Wrath

by Robin Wasserman

  Forgetting how early it was, he punched in her cell number—for the last time, he told himself. It rang and rang.

  “I know you’re screening,” Adam said harshly after the voice mail beep. “And don’t worry. I won’t be bothering you anymore. If you want to be a bitch about all this, fine. I’m out.”

  He hung up.

  He’d called her a bitch.

  It felt good.

  And, then, a moment later, it didn’t.

  “Look, I’m sorry about what I said,” he began gruffly, after the beep. “You’ve just got to know, the way you’re acting—” No, that wasn’t right. He hung up again. Climbed back into bed and closed his eyes.

  But he couldn’t go back to sleep.

  Unfinished business and all.

  “I know it’s crazy, calling you again, but how the hell else am I supposed to talk to you? You’re so damn sure that everything—” He hung up again, almost threw the phone across the room. This was humiliating. He hated himself for doing it. Hated her for putting him through it. And yet—

  “Beth. Look, I’m sorry. Please, just call me back. I—I love you. Please.”

  I love you. He’d never said the words aloud. But with Kaia, he’d thought … not that he did, of course—not now, not yet. But maybe someday. Or so he’d imagined.

  Just goes to show he must be even stupider than people thought.

  Reed pushed the pedal to the floor and the speedometer edged up to 55.The truck couldn’t go any faster. It was a piece of shit, just like everything else in his life.

  What had he been thinking, to imagine a girl like that would take him seriously? Her life was like a Ferrari—and his was a clunker that couldn’t even hit the speed limit.

  The night before, he hadn’t cared. A few drinks, a few joints, and nothing mattered. But this morning, neck and back sore from sleeping on the guys’ couch, it was all he could think about. He’d been stupid enough to forget who he was and ignore who she was, and he’d let himself get burned.

  His guitar rattled around in the back and, suddenly, Reed made an abrupt U-turn, his tires screeching as the truck veered around and headed off down the highway, away from town and into the desert.

  He would find a quiet, empty spot and play until his voice went hoarse and his fingers bled. And maybe then he would be able to purge her from his system. Or at least purge the reckless surge of anger that shot through him every time he thought of her and what might have happened.

  If only he hadn’t picked up her phone.

  If only the truck would go faster.

  If only he hadn’t used up all his stash.

  Things were easier when you didn’t have to think.

  When you didn’t have to feel.

  I feel nothing, Beth thought, watching the tiny red light flash on her phone. I see his name flash up on the screen, again and again, and I feel … nothing.

  It was just after dawn and she was at work. These days she was always at work, she thought bitterly, plunging the first batch of fries into the deep fryer and switching on the coffeemaker. She couldn’t complain too much; it’s not like she had anywhere else to be.

  The phone rang again—she stuffed it into her bag.

  It was easy to hide out in the diner, losing herself in the mechanics of wiping down the counters and mopping the floors. Sometimes, she even thought she’d reached some kind of Zen state, where she could accept whatever happened and move on.

  The phone rang a third time and, without warning, the wave of rage swept over her. It beat against her, pummeling her with the whys she couldn’t answer. Why me?

  That was at the top of the list.

  She pictured Adam rolling around in bed with Kaia, while they were still together. She pictured Kane and his lying smile, touching her, stealing her trust. She pictured Harper whispering poisonous nothings in Jack Powell’s ear. It wasn’t fair, she raged, stomping from one end of the kitchen to the other.

  And when another part of her responded: Life isn’t fair, it only fueled her anger.

  Beth began refilling the ketchup jars, wiping off the lids. And she instructed herself to calm down. She’d never felt like this before, so helpless and so powerful at the same time, and she didn’t know what to do with it, or how she was supposed to get herself under control.

  Maybe deep breaths.

  Counting to ten … or a hundred.

  Closing her eyes, sitting down, forcing her body to chill.

  It all might have worked—but instead, she tightened her grip on the ketchup bottle, and then, without thinking, flung it across the room. It shattered against the wall, spraying glass through the air and leaving a garish smear of red dripping down the stained tile.

  Beth should have felt horrified or panicked, afraid of herself—or for herself.

  But she didn’t.

  She just felt better.

  chapter

  10

  Reed was all about avoiding the hassle. School sucked, but it’s not like there was anything you could do about it, right? So he floated along, attending the occasional class, laying low, sneaking out for a smoke when it all got too much. He stayed under the radar. That would have been his motto, if he’d ever bothered to formulate one.

  That, also, was too much effort.

  So when they pulled him out of class, he was stumped—and also a bit stoned, which wasn’t helping matters. He hadn’t done anything. He never did anything. So why haul him down to the vice principal’s office and stick him in front of the administrative firing squad?

  Best not to speak until spoken to. More words to live by.

  So Reed slouched in the low-backed wooden chair and stared at them: the principal, the vice principal, that French teacher all the girls were so hot for. They didn’t scare him.

  And then his father stepped into the office.

  Shit.

  “If you admit what you’ve done, I may be inclined to go easier on you,” the vice principal finally said.

  He’d done nothing, so he said nothing. And he tried not to look at his old man.

  “Mr. Powell found the evidence,” the vice principal continued. “You can’t just weasel out of this one, Mr. Sawyer. Just tell us why you did it. And who helped you.”

  Reed laced his fingers together and put them behind his head, sliding down in the chair. He didn’t have to speak out loud for them to receive his message: Get to the point.

  “Does this look familiar?” Vice Principal Sorrento dropped a can of spray paint onto the desk. “Mr. Powell received a tip that led us to search your locker. Imagine our surprise when we found a number of these.” He pursed his lips, as if it pained him to continue. “It’s obviously what you used to doctor the billboard.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.” Damned if they were going to pin that lame stunt on him. As if he’d waste his time. If Reed wanted to say something, he’d say it—he wouldn’t need to hide behind an anonymous prank. And if he had nothing to say, he’d shut up.

  “Are you denying that we found these cans in your locker, young man?”

  Reed snorted. “For all I know, you found them up your ass.”

  “If they’re not yours, perhaps you have an alternate explanation to offer?” the principal jumped in, before Sorrento could lose his shit.

  Reed shrugged.

  “Maybe you’ve been framed, is that it?” Sorrento suggested sarcastically. “Someone’s out to get you, right? And who might that be?”

  Reed shrugged again. “For all I know, it was you.”

  That’s when his father spoke for the first time. “That’s enough! For God’s sake, boy, just tell them you did it and that you’re sorry, and we can get out of here.”

  Reed was sorry, but only that the school had bothered to drag his father out of work for this. His father usually didn’t care what Reed did—but he did care about missing his shifts. And, like everything else, this would somehow become all Reed’s fault.

  He would have been happy to speed things
along, even if it meant sucking it up for a parental lecture, but he wasn’t about to admit to something he hadn’t done.

  Bring it on, he thought, staring at the vice principal. You don’t scare me.

  Sorrento couldn’t threaten Reed, not with anything that mattered, because you could only threaten someone who cared.

  “Mr. Sawyer, I hope you realize that your son is putting us in a very difficult situation here,” Principal Lowenstein said. “I simply can’t have this brand of … disruptive element polluting my student body.”

  Reed’s father took off his cap and rubbed his bald spot, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Reed wondered what kind of memories this office held for the old man, who’d been a proud Haven High dropout, would-be class of’88.

  “I understand, ma’am, you gotta do what you gotta do,” Hank Sawyer said, and Reed winced, hating the way his father talked to the people who ran his life. “You wanna suspend him for a week or so, I’ll put him to work, set him straight.You don’t have to worry.”

  Not his life, Reed vowed to himself, not for the first time. Not for me.

  “I’m afraid you don’t understand me, Mr. Sawyer.” It seemed to physically pain the principal to address Hank with even the barest term of respect. “If Reed here refuses to take responsibility for his actions—his very serious actions, I might add—we might be forced to take harsher measures. As I always say, if a student truly doesn’t want to learn … well, I’m afraid sometimes there’s just nothing we can do.”

  “I’m not sure I get what you mean,” Hank mumbled.

  But Reed got it. He wasn’t as thick as people thought.

  “She means if we can’t settle this to our satisfaction—if we see no signs of … remorse, it may no longer be possible for Reed to attend Haven High School,” Sorrento explained with a barely hidden smile.

  Hank Sawyer looked dumbfounded.

  Lowenstein looked apologetic—or rather, what she thought a suitably apologetic expression might be.

  Sorrento looked triumphant.

  Powell looked satisfied.

  And Reed looked away. Whatever happened, he’d still have his job. He’d still have his band. He’d still have his buddies, and his stash.

  There was nothing in this place he wanted or needed, so maybe Sorrento, for once in his miserable tight-ass bureaucratic life, was right.

  Maybe it was time for Reed to go.

  “I know I said I’d do the lab for you, but don’t you think you should at least pretend we’re working together?”

  “Sorry, what?” Harper looked up from her doodles to discover her geeky Girl Friday had put down her beaker, turned off her Bunsen burner, and was waving the lab instructions in Harper’s face.

  “I said, how about you actually help me out here, before Bonner catches on?” The girl jerked her head toward the front of the empty room, where their robotic chem teacher was nominally supervising them.

  Harper had cut class again today, unable to face Miranda across the lab table, but that meant a makeup lab—and that meant a big, fat zero unless she could find someone to do the work for her.

  Enter Sara—or was it Sally? Sandra? whatever—a Marie Curie wannabe who always aced her labs and whose semester-long services could apparently be bought for the price of an outdated dELIA⋆s sweater and a setup with debate team captain Martin somebody the Third.

  “Trust me, you don’t want my help,” Harper said, laughing..

  “But it’s easy,” the brainiac argued. “If you just balance the equation and calculate the molarity of solution A, then you can estimate …”

  Harper tuned out the droning. Back in the old days, with Miranda doing their labs, she hadn’t been subjected to any of this chemistry crap; instead, Miranda had just measured and stirred and poured, all the while keeping up a running commentary on Harper’s latest rejects or the possibility that the Bonner was naked under her ever-present lab coat.

  Miranda had always known the perfect thing to say; she was never judgmental, patronizing, or—the worst crime, in both Harper’s and Miranda’s minds—boring. Harper had taken her for granted—and driven her away.

  She got that now. Miranda and Adam were right: They’d been too good for her. Maybe she was lucky it had taken so long for them to realize it. And maybe she still had time to change.

  “Thanks for your help, Marie, but I’ll take it from here,” she said suddenly, grabbing the lab instructions.

  “Uh, my name is Sandra?” the girl pointed out, sounding slightly unsure of it herself. “And I’m not sure you want to do that. We’re at kind of a delicate stage, and last time you—”

  “I said I’ve got it,” Harper said, accidentally sweeping one of the beakers off the table. Both girls jumped back as some of the solution splashed through the air.

  Young Einstein pushed her glasses up on her face and began backing away. “Sure. Okay. No problem. I’ll just get out of your hair then, uh … good luck!” She turned and raced from the room.

  No one’s got any faith in me, Harper thought in disgust. No one realized that she could be diligent and virtuous if she set her mind to it. Hadn’t she managed to manipulate and connive her way to the top of the Haven High social pyramid? That took strategy, brains, and forethought. Compared to that, being a good person would be easy.

  Harper sighed. Okay, maybe not easy. But it wasn’t impossible; she was just out of practice. Whatever Miranda and Adam thought, she had it in her. She’d prove it to herself, and then she’d prove it to them. “Okay, what’ve we got here?” she mumbled.

  Step 3: Combine 10 ml of your titrated acid solution with 10 ml of water. Record the pH.

  What had Marie Curie Jr. said about balancing the molarity and calculating the equation of the solution? Or was it estimating the equation and balancing the solution? And what was a titrated acid, anyway?

  Harper threw down the work sheet. She didn’t need to get a perfect score on her first try, right? The important thing was making it through the lab on her own. So all she needed to do was concentrate and—

  CRASH!

  Oops. Hopefully that wasn’t the beaker of titrated acid that had just smashed to the floor.

  “Everything all right back there, Ms. Grace?” the Bonner asked nervously, too nearsighted to see for herself.

  “Just fine, Ms. Bonner,” Harper chirped. “Don’t worry.”

  Harper picked up something that might or might not have been her titrated acid solution and dumped some into the remaining beaker. Then she spotted a test tube filled with a clear liquid. Marie must already have measured out the water; now, all she had to do was dump it in and …

  A huge puff of smoke exploded out of the beaker, blasting past Harper before she had the chance to move out of the way. “Ugh,” Harper moaned in alarm, “what’s that—?”

  The Bonner looked up in alarm, wrinkling her nose as the stench wave hit her. “Harper!” she cried, pinching her nostrils together and backing toward the door. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know!” Harper waved away the foul greenish smoke, trying to hold her breath and escape the noxious combination of rotten eggs and raw sewage. She dumped the beaker into the sink, grabbed her backpack, and ran out of the room, joining the Bonner in the hallway.

  “Oh dear oh dear oh dear,” the Bonner was muttering to herself. “I’ll have to contact the principal, I’ll have to have the room fumigated, I’ll have to—” She caught sight of Harper, or rather, caught scent of Harper. “Smells like we’ll have to get you fumigated too,” she said, stepping away.

  Harper took her hand away from her nose and breathed in deeply, her eyes widening in horror. She smelled like she’d gone swimming in a toilet.

  The Bonner shook her head sadly and pulled her lab coat tighter around herself, as if it would offer some protection from Harper’s cloud of stench. “Ms. Grace, I’m afraid I’ll be forced to give you a zero on this lab.”

  Harper looked down at her soiled clothes and back at the lab-turned-toxic
-waste dump, took a big whiff of her new eau de sewer, and nodded. “Zero sounds about right,” she muttered. Apparently, these days, that’s all she was worth.

  When Kane had coaxed Miranda out for a post-detention aperitif, he hadn’t intended a torture session at the Nifty Fifties diner. But when Miranda had suggested it, her face flushed with pleasure, he’d said yes almost instantly.

  Not that there weren’t plenty of good reasons to stay away from the diner, even above and beyond those the local health inspector published in the town paper every year. He could have cited the watery milk shakes and five-alarm chili, aka heartburn-waiting-to-happen. He could have reminded Miranda of the grating Chuck Berry anthems piped through tinny speakers, punctuated by scratches, squeaks, and the high-pitched whine of a grimy waitress announcing “order’s up.” Then there was the burned-out neon, the scratched, faux-leather bar stools, the vintage movie posters peeling off the wall, and the Route 66 junk clogging the counter, longing for impulse buyers to give them a new home.

  But all of those would have been excuses, skirting the truth of why he’d hoped never to set foot inside the dilapidated diner again. It was Beth’s turf, and he didn’t want to face her there. He’d spent one too many long afternoons lingering over a greasy plate of fries, waiting for her to finish her shift, and he could do without the flashback to happier days.

  But when Miranda had raised the idea, he hadn’t hesitated before agreeing, “Shitty Fifties it is.” His own reluctance was reason enough to go; he wouldn’t let Beth’s presence scare him away from anywhere, especially one of Grace’s few semi-tolerable dining establishments. Reluctance stemmed from fear, and fear was a sign of weakness, to be attacked wherever it appeared. Better to do it yourself, Kane believed, than wait for someone to do it for you.

  He and Miranda kept up a steady stream of banter as they settled into a booth and waited for their food to arrive. She was so much easier to be around than most girls, neither boring nor demanding, just … there. Like one of the guys, only with a better ass.

  “You sure you don’t want some?” he asked, waving a spoonful of ice cream under her nose.