Sloth

Chapter 6

It turned out that “Guido” was actually Roy, a sixty-two-year-old widower from Vegas who, having a hankering for small-town life, had moved west to find himself. He’d found Grace instead, a go-nowhere, do-nothing town in dire need of a pizza parlor, however mediocre.

And that’s pretty much all Beth took in from his half-hour monologue as she trembled in the chair across from him, willing him to continue talking so that she wouldn’t have to speak. It was hard enough to listen when there were so many loud thoughts crowding into her head.

“My daughter, she wanted me to move in with her and her husband. They fixed up the room over the garage real nice.”

My life is over.

“I raised her right-but that’s no life for a man, livin’ off his daughter, wasting away the days starin’ at someone else’s walls.”

My life should be over. I killed her.

“It’d be different if there were grandkids, but you know how it is today, no one s got any time for family. ‘What’s the hurry, Dad?’ she keeps asking me. ‘What are you waiting for?’ I say, but she just laughs, and that husband of hers… it’s not my place to say, but if you ask me, he doesn’t want the bother.”

I didn’t mean to.

“He’s not a worker, that one. Never did a day’s hard work in his life. Not like me. Twenty-five years at the casino and now here I am, shoveling the pizzas every day, and let me tell you, life couldn’t get much better.”

But it’s still my fault.

“Couldn’t get much worse, either, if you know what I mean. That’s life, eh? Gotta take that shit and turn it into gold, I always say. And it’s not so bad. Rent’s low, sun’s always shining, and customers know better than to talk back.”

Ruining my life won’t change anything.

‘”Course, can’t say as I don’t miss the old days. Vegas now? That’s nothin’ but a theme park. But in my day… yeah, you had your mob, and you had your corruption- but you also had your strippers and your showgirls and your cocktail waitresses. And then there was my Molly…”

I don’t even know what really happened.

“So what’s your story? I got your resume here, and I see you got plenty of experience serving. But why ditch the cushy diner job and come here? Don’t know as I’d see this place as a step up.”

I know what happened.

“Beth? You still with me?”

Beth tuned back in to realize that a large, calloused hand was waving in front of her face. “Oh… sorry. Yes.”

”So?”

She tucked her hair behind her ears, a nervous habit. “So… I’m, uh…” She wasn’t good at bluffing, even on a good day. And this had not been a good day. “I didn’t quite hear what you asked.”

He gave her a friendly smile. “Nerves got you, eh? Take your time. A few deep breaths never hurt anyone.”

She tried to follow his suggestion, but the heavy scent of garlic made her head pound. She didn’t know why he was being so nice to her. She didn’t know why anyone would be nice to her anymore.

“I asked why you wanted this job,” he repeated.

But Beth couldn’t concentrate on sounding responsible or eager to work in a grease-stained pit. She just shrugged. “I think it would be… I mean, I like pizza, and…” She’d prepared a perfect answer the night before-but it had escaped from her mind, and now she had nothing. She held her hands out in surrender. “I need the money.”

He grinned. “Who doesn’t? And why’d you leave your last job?”

Another perfect answer that she no longer had. “Creative differences?” she said instead, giving Roy a hopeful smile.

“Gonna have to ask you to be more specific on that one, hon.”

“Well…” She giggled nervously, her eyes tearing up. “I dumped a milk shake on one of the customers.”

“Can’t say as clumsiness is something I look for in a waitress,” he said, tipping his head to the side. “But I’m no ballerina myself, if you know what I mean.”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, I did it on purpose. I just dumped it on his head. It felt great.” Her giggles grew into full-scale laughter, the kind that steals control of your limbs and your better judgment. There was no joy in the spasms rocketing through her body, just an explosion of all the tension she’d been storing since morning-once it started coming out, she couldn’t figure out how to shove it back in again. She flopped around on the chair, heaving with hysteria, gasping for breath, until finally Roy’s frozen scowl brought her back to reality.

“Look, I don’t know what the joke is,” he said, standing up, “but I really don’t have time for this kind of thing.”

“No!” she cried, leaping up. “No joke. This isn’t me- I’m a great employee, really, just give me another chance, I really need this job, I’ve tried everywhere else in town-”

His expression warmed, but he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I am. But I can’t hire you just because I feel bad for you-I need someone reliable, and it’s pretty clear that you’re-”

“Not,” she finished for him. It would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so sad. Reliable was all she’d ever been. Good ol’ reliable Beth. And now she didn’t even have that. She slumped down over the table, her head resting on her arms and her arms resting on something wet and sticky, but she didn’t cry. She’d been holding it all in for hours now, and it seemed the tears had all dried up.

When she felt the hand on her shoulder, she knew who it was, and she knew she should stand up and rush out of the restaurant without even looking at him, but she was too weak and too selfish, and so she lifted her head up and smiled. “Hey. Again.”

“You’re having a bad week,” Reed said, without a question in his voice. “Come on.” He grabbed her arm gently and pulled her out of the chair, walking her toward the door. She let herself go limp, happy for a moment to be a marionette and let someone else pull the strings.

Once outside, he sat her down on the bumper of his truck, then perched up on the hood.

“I should go,” she mumbled, avoiding eye contact. “I should get out of here.”

“Slow down.” He pulled something out of his pocket- a small, squished paper tube, and offered it to her. “This always helps,” he explained.

Drugs, she thought, and the hysterical laughter threatened to burble out of her again. Why does every guy I’m with keep shoving drugs in my face? Doesn’t he know what could happen? That shut down the laughter impulse immediately; Reed, better than anyone, knew what could happen. She waved the joint away and sighed heavily.

“What is it?” he asked, his soft, concerned voice so incongruous against his punk rock wardrobe and apathetic pose. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I just screwed up my interview,” she admitted. “And everything.”

Reed laughed, a slow, honeyed chuckle. “Don’t worry about ‘Guido.’ He’s a pushover. I’ll talk to him, vouch for you-he listens to me.”

“Why bother?” she asked. “You don’t even know me.”

“So tell me.”

“What?”

“About you.”

So she told him about how she made up stories for her little brothers when they had trouble falling asleep, and about the stacks of blank journals that were piled up on her bookshelf, each with two or three entries she’d written before getting distracted and giving up. He told her that he’d taught himself to play the guitar when he was twelve, when the school had started using the music room for detention overflow. She admitted that she liked Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Dar Williams-the sappier, the better. He admitted that he hated the whole girl-power, singer-songwriter, release-your-inner-woman genre, but recommended Fiona Apple and Liz Phair to bulk up her collection.

They didn’t talk about Kaia.

Reed was lying back on the hood of the truck, staring up at the darkening sky. Beth couldn’t stop watching him, the way he moved his body with such fluid carelessness, as if he didn’t care where it ended up. The cuffs of his jeans were fraying, and his sockless ankles peeked out above his scuffed black sneakers. Beth resisted the crazy urge to touch them.

“I should take off,” she said, realizing that the sky was fully dark-her brother’s babysitter would be eager to leave, and her parents would be expecting to find dinner on the table when they got home from work.

“Wait-” He grabbed her wrist, and she gasped as the touch sent a chill racing up her arm. Their eyes locked, and neither of them spoke for a long moment. She had time to notice that his skin was softer than she’d expected, and then, abruptly, he pulled away. “If you need me…” He dug a scrap of paper and a stubby pencil out of his back pocket. She now knew he always kept one on hand, for times when a strain of melody popped into his head and he needed to record it before it disappeared. He scrawled down a number and handed it to her.

Beth knew she shouldn’t take it; she should never have allowed herself to lean on Reed, even for an afternoon. But she let him hand it to her, and she let herself smile when their fingers touched.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“What?”

“Being so… nice.”

“Because you-” He stopped in the middle of a word, closed his mouth, and looked beyond her for a moment, out to the dark horizon beyond Guido s pizza shack. She wondered if he was thinking about that day on the side of the highway-and she wondered if letting him believe in it, and believe in her, counted as a lie. “Because you look like you could use it.”

She couldn’t stand it anymore. “Reed, I should tell you-”

“I gotta go.” He gave her an awkward wave before sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Wait-”

But before she could say anything more, he shut the door and drove away.

“A little to the left, farther, no, now to the right, faster, faster, okay… not there-now! That’s it! Yes!”

“Awesome!” Miranda cried, tossing down the controller and shooting her fists in the air. “I rock!”

“You really do,” Adam marveled. He threw himself back on the couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. “Who knew?”

“High score!” Miranda cheered, pointing at the screen. “See that? I got the high score.”

“Mmph,” Adam grunted.

“Oh, don’t get cranky just because you got beat by a girl.” Miranda tapped her thumb against the buttons until her initials were correctly entered in as a testament to her glory. “Where has this game been all my life?” She glanced over at Adam, giving him a playful grin. “Think I could convince the phys ed department to give me some sort of credit for playing Wild Taxi?”

“Crazy Taxi “Adam corrected her. “You’ve really never played before?”

Miranda shook her head. “My cousin gave me his old PlayStation, but that was, like, when I was a kid. And it broke after a couple days. This is much cooler.”

“Okay, so what’s next? Resident Evil or Tony Hawk?”

Miranda checked her watch and her eyes bugged out. “Adam, we’ve been playing for two hours.” She hadn’t even noticed the time passing, which was pretty much a miracle since the first ten minutes in Adam’s living room had dragged on forever. Without Harper around, the two had nothing to say to each other; all the more reason to consider Sega Dreamcast a gift from the gods.

“Yeah? So?” Adam hopped off the couch. “Hungry? I could order a pizza, and I think we’ve got some chips or something-”

“Adam, we haven’t even started looking at math,” she pointed out. “What about your test?”

“What about your high score?” he countered. “You really gonna leave it undefended and let me kick your ass?” He plopped down on the floor beside her, lifting a controller and restarting the game.

“But…” Miranda stopped. If he didn’t want to work, it was his funeral, right, she told herself. And after all, just one more game wouldn’t hurt…

They spent another hour glued to the screen, switching from Crazy Taxi to Tony Hawk to NBA 2K1 before they were interrupted again.

“No fair!” she yelled as he sank yet another three-pointer. “You’re captain of the basketball team and I’m barely five feet tall-how am I supposed to block your shots?”

“Miranda, it’s a video game,” he reminded her. “Your guy’s about seven feet tall and he was last year’s MVP. I think it’s a pretty fair matchup.”

She was about to confess that she didn’t actually understand the rules of basketball-a fatal weakness no matter how many all-stars her cyber-team was fielding-when her phone rang. She paused the game and checked the caller ID. Harper.

Adam caught the name on the screen and gave her a pained nod. “You take it. I’ll practice my free throws.”

Miranda flipped open the phone. “Hey, what’s up?” she asked, pretending it was no big deal that Harper had called, though Harper never called, not anymore.

“Nothing. I just… can you talk?”

“Of course.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing much. Just hanging out.” It wasn’t really a lie, Miranda told herself. And it was for a good cause-if she admitted she was busy, Harper would probably just use it as an excuse to hang up again. And if she admitted she was at Adams house, fraternizing with the enemy… she’d have to explain what she was doing there, and Adam had asked her to keep that quiet and, all in all, it was easier just to be vague. “How about you?” “Thinking.”

“You?” Miranda asked, automatically slipping into sarcasm before she remembered that the old days were over.

But Harper laughed. “Crazy, I know. I need to ask you something. Do you think-”

“Woo hoo! High score, baby!”

Miranda winced as Adam’s shouts echoed through the empty house.

“What was that?” Harper asked.

“What?” Miranda said. “I didn’t say anything.”

“The champion returns!”

“Is that Adam?” Harper asked, continuing on before Miranda had a chance to answer. “It is. What’s Adam doing there?”

Miranda sighed. It would have been easier to ignore the whole thing, but she wasn’t about to lie now, no matter what Adam had asked of her. It’s not like he had anything to be embarrassed about-it was just Harper. “Actually, I’m at his house,” she admitted.

Harper didn’t say anything, and for a moment Miranda worried that the line had gone dead.

“Hello? Harper?”

“You’re next door,” she finally said in a low monotone. She didn’t ask why.

Miranda laughed nervously. “It’s not like we’re hanging out, like we’re friends or something. I have to be here-I mean, I don’t have to, like it’s some horrible ordeal. Actually, when you called, he was teaching me how to play some video game, which actually turned out to be fun-crazy, huh?”

“Wild.”

She was babbling, the words spilling out before she had time to think better of it. Which was ridiculous, because there was no need to be nervous-it’s not like she had snuck over here behind Harper’s back. Yes, she’d walked thirty minutes instead of driving over, but not because she didn’t want Harper to spot her car, she reasoned. It was just a beautiful day, and she needed the exercise, and… it’s not like everything she did had to do with Harper, she insisted silently.

It’s not like Harper had any right to care.

“But, really, we’re supposed to be studying,” she tried again. “See, Adam-”

“Miranda.”

She stopped talking abruptly, as if Harper had flipped a switch.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Harper continued. “What do I care if the two of you want to hang out?”

“But we’re not hanging out, I’m-”

“I don’t want to bother you,” Harper said loudly, talking over her. “Sorry I called. Talk to you later.”

“Score!” Adam cried from the living room, just as the phone went dead. Miranda flipped it shut and pressed it against her forehead. However irrational it may have been, she felt like that was her one chance to fix things-and she’d blown it.

Reed hadn’t set out with a destination in mind; he’d just wanted to take the edge off his strangely unsettled mood. He felt like he’d forgotten something important, but his thoughts were too jumbled to pin down what it was. So he decided to ignore it and take a drive. He wasn’t too surprised to see where he’d ended up. He made a sharp right and pulled off onto the small access road that led straight to the glass monstrosity. He’d always hated this house, with its jutting corners and its smooth, shiny facade. It looked like a machine, some gruesome futuristic gadget blown up to unnatural size and dropped into the middle of the desert. It looked wrong, its sleek silver lines out of place in the rolling beiges of the desert landscape.

Kaia had always complained about the scenery-or, as she was quick to point out, lack thereof. They’d stood on her deck and looked out at the deserted space surrounding her house and she’d seen nothing but an ocean of beige. She’d called it a wasteland, but only because she didn’t see that what was sparse and clean could also be beautiful, precisely because it had nothing to hide. He hadn’t had the words to explain it to her, however, so he’d just shrugged, and then kissed her.

She hated the house, too, but for different reasons. It was her outpost of civilization, true, but it was also her prison, and she resented its cream-colored walls and architecturally avant-garde floor plan, and even its size. She’d explained to him that her mother’s penthouse apartment back home could fit into one wing of her father’s mansion, and that the giant empty house swallowed her up and made her feel small and alone. It was the same way Reed felt about the desert, except he liked it.

Now the house really was empty. The windows had been dark and the driveway empty for weeks, until one day, Reed arrived to discover that the windows had been boarded up and a large FOR SALE sign planted in the absurdly well-manicured front lawn. But Reed kept coming back. He didn’t have anything left of Kaia except his swiftly fading memories. He dreaded the day he forgot how her pale cheeks reddened when she laughed, or the hoarse sound in her voice when she’d just woken up; the house helped him remember.

“Don’t I get some?” Kaia asks, grabbing his hand before he can bring the joint to his lips.

“You don’t smoke,” Reed reminds her.

“I know,” she says, snatching it away and tossing it to the ground. “And neither should you. It makes you sound like an idiot. “

“Doesn’t take much,” he mutters.

“Shut up.”

“What?”

“Clueless smile?” She grazes her fingers across his lips. “Hot. Self deprecation? Not. “

They are lying on a blanket in front of the old Grace mines. It has become “their place,” a phrase neither of them will say out loud because, as Kaia often points out, this is not 1951 and they are not teenyboppers in love. But nonetheless, it is their place; ever since Reed brought her here for the first time, he has been unable to think of it as anything else. He has been coming here since he was a kid, biking out along the deserted stretch of highway long before he had his driver’s license, enjoying the sense of freedom and power that came from getting away from the safe and the familiar and getting by on his own. But now when he comes on his own, as he still does, something feels off. The cavernous warehouses, the decaying machinery, and the welcome darkness of the mines themselves are no longer enough. He misses Kaia; it has been only a couple weeks since they toppled to the happier side of the love-hate fence, but already he has gotten used to having her around.

Today they skipped school and drove out here instead. They lay next to each other, staring up at the sky, swapping the occasional insult and listening to each other breathe. He doesn’t know what he’s doing with her-rich, stuck-up, spoiled, beautiful. And she’s made it clear that she doesn’t know what she’s doing with him. Neither of them care.

“Don’t try to reform me,” he warns her. “It won’t take.”

She rolls over onto her side, propping herself up to look at him. Her fingers toy with the curls falling over his forehead, and a smile plays at the corners of her lip. “Don’t worry,” she assures him. “You’re good just the way you are.”

“And how’s that?”

“Hmmm… dirty. “ She rubs his chest, where a long, dark grease stain stretches across his shirt. “Smelly. “ She buries her face in his neck and breathes in deeply. “Grungy. “ She pulls his hands toward her face and kisses the tips of his fingers, ignoring the dirt lodged under each nail. “Mine. “

He grabs her around the waist and rolls her over on top of him, lifting his head up to meet her lips. They kiss with their eyes open, and he can see himself reflected in her pupils. Her weight flattens him against the ground and he lets his head fall back as she spreads his arms out and entwines her fingers in his.

They stop kissing after only a few minutes, but she continues to lie on him, resting her head on his chest.

“Happy?” he asks, because he knows she never is.

“Shhh. I’m listening. “

“To what?”

“Your heartbeat,” she whispers. They are both still. Then she laughs. “Did I just say that? What the hell are you doing to me?” She sighs and tries to roll off of him, but he wraps his arms around her and holds her in place.

“Turning you into a sap,” he teases. “I like it. “

“Don’t try to reform me,” she tells him. “It won’t take.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, echoing her words as she echoed his. “You’re good just the way you are.”

Too late, he forgets how she hates compliments from him, even in jest.

“It’s getting cold,” she says, and he can feel her muscles tense. “I’m getting out of here. “

“Don’t,” he tells her. “Stay.”

She breathes deeply, and as her chest expands, it pushes against his, forcing their breathing to fall into the same rhythm. “I don’t know what we’re doing here,” she says, touching the side of his face.

“Who cares?” he asks, laying his hand over hers. “Don’t go.”

She kisses him, hard, her tongue prying his lips open and slipping in, her hands gathering the light cotton blanket into tight fists. This time she closes her eyes, but he keeps his open. He can’t stop watching her, as if part of him harbors the childlike belief that if he closes his eyes, she might actually disappear.

He looked up at the sound of a siren-it blipped once, like a horn blast, as if to alert him that he was totally screwed, without waking the neighbors. (Not that there were any.) The flashing lights of the approaching car cast a yellowish-orange tinge over everything as Reed scrambled to stow his pot deep in the glove compartment and popped a breath mint, not that it would be of much help. Everything about him reeked of stoner, and even though he’d had his last joint an hour or two ago and was as alert as he ever got these days, if the cops wanted to bust him, they would. It’s not like they hadn’t done it before.

The car pulled onto the shoulder just behind his, and a figure stepped out. As he approached, Reed was surprised to note that it wasn’t Sal or Eddie, the two beat cops who loved nothing more than handing out parking tickets and hassling “street punks,” aka anyone under the age of eighteen who didn’t dress like they were auditioning for an Abercrombie ad. Sal and Eddie had, until recently, been actual street punks-or, as close as Grace got to urban blight-until their shoplifting had gotten them banned from pretty much every store on Main Street and a number of drunken brawls had had the same effect on their barhopping days. They’d joined the police force for the thrill of running red lights; the guns were just a bonus.

This cop, an overweight guy in his mid-forties with a mustache and an eye-twitch, tapped on Reed’s window. “Whatever you’re up to, forget about it,” he snapped, once Reed had rolled the window down. “Just get out of here.”

That wasn’t a cop uniform, Reed suddenly realized. It was gray, not navy blue, and a narrow label above the shirt pocket read CAPSTONE SECURITY. “What’s it to you?” he asked. Sucking up to authority figures was bad enough; sucking up to a paunchy rent-a-cop who probably had a stash of his own hidden in the cruiser next to his mail-ordered Taser gun? Not gonna happen.

“Gimme a break, kid.” The guy leaned against the truck, casually letting his jacket fall open to reveal the holster strapped underneath. It wasn’t holding a Taser gun. “You think I’m out here in Crapville, USA, for my health? They pay plenty to run punks like you off the property- so I’m telling you. Get.”

“No one lives here anymore,” Reed pointed out.

“Don’t mean no one owns it.” He glanced up at the deserted mansion and scowled. “And the guy who does is plenty pissed off. There’ve been some break-ins-but I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, eh?”

Reed just stared blankly at him.

“Yeah. Of course not. But now I’m here, and I’ve got my instructions.”

“Yeah?”

“No lurkers. No prowlers. No squatters. No punks.” He squinted into the truck and stared pointedly at a glass pipe that had rolled onto the floor. “I don’t care which one you are. Just get going and don’t come back.”

“Or what?” Reed asked, something in him spoiling for a fight. “You’ll call in the real cops?”

“Don’t need ‘em,” the guy said, ambling away from the window. But he didn’t head back to his car-instead, he circled the front of the truck and, looking up to give Reed a jaunty grin, smashed in the front headlight.

“Dude! What the hell are you doing?”

“Take my advice, kid. Just get out of here,” the guy yelled, waving with his arm still and his fingers glued together in the universal sign for buh-bye. “Just drive away and don’t look back.”

“Harper, can you come down here for a second?” Her mother’s normally lilting voice had a steely undertone that suggested her options were limited.

“Great, more family together time,” Harper muttered, burned out on bonding after a night that had already included ice-cream sundaes and four rounds of Boggle. Ever since the accident her parents had gone into maximum overdrive on the TLC front-failing to realize that, to Harper, tender loving care involved a few drinks, a sugar high, and plenty of uninterrupted alone time. Tonight the plan had been simple: barricade herself in her room, blast some Belle and Sebastian, bury her head under a pillow, and try to plan out her next step. She’d been a master strategist, once, and though it seemed like too long ago to remember, she was certain the skills had just gone into hibernation, waiting for a more hospitable climate before they re-emerged to save her. Family fun time didn’t fit into her schedule.

“What?” she grunted as she trudged down the stairs. She stopped, midway down, catching sight of Kane’s smooth hair and smoother style. He gave her a reptilian grin, then offered her parents a far warmer expression, compassion oozing from every orifice.

“It’s just so good to see her up and around again,” he told her parents, as if she weren’t even in the room.

“Yes, she’s thrilled to pieces,” Harper said dryly. “What the hell do you want?”

“Harper!” Her mother shot her a scandalized look. Much as Harper despised the depths to which her family had sunk over the generations, from American-style royalty (read: outrageously wealthy with an attitude to match) to middle-middle-class plodders carrying the torch of small-town mediocrity, Amanda Grace hated it more. So much so that she refused to acknowledge that the family she’d married into no longer guarded the flame of civility amongst the heathens of the wild west. “People look to us,” she’d often told a young Harper, lost in delusions of mannered grandeur, “and it’s important we live up to expectations.” Miss Manners had nothing on Amanda Grace; Emily Post would have been booted from the house for rude behavior. And a solicitous attitude toward guests, from visiting dignitaries (in her dreams) to collection agencies (a walking, and frequent, nightmare) was rule number one. Apparently even in her fragile, post-invalid state, Harper was still expected to abide by the Grace code of etiquette.

“As I was saying, Kane, it’s so lovely of you to drop by,” her mother said, placing a deceptively firm hand on Harper’s shoulder. “Isn’t it?”

“Lovely,” Harper echoed. Her mother got a dutiful smile; Kane got the death glare.

“How are you feeling, sweetie?” her mother asked, releasing her grip.

“Fine.” Harper scowled; if only everyone would stop asking her that a hundred times a day, maybe she’d actually have a prayer of it being true. Though that was doubtful, she conceded. How fine could she be when the most important moment of her life was lost in some fog of for-getfulness and the only glimpses her memory chose to grant her were the ones that proved she probably didn’t deserve to live?

“That’s great!” Amanda Grace turned to Kane.” I think it’s a fine idea, then, as long as you don’t have her out too late.”

“Excuse me?” Harper snapped. “Could everyone stop talking about me like I’m invisible and-” She caught sight of her mother’s face and forced herself to soften her tone. “What’s a fine idea, Kane?’

”Well, Harper-” He winked at her, acknowledgment of the fact that he almost never used her first name and its appearance only confirmed that everything following would be a show put on for the sake of her parents. “I was just telling your parents that I thought you might enjoy it if I took you out for some coffee-”

“Decaf,” her father interjected.

“Right, of course, decaf.” Kane shrugged and gave everyone an “Aw shucks, aren’t I a heck of a guy” look. “You’ve been cooped up in the house for so long, and we get so little chance to catch up in school, that I thought it might be nice. As long as your parents are okay with it, of course.”

“It’s quite refreshing,” her father said, beaming. “Most of the time, you kids just dash off to some place or another and no one knows what the hell”-this time her father was the one who drew the patented Amanda glare-“I mean, heck, you’re up to. I hope you know what a good friend you’ve got here, Harp. I think this one’s a keeper.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I know exactly what I’ve got here,” Harper said through gritted teeth. Nice job with the Eddie Haskell impression, she thought. I’m suffocating in smarm. Kane always boasted he could read minds-let him read that.

“I’m kind of tired, actually,” she said, faking a yawn. “I was thinking I’d just stay here tonight…”

“You’re spending too much time up in your room,” her mother said, and behind the polite facade Harper could read real concern in her voice. “It’ll be good for you to get out. Get back to-”

“Okay. Okay, fine, whatever,” Harper cut in, knowing that if one more person suggested that things could ever be normal again, she might spit, or scream, or simply collapse, any one of which was definitely a Grace etiquette don’t. With a sigh, she slipped into a pair of green flip-flops and grabbed a faded gray hoodie from the closet. Her mother hated it-so much the better.

“Now, remember, don’t be back too late,” Amanda Grace reminded them as Kane escorted her out, hands tightly gripping her arm and waist.

“So now you’re kidnapping me?” Harper asked, as soon as they were safely in the car. “General havoc and mischief making getting too boring for you, so you’re moving on to felonies?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kane said, in his parent-proof, silky smooth voice. “I just wanted to spend some time with my good friend Harper, who’s so recently been having such a tough time of it.” There was a pause, then, “Oof!”

Kane talked tough, but shove a sharp elbow into his gut and he’d fold like a poker player with no face cards.

“What the hell was that for?” he asked, rubbing his side and giving her a wounded look. “You know I bruise easily.”

“Gosh, I’m awfully sorry,” Harper whined, pouring on some false solicitation of her own. “Whatever was I thinking?” Then she whacked him in the chest. “What the hell were you thinking? Since when do you ask my parents for my hand in coffee?”

“If I called and asked if you wanted to go out tonight, what would you have said?”

“You’re assuming I would have picked up the phone?”

”Exactly,” he concluded in an irritatingly reasonable voice. “You would have made the wrong choice. Again. So this time, I decided not to give you one.”

“Fine.” Harper leaned back against the seat and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “So where are you taking me? Bourquin’s, at least? I can’t drink that shit coffee they have at the diner.”

He shook his head. “Guess again.”

“So not in the mood for games, Kane. And you know exactly why.”

“This isn’t a game, Grace-you’re the one who hasn’t figured that out yet. You’ll see where we’re going soon enough.”

She crossed her arms and turned toward the window. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

They drove in silence for several minutes. The radio might at least have lightened things up or offered them something neutral to argue about, but Kane made no move to switch it on and Harper wasn’t about to do anything that might signify her willing participation in this ridiculous adventure.

They swung into a small parking lot and Kane turned off the car. “We’re here.”

“And where is… oh.” They had pulled up in front of a large, boxy building, its face a windowless wall of institutional gray. A single door, also gray, stood square in the middle, and over it hung a neon blue-and-white sign that would have been enough to scare away most visitors if the decor hadn’t already done the job: POLICE.

“What the hell is this, Kane?” Harper’s eyes flicked toward her bag, half expecting her phone to ring as if Detective Wells, who’d already left four or five messages for her over the course of the day, could somehow sense that she was nearby. Maybe she wouldn’t bother to call- Harper turned back to the window, gaze fixed on the solid-looking door, wondering if it would swing open. Who would they send out to escort her inside, where she belonged? “Why would you bring me here?”

Kane shrugged, but this time there was nothing aw-shucks about it. “You’re the one who said you wanted to talk to the cops. I thought I’d help you out. You want to confess your sins? You want to ruin your life? Go ahead.”

“This isn’t how it works,” she retorted, struggling against encroaching panic. “This isn’t-what do you want me to do, just march in there and say, ‘Hey, just FYI, I was the one driving the car’?”

“You don’t think they’d be interested to hear it?”

“This is what you want me to do?” Harper asked, her hand gripping the door handle.

“Isn’t it what you want to do?” Kane sneered.

“It’s the right thing…”

“Absolutely. So go ahead.”

“I’m just not…”

“No time like the present, Grace.” Kane opened his own door-and at the sound of the latch releasing and the outside air rushing in, Harper almost gasped. “I’ll go with you, if you want. Should be quite a show.”

She couldn’t say anything; she didn’t move.

“What are you waiting for? They’re right inside, just-”

“Stop!” she shouted, slapping her hand over her eyes so he wouldn’t see the tears. “Why are you doing this?”

He slammed the door. “Why are you doing this?” he shouted, and it was the first time she could remember ever hearing him raise his voice. “What the hell are you trying to do to yourself?”

“What do you care?” she mumbled, still hiding her face.

“This is real, Harper. Look out there.” When she didn’t move, he grabbed her hands roughly and pulled them away from her eyes, jerking her head toward the police station. “Look. This isn’t Law & Order. This is your life.”

“It was her life, too,” Harper said, almost too softly to hear.

“You don’t know what happened,” Kane said in an almost bored voice, as if he’d gotten tired of ticking off the items on the list. He’d stopped shouting and had released his grip on Harper’s wrists, and was now staring straight ahead, his hands loosely resting on the wheel. “You don’t remember anything about the accident-” She tried to interrupt, but he talked over her. “Except a few things you think you remember but could just be part of some Vicodin-induced nightmare.”

“Percodan,” she corrected him.

“Whatever. Okay, so you were driving. So what? There were drugs in your system-you don’t know how they got there. You were going somewhere-you don’t know where. Kaia’s fingerprints were found all over that perv’s apartment after he turned up with his head beat in-you don’t know why. Another car forced you off the road- you don’t know who. You don’t know anything except that if you tell them you were behind that wheel, they’ll crucify you.”

“I know it’s my fault,” she said stubbornly.

”You don’t know anything” he repeated loudly, over-enunciating each syllable.

And I can’t stand it, she admitted, but only to herself.

“I’m not saying we can’t figure it out,” he suggested, turning toward her and slinging his arm across the back of her seat. “Do some investigating, poke around-you and me against the world, like the good old days?”

“So this isn’t Law & Order, but now you want me to go all Veronica Mars on you?” Harper asked wryly.

“That’s kind of a chick show.” Kane smirked. “I was thinking more CSI. Or Scooby-Doo… you’d look pretty smoking in that purple dress, and I don’t know”-he peered at himself in the rearview mirror-”think I could pull off an ascot?”

“This isn’t funny,” she said dully.

“I’m serious, Grace-if you want to know what happened, we can figure it out. They can’t,” he added, pointing toward the station. “They won’t need to, because they’ll have you. But we can fix things, and get them back to normal.”

“Take me home,” she told him, not wanting to think any more about the accident, or any of it.

He ignored her. “Start with the drugs-that’s the key. Are you sure you didn’t take anything?”

She remembered Kaia handing her two white pills: Xanax. She remembered popping them into her mouth and stepping onstage, and her world falling apart. But that couldn’t be right.

“Take me home,” she insisted, louder.

“Promise me you won’t go to the cops,” he retorted.

“I still don’t get why you care.”

”You don’t have to,” he said, looking away. “Just promise.”

She had already promised herself that she would do the right thing; tonight was supposed to have been about figuring out what that was. Kane was the last person to go to for that kind of help. On the other hand, she thought, torn between horror and bemusement, who else have I got?

“I’ll do whatever I decide to do, Kane. Take me home.”

Kane banged a fist against the steering wheel, then visibly steadied himself, taking two deep breaths before turning to her with a serene smile. “Fine, Grace. Do what you need to do. It’s your funeral.”

But that was just the problem-maybe it should have been. But it wasn’t.