Lust

Chapter 2

Senior year, day one.

Harper sighed. An hour into the year, and it already felt like an eternity At least she’d already managed to snag a coveted Get-Out-of-Class-Free pass, this time in the guise of eagerness to welcome some newcomer to their hallowed halls. Because, of course, she wanted to give the girl a warm and cheery Haven High welcome.

As if.

“Ms. Grace, you’re late!” called the school secretary, catching Harper wandering slowly down the hall and hauling her back into the office. “Come in, come in! Meet Haven High’s newest student.”

Squirming out of Mrs. Schlegel’s greasy grip, Harper put on her best good-girl smile. It never hurt to curry some favor with the school’s high and mighty (or their secretaries), and besides, a new student was something to see. Something new and different-and there was very little at Haven High that was ever new or different. She just hoped this one wouldn’t turn out to be as big a loser as the last new girl had been. Heidi Kluger. A fat girl’s name, Harper supposed-she shouldn’t have been too surprised. But today-

“Harper Grace, meet Kaia. Kaia Sellers, Haven High’s newest senior.” Mrs. Schlegel beamed at the two girls, as if expecting their lifelong friendship to begin immediately. “Kaia, Harper will be showing you around today I’m sure she’ll be happy to give you all the 411 you need.”

Harper barely noticed the secretary’s pathetic attempt to co-opt some teen “lingo”-she was frozen, staring at the new girl. Who was most definitely not fat. Not ugly. Not a loser.

No, from the BCBG shoes to the Marc Jacobs bag to the Ella Moss top, this girl was definitely a contender. Long, silky black hair, every strand perfectly in place (Harper unconsciously raised a hand to her own wild mane of loose curls). A delicate, china doll face with just a hint of makeup to bring out her deep green eyes and high cheekbones. And the clothes… Harper squelched a stab of envy, thinking of the pile of rejects still lying on her bedroom floor. The winning ensemble, hip-hugging jeans and a white backless top (the better to show off her deep tan) had seemed a good choice in the morning, but although she’d driven two hours to Ludlow this summer to find the Diesel knockoffs, she could hardly call them haute couture. Faux couture, maybe. No one around here could tell the difference. But this girl-in a red silk printed halter and matching red Max Mara skirt, an outfit Harper was sure she’d spotted in last month’s Cosmo-this girl looked like she could.

Trying her best not to imagine what the arrival of this cooler-than-thou girl might do to her carefully maintained social status, Harper took a deep breath and began the tour. She led Kaia (what kind of a name was that, anyway?) down the hall, furiously searching for something to say that would make her sound more sophisticated than the smalltown hick Kaia was sure to be expecting.

But, wit and charm failing her when she needed them the most, Harper settled for the obvious.

“So, where are you from?”

“Oh, around,” Kaia said, looking bored. “We have an apartment in New York-and my mother keeps a place in the country. Of course, some years I’m away at school…”

Boarding school? Harper fought to maintain a neutral expression-just because the new girl was the epitome of urban rich cool and looked as if she’d just walked off a movie screen was no reason to panic.

And maybe…

Maybe Little Miss Perfect would actually be an asset. There had to be a way.

“Boarding school?” Harper asked, trying to sound as if she cared-though not too much, of course. “So what happened?”

“Which school?” asked Kaia, smirking. “This last time? Long story. Let’s just say that if you’re going to be sneaking two guys out your window, it’s best to check first that the headmistress isn’t spending the evening in the quad, watching a meteor shower. It’s also probably best if the guys aren’t carrying a stash of pot-the other half of which is in your dorm room.”

Harper burst into laughter. If nothing else, this was going to be interesting.

“So as punishment, they exiled you to no-man’s-land?”

“Yeah, my dad lives out here. Tough love, right? I guess they figured there’d be no trouble for me to get into out in the middle of nowhere.” Kaia, who had been smiling, suddenly frowned and looked around her. “Obviously, they were right.”

It was true. Haven High wasn’t much to look at-and appearances weren’t deceiving. The squat building, erected in the late sixties, had been ahead of its time, its designers embracing the riot-proof concrete bunker style of architecture that grew so popular in the next decade and then deservedly vanished from sight. It was an ugly and impersonal structure, painted long ago in shades of rust and mud-also, conveniently, the school colors (although the powers that be preferred to refer to them as orange and brown). Built to accommodate a town swelled by baby boomers, the small school now housed an even smaller student body, and the dilapidated hallway in which Kaia and Harper stood was largely empty.

The girls fell silent for a moment, contemplating the peeling paint, the faint scent of cleaning fluid mixed with mashed potatoes drifting over from the cafeteria. The year to come. At the moment, neither was too thrilled by the prospect.

“So, Harper Grace,” Kaia began, breaking the awkward moment. “I don’t suppose that’s any relation to Grace, California, my oh-so-fabulous new hometown?”

“You got it,” Harper replied, allowing herself a modest smile. She did love being great-great-great-granddaddy’s little girl. “Grace Mines, Grace Library, Grace, CA. There used to be a Grace High School, too, but it burned down in the fifties.”

Kaia failed to look impressed-or even particularly interested. But Harper persevered. “This used to be a mining town, you know. My great-great-great-grandfather was like a king around here. Graces ran the mine all the way until it closed in the forties.”

“Uh-huh.”

Of course, Harper didn’t mention the fact that a few years after the mine ran dry, the family bank account had done the same. Being a Grace somehow didn’t seem to mean as much these days when the only family business was a dry cleaning shop on North Hampton Street. But at least she had the name.

Not that Kaia seemed to care.

What was the point of trying to impress this girl, anyway? She’d find out soon enough that Harper was as good as it got around here. When that happened, she’d come crawling back-in the meantime, why bother trying?

And with that, Harper reverted to autopilot tour guide mode.

“And this is the gym,” she explained, directing Kaia’s attention to the wall moldings. “Refurbished in 1979, it can hold over one hundred people…”

You think you’re bored now, Kaia? she thought. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

“She said what?” Miranda’s eyes widened.

Harper grinned. She so loved a good story, and Miranda was such an appreciative audience-suitably shocked and awed in all the right places. Not that that was why Harper kept her around, of course… but it didn’t hurt.

“You heard me. I asked her why she’d been kicked out of her swanky boarding school and that’s what she told me.” Feigning sudden disinterest in Kaia’s sleazy past, Harper idly picked up one of the beakers of solution sitting on the lab table in front of her-but, thinking better of it, quickly set it down again. As if she’d been paying attention to what they were supposed to be doing with all this stuff.

Miranda let out a long, low whistle. “Do you think it’s true?”

Harper shrugged.

“Who knows. To be honest, she looked like she’d lie about her own name if she thought it would get a rise out of people. You know the type.”

Miranda arched an eyebrow but said nothing.

“What?” Harper asked.

Miranda looked at her pointedly

“Remind you of anyone you know?” she asked finally.

“Who, me?” Harper answered, forcing a laugh-and ignoring the annoying ring of truth. “In her dreams, maybe. You should have seen her, sauntering around like she owns the place, acting like I’m going to collapse in awe of her Marc Jacobs bag.”

“Marc Jacobs?”

“Oh God, chill out.” The shock and awe reactions were suddenly getting a little old. “It was just a bag. I’m sure it was a fake. You can always tell.”

Must have been. Harper’s “Kate Spade” bag looked real from a distance too. But it wasn’t. Obviously.

But Miranda wouldn’t be put off the scent. “So why do you think that-”

“Girls, a little less conversation, a little more science, please?”

Mrs. Bonner, a short, all-too-perky blonde who liked to wear her unnecessary white lab coat even on trips to the grocery store (and Harper and Miranda could vouch for this, having once spotted the white-smocked figure ferrying a case of Budweiser out of the Shop ‘n’ Save), shot them a warning look and continued pacing around the room.

They were supposed to be titrating their solvent-or dissolving their titration, or something along those lines, Harper couldn’t remember. Yet another reason, come to think of it, that it was useful to keep Miranda around. That and the fact that they’d been best friends since the third grade, when Mikey Mandel had knocked over their carefully constructed LEGO tower and Harper had punched him in the stomach. Mikey wasn’t too happy-and Miranda had stuck by her side through all the hair-pulling, pinching, wrestling, and screaming that followed, through the unsuccessful lying and excuses when they’d been caught by the recess monitor, through the long hours they’d spent sitting out in the hall “thinking about their actions.” Nine years later, Miranda had grown (if not as many inches as she’d hoped) from a shy, scrawny tomboy into a smart, snarky girl with a killer smile and the quickest wit in the West, and she was still loyally cleaning up Harper’s messes-or, when that failed, readily plunging after her into the mud. Mikey Mandel, on the other hand, had grown into a serious stud: six foot four, football team’s star running back, scruffy hair, smoldering eyes, never without a smiling blonde on his arm-and he was still a prick.

“I can’t believe she’s actually making us do a lab on the first day of school,” Harper complained, digging through the photocopied packet of instructions, searching for some hint of what she was supposed to do with the multicolored liquids staring her down from atop the table. “It’s inhuman.”

“Who ever said the Bonner was human?” Miranda asked, carefully suspending their beaker of solution over the lit Bunsen burner.

It was true-they’d had her for science three years in a row (nothing ever changed at Haven High), and in all that time she’d yet to show up with new hair, new shoes, or a new lab coat-and who could imagine what lay beneath the glorified white sheet? Their very own Frankenstein’s Monster, for all Harper knew. Maybe their science teacher was just some student’s award-winning science project. She stifled a laugh at the thought.

“What?” hissed Miranda, flashing her a look of caution as the teacher circled toward them again. They bent intently over their flasks and beakers, feigning enthusiasm in the scientific process. The two girls at the next table squealed with joy as they measured their solvent-just as they’d predicted, to the millimeter. Woo-hoo.

“Great job, Einstein,” Harper grumbled to the nearest squealer, a loser in a loose polo shirt and dark-rimmed glasses whom she recognized vaguely from homeroom. Probably on the math team. Or the chess “squad.” “Can you invent a chemical solution that will make us care?”

The girl and her equally geeky lab partner studiously ignored her-but at least they shut up. Harper knew she probably shouldn’t alienate anyone who might later be persuaded to do her work for her (since she knew from experience that doing these labs herself was basically a no-go), but it was all just too tempting. Especially given the mood she was in: shitty.

“So, is she going to be here all year?” Miranda whispered, once Bonner was a safe distance away.

“Who? Marie Curie over there? I hope not. I’ve already got a headache.”

“No, the new girl-Kaia? How long’s she staying?”

Harper shrugged. She was already sorry she’d ever started this conversation-she didn’t want to talk about the new girl anymore, especially since this was shaping up to be the start of a yearlong conversation.

“It’s a little hot and stuffy in here, don’t you think?” she asked, dodging Miranda’s question.

“What? I guess. So?”

“So maybe it’s time we get a little fresh air.” Before Miranda could stop her, Harper crumpled up a piece of paper, dipped it into the Bunsen burner’s flame for a moment, and then surreptitiously tossed the fiery ball into their trash can.

“What the hell are you doing?” Miranda hissed.

Harper ignored her, and instead watched with triumph and delight as flames began to lick at the edges of the squat trash can, slowly consuming the small collection of crumpled paper. It was mesmerizing.

“Fire!” Harper finally shouted.

On cue, the girls next to her began squealing in horror, and one slammed her fist into the emergency sprinkler button that hung next to each lab table.

And that was all it took.

The room began to rain.

The smoke alarm blared.

And chaos broke out as the roomful of students scrambled to get their stuff together and escape the downpour, pushing and shoving each other out of the way, only a couple of them craning their necks to search for the fire, which had very quickly gone out. Mrs. Bonner raced back and forth across the room, herding students out of danger but clearly more concerned about making sure that her precious chemicals and lab equipment stayed safe, sound, and dry.

Laughing, water pouring down her face, Harper pulled Miranda out of the classroom and down the hall. They ran for an exit together and ducked into the parking lot, finally sinking down behind a row of parked cars, convulsing with laughter on the warm concrete.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Miranda gasped, half annoyed and half amazed. “I’m totally soaked.”

Harper grinned lazily and, catlike, stretched her body out and preened in the sun.

“You’ll dry. And now instead of titrating and distilling and blah, blah, blah, we can spend the rest of the hour talking about the important things in life.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. Guys? What we’re going to do this weekend? Whether any of your cigarettes are still dry enough to smoke?”

Sighing, Miranda pulled out her pack-only slightly wet on one corner-and tossed it to Harper.

“I don’t want to rain on your parade, but did you even stop to consider what would happen if you’d gotten caught? Or if, I don’t know, you’d set the school on fire?”

“Rand, it was a double period.” Harper spoke slowly and loudly, as if deciding that Miranda needed a little help trying to wrap her brain around the basics. “We would have been stuck in there forever”

“Oh, please,” Miranda snorted. She began digging through her soggy backpack, assessing the damage: Spanish notebook: dry. Sort of. Paperback Hamlet for AP English: soaked. Stila mascara and MAC lipstick: mercifully intact. “If you’d just waited, we would have been out in an hour.”

Harper took a long drag on the cigarette and took a moment to consider that. She shook her head.

“We’re seniors now,” she said finally “We’ve waited long enough.”

Boring.

It had taken the girl-Harper-an endless fifty minutes to guide Kaia through the school, fifty minutes of her life that she would never get back. And the rest of the morning had just been more of the same. People she didn’t want to meet, telling her things she didn’t want to know. As if she cared what to do or where to go in this shoebox of a school, or had any interest in who was who-or who was sleeping with whom-as if the mundane details of anything in this tedious town could be anything less than tedious.

Anything but boring.

Boring.

Boring.

The word had been beating a steady tattoo in her head ever since she’d arrived in this one-horse (or in this case, she supposed, one-Wal-Mart) town. Not by plane, of course. There was no airport in Grace, CA. Apparently, there was no airport anywhere near Grace, CA, if the endless drive from Las Vegas was any indication. Though to be honest, she was surprised there were even cars in the ridiculous town-the whole place had the feel of a different century, except for the tacky tourist strip of Route 66 running through the town center-there time seemed frozen in a particularly bad year of the 1970s.

She’d plodded through three hours of the school day and knew pretty much all that she needed to know about her new life in Grace-as in, there wasn’t going to be much of one. Now here she was, standing in line in a cafeteria-a cafeteria, a smelly, cramped room painted hospital green, with long metal tables bolted to the floor, cranky old women in hairnets doling out lumps of food, hordes of dull-eyed students who at least deserved credit for not all outweighing an elephant, if they’d been eating this greasy crap their entire lives. Who knew places like this actually existed? Kaia’s schooltime meals had varied. There was the gourmet health food in the regal boarding school dining hall, with its vaulted ceilings and centuries-old oak tables. And of course the Upper West Side takeout cuisine grabbed to go during lunch periods-well, any and all periods-at her city prep school. (Prep school had been before and after boarding school-getting kicked out was easy when you had plenty of money and connections to kick you into somewhere else. How was Kaia supposed to know that she would only have so many opportunities to vacillate between the frying pan and fire before getting thrown off the stove altogether?) Even the lunches the maid had occasionally put together for her-or, years ago, the lunches her mother had packed before she’d decided that mothering was too last season-even those had been better than this slop. But that was then, this was now. This was life in Grace: dry heat, neon, decrepit gas stations, incompetent teachers, grease, dust, cafeterias. This was her life.

She was stuck. Stranded. A world away from everyone and everything she’d ever known.

At least it was also a world away from her mother. Thank God for small favors, right?

“Kaia, over here!”

Kaia whirled around to see the mind-numbing tour guide, Harper, waving in her direction. She stuck on a smile-though she didn’t trust Harper any farther than she could throw her (which, judging from the poorly hidden roll of flesh squeezed into the waistband of the girl’s faux designer jeans, wouldn’t be very far at all). But no reason to burn any bridges-not yet, at least. Besides, no way was she eating alone.

“Hi, Harper,” she said lazily, paying for her “lunch” (an apple, skim milk, and some wilted lettuce masquerading as a salad).

“My friends wanted you to come have lunch with us,” Harper explained.

Kaia noticed, but didn’t mention, the pronoun that was plainly missing from Harper’s halfhearted invitation. She followed Harper obediently out of the dingy cafeteria and into the cramped “quad” behind it, where students were apparently allowed to eat-if they could find a place to perch amidst the broken tables, scattered garbage, and everpresent dust. Kaia wrinkled her nose-this whole school should be declared a toxic waste site. Students included.

“Everyone, this is Kaia Sellers,” Harper said with a sarcastic flourish of her hands, once they’d found the right table.

Mmm… maybe not all the students. “Everyone” apparently included two tasty guys who looked as if they’d just walked out of an Abercrombie ad. They were sprawled on the wooden benches along with a few other apparent A-listers-even mahogany-filled dining halls have tables set aside for the social elite, and as a lifelong member of that class, Kaia could spot the signs from a mile away. The table was on the outskirts of the quad, far from the lunchroom monitor who poked her head outside every once in a while to make sure no one was smoking, drinking, or destroying school property. But even physically on the margins, the group was still somehow at the center of everything-attention, conversation, focus. These kids were loved, they were hated-but most of all, they were watched. Kaia knew the feeling.

“Kaia, this is Miranda Stevens.” Harper stood next to Kaia but had carefully angled her body away, so that she could keep a close watch on her but didn’t have to make any direct eye contact.

One of the girls, apparently Miranda, stepped forward to shake Kaia’s hand. Scarecrow thin, limp, dull hair pulled back into geeky braids, some unfortunate fashion choices-the white T-shirt under the imitation Chanel jacket just wasn’t doing it. But cute, Kaia thought. She’d do.

“And I’m Beth,” the other girl, blond and beautiful-if you liked that farmer’s daughter thing-waved from the other end of the table, where she was nuzzled under the arm of Abercrombie Number One. “Welcome to Haven High. I’m sure you-”

“And this is Adam and Kane,” Harper interrupted, stepping around to the other side of the table and placing a possessive hand on each of their backs. Adam was an all-American boy, with blond hair, a square jaw, an honest face, a dark blue T-shirt that no doubt hid washboard abs but revealed astonishingly thick biceps-no surprise, then, that he would be dating the farmer’s daughter, Kaia supposed. He kept one arm tightly around the blond girl, but reached out the other to shake Kaia’s hand. His fingers were warm, his grasp firm-she held it just a second too long.

Kane, on the other hand-there was nothing honest about him. The same muscles (they definitely didn’t make them like this in New York), the same striking good looks, but she could tell from his hooded eyes, from the smirk playing across his lips, from his unabashed and appreciative appraisal of her body as he rose to greet her, that he was playing in a different league. Maybe playing a different game.

Again Kaia extended a hand; instead of shaking it, Kane gently turned it face down, then raised it to his lips and gave it a light kiss.

“Charmed,” he said. From anyone else, it might have been smarmy. From him? It worked.

Both boys grinned at her, and Kaia could feel their gazes traveling down her long neck and lingering at the point where her silver pendant disappeared into the darkness of her low-cut V-neck. Boys and cleavage, she thought. It never fails.

She also noticed Harper noticing the boys’ glances-and saw the girl’s eyes narrow.

Not bad, Kaia decided. Pretty standard, maybe, but not too bad.

Who knows-maybe she could have a little fun here after all…

It was a perverse rule of nature: The first day of school always lasted forever. Temporal distortion not covered by the theory of relativity: One hour of first-day time roughly equivalent to half an eternity of normal time. Endless minutes of staring out the window, cursing the wasted daylight, all that time not getting a tan, not drinking a frozen strawberry margarita, not listening to cheesy eighties music and complaining there was never anything to do while secretly delighting in the Madonna singalong. Outside was suddenly Eden-inside, sweating through sixth period and watching the decrepit clock tick off the minutes, surely nothing less than the seventh level of Hell.

But this year, waiting through the day presented, at least for some, a special torture. They weren’t waiting for the final bell, they were waiting for the final period: advanced French. Normally a snoozefest with 150-year-old Madame Marshak (who, in the best tradition of hatefully eccentric high school French teachers, remained convinced of her essential Frenchness, despite her Houston birth certificate and unmistakable Texan twang). But this year Marshak had finally gone on to greener pastures-her sister’s house in Buffalo. Although given her advanced age and penchant for driving around tipsy after too much cheap French wine, it seemed likely that Buffalo would be only a brief layover on the way to her final destination.

Regardless, there was a new professeur in town-the first new teacher Haven High had seen in years.

He was young.

He was British.

And, if freshman gossip was to be believed-for he’d already made an appearance in third period’s French for annoying beginners-he was hot.

Seriously hot.

There was only one advanced French class, which meant that Beth, Harper, and now Kaia would be stuck in the small room together all year long. Beth sat toward the front (though not in the front row-she’d learned long ago that good grades were one thing, teacher’s pet was quite another) and flipped through her organizer, trying to figure out how she was going to fit in homework, editing the school newspaper, applying to colleges, babysitting her little brothers, and working a part-time job without going insane. And, oh yeah, without letting her boyfriend forget what she looked like.

Harper, ensconced as usual in the back row, lazily examined her nails and decided that it was definitely time for a manicure. And, come to think of it, maybe a pedicure. And a haircut. Not that there was a decent salon anywhere in town, but at Betty’s off of Green Street, they did a slightly better than half-assed job, and threw in a ten-minute head and shoulder massage for free. Which was an appealing thought-it was only the first day of school and already she could use a serious de-stressing.

Kaia slipped into the classroom just before the bell-Haven High stuck its language classes down in the basement, and she’d already stumbled across a decrepit boiler room and overstuffed janitor’s closet before finally finding her way here. She took the only seat that was left, on the aisle next to a boy who smelled like rotten fruit. A fitting end to the day. Or un fin parfait pour le jour, as her new French teacher would say. Wherever he was. “Advanced” French. Such a waste of her time, Kaia thought, considering she’d spent half of last summer on the Riviera, gossiping with the château’s staff like a native. Such a joke. Such a-

Such an unexpected treat. If the man who had just appeared in the doorway, flashed the class a rakish smile, ran a hand through his adorably floppy hair, and strode to the front of the room was actually their teacher, life at Haven High was suddenly looking up.

For the rumors were right.

This guy was hot.

Seriously hot.

Just like a movie star, Beth sighed to herself as he grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote his name on the board in quick, loping script.

Jack Powell. “Hola! Me llamo Jack Powell. Como esta?” he asked, as the class stared blankly back at him. “Okay, and if you understood any of that, you’re probably in the wrong place and you should get out. As for the rest of you, bienvenue and welcome to French 4.”

Hot and British, Harper mused. Tasty-Hugh Grant meets Clive Owen. So what the hell is he doing here?

“As you probably know, I’m new around here,” Powell admitted, taking off his sports jacket and perching casually on the edge of his desk. “So I’m sure this class is going to have some surprises to offer all of us.”

You have no idea, Kaia thought. She had never expected to find someone like him-so handsome, so charming, so cosmopolitan, so her-in this shitty town. But now that opportunity had knocked, it seemed only polite to open the door and invite him in.