Sloth

by Robin Wasserman

  “What?” she grunted as she trudged down the stairs. She stopped, midway down, catching sight of Kane’s smooth hair and smoother style. He gave her a reptilian grin, then offered her parents a far warmer expression, compassion oozing from every orifice.

  “It’s just so good to see her up and around again,” he told her parents, as if she weren’t even in the room.

  “Yes, she’s thrilled to pieces,” Harper said dryly. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Harper!” Her mother shot her a scandalized look. Much as Harper despised the depths to which her family had sunk over the generations, from American-style royalty (read: outrageously wealthy with an attitude to match) to middle-middle-class plodders carrying the torch of small-town mediocrity, Amanda Grace hated it more. So much so that she refused to acknowledge that the family she’d married into no longer guarded the flame of civility amongst the heathens of the wild west. “People look to us,” she’d often told a young Harper, lost in delusions of mannered grandeur, “and it’s important we live up to expectations.” Miss Manners had nothing on Amanda Grace; Emily Post would have been booted from the house for rude behavior. And a solicitous attitude toward guests, from visiting dignitaries (in her dreams) to collection agencies (a walking, and frequent, nightmare) was rule number one. Apparently even in her fragile, post-invalid state, Harper was still expected to abide by the Grace code of etiquette.

  “As I was saying, Kane, it’s so lovely of you to drop by,” her mother said, placing a deceptively firm hand on Harper’s shoulder. “Isn’t it?”

  “Lovely,” Harper echoed. Her mother got a dutiful smile; Kane got the death glare.

  “How are you feeling, sweetie?” her mother asked, releasing her grip.

  “Fine.” Harper scowled; if only everyone would stop asking her that a hundred times a day, maybe she’d actually have a prayer of it being true. Though that was doubtful, she conceded. How fine could she be when the most important moment of her life was lost in some fog of for-getfulness and the only glimpses her memory chose to grant her were the ones that proved she probably didn’t deserve to live?

  “That’s great!” Amanda Grace turned to Kane.” I think it’s a fine idea, then, as long as you don’t have her out too late.”

  “Excuse me?” Harper snapped. “Could everyone stop talking about me like I’m invisible and—” She caught sight of her mother’s face and forced herself to soften her tone. “What’s a fine idea, Kane?’

  ”Well, Harper—” He winked at her, acknowledgment of the fact that he almost never used her first name and its appearance only confirmed that everything following would be a show put on for the sake of her parents. “I was just telling your parents that I thought you might enjoy it if I took you out for some coffee—”

  “Decaf,” her father interjected.

  “Right, of course, decaf.” Kane shrugged and gave everyone an “Aw shucks, aren’t I a heck of a guy” look. “You’ve been cooped up in the house for so long, and we get so little chance to catch up in school, that I thought it might be nice. As long as your parents are okay with it, of course.”

  “It’s quite refreshing,” her father said, beaming. “Most of the time, you kids just dash off to some place or another and no one knows what the hell”—this time her father was the one who drew the patented Amanda glare—“I mean, heck, you’re up to. I hope you know what a good friend you’ve got here, Harp. I think this one’s a keeper.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I know exactly what I’ve got here,” Harper said through gritted teeth. Nice job with the Eddie Haskell impression, she thought. I’m suffocating in smarm. Kane always boasted he could read minds—let him read that.

  “I’m kind of tired, actually,” she said, faking a yawn. “I was thinking I’d just stay here tonight . . .”

  “You’re spending too much time up in your room,” her mother said, and behind the polite facade Harper could read real concern in her voice. “It’ll be good for you to get out. Get back to—”

  “Okay. Okay, fine, whatever,” Harper cut in, knowing that if one more person suggested that things could ever be normal again, she might spit, or scream, or simply collapse, any one of which was definitely a Grace etiquette don’t. With a sigh, she slipped into a pair of green flip-flops and grabbed a faded gray hoodie from the closet. Her mother hated it—so much the better.

  “Now, remember, don’t be back too late,” Amanda Grace reminded them as Kane escorted her out, hands tightly gripping her arm and waist.

  “So now you’re kidnapping me?” Harper asked, as soon as they were safely in the car. “General havoc and mischief making getting too boring for you, so you’re moving on to felonies?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kane said, in his parent-proof, silky smooth voice. “I just wanted to spend some time with my good friend Harper, who’s so recently been having such a tough time of it.” There was a pause, then, “Oof!”

  Kane talked tough, but shove a sharp elbow into his gut and he’d fold like a poker player with no face cards.

  “What the hell was that for?” he asked, rubbing his side and giving her a wounded look. “You know I bruise easily.”

  “Gosh, I’m awfully sorry,” Harper whined, pouring on some false solicitation of her own. “Whatever was I thinking?” Then she whacked him in the chest. “What the hell were you thinking? Since when do you ask my parents for my hand in coffee?”

  “If I called and asked if you wanted to go out tonight, what would you have said?”

  “You’re assuming I would have picked up the phone?”

  ”Exactly,” he concluded in an irritatingly reasonable voice. “You would have made the wrong choice. Again. So this time, I decided not to give you one.”

  “Fine.” Harper leaned back against the seat and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “So where are you taking me? Bourquin’s, at least? I can’t drink that shit coffee they have at the diner.”

  He shook his head. “Guess again.”

  “So not in the mood for games, Kane. And you know exactly why.”

  “This isn’t a game, Grace—you’re the one who hasn’t figured that out yet. You’ll see where we’re going soon enough.”

  She crossed her arms and turned toward the window. “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  They drove in silence for several minutes. The radio might at least have lightened things up or offered them something neutral to argue about, but Kane made no move to switch it on and Harper wasn’t about to do anything that might signify her willing participation in this ridiculous adventure.

  They swung into a small parking lot and Kane turned off the car. “We’re here.”

  “And where is . . . oh.” They had pulled up in front of a large, boxy building, its face a windowless wall of institutional gray. A single door, also gray, stood square in the middle, and over it hung a neon blue-and-white sign that would have been enough to scare away most visitors if the decor hadn’t already done the job: POLICE.

  “What the hell is this, Kane?” Harper’s eyes flicked toward her bag, half expecting her phone to ring as if Detective Wells, who’d already left four or five messages for her over the course of the day, could somehow sense that she was nearby. Maybe she wouldn’t bother to call— Harper turned back to the window, gaze fixed on the solid-looking door, wondering if it would swing open. Who would they send out to escort her inside, where she belonged? “Why would you bring me here?”

  Kane shrugged, but this time there was nothing aw-shucks about it. “You’re the one who said you wanted to talk to the cops. I thought I’d help you out. You want to confess your sins? You want to ruin your life? Go ahead.”

  “This isn’t how it works,” she retorted, struggling against encroaching panic. “This isn’t—what do you want me to do, just march in there and say, ‘Hey, just FYI, I was the one driving the car’?”

  “You don’t think they’d be interested to hear it?”

  “This is what yo
u want me to do?” Harper asked, her hand gripping the door handle.

  “Isn’t it what you want to do?” Kane sneered.

  “It’s the right thing. . . .”

  “Absolutely. So go ahead.”

  “I’m just not . . .”

  “No time like the present, Grace.” Kane opened his own door—and at the sound of the latch releasing and the outside air rushing in, Harper almost gasped. “I’ll go with you, if you want. Should be quite a show.”

  She couldn’t say anything; she didn’t move.

  “What are you waiting for? They’re right inside, just—”

  “Stop!” she shouted, slapping her hand over her eyes so he wouldn’t see the tears. “Why are you doing this?”

  He slammed the door. “Why are you doing this?” he shouted, and it was the first time she could remember ever hearing him raise his voice. “What the hell are you trying to do to yourself?”

  “What do you care?” she mumbled, still hiding her face.

  “This is real, Harper. Look out there.” When she didn’t move, he grabbed her hands roughly and pulled them away from her eyes, jerking her head toward the police station. “Look. This isn’t Law & Order. This is your life.”

  “It was her life, too,” Harper said, almost too softly to hear.

  “You don’t know what happened,” Kane said in an almost bored voice, as if he’d gotten tired of ticking off the items on the list. He’d stopped shouting and had released his grip on Harper’s wrists, and was now staring straight ahead, his hands loosely resting on the wheel. “You don’t remember anything about the accident—” She tried to interrupt, but he talked over her. “Except a few things you think you remember but could just be part of some Vicodin-induced nightmare.”

  “Percodan,” she corrected him.

  “Whatever. Okay, so you were driving. So what? There were drugs in your system—you don’t know how they got there. You were going somewhere—you don’t know where. Kaia’s fingerprints were found all over that perv’s apartment after he turned up with his head beat in—you don’t know why. Another car forced you off the road— you don’t know who. You don’t know anything except that if you tell them you were behind that wheel, they’ll crucify you.”

  “I know it’s my fault,” she said stubbornly.

  ”You don’t know anything” he repeated loudly, over-enunciating each syllable.

  And I can’t stand it, she admitted, but only to herself.

  “I’m not saying we can’t figure it out,” he suggested, turning toward her and slinging his arm across the back of her seat. “Do some investigating, poke around—you and me against the world, like the good old days?”

  “So this isn’t Law & Order, but now you want me to go all Veronica Mars on you?” Harper asked wryly.

  “That’s kind of a chick show.” Kane smirked. “I was thinking more CSI. Or Scooby-Doo . . . you’d look pretty smoking in that purple dress, and I don’t know”—he peered at himself in the rearview mirror—”think I could pull off an ascot?”

  “This isn’t funny,” she said dully.

  “I’m serious, Grace—if you want to know what happened, we can figure it out. They can’t,” he added, pointing toward the station. “They won’t need to, because they’ll have you. But we can fix things, and get them back to normal.”

  “Take me home,” she told him, not wanting to think any more about the accident, or any of it.

  He ignored her. “Start with the drugs—that’s the key. Are you sure you didn’t take anything?”

  She remembered Kaia handing her two white pills: Xanax. She remembered popping them into her mouth and stepping onstage, and her world falling apart. But that couldn’t be right.

  “Take me home,” she insisted, louder.

  “Promise me you won’t go to the cops,” he retorted.

  “I still don’t get why you care.”

  ”You don’t have to,” he said, looking away. “Just promise.”

  She had already promised herself that she would do the right thing; tonight was supposed to have been about figuring out what that was. Kane was the last person to go to for that kind of help. On the other hand, she thought, torn between horror and bemusement, who else have I got?

  “I’ll do whatever I decide to do, Kane. Take me home.”

  Kane banged a fist against the steering wheel, then visibly steadied himself, taking two deep breaths before turning to her with a serene smile. “Fine, Grace. Do what you need to do. It’s your funeral.”

  But that was just the problem—maybe it should have been. But it wasn’t.

  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 hersel
f, 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.”