Storm Glass

The sky outside the barn window turned that sickly purple-green color that means tornado weather in Oklahoma. Rain hammered the metal roof like it was trying to break in.

"You gonna tell me what's actually wrong, or are we gonna pretend you didn't literally cry in the bathroom at Paxton's party?" Maya asked, not looking up from her phone.

I stared at my boots. "It's nothing."

"That's such bull." Maya finally looked at me. "You've been my best friend since sixth grade. I know when something's up."

Lightning flashed across the window, making everything inside the barn glow ghostly white for half a second. Then thunder shook the walls. The bulls in the back pen started shifting nervously, their hooves scraping against the concrete.

"My dad's moving again," I said, the words tasting like gravel. "Phoenix this time."

Maya's phone screen went dark. "What? When?"

"End of the month."

"But it's junior year, Harper. You can't—" She stopped. "Wait, is that why you were crying at Paxton's? Because Tyler asked you to winter formal and you knew you'd be gone?"

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The bulls were definitely freaking out now. I could hear them snorting and bumping into each other.

"I don't care about Tyler," I said. "I care about—" The sentence caught in my throat. "I care about not being here. With you."

Maya's phone buzzed on her lap. She didn't pick it up. The space between us in that dusty barn felt suddenly electric, like the air before a storm, and it wasn't the weather.

"Phoenix isn't that far," she said quietly. "We can—"

"It's not the same." I looked at her. Really looked at her. "Everything's different when you're not two towns over."

She reached over and squeezed my hand. Her palm was warm. Outside, the rain kept falling like it would never stop, and the lightning kept striking, and somewhere in all that noise and light, something changed between us that I couldn't name yet but knew would matter forever.