back at Harlow and said, “You sure things aren’t mixed up and you’re not actually the one who’s my daughter?”
Harlow’s eyes shot straight to the floor mats. The whole car went silent. It was much too soon for that type of joke. Julian coughed awkwardly in what I assumed was an attempt to recover.
“Sooooo,” he breathed out, “do you want to put on some of your girl’s jams or what?”
Harlow glanced at me as if asking, Is that okay? Or do we hate him now? Should I ice him out? Loyalty. Despite everything that was broken between us, at least the two of us still had that.
I gave her a slight nod.
Harlow leaned forward and grabbed the auxiliary cord. She plugged her phone in and soon Quinn’s tinny voice filled the car. I’d never found Quinn’s band to be anything to write home about (or perhaps more accurately, to write Julian about), but Harlow loved them, of course. I briefly wondered if it was the same for Mom when she listened to S.I.T.A.’s songs. The thought made me feel queasy and guilty and I tried to chase it away.