Wrath

by Robin Wasserman

  Reed wasn’t usually a possessive person. A hookup wasn’t a marriage proposal. People didn’t belong to each other. He belonged only to himself—and his girls were the same.

  But Kaia was different.

  Or at least he’d thought she was.

  Reed held the phone and brought his thumb toward the delete button—and then he stopped. The phone didn’t belong to him. And neither did Kaia.

  He closed the phone, laying it back on the table next to her wallet.

  And when Kaia came back from the bathroom, he was gone.

  Beth didn’t have the nerve to confront them in person. It was easier, safer to pick up the phone and climb into bed, swaddling herself in the fuzzy pink comforter. But, even surrounded by all the things she loved—Snuffy the stuffed turtle, her copy of The Wind in the Willows, her trophy from the sixth-grade spelling bee—she felt lost in hostile territory.

  Claire picked up the phone after the fourth ring, just as Beth had begun to breathe an ounce easier and prepared herself to leave a message. “Claire, we need to talk,” she began, knowing that even if the other girl still didn’t have caller ID, she would recognize Beth’s voice. “Are you … mad at me?” It sounded so childish—but it was all she could come up with. She couldn’t reference what she’d heard in the parking lot.

  “Why would I be mad at you, Bethie?” Claire asked, adopting the nickname she’d used when they were kids. “Have you done something? Feeling guilty?”

  “You just seem … mad,” Beth said lamely, avoiding the question. Did she feel guilty? Had she trashed the friendship, or had they just drifted apart? What did it say that she could no longer remember?

  “Beth, I’m kind of busy. Is there a point to this? Because otherwise—”

  “I heard you in the parking lot,” Beth blurted. If Claire hung up, Beth might not have the nerve to call back. And that would mean letting it go, returning their fake smiles and pretending she didn’t know what lay behind them. “You, Abbie, Leslie—I heard what you said. About me.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a pause. Then—“You were spying on us?”

  “No, I was just—it doesn’t matter. I just …”

  “What do you want me to say?” Claire asked irritably. “If you heard us, why are you even calling? What do you want from me?”

  It was a reasonable question, but for all her agonizing over this call, Beth hadn’t thought to come up with an answer.

  “I wanted—I thought we could be friends again.”

  Claire laughed. “Just like that? Just because you decide, after all this time, you want to pick things up where we left off. You think it’s that easy?”

  “Why not?” Beth whispered.

  “Because where were you, Bethie? Where were you when Abbie broke her leg, or got her first boyfriend? Where were you when I almost failed precalc? When my parents got divorced—” Her voice, which had been rising steadily, suddenly broke off, and all Beth could hear were her labored breaths.

  “I’m sorry,” Beth began. “I wish I hadn’t—”

  “I don’t care if you’re sorry. Don’t you get that? And I don’t care anymore that you weren’t there—I got by without you. We all did. I don’t need you anymore. And I really don’t care if you need me.”

  Claire hung up.

  Beth sat with the phone to her ear for a long time, just listening to the dial tone. That was it, then. Unless she wanted to back down and forgive Adam, she was on her own.

  On her nightstand, sandwiched between a stack of CDs and an empty picture frame (that had, until recently, held a shot from the junior prom), sat a small cardboard box. It was the size of a jewelry box, and inside it lay two yellow pills, each the size of one of her gold stud earrings.

  She lifted the top and looked at the pills, examining them more closely than she had before. She even took one out of the box, just to see how it would feel in the palm of her hand. It was light, like aspirin, and it looked just as harmless.

  Kane had given them to her as a Christmas present. He’d thought they could make their New Year’s “ex-tra special”—a mistake almost as big as the one she’d made by inviting him into her life in the first place.

  Still, she’d pocketed the pills, and kept them. For a rainy day? If so, this qualified, and she could certainly do with a jolt of happiness, chemical or not.

  But she put the pill back in the box. She either had too much restraint or not enough nerve—she was no longer sure which. She didn’t want to find out what those little pills did, no matter how wrecked she felt.

  Yet, for whatever reason, she couldn’t bring herself to throw them away.

  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 de
sk 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?”