Sloth

by Robin Wasserman

  She hadn’t responded, but she’d shown up, arriving a few minutes early so she could grab her coffee and be sitting down if and when Harper arrived. She needn’t have bothered; Harper, as always, was late.

  Harper didn’t bother to stop at the counter; she just came straight to the back corner, where Miranda had snagged a table next to the window. The heavy pink drapes were drawn back, and a splash of sunlight fell across her lap. If they stayed long enough, they’d be able to watch the sunset; it didn’t seem likely.

  Miranda waited. Harper sat down without saying anything, and for a few moments the two girls just stared at each other. Miranda refused to speak first, no matter how difficult it was to stand the silence.

  “So,” Harper finally said.

  Miranda decided that didn’t count, and kept her mouth shut.

  After another long pause, Harper rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t ... the thing with Kane, it wasn’t ...” “So what was it, then?” Harper shrugged.

  “Do you want me to hate you?” Miranda asked— realizing, once the words were out there, that maybe that was exactly it.

  Harper looked down at the table. “Do you?” she asked quietly.

  Miranda sighed. She scraped her spoon around the bottom of her empty coffee mug, then tapped it a few times against the rim. “No. God, Harp, I love you. Don’t you get that?”

  Harper didn’t look up. She drew her arms close against her body, as if for protection, though Miranda suspected she didn’t even realize she was doing it. She held her body rigidly still. She obviously wasn’t going to say anything, but Miranda remembered those boxes in the back of her closet, and decided to keep going.

  “I’m your best friend,” she said simply. “I want to help. I know you don’t think I understand, and maybe I don’t, but I get that you miss—” Miranda paused. She’d been so wary this month of saying the name by accident, dropping it into concentration and setting off some kind of emotional explosion, that it required a force of will to spit it out now. “Kaia. If I don’t understand the rest, it’s because you don’t tell me anything.”

  Harper was now trembling, and still staring down at the table.

  “I can do whatever you need me to do, but you have to tell me. Whatever you need, I’m there. But if you don’t need me . . .” Miranda took a deep breath. She didn’t want to get angry or hysterical—she just needed to get this out so that she would know she’d tried everything she could. “If you want me to stop bothering you, fine. I’ll go away. You just—I need to know what you want. Just say it.”

  Harper finally looked up. She took a deep, shuddering breath, opened her mouth, then shut it again.

  Long minutes went by, and nothing happened. Miranda shook her head in disgust. She stood up, pushed her chair in, and gave her best friend a curt wave. “See ya.”

  She’d turned her back and already walked away when Harper finally spoke. “I do ... I need you.”

  Miranda turned slowly but didn’t come any closer, as if Harper were a wild beast she was liable to frighten away.

  “I just need some time, Rand, okay?” Harper was looking down at the table once again, her voice high and tight. “Can you just . . . wait for me?”

  It wasn’t much, but Miranda suddenly felt weightless. “Sure,” she said, trying to sound like the whole thing was no big deal. “And when you’re ready—I’ll be there.”

  The truck skidded to a stop a foot in front of her. Reed’s face peered out from the open window. “Get in.”

  “What?” Beth’s mind wasn’t at its sharpest these days, and, given that it had been days since she’d expected—and hoped—never to see him again, the scene took a moment to process.

  “Get in.” He leaned across to the passenger door and pushed it open for her. “Come on, trust me.”

  Never, Beth thought, in the history of the universe, had the words “trust me” led to anything but disaster. But she didn’t have particularly far to fall.

  She got in.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “About before.”

  “Okay.” She waited for him to elaborate, but he was apparently done talking. Beth shrugged and turned to look out the window as the desert streamed by. They drove for a little under an hour, without conversation or music. Beth closed her eyes, listening to the steady hum of the engine and the snap, crackle, pop of rocks and sticks kicked up by the tires and clattering against the underside of the truck. She’d almost drifted off to sleep when the truck made a sharp turn, swinging off the main highway onto a narrow, bumpy dirt road that seemed to wind into an expanse of nothingness.

  Beth wondered if she should be concerned—then closed her eyes again and let the bumping and rocking of the truck guide her back toward sleep.

  “We’re here,” Reed suddenly said, pulling to a stop. He grabbed a couple bottles of water from the back and tossed one to Beth. “Let’s go.”

  They were deep in the desert, standing at the foot of an unnaturally smooth, bright white expanse. A dry lake, Beth realized, as they hiked across—there were a few of them sprinkled across the area, but she’d only ever seen them from a car window. As they crossed the lake, it appeared on the horizon: an enormous cone, hundreds of feet high and wide, spurting out of a field of jagged, reddish-black rock.

  “Salina Crater,” Reed said, as Beth’s eyes widened. “It’s prehistoric.”

  They followed a gently sloping path into the crater’s center, climbing over hardened lava rolls and scrambling up a slippery trail toward the top. The afternoon sun beat down on them, and Beth gulped her water greedily, pouring a tiny trickle down the back of her neck. She shivered at the delicious touch of cold. She was breathing too hard to speak, but it didn’t matter; the breathtaking size and alien beauty of the place had stolen all her words. It felt like they’d traveled back in time and that, when they emerged at the top of the rim, they would see a panorama of roiling volcanoes and wandering dinosaurs stretched out before them.

  There were no dinosaurs, but she still gasped at the view. The white lake stretched out to their left, dwarfing the tiny strip of black that marked the highway, and in the other direction, a range of low, rolling mountains dotted the horizon.

  “This is amazing,” she breathed. She’d been feeling alone in the world for so long—but now, here, she actually understood what that would mean.

  The rim was at least ten feet wide, and Reed sat down toward the outer edge, gesturing for her to join him.

  “I can’t believe this place,” she said quietly, not wanting to disrupt the absolute calm and stillness of the setting.

  “My dad told me about it,” Reed said. He should have looked totally out of place up here, in his black, ripped punk rock T-shirt and dark, stained jeans. But somehow, he fit perfectly. “I always wanted to check it out, but just never, you know.”

  “So why today?” she asked. The sun was dipping toward the horizon, and part of her worried that they should start back down so they wouldn’t have to hike in the dark. But she didn’t want to go anywhere.

  “I wanted to go somewhere new.” He chewed on the edge of his thumbnail for a moment, then shook himself. “I wanted to—”

  And then his lips brushed against hers, so lightly that, if she’d had her eyes closed, she might have thought she imagined it. They were soft, and tender, and then, before she knew what was happening, they were gone.

  “Reed . . .” Beth covered her face with her hands and leaned toward the ground, as if she were praying. What was she supposed to do? Not this—she was certain of that. Not with him.

  His hands grabbed hers and gently pried them away from her face.

  “You don’t even know me,” she whispered. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

  “I don’t care.” He was still holding her hands. “Screw the past. We’re here, now.”

  “I want to tell you . . .” But she knew she couldn’t.

  “Don’t. Let’s just . . . be.” His lashes were so long, and dark, like a gi
rl’s. And in his eyes, which she’d once thought were a deep brown, she could now see flecks of blue, green, silver, even violet. He was looking at her like he could see into her—like he knew everything.

  Of course he didn’t.

  But maybe he really didn’t want to. Maybe they could make a fresh start, and help each other forget the past; or at least move forward.

  “Your move,” he said, his lips turning up into a half smile.

  She moved.

  It was the kind of kiss you imagine when you’re a kid, dreaming of a fairy tale romance: soft, chaste, quick, and perfect. Beth broke away first. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it slowly.

  Reed stood up and took her hand, pulling her off the ground. He led her to the edge of the rim and put his arm around her. She nestled against him, and they stood in silence, watching the sun blaze toward the horizon. The desert stretched on forever, still and silent, miles of emptiness in every direction. It seemed like civilization, and along with it, her life, her problems, and everyone else in the world were just figments of her imagination.

  So it was especially strange that, for the first time in months, she felt like she wasn’t alone.

  Harper huddled under her covers with the phone cradled to her chest for more than an hour before she got up her nerve to call.

  He didn’t answer, and she almost hung up—but she stopped herself, just in time.

  “I know I told you to leave me alone,” she said after the beep, talking quickly before she lost her nerve, “but—”

  She couldn’t say it.

  I need you—it wasn’t her, no matter how true it might be.

  “Just come find me when you get this. Please.”

  She told him where she’d be, and hung up. Her parents, who’d thankfully given up on the nightly family bonding sessions, were downstairs watching TV and would be only too delighted to let her go out and meet a friend for “coffee,” even if it was a school night. Harper promised them she’d be home early, then hurried out to the driveway, forcing herself not to look up at Adam’s dark and empty bedroom window.

  There were no lights on the road, and she had some trouble finding the right spot, but the thin white cross glowed in the moonlight. Harper hadn’t been back since the accident, and in her imagination she’d pictured a burned strip of land strewn with torn metal and ash. But, aside from the small memorial, the spot looked no different from any other stretch along the road.

  She sat down on the ground, tugging her sweater around herself, and waited. There was no reason to expect that he’d come. Even if he got her message, the odds were low that he’d bother to show up. Especially after the way she’d treated him these last few weeks.

  But she was holding too much inside. If he didn’t show, maybe she could just scream her pain into the night; maybe that would make everything somehow better. She stared at the thin, white wooden boards and wondered why she didn’t cry. Being here should offer some kind of release, she thought in frustration. Instead, it just made her feel disconnected; it didn’t seem like anything that had happened here could have any connection to her.

  The road was empty, and when the headlights appeared on the horizon and drew closer, splashing her with light, she knew he’d come for her. The car pulled off the road and stopped. A door slammed, and footsteps approached.

  “Okay, Grace. I’m here. Now what?”

  Harper stood up to face Kane. The smirk dropped off his face. “What the hell is wrong?” he asked. “You look like shit.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Seriously, Grace, what is it?”

  “It’s . . . everything.” Harper rubbed her hand against the back of her neck, trying to ease the tight knots of muscle. “I just wanted to ... I need . . . I—” She wanted to tell him everything: how she couldn’t even remember what it felt like not to be miserable; how every night she went to sleep dreading the next morning; how she wanted to escape from inside her head and just become someone else, with a normal, happy, guilt-free life. But the words froze somewhere in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning away from him. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t.” She shook her head. “Sorry I dragged you out here. You should just go.”

  “I don’t think so.” Kane grabbed her arm and spun her back around. “Talk to me, Grace. What do you need?”

  “What the hell do you care?” she sneered, pulling her arm away.

  “I’m beginning to wonder that myself,” Kane said, arching an eyebrow, “if this is the thanks I get. . . .”

  “Whatever.” Harper walked away from him, wishing she could just keep walking, into the darkness, and disappear.

  “Hey!” Kane followed. “Harper!” he grabbed her again.

  “Get off of me!”

  “I’m not leaving you here alone!” he shouted.

  Harper forced a laugh. “As if you care about anyone but yourself.”

  “Insult me all you want, but I’m not leaving.”

  She smacked his arm, then his chest. “I am.”

  But Kane threw his arms around her and pressed her fiercely against him.

  “Let go of me!” she cried, banging her fists into his back. He ignored her and just held her tighter. “Kane, please! Please. Just let me go.”

  “And then what? You get to finally be alone? You think I don’t know I’m your last stop?” He stopped shouting. “I’m not like the rest of them—you can’t push me away. Come on, Grace, you know I always stick around until I get what I want.”

  She burst into laughter, letting herself sag against him, and in that moment of release, everything she’d been holding down so tightly came flooding to the surface, her laughter quickly turning into gasping, wracking sobs.

  And Kane held her as she cried.

  “This is natural” she hears the doctor say to her mother as she lies still in the bed, unwilling to move, or speak, or do anything but stare at the ceiling and wait for the nightmare to end. “She’s in shock. Give her a chance to absorb things. It’s all a part of grieving. “

  It doesn’t feel like grieving. It feels like falling.

  “I killed her!” Harper screamed, shaking. “I did it. She’s dead. I did it.” Tears gushed down her face and she gasped for breath, wishing she could just pass out so the pain would end.

  “It was an accident.” Kane insisted. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  But she wasn’t listening. She was remembering.

  They won’t tell her what happened to Kaia. They won’t tell her anything. Until, one day, when she is “strong enough,” they do.

  “Kaia didn’t . . . didn’t make it, hon. I’m so sorry.”

  Harper doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t feel anything— just . . . empty. It doesn’t seem real. Things like this don’t happen to people like her. She doesn’t cry.

  “It should have been me,” she moaned.

  “No.”

  “Yes. “

  “Harper, no.”

  The memories flowed faster, beating her back in time through the misery, through the pain.

  Everything hurts.

  “Where am I?” she asks. Her voice sounds like two pieces of metal scraping together.

  “There was an accident,” her mother says, hovering over her. “You and Kaia. . . . Do you remember what happened?”

  She doesn’t remember anything. She feels like the past doesn’t exist, that there is only the present—pain and confusion.

  It isn’t the first thing she asks. But, eventually, it occurs to her: “How’s Kaia?”

  “It should have been me,” she said, letting herself fall limp in his arms. If he hadn’t been holding her up, she would have fallen.

  “Stop.”

  “It should’ve,” she insisted.

  “It shouldn’t have been anyone,” Kane said softly, smoothing her hair down.

  “I wish I could just go back.” She closed her eyes and lay her head against his shoulder. It was wet with her tears.

  “It�
�s going to be okay, Grace.”

  The tires screech as she spins the wheel, but the car won’t move fast enough. The van is bearing down, and next to her, Kaia screams and screams as the car shakes with a thunderous impact and rolls off the road. The world spins, Kaia screams, and everything goes dark.

  Harper shuddered. “Nothing’s ever going to be okay.” But her sobs had quieted and she realized she could breathe again. She took a few deep breaths.

  “Better?”

  “Don’t let go,” she murmured. Not yet. She wasn’t ready.

  “Never,” he promised.

  The wind rushes past them, and Harper can feel everything fall away until nothing is left but a crisp, clear certainty that life is good, and that she is happy. Kaia turns the music up, and they shout the lyrics into the wind, their voices disappearing in the thunder of the engine.

  She presses her foot down on the pedal. Faster, faster, the world speeds by, her life fades into the distance, she can leave it behind if she just goes fast enough and far enough.

  “Let’s never go back!” she shouts to Kaia.

  “Never!” Kaia agrees, tossing her head back, laughing.

  They have everything they need. A fast car. A sunny day. Freedom. Each other.

  She has been so miserable, so angry, so afraid, for so long, and now all that has burned away, and there is only one thing left.

  Joy.

  Here’s a taste of the next sinfulread

  Gluttony

  “Now this is more like it,” Harper gushed as they turned onto the Strip. “Civilization. Thank god.”

  “Mmm hramm.”

  “Okay, how much longer are you going to give me the silent treatment?” Harper asked, exasperated. “I already told you I was sorry. How was I supposed to know that you’d find—”

  “Don’t say it!” Miranda shrieked. “I’m trying to block it out of my mind forever.”

  “Okay, okay. How was I supposed to know you’d find that thing in the sink? I only volunteered to take the toilet because I thought it would be the easier job, and it is your birthday weekend, after all.”