Wrath

Chapter 8

A month of detention was starting to look a whole lot sweeter. Room 246 was the same as she remembered it from her last week of incarceration: a long, gray space crammed with rows of desks drilled to the floor, the detention monitor positioned at the front with her nose buried in a book. There were just a few key differences.

First, Harper wasn’t by her side to help make the hours speed by.

Second, the sign-in sheet was now yellow, rather than its former puke green.

And third, the only difference that mattered: Kane Geary was sitting in the back corner. And he was flagging her down, pointing to the empty desk to his left.

Me? Miranda mouthed, fighting the urge to look behind her and see what tall, leggy blonde was the true target of that lazy grin. Yes, you. He nodded, and when she slipped into the desk beside him, he patted her on the knee in welcome. It as all Miranda could do to not slide off the seat and melt onto the floor.

“Welcome to prison,” he greeted her. “At least now I’ve got a good cell mate.”

The hour passed too quickly, in a haze of whispered complaints about the monitor’s hairy mole or the leaning Mohawk of the delinquent in front of them. They played dirty hangman (Miranda’s winning word: “vulva”), placed bets on the number of wads of gum stuck beneath Kane’s desk (seven), and, for a blissful ten minutes, Kane leaned over to Miranda’s notebook and drew nasty but spot-on caricatures of the other members of the basketball team, who were seated in a hulking cluster toward the front of the room. Blissful because, to reach Miranda’s notebook, Kane had to shift his body into her space and lay his arm across her desk, where it pressed, very lightly, against her own. As he stared at the page, intent on getting the point guard’s dopey expression just right, Miranda concentrated on his arm, imagining that he was touching her on purpose. Knowing, even when he shifted position for a moment and his hand actually grazed hers, that he wasn’t.

And then the bell rang, and it was all over.

It would be asking too much, holding out foolish hope to think that-

“See you tomorrow?” Kane asked, hoisting his bag over his shoulder and helping her gather up her scattered belongings.

“Same time, same place,” Miranda replied, trying desperately for nonchalance.

Thank God Beth had weaseled out of trouble and left Miranda to face her punishment all on her own.

Miranda Stevens had spent her whole life flying under the radar and doing what other people told her to do.

So this is what you got for being a rebel?

Bring it on.

Beth felt him before she heard him. She was absorbed in her work, proofing the page layout for the next issue of the paper, and didn’t hear the door to the tiny office click open. But some part of her must have registered it, and must have known whose hand lay on the knob, because gradually the words on her computer screen began to swim in front of her eyes and, unable to concentrate, she sensed a heavy quality in the air. The walls felt closer, the ceiling lower, and her muscles tensed.

He cleared his throat.

It was then she knew for sure.

“I thought we had an agreement,” Beth said, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice. Her hands gripped the edge of the small computer desk until her knuckles turned white. She focused on the dull pain of the wooden desk digging into her palms. It kept her from being swept off in a wave of panicked thoughts-the room was empty, the halls were deserted, he was blocking the only exit, there would be no one to hear her scream. Yes, it was probably best to steer clear of thoughts like that, and not to even think the word “scream.” Or she just might.

“You’re not supposed to be in here, not while I’m here alone.” It was silly, but she suddenly felt she’d made a dangerous misstep by calling attention to the fact that she was by herself-as if, otherwise, he wouldn’t have noticed.

“Things have changed,” Jack Powell said. He locked the door behind him and took a seat on the couch, patting the space next to him. Then he laughed at the look of horror on her face. “Oh, calm down,” he said irritably. “You’ve got nothing I want.”

Beth couldn’t believe she’d once found this man adorable, fantasizing about his dark eyes and crooked smile. She had, more than once, drifted off to sleep while imagining them together in a romantic scene from a black-and-white movie. Everything about him repelled her now-even the accent seemed phony.

“Get out,” she said steadily. “I told you before, I’ll tell the administration what happened, what-you tried to do, if you don’t leave me alone.”

The last time they’d talked one-on-one and she’d unveiled this threat, it had knocked him off balance. But this time was different. He was expecting it-and more than that, he seemed to welcome it.

“Get off it, Beth. I didn’t do anything to you. We both know that you wanted-” He cut himself off and gave himself a little shake. “Enough of that.” And suddenly, his cold look was replaced by an amicable grin, the same one that made every other girl in school swoon. The sharp change, as if he’d swapped personalities with the flip of a switch, was the scariest thing of all. “That’s why I stopped by,” he said pleasantly, as if she’d invited him in for tea. “To tell you that the past is behind us. You won’t be going to the administration, or making any more threats, and I’ll do whatever it is I want to do.”

“And how do you figure that?” Beth asked, forcing herself not to look away. Facing this Powell was even more unsettling than confronting him in attack mode. At least then, she knew what to prepare herself for. Now, looking at his blank face, she could only image what lay beneath the surface. This was the face she still saw in her nightmares.

“You made a good show of it, Beth, and I’ll agree, you had something on me. Impressive. But, unfortunately, I now have something on you.” He pulled a folded-up page out of his pocket. Beth knew what it was before he’d unfolded it and waved it in the air like a conqueror’s flag. The blood red color gave it away. “I’ve got proof,” Powell said simply.

“What you did is worse,” she whispered-any louder, and she couldn’t trust her voice not to break.

“Maybe,” he allowed. “But you’ve no evidence of that. My word against yours, remember? And as for this”-he waved the flyer again-“I’m afraid I’ve got all the evidence I need. Ask your little friend Miranda if you don’t believe me. I presume you’ll find her in detention.” He shook his head. “Nice of you to stand up and face the music with her, by the way. That was a classy move.”

Beth felt a blast of shame rise to her cheeks. “So we’re even,” she said, fighting against the suspicion that it wouldn’t be quite that easy. “I’ve got something on you, and you’ve got something on me.”

“Not quite,” he stopped her. “As I see it, since I’m the only one here with any kind of proof, you’ve got nothing on me. Any accusation you make now is tainted. Nothing more than a pathetic attempt to get yourself out of trouble by discrediting me. No more than you’d expect from a coward who lets her partner take the blame.”

She sighed. “What do you want?”

“Nothing. For now.” Powell leaned back on the couch and kicked his feet up. “I just wanted to alert you that there was a new game afoot. Oh, don’t look so glum,” he admonished, twisting his face into a parody of her own miserable scowl. “This means we can be friends again, just like in the old days-back when you were so eager to help me out.”

Beth remembered. It made her want to throw up.

“And if you’re nice, there are things I can do for you too,” Powell said.

“Like what?” she asked snidely.

“Like, for example, telling you who turned you in. Like they say, the best cure for losing one battle is winning the next. I’m sure you’d like to get even with someone, and since it’s not going to be me…”

She knew it would be stupid to play any more of his games, but could it hurt to stay a moment longer, to smile and ask nicely? To get a name?

She was tired of being a victim. Maybe Powell was right: Just because she’d lost this battle didn’t mean it was time to give up.

Maybe it was just time to find a better target.

And reload.

She felt like a Bond girl, or a savvy spy from Mission: Impossible, as she snaked her way through the crowd and took position, waiting patiently to deploy her grand master plan.

We need to talk, her note had said. Meet me on the 6 P.M. Twilight Trails train. I’ll be in the front seat of the second car from the back. Beth

The Twilight Trails company ran fake freight trains on a scenic route through the desert every day at sunset. They stopped at Grace, then continued on for an hour into the wilderness before turning around. Which meant that she and Adam would be trapped together for two hours. And unless he wanted to throw himself from a moving-albeit painfully slow-moving-train, he would be forced to listen to what she had to say.

She paid her exorbitant fee and settled into a window seat, glancing disdainfully at the scattering of passengers around her, wondering who would actually waste their money on a tour of this wasteland. She put on a pair of sunglasses-all the better to play out her interlude in espionage-and pulled out a magazine.

She didn’t have to wait long.

“I was so glad to get your note-” Adam began, his voice breaking off when she turned her face from the window. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Harper tried to smile and ignore his tone-and his disappointment. “I guess the jig is up,” she quipped.

“What is this?” Adam asked, whirling around to scan the rest of the train car. “Where’s Beth?”

He could be so slow sometimes… but, still, so adorable.

“Beth’s not coming,” Harper said, spelling out the obvious. “I sent the note.”

He shook his head. “You’re really sick, you know that?” He turned on his heel and walked back down the aisle, taking a seat toward the back of the train car.

Harper sighed, stood up, and followed him, ignoring the glare of the conductor, who cleared his throat and pointed at the large red letters ordering passengers to STAY SEATED WHILE THE TRAIN IS IN MOTION.

“It’s not that big a car,” she pointed out, sitting down behind Adam. If she squeezed in next to him, it might scare him away. “Do we really need to play musical chairs?” She sat on her knees and leaned forward, resting her arms on the seat in front of her. He didn’t turn his face up to look at her, but if he had, her lips would still have been too far away to brush his forehead. “Train doesn’t stop again until Salina,” she pointed out. “You’re stuck with me.”

Adam closed his eyes and began to rub the bridge of his nose. “Fine. What do you want from me?”

“I want to know what you want from me, Ad. What can I do to fix things? Just tell me.”

“Nothing,” he grunted.

“You can’t stay mad forever.”

“Watch me.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Harper watched the scenery crawl by, mile after mile of low ranging hills and straggly scrub brush. All painted in the monotonous sepia tones of desert life. Who would search this out? she wondered again. Who would pay? One elderly woman across the aisle wasn’t even looking out the window. Instead, she had her eyes glued to a trashy romance novel, as if the scenery was beside the point.

“So,” Harper began again, casually, “who do you think spray-painted the billboard? My money’s on the sophomores-it was so lame. Reeks of some pathetic attempt to establish a rep. As if-”

“Don’t do that,” he said abruptly.

“What?”

“Don’t act like everything’s normal.”

“It can be,” she pointed out. Pleaded.

“No.”

She’d tried being patient and giving him his space, but that just wasn’t her. She couldn’t just wait-she needed to act. She refused to let Beth win, and she was physically incapable of just letting him go. If it meant sacrificing her precious dignity and making him understand how much she needed him, then that’s just what she would do. And so she’d formulated her plan, and now she just needed to push through his anger and pride, and uncover that piece of him that still loved her.

“Adam, you want Beth to forgive you, right?”

“Don’t talk about her.”

“I know you do. Everyone sees you running around school after her and-”

“I said, don’t talk about her.”

“Okay, fine. I just… I just don’t get it. How can you expect… some people to forgive you, but you won’t forgive me?”

“It’s not the same,” he snapped.

“But, why? Okay, I lied-so did you. I screwed up-so did you. And I still love-”

“It’s. Not. The. Same,” he repeated.

“You’re right, because what you and I had together, it’s nothing like you and Beth. It’s so much more-”

“You really want to know?” he asked, loudly enough that the woman across the aisle looked up from her book in alarm. He whirled around to look at Harper, who resisted the urge to sink back into her own seat and turn her face away from his expression and what it meant.

“Of course I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I really do.” Though she wasn’t sure it was true. “Tell me. Why can’t we just get past this?”

“Because it’s not what you did!” he yelled, as if he’d been holding the words in for weeks and they had finally battled their way out. They were all looking at her now: the old woman across the aisle, the mother with two squirming kids who kept shooting her a sympathetic smile, the preteen girls two rows ahead who couldn’t even be bothered to disguise their eager eavesdropping. Harper knew exactly how pathetic she must look, but she forced herself not to care what a train full of tourists thought of her. Today only one person’s opinion mattered.

It’s not what you did. Then… what?

“It’s who you are, Harper,” he said, more quietly. This was how a doctor’s face must look when he’s telling someone the patient died, Harper realized. Adam was pronouncing their relationship. Time of death, 6:09.

“I don’t get it,” she said, but that was just another lie. After all, hadn’t she already been treated to this little speech? Hadn’t she already been informed of what a horrible, irredeemable piece of trash Harper Grace had become?

“Look, with Kane, what he did? It was shitty, but… no big surprise. I knew better than to trust him. But you?” Adam sighed. “I always trusted you. Out of everyone, you were the only one…”

“That’s what I’m saying, Ad,” Harper begged. “It’s different between the two of us. You can’t let one screwup ruin everything.”

“It’s not just about that,” Adam said. “It doesn’t matter if I forgive you. I can’t be with someone like you. Or be around someone like you. Not someone who’d do what you did.”

“Someone like me?” Harper cried. “Someone who’s been your best friend since you were eight years old?”

He shook his head.

“You’re not that person. I thought you were, but… something’s different.You’re…”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“What? Just say it.”

“Wrong. Okay? Something in you, it’s like… it’s gone bad. Rotted.”

Harper just looked at him, her eyes watering, her hair falling down over her face. Surely he would look at her and see that she was still the same person, that however much of a bitch she could be, it didn’t define her. She’d done the wrong thing, she conceded that-but it didn’t mean there was nothing right left in her. It wasn’t fair for him to think that. It wasn’t right for him to say it.

And when he saw how he’d hurt her…

But he did look at her, and his face didn’t soften; in fact, his mouth tightened into a hard, firm line. And then he turned away and settled back into his seat.

“I told you that you wouldn’t want to hear it,” he said, and his voice was casual, almost sneering, as if he couldn’t hear her collapsed onto the seat behind him, choking back her sobs. But of course he heard; he just didn’t care.

“Want some?”

Beth shuddered. She’d come out here hoping to be alone. No one used the playground this time of night, and she figured there’d be no one to see her huddled under a tree, her knees tucked up to her chest and her eyes filled with tears. Fleeing from Powell, she’d needed to go somewhere safe, and for Beth, the playground felt like home. All the more reason to be displeased when some stoner in a weathered leather jacket and torn black jeans slumped down beside her, waving a joint in her face. (At least, Beth assumed that’s what it was-she’d never seen one in real life, not this close.)

She shook her head and laid it back down on her knees, hoping that if she closed her eyes and ignored him, maybe he would slink away.

“I just figured, you know, your eyes are going to be all red, anyway,” the guy explained. “So, might as well take advantage of it.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Pot joke,” he said. “Not funny, I guess.” He paused, and she could hear him inhale deeply. “Look, you sure you don’t want any? You look like you could use…”

Beth looked up then, and faced him with a fierce expression, silently daring him to finish the sentence. That’s all she needed to hear right now, some burnout telling her that she was an uptight “Miss Priss” who could use a little fun in her life. She didn’t know whether he was trying to insult her or pick her up, but either way, she wasn’t in the mood.

“A break,” he concluded, blowing out a puff of smoke. “Bad day, huh? Me too.”

“I’m sorry, I really don’t want to be rude, but I don’t even know you, and-”

“Reed,” he said, raising the joint as if to toast her. “Rhymes with weed.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Another joke,” he added. “Still not funny?”

It suddenly occurred to Beth that she was alone on a deserted playground with this guy-anything could happen. But whether it was his amiable expression or her exhaustion, she didn’t feel threatened, just worn out. “Like I was saying, I came here to be alone, and I’m sure you’re a nice guy and all, but-”

“I’m not trying to pick you up,” he said suddenly.

“What?”

“Too much trouble.” He leaned back against the tree, staring up at the sky. “Girls. Women. Whatever you call yourselves. I’m out.”

“Uh, congratulations?”

“Damn right.” Reed closed his eyes and took another hit.

“So what do you want, then?”

“World peace? A Fender Stratocaster?” he grinned. “How ‘bout a warm breeze and a good buzz?”

“What do you want from me?” Beth clarified, not sure whether to be annoyed or amused. “If you’re not trying to pick me up, what are you doing?”

“You were crying,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“And?”

“And I wanted to make you stop. Which you did.”

“Oh.” Beth blushed, feeling a little silly for having assumed some dark ulterior motive.

“But if you want to be alone…”

She realized that was the last thing she wanted. “No, stay-I mean, you can. If you want.”

Reed shrugged. “Whatever.” Raising his eyebrows, he tipped the joint toward her again. She waved him away. Not that tuning out didn’t seem like a pretty good idea right about now, but it wouldn’t solve anything. And it’s not like Reed looked particularly cheerful himself.

“I’m Beth,” she blurted, blushing again. He hadn’t asked for her name, probably didn’t even care.

Reed shifted away from the tree, lying flat on his back with his arms splayed out to his sides. A slow smile broke across his face. “Beth Manning. Yeah, I know.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Kaia hissed as soon as Powell picked up the phone.

“Right now? Grading papers and trying not to vomit over the sad state of secondary education in this country.”

“Don’t be cute. I assume you were there.” She hoped her voice wasn’t betraying how much this pervy stalking routine was freaking her out. So she focused on her anger-it gave her clarity.

“Cute is not something I aspire to be at the moment. Enlightened might be a better goal to strive for. Care to fill me in on what’s got you so hot and bothered?”

“I got your text message, Jack-and so did he, just like you intended.”

“He? He who?” He sounded so genuinely clueless that Kaia was certain it was an act; nothing about Powell had ever been genuine.

“Drop it.You know I was with Reed. I know you saw me with him. You probably followed me there.” Kaia could almost see it-his figure, waiting in the dark, coldly weighing his options, delighting in his view. She shivered.

“Are you actually admitting that you were with someone else?” Now his tone shifted from innocence to outrage. “And I’m supposed to feel guilty because my intimate message somehow fell into the wrong hands? Seems like the only guilty party here, mon amour, is you.”

“I’m supposed to believe it was just a coincidence?” Kaia laughed bitterly. “Right. Just leave me alone, okay? This is it. We’re done.”

“I don’t think that’s your decision to make,” Powell said, his voice low and steady. “Only one thing is done here, and it’s your little dalliance with the Sawyer boy. I warned you before to keep your hands off.”

“Or what?” Kaia struggled to keep her voice as calm as his. “You’ll keep following me around until I realize you’re the only man for me?”

“Oh, Kaia.” Powell sighed, and took on a patronizing tone that suggested he was delivering wisdom from on high to a silly little girl. “Stalking is a coward’s game. Hiding in bushes. Peering in windows.” He laughed humorlessly. “Now does that really sound like me? No, when I want something, I take it.”

“Not everything’s yours to have,” she snapped.

“Not everything, true. But you are.”

“You’re pathetic,” she spit out.

“Now, now, that’s not very nice. And as I’ve already suggested, you should be rather nice to me. Or do you want to fail your senior year? Get thrown out of school? Let’s remember who’s in charge here.”

Enough.

“I am,” Kaia snapped. “You know what will happen if I go to the administration and tell them how you’ve been forcing yourself on poor little me.”

“Your word against mine,” he said simply. “And once I’m through with you, your word will be worthless.”

“Your word against mine and Beth’s” she reminded him. “Or have you forgotten I know about that little misstep?”

“Beth’s been taken care of,” he said shortly. “I think you’ll find she won’t be much interested in joining forces with your little campaign. It’s over, Kaia. No more leverage. But I’m a bighearted man. If you’re ready to apologize and come back to me-”

“Dream on.”

“Have it your way,” he said agreeably. “But I think you’ll change your mind soon enough.”

“Just leave me alone.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Kaia.” He chuckled again. “You know, I once suggested that you stick to playing with boys your own age. Looks like you should have taken my advice.”