“I know,” Beth said quietly, bitterly. When would Harper finally leave her alone?
“But it didn’t matter, of course.” Harper shook her head sorrowfully.
“And why’s that?” Beth half expected her to admit she’d rigged the contest. After all, why leave things to chance? Only losers like Beth would be that stupid, right?
“It wouldn’t matter if you’d written the Gettysburg address,” Harper explained—and Beth would think her voice almost kind, if she didn’t know better, if she hadn’t seen the look in Harper’s eye. “You think anyone actually cared what those speeches said? You think anyone but you was listening? It was a popularity contest. Everything in high school is a popularity contest.” And how could you get this far before figuring that out? her look said. I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. “That’s why I’ll always win. People love me. You can’t beat that.”
“Not everyone loves you,” Beth pointed out, amazed that, for once, she wasn’t frozen and brought to tears by her anger. “Not Adam.”
Harper didn’t even flinch. She just smiled indulgently, as if watching a child try fruitlessly to contact the outside world on a plastic telephone.
Certain she could crack the facade, Beth pushed ahead. “None of these people have figured out who you really are. But Adam gets it—now.”
“What do you know about it?” Harper asked in a perfectly measured voice.
“I know that whatever you try to take from me, you’ll never get what you really want,” Beth snapped. “He won’t stop following me around—but he’s done with you, forever.”
“Nothings forever.”
“Nothing’s more pathetic than watching someone chase after a guy who obviously wants nothing to do with her.”
Harper shook her head. “Better watch out—this bitch thing doesn’t suit you. And it can’t possibly have a happy ending.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just a piece of friendly advice,” Harper said, offering a cool smile, “from one bitch to another.”
She walked away, leaving Beth alone in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by the surging crowd of students all with better places to be. She’d finally found the nerve to stand up for herself—and Harper had barely noticed. Maybe she didn’t really care about Adam, Beth realized, or about anyone but herself. Maybe that’s the kind of person you had to be to wreck other people’s lives.
Yet again, Harper had stolen something from her—and obviously she’d only done it to make Beth more miserable than ever. It made her even more desperate to strike back. But how could you hurt someone who didn’t have the capacity to feel pain?
She’s wrong, Harper repeated silently, over and over again.
Beth didn’t know anything about Harper, and she didn’t know Adam as well as she’d thought, and that should be enough to make her words powerless. Words can never hurt me, she sang to herself, as if this were a Very Special Episode of Sesame Street: “B is for Bitch.”
Beth was just lashing out, feebly trying to make herself feel better—and it was only an accident that she’d struck a nerve. But Harper couldn’t help wondering whether that mattered. A stopped clock is right twice a day; maybe every once in a while Beth’s bitter, nonsensical babbling stumbled into the truth.
She considered ditching her meeting with the principal and escaping in search of some way to clear her mind. And maybe she would have, if she’d had Miranda by her side, ready to ply her with cigarettes and chocolate chip cookies and assure her, with the certainty of someone who knew from personal experience, that soon enough, Adam would fall prey to her natural charm.
But since she was on her own, as usual, she strode down to the principal’s office, her step steady and with a hint of a bounce so that no one watching would guess the truth. And the truth was that Beth’s words still echoed in her mind:
He ‘s done with you.
Forever.
And every time she thought of them, it felt like her bones were snapping and her muscles dissolving, so that it soon took all her effort not to crumple to the floor.
“Congratulations, Ms. Grace!” the principal boomed, meeting her in the doorway with a hearty handshake. “How does it feel?”
Harper returned the smile, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and looked the principal straight in the eye. “It feels great,” she said, wishing they offered an Oscar for Best Performance in a High School Hallway. “I couldn’t be happier.”
Suspension wasn’t all bad.
In fact, as it turned out, it wasn’t bad at all.
Adam slept late, ordered pizza, watched TV and, in other words, did whatever the hell he wanted to do. It’s not like his mother was home enough to care. She hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t going to school. (And, since he’d successfully forged her signature on the suspension form, there was no reason to think that she ever would.) It wasn’t a bad life. And the coach was right: It gave him plenty of time to think.
That’s what he did all morning, whether he was gnawing cold pizza or flipping aimlessly between ESPN and The Backyardigans. He thought about what had been done to him, and how he’d been wronged, and he thought about how there seemed to be no way out. And when the thoughts built up inside his head and it felt like the pressure would cause his eyes to bulge out, that’s when he finally threw on some clothes and a pair of old sneakers and shambled down the street to a dark bar where they wouldn’t bother to check his ID or ask why an eighteenyear-old local basketball star would want to waste his afternoon slouched over a mug of cheap, stale Bud Light.
Like father, like son, a voice in his head chanted.
After only a few days, he’d settled into a comfortable routine—and would be almost sorry when the suspension was lifted. Traipsing from class to class—facing his teachers, his ex-friends, his failures—was no match for long, lazy afternoons that turned into long evenings, hidden away in the dark, cozy recesses of the Lost and Found.
Sometimes he struck up a conversation with a regular—they were all regulars, here—and sometimes he kept to himself, his glowering expression keeping the prying strangers away.
“Hey, honey.”
Today, apparently, wasn’t going to be one of those days.
“What’s a nice kid like you doing in a dump like this?”
Adam looked up from his beer. The pickup line was almost older than she was, though not by much. The woman who’d scraped her bar stool over toward him and was now curling a stubby finger through a lock of her platinum blond hair was probably a couple of years younger than his mother. She wore a garish flowered blouse whose neckline plunged far lower than you might have wanted it to, and her nails were painted a bright pink that clashed with her red pants. Each had a little decaí painted on its tip. On the nail of her index finger—which she was using to trace the rim of his half-empty glass—there was a tiny butterfly.
“How about it, hon, you got a story you want to tell?”
“Not really,” Adam mumbled. But he gave her a half smile. She’d been pretty, once—and at the moment, he had nothing better to do. “How about you?”
“Oh, sweetie!” She threw back her head and laughed, and he could see the blackened enamel fillings lining her molars. “I got about a million of them. Let me tell you—”
“Here I am, Adam.”
He froze as a pair of arms wrapped around him from behind, cool hands pressing his chest. Which might have been a good thing, were they not hands he knew.
“Have you been waiting long?” a too-familiar voice asked.
The older woman’s face reddened—though it was hard to tell, thanks to the several layers of pale pancake and blood red rouge. “I—I didn’t know you had company. I, uh, I’ll get out of your hair.”
“She’s not with me,” Adam protested weakly as the hands traced their way up his body and began doing something unspeakably pleasurable to the tips of his ears. And the woman disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the bar—there were plenty of
other men drinking alone.
“What do you want?” Adam asked Kaia dully, without turning around or pushing her away. He hated her … but he had never been able to push her away. “I was busy, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I noticed,” Kaia said. She let go of him—Adam tried to feel relief, but couldn’t—and pulled up a stool next to his. “So, aren’t you going to thank me?”
“For what?” Now that she wasn’t touching him anymore, Adam’s feelings were uncomplicated. He just wanted her to go away.
“For rescuing you from”—Kaia looked off in the direction the older woman had disappeared—“that.”
“I can take care of myself, thanks.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“Kaia, if you’ve got something to say, just say it. I don’t have time for your games.”
“Fine. You want the short but sweet version? You’re screwing up.”
Yeah, thanks for the news flash.
“Beating people up? Getting suspended? Walking around half-drunk all the time? It’s pathetic—you’ve got to get it together.”
“What do you care?” he growled, trying to push away her words before they could do any damage. Kaia never said anything without an ulterior motive.
She also never said anything that didn’t sound at least partly true. It’s why she was so deadly effective.
She shrugged.
“Good point. I don’t care. I’m just telling you what I see.You want to ruin your life, that’s your business. I’m just bringing it to your attention. Always good to make an informed decision.” She flagged down the bartender and ordered a seltzer with lime. Adam suddenly wondered what she was doing here, in this dead-end bar in the middle of the afternoon, but forced himself not to ask. With Kaia, curiosity was just another form of weakness.
“I’m ruining my life?” he said instead, pouring on the sarcasm. “That’s a good one. And I suppose you’re just here for the show? You had nothing to do with it?”
“Very mature, Adam, blaming me for all your problems.” She remained infuriatingly serene. Suddenly, she seemed to spot someone in the back of the bar, and she abruptly lifted her drink and stood up. “I’ve got better things to do than babysit you, Adam. Enjoy your beer.”
“Like I really need someone like you looking out for me,” he spit out.
Kaia looked up and down the long, empty bar, then fixed Adam with a pitying stare.
“It looks to me like I’m all you’ve got.”
You can’t go home again.
That was the line that swam into Beth’s mind as she crouched behind a car in the parking lot, furious at herself for hiding like a coward, unable to find the strength to stand and show herself. She’d left school in search of Claire, or Abbie, or anyone from older, easier days, needing the reassurance of familiar faces, people to whom she mattered.
She’d found them, all right. And that, it seemed, had been the biggest mistake of all.
“Can you believe her?” Claire asked. She was lounging against the side of her silver Oldsmobile, while Abbie and Leslie perched on the hood of a boxy green Volvo. They were taking advantage of the picture-perfect weather, stretching out in the sun, and Beth would have joined them—until she heard the words that made her duck behind a parked car instead. “That speech was so pathetic. It was so her, though—all the little Miss Perfect crap.”
“Come on, Claire, don’t be such a bitch,” Abbie said, in a chastising tone spoiled by the fact that she couldn’t choke back her laughter.
“What? Admit it: She thinks she’s better than everyone.”
“Well …” Abbie and Leslie exchanged a glance. “Yeah,” Leslie allowed. “But that doesn’t mean—”
“Guys. Did you not see the way she was looking at us at the sleepover?”
“Like she couldn’t wait to get away from us,” Abbie mused.
“Like she was bored out of her mind,” Leslie added. “And we were supposed to be honored or something that she’d showed up in the first place.”
“It was kind of worth it, though, wasn’t it?” Abbie asked, tipping her head back to get a full blast of sunshine. “I told you we’d get some good gossip out of her.”
“Okay, but is it really worth putting up with Miss Priss for much longer, gossip or not?” Claire pointed out. “All this fake smiling’s starting to hurt my face.”
“Give her a break, Claire. This is Beth we’re talking about—I mean, yeah, she’s kind of boring and pretentious, but she was your best friend,” Abbie reminded her.
Claire scowled. “Was. Note the tense. She’s the one who ditched us—and now we’re supposed to be grateful that she’s come sniffing around again? Like we’re some kind of last-resort rescue from total loserdom?”
“Okay, she’s not that bad,” Abbie argued. “It’s not like we weren’t friends with her … once.”
“She’s different now,” Claire said firmly. “You know she’s not one of us anymore. And I don’t care how many innocent little wide-eyed smiles she gives us—she knows it too.”
Maybe she had to work on her delivery. Giving someone helpful advice probably wasn’t supposed to make them want to throw barware at you—but Adam had looked about ready to do just that. And the irony was, she’d actually been sincere. For whatever reason, she was tired of watching his pitiful downward spiral; but, apparently, he didn’t want her help.
It was a good thing Kaia had better things to think about than the aberrant wave of consideration for her one-time mark. Reed was waiting.
“I’m glad you came,” she said, when she found him slouched in a booth at the back of the bar. He was wearing a tight black T-shirt and, with his river of black curly hair and deep brown eyes, he almost faded into the shadows. She hadn’t seen him—not this close, at least—since the day he’d run off from her house.
Her run-in with Powell had convinced her once and for all that if anyone in her life was a desperate perv, it was him. Reed had no motivation to torment her since she was sure he didn’t know about Powell. She’d been too careful.
“I’m not doing this, Kaia.” She loved the way it sounded when he said her name in his lazy, throaty voice. It sounded like honey—with a splash of tequila thrown in for flavoring.
“Doing what?” Kaia was good at acting the innocent, but in this case, she was honestly clueless. And she didn’t like it.
“You and your father—I’m not getting in the middle of that.”
“Of what? There is no ‘that.’ He barely knows I exist. And I try my best to forget he does.”
“I saw what you were doing.”
He spoke so slowly, as if each word did battle to escape from his brain. Usually it was sexy. Now it was just maddening. “Using me, to piss him off. I’m not doing it.”
Kaia laughed. Unlike the light tinkling giggle she usually allowed herself, this was a full-throated chuckle, a mix of relief and genuine amusement. She stopped abruptly when she noticed his expression—apparently, Reed didn’t like it when people laughed at him.
“Reed, did you see the look on my father’s face when he went back into the house? Did you hear what he said? He doesn’t care what I do. If I wanted to piss him off, I’d spill something on his white Alsatian carpeting. He couldn’t care less about my dating life.”
“I know what I heard,” Reed persisted.
His stubbornness, usually so sexy, was going to ruin everything.
“You’ve seen too many movies. My father and I? It’s not like that. What you heard was the same fight my father and I have every time we speak—which is about once a month. I don’t care what he thinks of me, or who I’m with.” She didn’t say please believe me. Either he would or he wouldn’t. “My father has nothing to do with—with whatever is happening between us,” she swore. “Forget him. I have.”
Reed considered her for a moment. He pushed a hand through his unruly hair, then nodded. “Okay.”
“We’re good?” she asked, wrapping her hands around his.
She leaned across the table to kiss him, hovering there for as long as she could, tasting his lips and breathing in his deep, musky scent. Then she stood up and laid her cell phone and wallet down on the table, hoping she’d chosen a clean spot.
“In that case, I’m off to find what passes for a bathroom in this place.” She skimmed her fingers across his forehead—for no reason other than that she liked to touch him. “Don’t go away.”
Kaia had been gone for two minutes when her cell phone beeped. Reed could still smell her perfume lingering in the air.
The phone beeped again. A second text message. And Kaia was nowhere in sight.
The phone was lying on the table, only a few inches away. It beeped a third time, insistent, as if it were calling to him.
Reed wasn’t usually a curious person. He saw as much of the world as the world wanted him to see—no more, no less. Why examine something when you could just breathe it in and enjoy?
But Kaia was different.
She was complicated and surprising. He didn’t trust himself around her. And he didn’t trust her at all.
When the phone beeped a fourth time, he looked quickly back toward the bathroom. There was no sign of her, so he picked up the phone and flipped it open.
See you at 8.
Wear the black teddy I like.
Or nothing.
That’s even better. J
Reed had never been a big reader. And in English class—when he bothered to attend—he’d always ignored all the crap about levels and symbolism. But the message didn’t require much interpretation; it said exactly what it meant.
When Kaia got through with him this afternoon, she’d be meeting someone else.
And maybe Reed was better at interpretation than he’d thought, because he was suddenly convinced that this was someone Kaia had seen a lot. “J” had certainly seen plenty—all—of her.
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