Sloth

Chapter 4

It wasn’t easy to surprise Kane Geary When you assume that everyone in the world is out for themselves, not much happens that you don’t see coming.

But this was most definitely unexpected.

Beth sat at a table just in front of the school doors, handing out Haven High pennants and wrist bands to any seniors who’d forgotten to dress in Haven’s school colors- rust and mud-for Spirit Day; the most festively adorned, psychotically spirited senior would win some kind of fabulous grand prize.

Kane wore a navy button-down shirt and Michael Kors jeans.

He didn’t do spirit.

Harper was a few feet ahead of him, walking quickly with her head down, taking a few final puffs on her cigarette before entering the school. Kane, who noticed everything, caught Beth looking away as she approached-no surprise there. Harper, on the other hand, barely noticed the table of paraphernalia or the blond beauty staffing it. She just took one last drag and carelessly flicked the cigarette away-too carelessly, it turned out, as it tumbled through the air, right into Ms. Barbini’s back.

Never a good idea to pelt the teachers with cigarettes- tempting as it often was-but Ms. Barbini, the no-nonsense, no-deodorant geometry teacher, was a particularly poor choice. She whirled around, bent down, and picked up the incriminating butt between her thumb and index finger, then glared at Harper, who had frozen in place.

“Who threw this?” she asked, in a tone that suggested she need not wait for an answer.

Kane was close enough to see Harper roll her eyes, open her mouth… and snap it shut again as Beth leaped to her feet.

“I did, Ms. Barbini,” she announced.

Surprise.

Kane and Ms. Barbini goggled at her; Harper’s face remained expressionless, as if she were watching a rather boring show on TV and was just waiting for a commercial.

“You?” the teacher said incredulously.

“Me.”

“Can I go now?” Harper asked. “Wouldn’t want to be late for homeroom.” She shot a hostile glare at Beth-a silent message that looked less like thank you and more like your choice, your funeral-and, without waiting for an answer, limped up the stairs and disappeared inside the school.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Ms. Manning. Smoking on school grounds?” The teacher whipped out a small pink pad and began to scribble. “That’s two days’ detention.” She thrust the detention slip at Beth and, after giving her a disdainful scowl, followed in Harper’s footsteps up the stairs and through the heavy wooden doors.

It had been a late night, and Kane had almost cut homeroom to sleep in-good thing he’d made the “responsible” choice, as nothing cured a hangover like a good mystery. And there was nothing more mysterious than Beth taking the fall for her mortal enemy.

“Now that was interesting,” he said, sauntering up to Beth’s table. He swept aside a swath of orange and brown crap and hopped on, half standing, half sitting, and all in Beth’s face.

“Good morning,” she chirped, her face a gruesome imitation of a smile. “Would you like a pennant?”

“I’d like to know if you’re lobbying for sainthood.”

The smile collapsed into a frown-this one looked real. “Get off of there.” A pause. “Please.”

“She’s not going to thank you,” Kane pointed out. “But you know that. And you’ve got no reason to want to help her, unless maybe you just feel sorry for her… but even the kind and generous Beth Manning wouldn’t go that far.” He leaned toward her, squinting as if to peer more deeply into her eyes and uncover the real motive.

“Can you just leave me alone?” Beth snapped. Her face was turning pale, and she looked nervously down at the stack of papers she was shuffling and reshuffling as she spoke.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you owed her in some way,” Kane mused. “But what could you possibly owe Harper?”

At first, he’d just been enjoying himself watching her squirm-but Kane was beginning to suspect that his instincts were right, and something really was going on here. And it turned out that, accompanying his natural curiosity was an uncharacteristically sincere urge to protect Harper from whatever it might be. The second surprise of the morning.

“Just drop it,” she pleaded in a choked voice. “Just go away.”

“Where’s all this hostility coming from?” He gave her a wounded look. “I thought we were supposed to be friends now-isn’t that what you said?”

“Forget what I-”

“Is this jerk bothering you?”

Ah, the knight in shining armor, Kane thought, without turning around. Just in time.

“Chill out, buddy,” he told Adam. “Your ex and I are just having a little chat.” Kane stopped, and then, laughing as if the thought had just occurred to him, continued, “I guess she’s my ex too. Share and share alike.”

“Get out of here, Kane.” Adam grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and pulled him off the table. Kane wrestled his arm away, but that was it. He didn’t leave; he also didn’t fight back. Adam was the one with the problem, Adam was the one with the grudge-Adam was the one who, despite an apology and plenty of time, refused to get over it. He liked to act the wounded party, but he was the one who’d called an official end to their friendship. Over a girl. Adam was the one who just couldn’t deal.

“You okay, Beth?” he asked now, pulling that Mr. Sensitive act the girls couldn’t get enough of. (Except for Beth, Kane noted, with more than a flicker of pride- thanks in part to him, she’d had plenty.)

“I don’t need you to protect me,” she snapped, rising from the table.

“Can’t you both see that I’m busy?” she cried suddenly “I’m taking care of a million things, and the two of you…” She slammed down the cover of her thick binder and grabbed it off the table, hugging it to her chest.

“Beth-”Adam smiled and held up his hands in supplication.

“No. Not now. Just leave me alone. Both of you.” No one moved. “No? Fine, then I’ll do it for you.”

She spun away, her blond hair whipping against Kane’s face, and walked off.

Kane and Adam stared at each other, Adam looking like he’d just taken a swig of sour milk.

“So,” he said finally, rubbing a hand against his close-cropped blond hair.

“Yeah,” Kane agreed.

“What did you-?”

“Hey, nothing,” Kane protested quickly, shaking his head. “She’s just wound too tight.”

“Ya think?” Adam laughed, sounding not particularly happy, but not particularly angry, either, which was a change. “I’m starting to think all girls are crazy. She ‘forgive’ you, too?”

Kane nodded, and the two exchanged a wry smile, their first in weeks. “Wonder what she acts like when she holds a grudge.”

Adam was waiting for his tutor in the “computer lab” (really a closet-size space with a couple of stone-age PCs) when Miranda wandered in.

Great. Just great.

He’d hoped to keep the whole humiliating tutor thing under wraps, but if Miranda got wind of it, surely she’d run straight to Harper-who, in her current mood, might spread it all over school.

More good luck for me, he thought sourly.

“Hey, Adam.” Miranda didn’t look particularly surprised to see him, just uncomfortable. “What’s up?”

“Just waiting for someone,” he said brusquely, hoping she’d take the hint and leave.

And then the other shoe dropped-on his head.

“Uh, yeah… I know.” She gave him a tight smile, and the truth sunk in.

”You’re my tutor?”

“Guilty.” Miranda rubbed the back of her neck and hovered in the doorway. “Look, if this is too weird for you or anything, I’m sure you could get them to assign you someone else-”

“No, no,” he said without thinking, not wanting to be rude. But, on second thought… he’d known Miranda for years, and though they’d never been close, they’d always had one big thing in common: Harper.

Maybe this wasn’t such bad luck after all.

“I’m glad it’s you,” he told her, “and not some jerk who’d go bragging to the honor society about what an idiot I am.”

Miranda set her stuff down and pulled up a chair. “You’re not an idiot,” she said firmly.

Adam spit out a laugh. “I can see Campbell didn’t give you the full story. Trust me,” he boasted, clasping his hands together over his head like a champion, “you’re looking at the official winner of the Haven High dumbass award.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Miranda said, grinning. Adam was suddenly certain that she didn’t know he was on the verge of not graduating; he wasn’t about to fill her in.

“So, where should we start?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I guess I’ve got a math test this week,” he mumbled. Most of his friends were in calc or pre-calc this year, but he was stuck taking basic algebra. It was really for juniors-and it was still way over his head.

“Cool, I love math.” As the words slipped out, Miranda looked up, horrified. “You tell anyone I just said that and I’ll have to kill you.”

“How about a deal?” he suggested. “You keep this whole tutoring thing to yourself and I won’t tell anyone that you’re secretly a total geek.”

They grinned, and shook on it.

That was the end of the fun-Miranda dove right into the work, struggling to explain to Adam how to apply the quadratic formula and what it meant when an equation had an imaginary solution. But he couldn’t focus, and not just because it all sounded like a foreign language.

“How is she?” he asked suddenly, looking up from the books.

Miranda didn’t even pretend to be confused. “She’s okay…” She sighed. “That’s what she says, at least. I don’t ask anymore. It’s just… it’s better that way, you know?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know, of course. But he knew Harper, so he could imagine.

“Have you talked to her? I mean, have you two been…?”

“You don’t know?” Adam wrinkled his forehead. “I thought girls talked all that stuff to death.”

“Well, lately…”

“Yeah,” he said again. “Lately.” He wouldn’t make her say it. “She won’t talk to me,” he admitted. “I don’t know why.”

But that was a lie, wasn’t it? He knew exactly why-he couldn’t accept it.

She looks much better this time. Her skin is pink, her breathing strong and steady, the machines gone. And her eyes are open.

For two days, she refused to see anyone. And then, today, he was summoned.

She waves weakly when he comes into the room. She doesn’t smile.

”You look good, kid,” he says. Comparatively, it is true.

”They say I’m going home tomorrow.”

”Great!” His smile feels fake. Hers is nonexistent.

He comes over to the bed and leans over, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “I’m really glad you’re okay, Harper,” he says softly. “I’m-”He doesn’t know how to talk about it, what it felt like to lie awake in bed worrying about her, not knowing, waiting for something to happen, desperately hoping it wouldn’t, but even more desperate for the weird, endless, torturous limbo of waiting to just end. One way or another. He doesn’t want to ask if she heard all the things he told her when her eyes were closed, because he’s afraid that she did-and afraid that she didn’t. “We were all really worried,” he says finally, hiding in the “we.”

”I didn’t think you’d come,” she says dully. “I thought you hated me. ”

”Of course I don’t hate you,” he says, his voice too jolly. She winces. He knows he’s trying too hard; he just doesn’t know what he’s trying to do. He pulls a familiar chair up to the bed. He doesn’t take her hand. “Look, things got all screwed up at the end there, and I … we both said a lot of things that… you know, we probably shouldn’t have.”

”Mostly you said a lot of things,” she reminds him. “I just said I’m sorry. ”

She’d said it over and over again; he hadn’t wanted to listen.

”I know. I know you are,” he tells her. “I get that now. And I forgive you. ”

”Really?” Her eyes widen. She tries to sit up in bed, and her face twists in pain. He touches her shoulder, gently, helping her to lie back. She reaches out, touches his face. “Everything I did, I just did it because-”

”I know.”

The tension disappears from her face. “Then it’s okay,” she murmurs, almost to herself “Then at least something is…”

He leans in closer, struggling to hear-and she kisses him.

He jerks away.

He does it without even thinking.

He hasn’t thought any of it through, he realizes now. And now it’s too late.

”What?” There is a new pain on her face. “What is it?”

”Gracie, when I said-I didn’t mean-”

”You said you forgave me, Ad,” she says softly, as if maybe he forgot, and this is all a simple misunderstanding. “So that’s it. We can start again. No more lies, no more-”

”No.” He doesn’t know he’s going to say it before the word pops out, but he means it. “I want us to be friends again, Harper, I really do. But anything else… I think we work better, just as friends. When we tried to have more”-When you had to have more, he doesn’t say-”things got messy.”

”But it was all a mistake!” she protests, her voice scratchy and weak. “I explained that. I apologized, a million times. And you just want to go back? Like none of it ever happened? Like you never told me that you-”

”None of it was real.” He tries not to look away. He wants so much to make her smile; but he can’t tell her what she wants to hear. “When we were together, it was all a lie.” The words are harsh, but his voice is gentle. He doesn’t want to hurt her. “Everything you said was based on lies-and everything I said, that was just because I believed them. ”

She sags back against the pillows, her face returning to the dull, expressionless mask she’d worn when he came in.

Stop, he tells himself, horrified. Look what he’s said, what he’s done. He has to fix it-fix her.

”Gracie, you’re my best friend,” he says, and now he does take her hand. He can feel her pulling away, but he squeezes tighter, and she doesn’t have the strength. “I miss that. I miss you. We tried the whole dating thing, and it didn’t work out. It doesn’t matter why, or whose fault it is. It just didn’t. But that doesn’t mean-”

”Get out,” she says flatly.

”What?”

“I don’t need this.”

“I don’t understand,” he says, trying not to.

”You don’t forgive me,” she says bitterly. “You still think I’m not good enough for you, that I’m this manipulative slut who can’t be trusted. That’s what you told me, isn’t it? That I’m this terrible person, all rotted on the inside?”

”But I was wrong,” he protests. “I didn’t mean it. ”

”Right. “ Her voice swells, and he realizes that even now, hurt, powerless, confined to a bed, she has power. She is still, after all, Harper Grace. “You meant it. Then. So what’s changed now? You see me lying here and you feel sorry for me? You figure poor little Harper needs a nice pick-me-up in her bed of pain? And what? I’m supposed to be grateful for your pity?” Her voice is shaking, but her eyes are dry. And he knows that she will never let him see her pain.

“It’s not pity,” he argues.

”Yeah, but it’s not-” She stops herself. There is a long silence. “You don’t have to worry about me,” she says finally. “I’m fine. You did your little good deed by coming here, so you can forget your guilty conscience. ”

It would be so easy to fix this, he thinks. All he has to do is take her back, tell her he loves her and he understands everything she did to him. Tell her he’s ready to start over again, that the past doesn’t matter.

But it does matter. A car crash can’t erase anything that happened, or the choices that she made; it doesn’t change the kind of person she is, it doesn’t make it any easier to trust her again.

”You should get some rest,” he says. “We can talk about this tomorrow. I’ll come back and-”

”Don’t. ”

“I want to. ”

“I don’t care. “ She turns her head away from him and closes her eyes. They’re done.

“She’s feeling a lot better,” Miranda said, shrugging. “I’m sure pretty soon everything else will be back to normal. And the two of you…”

“I don’t know,” he said dubiously, although he had the same hope. It’s why he kept trying, in hopes that, if nothing else, she’d eventually get tired of pushing him away.

“I could tell her you were asking,” Miranda offered.

“No, don’t bother.” He looked down at his notebook, where a mess of numbers and letters sprinkled the page in an incomprehensible pattern. “Maybe we should just get back to work.”

After all, nothing in his life made much sense anymore; at least when it came to algebra, there was an answer key in the back of the book.

Beth pressed her foot down on the gas pedal, nudging the car just over the speed limit, and tried not to think about the two meetings she was blowing off or the stack of homework she’d face when she got home again. Today had gone from bad-an encounter with Kane that had rattled her even more than her first ever detention slip- to worse as she’d bombed a pop quiz, forgotten her gym uniform, and almost lost the Spirit Day prizes. She’d found them at the last minute, but had been forced to miss the culminating Spirit Rally in favor of her first detention, where she’d cowered in the back row under the glare of a tall, gaunt boy with pale skin and greasy hair who kept whispering something about how hot she’d look in leather.

It would be nice to say it had all been worth it, that she’d managed to erase some part of her imagined debt to Harper, and she was able to start feeling good about herself again, or at the very least that she could put the day behind her, sleep long and hard, and hope the next day would be better.

But she just felt unsteady. Maybe it was the detention, maybe it was the four cups of coffee she’d downed since morning, maybe it was Kane-her supplier, she reminded herself. She tried to shut it out, but the image popped into her mind yet again: the empty box on her nightstand. Kane was the only one who knew about it-the only one who could ever suspect what she’d done.

And if he hadn’t given her the pills, she reminded herself, none of this would have happened. She hated him- almost as much as she hated herself.

Little wonder that she couldn’t face her meeting, haggling with a bunch of overly enthusiastic volunteers about how to stage the next day’s auction, where to hang the banners, which last-minute details to delegate and which to ditch. It was too depressing, especially since she used to be one of them, trying hard, worrying, taking all that nervous energy left over from waiting for college decisions and funneling it into something productive and mildly entertaining. Now she was just acting the part. And it was getting old.

She couldn’t face going home; the house was always either too full of people, noise, and clutter to think straight, or it was empty and too quiet.

So she’d driven away, following the familiar curves until she reached the spot that guaranteed her a quiet place to think. She felt guilty there, as if she were trespassing, especially in those moments when she was overcome by self-pity-it felt wrong, feeling sorry for herself, there of all places. But she couldn’t help it. And as time passed, it became the only place that could help.

The road curved, and the thin white cross appeared. Beth pulled her car onto the shoulder and parked. She hesitated for a moment, staring through the windshield at the small wooden cross stuck into the brush-covered ground, the withering bunches of flowers gathered around it. It looked almost lonely, dwarfed by the vast emptiness of the surrounding desert. From this distance she couldn’t see the name scratched into the wood, but she imagined she could. She had traced her fingers over the letters often enough.

Beth didn’t know who had erected the small memorial- Kaia’s father, from the few glimpses she’d gotten before he left town, didn’t seem the type. And there were few other candidates. She got out of the car and walked slowly over to the cross, then sat on the ground in front of it, not caring if she got dirt all over her jeans. She’d brought along her ancient duct-taped-together Discman, and now she switched it on, sliding the headphones over her head and tuning out the world.

The first time she’d come, she had wandered through the brush, looking for signs that something had happened here. And she’d found them-small spots of scorched earth, scratches and gouges in the ground, a smear of rubber on the road, a jagged chunk of metal, twisted and torn beyond recognition. But all of that was gone now; or, at least, Beth no longer had any urge to look. Now she just sat and stared, sometimes at the roughly engraved letters-just KAIA, no dates, no messages, no last name- sometimes at the empty road and still scenery, disturbed only by the occasional eighteen-wheeler barreling through, sometimes at the sky. She chose her music at random, though most of the CDs in her collection were weepy women, singer-songwriters warbling about lost love, so there was rarely much surprise. Today, however, she’d popped in an old Green Day album-something Adam had given her in hopes of giving her some kind of music makeover. She’d never really listened to it. But it was loud and angry, and today, somehow, it worked.

It’s not my fault, she told herself, trying to dislodge the mountain of guilt. There was no cause and effect. No connection. She’d drugged Harper; Kaia had crashed a car. It was a coincidence, nothing more. A bad driver, speeding down the road, slamming into the BMW, disappearing. It was an accident-just bad luck. Not my fault. Harper was fine. Harper was healthy. Whatever Beth had done, there’d been no permanent consequences.

What happened to Kaia was permanent, but-not my fault.

She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when she felt the hand on her shoulder. She tipped her head back and looked up into the deepest brown eyes she’d ever seen. She took in his warm, crooked smile, the tendrils of dark, curly hair that flopped over his eyes, the smudge of grease just above his chin… and then it all came together into a familiar face, and she jerked away.

“Hey,” he said, his voice warm and gravelly, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. “Sorry.” He sat down next to her. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” Beth said, pulling off her headphones. She couldn’t look at him.

Reed flicked his eyes toward the cross. “I didn’t know anyone else came here,” he said. “Didn’t think anyone cared.” He spoke slowly, pausing between each word as if part of him preferred the silence. “I didn’t know you two were friends.”

Beth couldn’t bring herself to say that they weren’t, that Kaia had zoomed to the top of Beth’s enemies list by sleeping with her boyfriend; she couldn’t admit the hours she’d spent wishing Kaia Sellers out of existence. But she also didn’t want to lie.

“I’m Reed,” he said, breaking the awkward silence. “Maybe you don’t remember, but we met a while ago, before…” He reached for her hand and shook it, an oddly formal gesture considering they were sitting across from each other in the dirt on the side of a highway. His hand was warm, his grip tight; she didn’t want to let go.

“I remember.” She’d been upset, and he’d cheered her up, somehow-she couldn’t remember now. Couldn’t even remember what she’d been so upset about. It felt like a different lifetime. “I should go,” she said suddenly, realizing he probably wanted to be alone-she didn’t belong. “Do you want me to-?”

“I should take off,” he said at the same time. They both stopped talking and laughed, then, shooting a guilty glance at the thin, white cross, fell into silence again.

“Really, I should go,” she insisted.

“No, stay.” He sighed and rubbed a worn spot on the knee of his jeans where the denim was about to tear apart. “Please.”

Beth nodded, feeling her chest tighten. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do this.

The sun was already setting, but it was a cloudless day, so there was no brilliant sunset, only a steadily deepening haze as the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Reed dug around in his pocket and pulled out a flat, grayish stone, its edges rounded and its top streaked with red. He stood up, placed it in front of the cross, where it was lost amid the bouquets of dying flowers. Then he sat down again and gave Beth a half smile. “I saw it, somewhere, that people do that. And I just thought it was, you know, a good thing to do.”

Beth opened her mouth to say, “That’s nice.” Instead, she let out a gasping sob and burst into tears.

“Hey,” Reed said, sounding alarmed. “Hey, don’t-”

Beth had squeezed her eyes shut, willing the tears to stop, so she didn’t see him leaning toward her. She just felt his strong arms pull her in, pressing her head against his chest.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, stroking her hair. “It’s okay.”

He smelled sweet and smoky and, as her gasps quieted, she could hear his heart beat.

“I miss her too,” he whispered.

Oh, God.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, her voice muffled by his shirt. She pushed him away and stood up. “I have to go, I’m sorry.” By the time he stood up, she’d already started running toward her car, tears blinding her vision.

She didn’t know if he was trying to follow her and, as she started the car and tore out onto the road, she forced herself not to care. She never should have allowed him to comfort her like that, and she couldn’t let it happen again.

She didn’t deserve it.

Harper jerked awake, her breath ragged, sweat pouring down her face. She turned over to check the clock: 2:46 a.m. Four hours to go before the rest of the house woke up, and she would hear some noises other than her pounding heart.

She felt like she was still trapped in the nightmare; the dark shadows of her room seemed alive with possibility, as if the childhood monsters she’d once feared had returned to haunt her. But that was just the dream talking, she reminded herself. And nightmares weren’t real.

Except.

Except that her nightmares were memories that fled as soon as she opened her eyes. All she had were glimpses: the scream of tearing metal, the stench of smoke, the heavy weight on her chest that made it hurt to breathe. Her pillow was damp, maybe with sweat-she rubbed her eyes- maybe with tears.

She should be used to it by now, and she ran through her regular routine: Lying still, on her back, eyes fixed on the ceiling, counting her breaths. It was supposed to relax her and lull her back to sleep, but this time, it relaxed some protective barrier in her mind, and the images of her nightmare came flooding back.

Harper sat up. “No.” It was halfway between a plea and a moan. “Please.”

But the truth slammed into her. She squeezed her eyes shut and fell forward, clapping a hand over her mouth, fighting against her sudden nausea.

Deep breaths, she told herself, trying to stop shaking.

It was only a dream.

Except it wasn’t a dream and she couldn’t breathe. She felt like someone had shoved a gasoline-soaked rag into her mouth and she was choking on rough cotton and toxic fumes.

If it was true, she thought, Yd light the match.

She’d waited so long to remember, but now she fought against it; maybe she could hide in the dark, she told herself, slip back into sleep, and wake up the next morning, everything safely forgotten.

But she stood up and fumbled her way toward the desk, refusing to turn on a light-that would make it too real. Blinking back tears, she found the business card and brought it back to her bed, reading the numbers by the dim light of her clock radio. Her fingers hesitated over the buttons on her cell. She had to do it now, she told herself; in the morning, in the light, she’d be too afraid.

The phone rang and rang, and then, just before she was about to hang up, the voice mail kicked in.

”This is Detective Sharon Wells. Leave your name and phone number after the beep. If this is an emergency, please call 911.”

“This is Harper Grace,” she said quickly, thinking, This is an emergency. She tried not to let her voice shake. “You told me to call you if I remembered anything. About, you know, the accident. And. I did.”

Harper snapped the phone shut and dove back into bed, burrowing under the covers. She squeezed her eyes closed but couldn’t force the images out of her brain.

Kaia laughing.

The truck barreling toward them.

Music pumping.

Breaks squealing.

And Harper’s hands wrapped around the wheel.