Sloth

Chapter 11

Achy and bleary-eyed, Beth stepped through her front door-and into an ambush.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Are you okay?”

“What were you thinking?”

“Why didn’t you call?”

Beth sighed, ducked her head, and waited for the yelling to stop.

“Well?” Her father loomed over her, fuming, while her mother slumped onto the frayed living-room couch, her eyes rimmed with red. Beth supposed she should feel sorry for causing concern, but all she had to offer was surprise and a mild disgust.

“Well what?” she asked. “I told you I was going to a party. I stayed over.”

Her father s eyes widened. She knew what they’d been expecting. Sweet, mild-mannered Beth, always responsible and always apologetic. She was sick of it.

“Do you know how we felt when we woke up and saw you never came home last night?” her father boomed. “Do you know what we thought?”

“That you’d actually have to make your own breakfast for once?” Beth snapped, horrified as soon as the words popped out of her mouth. But there was no taking them back, and she didn’t particularly want to.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“Beth, Beth, sweetie.” Her mother shook her head sorrowfully, giving Beth her well-practiced martyr look. “Things around here are hard enough without… we really expected more of you.”

Beth wanted to kick something. “Too bad!” she cried, all the stress of the last week shooting out of her. “I’m seventeen, Mom. I’m not your maid, I’m not your babysitter, I’m not your cook, I’m your daughter, and sometimes I screw up. Deal with it.”

“That’s it!” her father shouted. “Go up to your room. Your mother and I don’t have time to deal with your temper tantrum right now.”

Cue the guilt: Her parents both worked triple shifts and were constantly exhausted. The twins took a lot of work. The house was always a mess. It was Beth’s responsibility to pitch in and shut up. She knew all that-but today, she just didn’t care.

“I’m out of here,” she muttered, turning her back on her parents.

“Don’t you disobey me,” her father warned. “Get back here.”

“Or what?” Beth kept her back to him, not wanting him to see the tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. “You’ll punish me? You’ll disown me? If it turns out I’m not one hundred percent perfect, you’ll just stop loving me?”

“Beth, what are you-?” Her mothers voice broke. Beth forced herself not to give in to the inevitable tears. She slipped out the door before her father could issue any more threats or her mother any pleas.

I’m not who they think I am, she told herself, getting into the car without knowing where to go next. Better they find that out now.

Tyson versus Holyfield.

Bush versus Gore.

Jennifer versus Angelina.

As all-time grudge matches go, they had nothing on this.

In one corner: Miranda Sellers, five feet of fighting force powered by jealousy, humiliation, a world-class hangover, two months of repressed anger, and eighteen years of repressed everything else.

In the other corner: the undefeated champion Harper Grace, aka the Terminator, aka the Beast, aka the Ice Queen, who would settle for nothing less than unconditional surrender.

Ladies, come out fighting-and try to keep this fair and above the belt.

As if.

Miranda and Harper circled each other warily, each waiting for the other to land the first blow. Harper had the home-court advantage, which only meant that she had nowhere to escape. Miranda had shown up at her door, dragged Harper up to her bedroom, and now, behind closed doors and with a bleary-eyed ferocity, was ready to pounce. On the wall behind her hung a bulletin board covered in photos of the dynamic duo s greatest hits: junior high dances, makeover-themed slumber parties, crappy double dates, and triumphant after-parties. It was a vivid documentary record of their friendship; but at the moment, it was irrelevant.

Miranda swung first. “How could you?” she asked, pacing around Harper in a tight circle.

“What?”

“I saw you with Kane,” Miranda snapped. “It was disgusting.”

“So?”

“So you know how I feel about him.”

Harper landed the first blow. She laughed. “So maybe I don’t care.”

“That’s obvious,” Miranda retorted. “You don’t care about anything.”

Point to Miranda.

“What do you know?” Harper yelled, her face turning red.

“Nothing!” Miranda shouted back. “Because you won’t let me!” She paused, and sucked in a lungful of air. “I’m supposed to be your best friend,” she said quietly.

Harper threw her hands in the air. “Since when? Last month you hated me, this month you love me. Gosh,” she said sarcastically, opening her eyes wide in confusion. “I just can’t keep track.”

“Last month you screwed me over and were a total bitch about it!” Miranda snapped. “This month…”

“Yeah.” Harper scowled. “This month you’re back, because you feel sorry for me. Like I need that!”

The gloves were off.

Miranda wanted to cry. But, instead, she balled up her fists, wishing she could land a real blow.

Harper felt the anger explode from her, and it was such a blissful release to finally let it go that she didn’t care who was in the line of fire. She didn’t care who she was really angry at-Miranda was there, and she made for an easy target. It just felt so good, after all these weeks, to shout, to scream, to unclench her muscles, to drop the fake smile.

To let herself feel.

It was almost worth it.

Even when Miranda pounded her fist against the wall, slammed through the door, and left Harper alone.

Here is what Miranda remembered as she walked down the driveway to her car, trying to keep her face turned away from Adam’s house, and trying not to cry:

The sneer on Harper’s face and the ice in her eyes.

The sound of Harper laughing at her pain.

And, most of all, Harper’s words.

“Maybe if you weren’t so goddamn annoying and in my face all! The! Time!”

“Stop pretending you can understand anything about

me!

“I don’t need your pity and I don’t need you!”

And here is what Harper remembered as she sat on the edge of her bed and let the numbness seep back in:

Miranda’s eyes blinking back tears.

Miranda’s voice shaking as she spit out everything she’d been holding back.

Miranda’s attack, the words they both knew were true.

“Why is everything always about you?”

“Of course I felt sorry for you-why else would I pretend you weren’t such a bitch?”

“I’ve been your best friend for ten fucking years-you barely even knew her!”

Mostly, both girls remembered the end.

“You want to be miserable? You want to be totally self-destructive and pathetic and blow off anyone who tries to help?” Miranda asked, disgusted. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Harper opened her bedroom door and waved her hand like an usher. “Don’t let me stop you from leaving.”

And with that, they were both down for the count.

Reed was on his back under the truck, monkeying with the exhaust system, when she came into the garage. He could only see her feet and ankles: thin, black pumps with a low heel; pale, delicate ankles growing from them, narrow enough that he could probably encircle each with one hand. He’d seen those feet before.

“Hello? Is anybody here? Hello?”

For a moment, Reed considered hiding under the truck until she gave up and went away. And he might have, if his wrench hadn’t slipped out of his fingers and clattered to the floor. After that, he had no choice.

He wheeled himself out from under the truck and sat up, wiping his greasy hands against his jeans. Beth was still wearing the same outfit she’d worn the night before. It had looked perfect at the party; here, surrounded by chains and toolboxes and busted carburetors, it didn’t fit.

“What’s up?” he asked, not really wanting to know.

Her face was flushed and tearstained, and her hands kept flickering toward her head. She would twirl a strand of hair, tuck it behind her ears, put her arm down, and then, a moment later, start twirling again, as if she couldn’t help herself. “I didn’t know where else to go,” she said simply. “I thought…”

She looked so lost and fragile, he just wanted to go to her and hug her. He wanted to fix her problem, whatever it was.

But why? he asked himself. What’s she to you?

“Can we, uh, go somewhere?” Beth asked, her lip trembling.

Reed shook his head. “I got a lot of stuff to do here,” he said. “You know.”

“Maybe I could just hang out for a while?” she asked, almost pleading. “I really just need-”

“No.” It would be too easy to be happy if she were there. And he shouldn’t be happy, not with someone else. “I told you, I’ve got stuff to do. You’d be in the way.”

“Oh.” She looked like he’d punched her. “Okay.” She began backing out of the garage, her eyes whipping back and forth, searching fruitlessly for something to focus on. “See you around, I guess.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Whatever.”

Then she was gone. He felt like an asshole. And he hurt.

He hadn’t lit up since the night before, and now, as the pain crept back into his brain, seemed like as good a time as any. He grabbed his stash out of the glove compartment and wandered outside, sitting on a small ledge behind the garage. He’d have plenty of privacy.

It was a familiar, soothing routine, parsing it out, rolling it up, sealing the blunt with a swift and smooth flick of the tongue.

A few deep breaths and he’d be able to float away, beyond all the pain and all the shit. It would stop hurting.

Reed brought the joint to his lips-and stopped.

He still missed Kaia when he was high. It was a dull, faint throbbing, like a bruise that’s turned invisible but has yet to fully heal. Not like now, when the pain was sharp and clear.

The pain was the only thing that was clear, and it burned everything else away. Maybe instead of putting the fire out, this time he should let it burn. He hadn’t cried when Kaia died, or yelled or pounded his fist into a glass window, as he’d wanted. He had just smoked up, and that made it all go away.

Just as he’d made Beth go away.

Reed didn’t know why he couldn’t let her get close.

He didn’t know why he couldn’t forget the touch of Kaia’s fingers on his neck-but could no longer picture her face.

He didn’t know if there was some time limit on what he felt, if one day he’d wake up and things would be right again-and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do if that never happened.

He stuffed the joint into one pocket, and the plastic bag into another. He was tired of being confused. Maybe, just for a while, he’d stay clear. It was worth a try. And if it was too much, relief was no more than a few lungfuls away.

In the back of Miranda’s closet, behind the stash of liquor, cigarettes, old issues of Cosmo, and a single pack of condoms that she enjoyed owning but had no expectation of using anytime soon, there was a stack of cardboard boxes. There were seven of them, each labeled in black permanent marker; one for each year, stretching back to sixth grade, and one extra for everything that had come before.

Every year, Miranda set aside an empty desk drawer and filled it with all the detritus of life that most normal people threw out. When the year ended, she dumped the contents into a box and started her collection over again. There were the obvious-ticket stubs, photographs, birthday cards-but everyone with the slightest pack rat tendency saved those. Miranda had an eye for the more subtle mementos: take-out menus, empty cigarette boxes, fliers for concerts she’d never attended, notes passed in class, detention slips, matchbooks, napkins, receipts, anything that might someday bring faded memories back to full color. Her mother liked to call her “the connoisseur of crap,” but as Miranda saw it, she was curating the museum of her life.

It was a narrow life, she saw now, sitting on the floor surrounded by half-open boxes and carefully sorted mounds of memories. There was the occasional homemade Valentine’s Day card from her little sister, and an entry pass left over from a long-ago family trip to some amusement park that had gone bankrupt only a few months later. But those were the exception; Harper was the rule.

Item: a torn scrap of lined paper, with the initials HG and SP written in neon, encircled by a light blue heart. (Pink had been out that year.) Harper had slipped Miranda the note while their sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Hernandez, had droned on and on about Lewis and Clark. Miranda knew exactly what it meant. For weeks, Harper had been drooling over Scott Pearson, universally acknowledged to be the cutest boy in the sixth grade, except for Craig Jessup, who didn’t count because he smelled like mildew Everyone knew that Scott had been planning to take Harper behind the school at recess, and kiss her. They’d disappeared after lunch, right on schedule-and now they were back in the classroom, and here was Harpers note. Miranda got the story on the walk home: He’d kissed her. It was wet, and sloppy, and gross, and now he was her boyfriend. Miranda made Harper promise to tell her every detail of everything that happened, so that she, too, could know what having a boyfriend was like. And Harper came through, recounting every moment she spent with Scott for the nine days their relationship lasted. Then Scott moved on to Leslie Giles, a seventh grader with bigger boobs, and Harper pretended her heart was broken, to get sympathy from every girl in school. Only Miranda got to hear the dirty little secret: Scott had bad breath, kissing was boring, and she was glad to be done with the whole stupid thing.

Item: a wrinkled napkin from High Score, a sports bar that had closed a couple years ago, probably because its TV was only thirty-two inches wide and its waitresses, who mostly looked like they’d been around since the Eisenhower administration, preferred using it to catch up on SOAPnet reruns of Dynasty and Melrose Place. For her sixteenth birthday, Harper had given Miranda her very first fake ID. It was crude and cheap, and claimed Miranda was a twenty-one-year-old Virginian named Melanie DeWitt, born May 27, Gemini, residing on Applewood Road, Manassas, Virginia, 20108. All details Miranda had struggled to memorize before they set out to test her new identity at High Score, where it was reputed that they’d let in a second grader if she flashed a homemade library card with her picture taped to it. Miranda was still nervous, forcing Harper to give her a pep talk before they strutted past the bouncer, flashing their ridiculous IDs, and sat down at a bar together for the first time. And despite the gross tables, nasty smells, and cheap beer, it had been the first truly great night of Miranda’s life.

Item: a program from the ninth-grade musical, Oliver! Miranda had wanted to try out-and, given the size of their school, “try out” really meant “write your name on the list and Mr. Grady will assign you your part.” But Harper had labeled it TLFU, Too Lame For Us. Lots of things were TLFU that year, which, not coincidentally, had marked the beginning of Harper’s rise to the top of the social stratosphere. White sneakers, boy bands, binders, the color pink (in the previous year, now out once again), eighth-grade boys, PG movies, sparkly nail polish-all TLFU. It was a lot for Miranda to remember, which was why, as in the case of the school musical, Harper had to keep reminding her. But they’d gone to see it, because Harper had scored them an invitation to the cast party, hosted by geeky Mara Schneider, whose brother Max was a junior and topped the official list of high school hunks. Max was supposed to be at the party, but didn’t show. Instead, Harper and Miranda got stuck in a corner with Barry and Brett Schanker. Barry had played the Artful Dodger, Brett had played the trumpet in the pit; both were pale, gangly, pockmarked, and intent on getting Harper and Miranda to play Twister with them in Mara Schneider’s rec room. Instead, Harper and Miranda had escaped into the backyard, where they’d spent the night dangling their feet in the Schneiders’ pool, smoking a full pack of cigarettes (courtesy of Brett Schanker), getting drunk on the hot pink “Kool-Aid-plus” punch, and pretending that they were the only two people there, or at least the only two who mattered. By the end of the night, Miranda had thrown up in the bushes, Harper had nearly fallen into the pool, and, in an act of mad courage (or courageous madness), they’d snuck up to Max’s room and snagged a pair of his boxers. (White, size medium, and covered in bright yellow happy faces; Max, they decided, was definitely TLFU.)

Item: a dried carnation from tenth-grade Valentine’s Day, left over from the bouquet Harper had given Miranda when she freaked out about not having a boyfriend.

Item: a magazine clipping of a tropical island, where they’d dreamed of someday co-owning a vacation house with their unspeakably wealthy and unbelievably handsome husbands.

Item: a Scrabble tile, rescued from the trash, after Harper-tired of losing each and every rainy day-had dumped the game.

Item: a thin, green plastic ring purchased for a quarter from a gumball machine. They’d each bought one, pledging to wear them forever. Miranda had lost hers first-this was Harper’s, because they both knew that Miranda’s card board boxes were the only place it would be safe.

Miranda rubbed her eyes. She’d been looking through the boxes for hours, as if something in one of them would be able to explain what was happening. But there were no answers, only the record of a friendship that should have been enough.

It was enough for Miranda-it had, for all these years, been nearly everything, and here was the proof. So why did Harper need so much more? And why was she willing to trash it, for Adam, for Kane, for Kaia, for anything?

Miranda had been willing to put everything aside for Harper s time of need, because that’s what best friends do. But it was obvious now: Whatever Harper needed, it wasn’t her.

Sometimes, she knew it was a dream while it was happening.

“Where are we?” she asked Kaia, gaping at the tiny huts lining the cobblestone streets. They wound up and around into the hills, giving way to long stretches of emerald green vineyards. On the other side, the land dropped off abruptly, and at the base of a cliff lapped the waters of a calm, turquoise sea.

“Italy,” Kaia said, looking bored. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses, despite the cloudy sky. “A little fishing village on the Riviera.”

“But I’ve never been here,” Harper said, confused. She’d never been out of California, not that she would have admitted it to Kaia, with her passport stuffed full of stamps from glamorous getaways to international hot spots.

“I have,” Kaia said, shrugging. “It gets old.”

“But this is my dream,” Harper pointed out. She wandered down one of the uneven paths, stopping just before the land dropped off to nothingness. Keeping her back to the town and staring out over the cliff face, she felt like she was on the edge of the world. “How can-?”

“You want to argue?” Kaia asked, stretching out on the ground as if she were at the beach. “Or you want to get a tan?”

Harper tossed a small rock over the edge of the cliff She tried to follow its way down, but didn’t see it land. “What are we doing here? What are you doing here? You’re…”

“Can’t say it, can you?” Kaia laughed bitterly. “Dead. Kaput. Kicked the bucket. Passed over to… woooooooh…” She made her voice dramatically low and solemn, “the Other Side”

“I was going to say, ‘You’re annoying me,’” Harper corrected her. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

“I did leave you alone. Isn’t that the problem?” Kaia stood up and brushed herself off. “Why else are you acting like such a mental case?” Before Harper could answer-not that she had an answer-Kaia wandered over to a small storefront, where she haggled with a stooped old man. She came back a moment later with an ice-cream cone heaped high with dripping scoops of chocolate and handed it to Harper.

“None for you?” Harper asked.

“Some of us actually care about our figures,” Kaia said, giving Harper a pointed look. She ignored it and took a big, slippery mouthful. It was chilly and delicious and, just like everything else, seemed somehow more real than waking life. For weeks, everything had looked gray, tasted dull; but here, even the air tasted sweet, and the ocean blazed a brilliant blue.

She stared down at the jagged rocks at the base of the cliff. The waves slammed against them, frothy geysers spurting several feet into the air. Harper crept closer to the edge, feeling a strange sense of power and possibility. Taking another step seemed like such a small, routine choice-she took steps every day, thousands of them-but the next one could launch her into midair, hundreds of feet above the ground.

What happens if you die in a dream? she wondered.

And maybe she wouldn’t die at all-maybe the water would cushion her and she would float away. Or maybe, since it was a dream, she would step off the ground and discover she could fly.

She was too afraid to find out.

“I don’t blame you.” Kaia’s voice was almost lost in the thunder of the crashing surf.

Harper didn’t turn around. It was all so easy for Kaia. It always had been. She just did whatever the hell she wanted, and then walked away. Disappeared. Harper was the one left to face the consequences. Harper was the one left to bear the pain.

She wanted to scream, as loud as she could, to see if her voice could fill the emptiness that lay before her, the vast ocean and sky bleeding together in a field of blue. She wanted to berate Kaia for leaving, to beg her to come back, to admit the horrible truth: More than anything, she wished she and Kaia had never met. Because then this whole nightmare-before the accident, and after-would disappear. But even though it was a dream, that was no excuse to let things get out of control, or to feel the things she wasn’t allowed to feel.

She opened her mouth, intending to apologize-for what she’d done, for what she’d thought, for what she’d wished. But something else leaked out.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” she told Kaia in a tight, level voice. “Maybe I blame you.”