Sloth

Chapter 7

The newspaper staff was at the hospital, reading picture books to sick children.

The cast of the school musical was performing excerpts from Oklahoma! at the Grace Retirement Village.

The French club was distributing meals-with a side of croissants, but no wine-to invalids and shut-ins.

Community Service Day was a success, and any senior with a conscience or a guilt complex was devoting the morning to helping others. The only seniors left in class were the ones too lazy to make the effort and too dim to realize that even cleaning bedpans or trimming nose hairs would be preferable to spending the morning in school.

And then there was Beth.

She’d organized the event, worked with the hospital administrators and the town hall community liaison, shined with pride at adding a socially responsible activity to the spirit week agenda, and planned to lead the charge with a quick visit to the Grace animal shelter and a stop at the hospital children’s wing, culminating in a triumphant hour of reading to the blind. But instead, she was hiding in an empty classroom, folded over her desk with her head buried in her arms, like she was playing Heads Up, 7 Up all by herself. She’d told her history teacher that she had a headache, but instead of going to the nurse’s office, she’d slipped in here and was wiling away her time by listening to her breathing and wondering if Berkeley admitted felons.

She looked up at the sound of a knock on the door. Before she had a chance to come up with a cover story or consider hiding, the door swung open, and Beth was momentarily relieved to realize that it wasn’t a teacher who might demand an explanation for Beth’s presence. But her relief was short-lived, as a dour-looking woman with a squarish build, coffee-colored skin, and a pinched, vaguely familiar face stepped into the room-followed by a reluctant Harper Grace.

“I was told this room would be empty,” the woman said, her words clipped and precise. “You’ll have to go.”

The woman sat down on one of the desks and, without bothering to check that Beth would follow her command, focused her attention on Harper.

“I should get back to class,” Harper mumbled, still standing in the doorway. Beth had to push past her to get out of the room, a maneuver made more difficult by the fact that Harper didn’t edge out of the way, but instead just stood planted in the middle of the doorway.

“Come in, sit down,” the woman said, and though her voice was soft, it was far from kind. “You said you needed to talk to me-here I am.”

Harper glanced toward Beth for the first time, and Beth recoiled from the look in her eyes, a confusing mixture of Get out and, more disturbingly, Stay. Beth quickened her step. She shut the door behind her, just slowly enough to hear the woman’s final words.

“So, what did you remember about the accident?”

She just had to come to school today. She couldn’t be bothered to tend to the elderly or wipe the brows of the sick-and apparently, this was her punishment. Detective Wells was perched on the edge of one of the desks, while Harper had squeezed herself into a seat, feeling oddly constrained by the metal rod and flat, narrow desk that wrapped around and held her in place. When they called her out of class, she should have known what was coming, but she’d somehow fooled herself into thinking that Wells was a problem that, if ignored, would go away. Not forever, she’d promised herself, screening the latest of the calls, but just long enough that Harper could have a chance to figure out what she was going to do.

Apparently Detective Wells was working on her own timeline.

“I really don’t remember what happened,” Harper said uncomfortably. The detective’s gaze was making her skin crawl, but the alternative views weren’t much better. Whoever usually used this classroom had papered the walls with portraits of historical courage-Martin Luther King, Jr., FDR, Rosa Parks, Winston Churchill (she only recognized that one thanks to the oversize caption)-face after face staring down at her with solemn expectation. All she needed was a big painting of Honest Abe to remind her that some people “cannot tell a lie.” (Or was it George Washington who’d chopped down his cherry tree and then needlessly confessed? Harper could never remember, but she’d always thought that, in the same position, she would have gorged herself on cherries and then enjoyed a sound sleep in the log cabin without giving her sticky red ax a second thought.)

“You left me a message, Harper, saying that you’d remembered something” A ridge of wrinkles spread across the detective’s forehead. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to help us out, unless-”

“It’s just hard,” Harper said quickly. Shut up, she told FDR’s accusing stare. At least that’s true. “You know, talking about… what happened.” After struggling for weeks to maintain a mask of contentment, it was tough to make an abrupt shift to visible vulnerability. But Harper didn’t know how else to slow things down.

It worked.

“Just take your time,” Detective Wells suggested. She leaned forward. “Anything you remember might help us, even if it seems inconsequential.”

Harper took a breath and opened her mouth, then shut it again, stalling for time. You don’t know anything, Kane had said. She wanted to believe him. “I remembered… I thought I remembered that the car that hit us was… white.”

The detective whipped out a notebook and favored Harper with a wide smile. “That’s great-anything else?”

“But then, the next night, I had another dream, and the car was black. I guess it was just a dream. Not, you know, a memory,” Harper added, wondering if Grace cops got trained in spotting liars. Detective Wells didn’t seem much like a human polygraph machine, but you could never tell. “That’s why I was, uh, avoiding your calls. I was embarrassed to waste your time.”

“It’s not a waste,” the detective assured her, without bothering to suppress a disappointed sigh. She shut the notebook and stuffed it back into her bag. “You thought you could help, and you did the right thing. No need to be embarrassed about that.”

“So…” She wasn’t sure she actually wanted to know. “Do you have any leads?” Did they even use that word in real life? she wondered. “You know, about what happened? I mean, the other car?”

She shook her head. “We haven’t been able to match the paint samples-the van was red, by the way.”

“Oh.” She wondered why no one had told her that before. She tried to imagine a red van speeding toward her and tried to picture her hands on the wheel, jerking away; but visualization exercises were tough to do when you had to keep your eyes open and smile at a cranky detective.

“We’ve ascertained that both vehicles were speeding, and that the collision took place on your side of the road, which implies that the driver of the other vehicle may have strayed into your lane, but I’m afraid that’s all we know. So far, of course.”

“Of course,” Harper repeated, although judging from Detective Wells’s hopeless and impersonal tone, she guessed that no one really expected to learn much more. “But if you ever did find the guy…?”

“Hit-and-run is a very serious crime,” the detective said, looking up at the posters lining the wall. “He or she would be punished to the fullest extent of the law.” She scratched the side of her neck, visibly uncomfortable with what she had to say next. “Look, I know it can be difficult, after a traumatic event like this-especially when no one’s taken responsibility, and you have no one to blame. There are people you can talk to, if-”

“I’m fine,” Harper half shouted. “Can I go back to class now?”

“Sure. Of course. Thanks for speaking with me.”

“Sorry you had to come out here for nothing.” As Detective Wells shook her hand and headed for the door, Harper could feel her split-second decision hardening into reality. She could still tell the truth-catch the detective before she walked out the door and explain everything- but then the door shut, and the moment had passed.

These are the things I know, Harper told herself.

1. No one knew she was driving, and Kane would never tell.

2. If the van had been in the wrong lane, the accident would have happened anyway, no matter who was driving.

3. Kaia was dead, and she would stay that way, no matter what anyone did.

4. Kaia didn’t believe in self-sacrifice.

That left plenty of gaping holes. She didn’t know where she’d gotten the drugs from, or why she had taken them. She didn’t know why she and Kaia were on the road in the first place, or where they were going. She didn’t know whose fault the accident was, not really, though she could pretend that she did. She didn’t know if she believed in Hell, so she obviously didn’t know if she’d end up there. And she didn’t know if she could live with herself-with what she knew and what she didn’t-in the meantime.

I have to, she told herself. And I will. She looked again at the posters-JFK, Gandhi, Anne Frank, Charles Lindbergh. They must have been from a set made specially for irony-deficient high school teachers, because they all bore some cheesy-beyond-belief quote designed to inspire students.

The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be. Socrates.

He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat. Napoleon.

It’s not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required. Winston Churchill.

That one appealed to her the most.

I will do what I have to do and no matter what, I will survive. Harper Grace.

“Where to?”

Beth leaned her head back against the seat and halfheartedly tried to wipe some of the grime off her window, as if the answer to his question might arise from a better view. “Wherever.” The word came out as a sigh, fading to silence before the last syllable.

“Okay.” Reed drove in circles for a while. He had nowhere to be. When she’d called, he had been at his father’s garage, tinkering with an exhaust system and ready for a break. “Can you come?” she’d asked. And for whatever reason, he’d dropped everything and hopped in the truck. He’d found her slouched at the foot of a tree, just in front of the school, hugging her arms to her chest and shivering. She wouldn’t tell him anything, but when he extended a hand to help her into the truck, she squeezed.

It’s not like they were friends, he told himself. But she needed something, and he had nothing better to do. He couldn’t help but notice that she relaxed into her seat, stretching out along the cracked vinyl, unlike Kaia, who almost always perched on the edge and sat poker-straight in an effort to have as little contact with the “filthy” interior as possible. Beth also hadn’t commented on his torn overalls or the smudges of grease splashed across his face and blackening his fingers.

Reed caught himself and, for a moment, felt the urge to stop the car and toss her out on the side of the road. But it passed. “Wanna talk about it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t even want to think about it,” she said. “Any chance you can take me somewhere where I can do that? Stop thinking?”

She said it bitterly, as if it were an impossible challenge. But she obviously didn’t know who she was dealing with.

Reed swung the car around the empty road in a sharp U-turn and pressed down on the gas pedal. She sighed again heavily, and without thinking, he reached over to put a hand on her shoulder, but stopped in midair-maybe because Kaia had trained him well: no greasy fingers on white shirts. Maybe because he didn’t want to touch her- or maybe because he did.

He put his hand back on the wheel and began drumming out a light, simple beat. “I know just the place,” he assured her. “We’ll be there soon.” It felt good to have a destination.

Adam crushed the paper into a ball and crammed it into the bottom of his backpack, then butted his head against the wall of a nearby locker-stupid idea, since all it produced was a dull thud and a sharp pain, neither of which went very far toward alleviating his frustration.

But a stupid idea seemed appropriate; after all, what other kind did he have?

Fifty-eight percent.

Maybe if he and Miranda had spent more time working and less time playing video games and talking about Harper… At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do. For those few hours, he’d felt more normal and more hopeful than he had in a long time. Though he and Miranda had never been close, they had history-and, more important, they had Harper. He hadn’t needed to confide in her, because she already knew how he felt. And he knew she felt the same.

She was a good friend, he’d realized.

Just maybe not a very good tutor.

Or maybe it’s just me, Adam thought in disgust. He’d actually studied this time, staring at the equations long enough that at least a few of them should have started to make sense and weld themselves to his brain. But the test had been a page of incomprehensible hieroglyphics, and Adam’s answers-what few he bothered to attempt-were mostly random numbers and symbols that he strung together in an approximation of what he thought an algebra equation should look like.

Thanks to Mr. Fowler’s supersonic grading policy-all tests graded and returned by the end of the school day, courtesy of a team of eager beaver honor students who gave up their lunch period for some extra credit and a superiority complex-he didn’t have long to wait for the results. Not that there was much suspense.

Fifty-eight percent. It was scrawled in an angry red, next to a big, circled F and a note reading Come see me.

Instead, Adam dumped his stuff in his locker and walked out of school. It was bad enough he’d had to show up in the first place. Haven teachers were “encouraged” to postpone tests and important lessons for Community Service Day, but Adam’s math class was for sophomores and juniors. Which meant enduring both a brain-busting test and the curious stares of his classmates who obviously wondered what kind of loser he was to get left so far behind. Now that he was free for the day, he wasn’t going back.

He stomped out of the school, the pounding of his footsteps mirrored by the rhythmic battering of a single word against his brain:

Stupid.

Stupid.

Stupid.

Stupid.

His basketball was in the trunk, and the court across from the school parking lot was empty. It was a no-brainer- fortunately, since his brain was otherwise occupied.

Adam dribbled up and down the court, forcing himself to take it slow and easy. At first the word beat louder, in time with the ball slapping his palm and then slamming into the concrete.

STU-pid.

STU-pid.

STU-pid.

But then he sank his first basket. Adam had always been able to lose himself in the soft sigh of the ball sinking through the net, and today was no different. He emptied his mind and let his body take over, relaxing into the familiar thwack and crack and swoosh that made him feel more alive. Chest heaving, muscles aching, sweat pouring down his face, he didn’t notice the time passing or the sky darkening. He stopped only briefly to take a few swigs of water, and again to pull off his shirt and toss it to the sidelines, dimly registering that the scalding afternoon sun had given way to a cool breeze.

He didn’t notice Kane step onto the court-it wasn’t until the rebound dropped into Kane’s hands that Adam looked up. It wasn’t the sight of Kane’s tall, angular figure poised under the basket that knocked Adam out of the zone; it was the break in the rhythm, when suddenly the expected crack of the ball against pavement was replaced by a soft slap and then silence, as Kane cradled the ball to his chest.

They hadn’t faced each other on a basketball court since the game last month, when Adam started a fight with the other team and, in the chaos, flattened Kane, accidentally on purpose. The bruises had taken a couple weeks to fade; Kane’s basketball career had dissipated more quickly, as he hadn’t returned to practice since.

Kane held the ball and looked at Adam expectantly, his infuriating smirk gone. There were a lot of things Adam could have said-many that he’d said before, many he’d been holding in for a long time:

I thought we were friends.

Did you want Beth, or did you just want to screw with me?

Are you happy now?

We both slept with someone who died.

Are you as freaked out by that as I am?

What happens now?

“Check it,” he called, reaching for the ball. Kane bounced it toward him. “First to fifteen.”

“Make it twenty-one,” Kane suggested, chasing after Adam as he dribbled the ball up the court.

Adam feinted left, then went right, darting around Kane, sprinting toward the basket, and sinking an easy layup. “Done,” he agreed.

That was the end of the talking. After that it was all grunting and panting, punctuated by the occasional groan of displeasure as a ball rolled off the rim or a hoot of triumph after a wild shot from the three-point line sailed in with nothing but net. An hour passed, and soon they were playing in the shadows, tracking a sound and a silhouette to chase down the ball, shooting as much by feel as by sight.

Kane sank the final shot. “Twenty-one!” he crowed.

He always won. Adam felt the familiar anger bubble up, but instead of exploding, it just popped and drizzled away, like a string of soap bubbles turning to mist. “Good game,” he grunted, slapping Kane’s sweaty palm. He grabbed his water bottle and dumped it over his head, closing his eyes and tipping his face up to the cool stream.

“Morgan…?” Kane, who looked as sleek and unruffled as when he’d first appeared, tossed Adam his shirt and a second bottle of water. He rubbed his lower back and looked over toward the empty parking lot. “Look. About… everything…”

“Forget it, Geary.” Adam pulled his shirt on over his dripping torso and grabbed the ball out of Kane’s loose grip. He rolled it around in his hands, enjoying the familiar grooves and ridges of its rough grain. “Rematch tomorrow?” he suggested. He turned his back on Kane without waiting for an answer and headed for the car.

“Same time, same place,” Kane agreed from behind him, and it was impossible to tell whether his unfailingly sardonic tone masked relief, eagerness, apathy, or regret.

Adam bounced the ball a few times, then tossed it high in the air and caught it with his eyes closed, cupping his hands in a loose cradle and stretching them out to where he knew the ball would be. “I’ll be there.”

“Aw yeah, that’s right.” The one named Hale clapped his hands together once as Fish hoisted a giant glass tube out of the crawl space behind the lopsided couch. “Give it here, dude.”

“Hold your shit,” Fish said, flourishing a lighter.

Beth tucked her hair behind her ears and tried not to look nervous.

Get out, her instincts screamed.

“You okay?” Reed asked, as if he could sense her discomfort. It probably wasn’t too hard, she realized, since she was squeezed into the corner of the couch, as far away from Fish as she could get, her arms scrunched up against her sides and her mouth glued shut. She nodded.

“Over here, baby,” Hale requested, beckoning Fish to hand over the bong.

“Dude, don’t you have any manners?” Fish grabbed one of the discarded fast-food wrappers off the ground, scrunched it up, and threw it at his head. “Ladies first.” He stretched across the couch and handed the long, glass tube to Beth, giving her an encouraging nod. She noticed that his hair was even paler than hers, and almost as long.

“Guys, I don’t think…” Reed, who was perched on an orange milk crate, leaned forward, speaking softly enough that only Beth could hear. “You don’t have to. We can go, if you want.”

He’d said the same thing when they’d walked into the house and he’d seen the look on her face. There were some empty rooms upstairs, he’d suggested, if she didn’t want to hang with the guys-and then he’d flushed, stumbling over his words, hurrying to explain that he hadn’t meant bedrooms, not like that. Or they could just go. Anywhere. But for some reason, Beth had insisted they stay, and now here she was, the bong delicately balanced in her hands, nauseating fumes rising toward her, a trippy hip-hop beat shaking the walls-which were covered with fading posters of half-naked women-and for the first time that day, Beth smiled.

“Just tell me what to do,” she said firmly. She’d always sworn she wouldn’t smoke pot-it was illegal, not to mention dangerous. But she was already a criminal, she reminded herself, and danger didn’t scare her anymore- things couldn’t get much worse. If she could find a way to turn off her brain, maybe, for a little while, they could actually be better.

Reed didn’t try to talk her out of it, and didn’t ask about the sudden change of heart. He just rested his hand on top of hers and guided the opening toward her mouth, then gently pressed her finger over a small hole and flicked on the lighter. “Take a deep breath, but don’t-”

A spasm of coughing wracked through her body and she inadvertently jerked the bong away, spilling warm, grayish water all over her jeans. “Sorry,” she mumbled, her face flushing red.

“No problem. Take a smaller breath the next time,” Reed suggested. “And don’t uncover the hole until you’re ready. Then suck the smoke into your mouth and kind of breathe it down into your lungs.”

“Okay, I think-” She broke off as another cough ripped out of her. Reed put his hand on her back, rubbing in small, slow circles.

“Take it easy,” he said quietly. “Go slow.”

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” she protested, straightening up so that he would take his hand away, even though it was the last thing she wanted. “Let me try this again.” This time she got a hot lungful down without much coughing. She passed the bong to Fish and leaned back against the couch, waiting for it to take effect.

“Man, this is some good shit!” Fish sputtered as he took his mouth off the tube.

“Totally,” Hale agreed after his turn, already looking tuned out to the world.

Reed didn’t say anything after his turn, just fixed his eyes on Beth. She looked away, waiting for the room to start spinning or her tongue to start feeling absurdly big. She felt nothing, except the same panic and fear she’d felt for days.

“Time for another little toke,” Hale said eagerly, grabbing it back. “Yeah, that’s good. Dude, I’m totally high.”

“It’s like… yeah. Cool,” Fish agreed.

“Hey, uh… Reed’s girl, you feeling it?” Hale asked.

Lesson one of getting stoned: Talk about how stoned you are. Beth learned fast. “Yeah,” she lied. “It’s really wild.”

”Dude, Fish, you know what I just realized? You totally look like a girl,” Hale cried, a burst of giggles flooding out of him.

Fish ran his fingers through his straggly, straw-colored hair as if realizing it was there for the first time, then looked at Beth in wonderment. “Yeah,” he agreed. “And I must be hot. Blondes are hot.”

Beth laughed weakly and searched herself for hysteria, paranoia, munchies-something to testify to the fact that she’d just ingested an illegal substance for the first time in her life. But she felt, if anything, more self-conscious than ever, as if they could all tell that her mind was running at normal speed and that she was, even here, a total fraud.

“You usually don’t feel much the first time,” Reed confided, again using that just-for-her voice. “You didn’t do it wrong.”

Once again, he’d known exactly what she was thinking. A horrifying thought occurred to her: What if he really could tell what she was thinking? What if he knew about Harper, and about Kaia, about everything? And even if he didn’t, what would happen if he found out?

Maybe this is paranoia, Beth thought, and now a hysterical giggle did escape her. Maybe I am high.

“So, you guys, like, live here?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound as slow and foggy as theirs.

“Fish and Hale do,” Reed explained. “And I crash here sometimes.”

“He brings his ladies here,” Hale cackled. “All except-”

“Dude, shut up,” Fish snapped, pelting him with another fast-food wrapper-this one seemed to have a chunk of something oozing out of it.

”Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry, bro. Didn’t mean to-”

“Whatever.” Reed turned the stereo up and then threw himself down on the couch in between Beth and Fish. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and kicked his legs up on the milk crate. “Awesome song.” He sighed.

When in Rome…, Beth thought. Do as the potheads do. She closed her eyes, kicked her feet up on the same milk crate so that one leg crossed over Reed’s, and forced a serene smile. “I’m, uh, totally hungry,” she said tentatively. “Anyone got anything to eat?”

It was such a relief not to have to screen her calls anymore that Harper forgot to play it safe; she forgot that there were still plenty of things she needed to avoid.

“So, I was thinking, tomorrow night,” Adam said as soon as she picked up.

“For what?” She lay on her bed, facing away from the window so she wouldn’t be tempted to look out for him, or wonder if he was watching her.

“For our date.”

“Adam-” she began warningly.

“I paid good money for that date,” he pointed out.

“Don’t remind me.” Her list of humiliating moments was mounting up daily, but stepping onstage for that auction still hovered near the top. “Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

“Tomorrow night,” Adam said again. “Eight. I’ll pick you up.”

“I told you that I’m not doing this,” Harper told him, but she was too tired to fight. “You and me…”

“One night. You owe me that.”

She sighed. “Fine. Eight. See you then.” He started to say something else, but Harper hung up.

It was barely past nine, but she was already in her pajamas. Her homework lay undone-as usual-in a stack on her desk. Her Thoroughly Depressing Music mix (Nick Drake, Norah Jones, Belle and Sebastian, Anna Nalick) was on repeat.

“ ‘Breathe, just breathe…,’ ” she sang along under her breath with the mournful melody. “‘There’s a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout ‘cause you’re just as far in as you’ll ever be out…’ ”

Yeah, right. Everyone had a cliché to offer, and they were all wrong.

Harper was wearing one of Adam’s old T-shirts, a Lakers shirt that he’d brought back from his one trip to L.A. a few years ago. Before going, he’d bragged to half the school about going to see Shaq and Kobe play. His mom was dating some real estate hotshot she’d met at a conference, and the guy had gotten them floor seats and all-access passes. He might even get into the locker room, Adam had bragged. But on the night of the game, his mom and her bigwig boyfriend had disappeared for the night, leaving Adam back in the hotel room to watch porn and steal candy from the minibar. He showed up at school the next week wearing the Lakers shirt, full of stories about Shaq’s giant feet and the way Kobe had winked at him. Harper was the only one he ever trusted with the truth. She’d borrowed the shirt once last summer, after a drunken water balloon fight had gotten out of hand. She never gave it back.

Summer had been easier, she thought, but then stopped herself. Even then, things hadn’t been right, not really. Adam had been slobbering over Beth while Harper pretended not to care. She imagined she could still see shallow imprints in the heel of each hand from where she’d dug her nails in every time she saw them together, hoping the pain would distract her. She had thought that if she got rid of Beth, somehow, all her problems would just go away. After all, she was Harper Grace-she wasn’t supposed to have problems. Ask anyone. She could still remember when that had been true-not last summer, but the one before that, when everything in her life had still made sense.

Kane measures out a small shot of vodka into each of their plastic cups, then tucks the silver flask back into his pocket. Harper puts an arm around Miranda and leans against Adam and, after they clink glasses, downs the shot in a single gulp. A warm tingle spreads through her.

“This idea wasn’t nearly as dumb as I thought it was,” she admits to Kane, who has dragged them out to the lame ghost town in the dead of night. He gives her a mock bow. They have snuck inside the fake saloon, squeezing up to a table already occupied by plastic mannequins dressed in cowboy clothing. A frozen bartender stands behind the bar, holding a jug of whiskey that will always remain half empty.

“Agreed,” Adam says, clapping Kane on the back. “Excellent plan. “

“I’m full of them,” Kane brags.

Miranda snorts. “Is that why your head’s so big?”

He grabs her and puts her in a loose headlock. “Watch it, Stevens,” he warns, “or I might be forced to…”

“I’m terrified,” Miranda says sarcastically. “I’m shaking. What are you going to do?”

Kane doesn’t respond, just drives his knuckles into her head and spins. A noogie.

“What are you, ten years old?” Miranda squeals, convulsing in giggles as he lets her go.

Adam and Harper exchange a glance and smile.

“So where’s your latest conquest?” Kane asks Adam. “I figured you’d bring her along. “

Harper suppresses a laugh. Adam doesn’t bring his girlfriends out on excursions like this. They’re excess baggage. They’d miss the jokes and spoil the flow of banter honed over the years. They are a foursome, and Adam knows better than to screw with that.

“This one’s kind of cute,” she tells him, ruffling his hair. “A little bland, but-”

“Who needs a personality when you’ve got a body like that?” Kane points out, giving them an exaggerated leer. “She’s hot.”

Miranda smacks him on the shoulder. “She must have some personality-after all, she was too clever to fall for your bullshit. “

“I just stepped out of the way and let my man here have a shot,” Kane says magnanimously.

Adam, Harper notices, says nothing. It’s his turn-now is the time when he chimes in about the annoying way she slurps her soup or the nasal sound of her voice. They always have some minor flaw that becomes insurmountable-too much throat clearing, too many pimples, not enough Simpsons trivia-and then he moves on to the next. It is how things work.

“I’m going to do some exploring,” he says instead, standing up.

Harper jumps up. “I’ll come along. You guys in?”

Kane puts an arm around one of the mannequins. “What? And leave my friend Buffalo Bob here to drink alone?”

Miranda stays too, and Harper and Adam wander out into the darkness. There are no lights, and she can barely see. She takes Adam’s hand so they don’t get separated. It is warm and his grip is strong, and she is not afraid of falling.

“Where do you want to go?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Dunno. I just needed to get out of there. “

They wander aimlessly without speaking, past ramshackle buildings whose hokey labels are too difficult to read in the dark. This is the Adam no one else knows, quiet and thoughtful. To everyone else, he is the hot jock, blond and beautiful. To Harper, he is just Adam, who eats his pizza slices crust first, can recite the alphabet backward, and has a tiny scar just behind his left ear. He always capitalizes the word “summer,” and flosses his teeth twice every night because he’s terrified of getting a cavity. She knows him better than she’s ever known anyone.

“So what’s the deal?” she asks, shivering as the wind begins to blow. He puts his arm around her and tugs her toward him. She snuggles into his side, where it’s warm.

“With what?”

“With the new girl. Beth. Bad breath? Can’t stop clearing her throat? Drools when she kisses?” “Nah, she’s good. “

“Come on,” she says playfully. “It’s always something. You can tell me. “

“It’s weird, Grade. “His voice isn’t playful at all. “It’s not like that. She’s… different. “

“Oh, I get it. “ Harper squeezes her arm around his waist. “You’re still in that nauseating ‘everything is wonderful’ stage. Ah, young lust. So romantic. “

“No. “ He stops walking and drops his arm away from her shoulder. “It really is different this time. It’s… she’s…”He holds his hands out to his sides. She can’t see his face in the dark. “I can’t explain. There’s just something about her. “

“I understand, Ad. “ And she does. She throws her arms around him and hugs him tightly. “I’m really happy for you.” And she wants to mean it. She knows she should mean it, but as she holds him, her face burrowed into his shoulder, breathing in the familiar mix of fabric softener and a woodsy aftershave, she realizes something important. And then she squeezes tighter. She doesn’t want to let go, because when she does, everything will change.

Harper turned out the light and curled up into a ball, trying to sleep. Her leg throbbed and her back ached, and the T-shirt felt uncomfortably tight around her collar. It kept getting caught beneath her weight as she rolled to one side, then the other. It was tugging at her and choking her, keeping her from sinking into sleep. Eventually she wriggled out of it and tossed it to the floor. It didn’t even smell like him anymore.