Envy

"I"m done with small talk if you are."

"Good." She leaned forward, and Harper was once again taken by her perfect form and poise, even in a place like this. And that rust-colored asymmetrical shirt? It was unmistakably a Betsey Johnson original. Harper closed her eyes for a moment and, with a sharp pang of envy, briefly considered what it would be like to have Kaia"s life-but she couldn"t even begin to imagine.

"Here"s how I see it," Kaia continued. "You want Adam. Kane-for whatever reason-wants Beth. You teamed up to split them up, and you"re ready and waiting for them to fall, heartbroken and sobbing, into your arms. How am I doing so far?"

Harper was disgusted with herself. Some secret plan. What a joke. And it sounded even more pathetic coming out of Kaia"s mouth. But she played it off. She had to.

"So far you haven"t told me anything I don"t know," she complained.

"I"ll take that to mean, "Why, yes, Kaia, that"s the situation exactly. Please enlighten me as to how to make my dreams come true.""

"I"m listening."

"So you"ve got Beth tutoring Kane-a nice move, incidentally, but Adam"s too much of a wuss to break up with her just because he"s jealous. He"d never trust his own instincts on that one-and princess Beth isn"t going to fall on Kane unless you push her."

"Again, waiting for the newsflash," Harper drawled, inwardly bristling at the way Kaia casually spoke of Adam"s flaws and failings, as if she knew him so well.

"Well, for one thing, what you may not know is that Adam has some secrets of his own that Beth might not be too happy to hear." A secretive smile crept across Kaia"s face. Harper knew exactly what she was referring to, but any pleasure she might have drawn from taking Kaia down a peg was hollow. She"d caught a glimpse of Kaia-and-Adam, act one, and had yet to wash the painful images out of her mind. She didn"t like to be reminded of act two, when they"d adjourned to a bedroom; Harper had, mercifully, missed the fireworks. But she could imagine. And did-often.

"Yeah, yeah, he slept with you," Harper said, the words slicing into her. "Big deal. Anyway, I can"t use it."

Kaia"s eyes widened, and Harper smiled, knowing that at least she"d taken the wind out of the other girl"s sails, as hoped. But Kaia wasn"t thrown off for long.

"So he told you? Interesting-and not too smart."

"Well, that"s Adam, honest to a fault. Of course, he used to be loyal to a fault, too," Harper said, glaring, "before you got through with him."

"Do you want to fight about my popping your boy"s cherry, or do you want to get him for yourself?"

"What"s the difference?" Harper asked irritably. "I told you, I can"t use it. If Beth breaks up with him over this, he"ll spend the rest of the year feeling guilty and chasing after her. That does me no good at all. And, not that I really care, but I imagine that Beth wouldn"t be bouncing back too quickly either-I see her as the "I can never trust a man again" type. After something like that, I don"t think Kane would exactly be her type."

"Good thing I have a backup plan, then," Kaia said triumphantly. "One that turns Beth into the villain. Adam will be looking for a "true" friend to turn to, and you"ll be right there to pick up the pieces."

"Sounds perfect. Only one problem-Beth would never cheat on Adam. She doesn"t have it in her."

"Oh, really?" Kaia smiled, and it seemed she was about to say something, but she stopped herself, paused for a moment, and then continued. "Well, I suppose you"re right. And we know that, and Beth knows that, but there"s no reason Adam has to. And all that really matters is what he believes."

"He accuses her-unjustly-she gets mad, we get mutual destruction." Harper nodded eagerly. "I like it. But how-"

She cut herself off at the sight of two drunken hulks looming over their table, one uglier than the other. (Although it was admittedly difficult to judge: Were buck teeth uglier than gold teeth? Was the jagged scar above the eyebrow uglier than an irregularly shaped red blotch covering the chin? Was mountain man hair uglier than no hair?) Baldy leered down at the two girls, his stained T-shirt exuding the stench of cheap beer.

"You ladies are at our table," he slurred.

""S our table," Mountain Man agreed. "Everyone knows that."

Baldy tried to squeeze into the booth with Harper, but with a yelp of anger and a sharp jab, she successfully pushed him away. He stumbled backward, but Mountain Man broke his fall.

"Wasn"t nice," Mountain Man warned them. "You"re sitting at our table, you must belong to us too. Move over."

Kaia wrinkled her nose and shot Harper a look of disbelief. "Why are these losers talking to us?" she asked.

Harper cringed at her choice of words-she"d spent enough time around Grace"s roughnecks to know that the best tactic was to shut up and get out of the way. But she wasn"t about to be bested by Kaia"s bravado. So she mustered some of her own.

"I don"t know-they must be as stupid as they are ugly," she said, forcing a laugh. It felt good.

"Who you calling stupid?" Baldy asked menacingly.

"You sure ain"t too ugly yourself, babe," Mountain Man leered, pa.s.sing his greasy hand through Harper"s hair. That was enough. She jumped up from the table-and suddenly realized she was taller than both of them.

"Listen, buddy, get the h.e.l.l out of my face," she snapped.

"Who"s gonna make me? You? Or your hot little friend?"

As Harper searched for the words that would end this fias...o...b..fore it went any further, a scruffy guy about her age came wandering over.

"We got a problem here?" he asked, getting in Mountain Man"s face. "She asked you to leave her alone."

"Who asked you, s.h.i.thead?" Baldy growled, stepping up behind their knight in scruffy armor.

It was over in an instant.

Scruff Boy punched Mountain Man in the gut and, before Baldy had a chance to react, gave him a shove hard enough to knock both men to the ground. As the two losers lumbered up to their feet and began advancing on him, they got a nasty surprise-a tap on the shoulder from the Cactus bouncer, a WWE reject who looked like he bench-pressed losers like them for a warm-up. And, apparently, a friend of Scruff Boy"s.

Five minutes later the bouncer was back at the entrance, having barely broken a sweat, Mountain Man and Baldy were stumbling through the parking lot with a few fresh scars to show off to the ladies, and Scruff Boy? He was still standing there.

Harper looked him up and down-medium height, medium build, wildly curly black hair, and dark, catlike eyes. Kind of hot, really, beneath that stubble and the torn Clash T-shirt. She knew who he was, of course-she knew every guy in town. Especially the hot ones. He went to their school, barely (this was his second senior year in a row), played in a band, ran with a crowd that drank too much and smoked even more. Pretty much a total waste of s.p.a.ce. But he had, after all, cleaned up their mess. They should probably be polite- "Why are you still here?" Kaia asked him, curling her lip in disdain.

Or not.

"You two okay?" he asked, in a slow, zoned-out voice. "I"m Reed." He stuck out his hand for Kaia to shake-she left him hanging.

"We"re fine," Harper jumped in, again not to be outdone. "So you can just run off back to ... whatever it is people like you do."

He stood frozen in place, looking at them both with a mixture of disgust and disbelief.

"What are you waiting for?" Kaia finally asked. "A medal?"

"Actually, a thank-you," he informed her. "My mistake."

"You"re right. It was," Kaia said, and turned back to Harper. "What was I saying?"

Harper watched the boy out of the corner of her eye. He stood there for another moment, as if waiting for them to let him in on the joke. Then reality sank in. He shook his head and trekked back across the bar to a booth crowded with deadbeat delinquents. They pounded him on the back and slammed him with high fives-impressed by the fight, she supposed. Good thing they hadn"t paid attention to the aftermath. Reed Sawyer could take on two drunken thugs with ease, but apparently in Harper and Kaia, he"d met his match.

"You were about to blow my mind with your oh-so-perfect plan," Harper prodded Kaia, putting the whole sordid incident out of her mind.

Kaia laid it out for her, step by step, and when she was done, Harper leaned back and let loose a low whistle of admiration. It was breathtakingly perfect-beautiful, and a little complex, but if everything went smoothly, it would deliver the goods. She could already imagine herself in Adam"s arms.

And if Kaia really came through, and she owed all her happiness to her worst enemy? Well, if it got her Adam, it was a debt she"d be willing to spend the rest of her life repaying. And knowing Kaia, that might be exactly how long it would take.

The Wizard of Oz was playing at the Starview. It played there every year in October, and every year, Miranda and Harper went to the last showing and split a large popcorn and an overpriced box of Mike and Ikes. It was tradition, and had been ever since eighth grade, when they"d both desperately wanted to go but had been too embarra.s.sed to admit it to each other. Finally, on the day the movie was set to close, they"d each secretly snuck off to the theater-only to run into each other in the lobby, both buying boxes of Mike and Ikes.

By now it was a ritual set in stone, down to the whispered comments they tossed back and forth during the show and the postmovie pizza and beer at Guido"s. (The beer had been a tenth-grade addition, but in some cases, it was worth making a change.) It was tradition-fixed, beloved, and unbreakable. At least, until now.

Now Miranda stood at Harper"s locker, waiting in vain for her friend to show, watching the minutes slip past and the other students fade from the hall, until only she stood there, patient and alone.

The movie started at five. By four, Miranda was done waiting. She"d already waited an embarra.s.sing half hour too long.

And she wasn"t about to go to the movie herself, not alone, not as if the past five years had never happened and she was still a gawky eighth grader too worried about her status to admit a geeky love for Munchkins.

No, apparently Harper had better things to do-probably some guy had sworn his everlasting love and she"d taken him out for a quick spin-"quick" being the operative word, since use "em or lose "em got tedious if you hesitated too long before moving from the former to the latter. Or so Harper always said.

Not that Miranda hadn"t elimidated her share of lovestruck losers-it was just that the tan, dark, and handsome set didn"t usually flock in her direction. At five feet one, maybe she was just too close to the ground for them to see her.

She was tired of being invisible and-apparently-forgettable. Why should Harper have all the fun? Miranda found her car, one of the last in the largely empty lot, and took off toward the strip mall on the edge of town.

Her new and improved look had waited long enough, and outfit number one was there, ready and waiting for her.

Was it too risque? Did it make her b.o.o.bs look big? Did the skirt make her a.s.s look huge? Maybe. So what? she fumed silently, trying to drown out Harper"s scoffing voice in her mind. At least it makes a statement. At least people will remember I"m there.

Never return to the scene of the crime. If it worked for Law & Order, it worked for Beth, so she"d spent the last weeks studiously avoiding the newspaper office as best she could. Every time she set foot inside, even with other people around (and she made sure there were always other people around), she could feel the weight of memory pressing down on her. The small s.p.a.ce, a refurbished supply closet that she"d pet.i.tioned the school to allocate to the newspaper, had felt so cozy, so warm and familiar-a place she"d fought for and won. It had been a home. Now it was just a dank and claustrophobic cave-every time the door closed, her heart sped up, her throat constricted. She felt trapped by those walls, just like she felt in French cla.s.s every time Mr. Powell"s eyes alighted on her. Sometimes their gaze locked before she could look away, and she felt his eyes boring into her, the way his tongue had when his arms were wrapped around her, pushing himself against her and- No matter what she may have been fantasizing about in her most secret, most ridiculous daydreams, she never would have acted on it. Never.

She just wished she could go back in time and make sure it never happened.

But going back not being an option, she resolved to go forward. Forward meant acing AP French, and forward meant sticking it out on the newspaper, for the sake of her college applications, if nothing else. Forward meant looking him in the eye every day and never saying anything to anyone about what had happened, until she forgot it herself. Eventually she would forget. It had just been a kiss. One kiss. She would forget all about it. Soon.

And today moving forward meant returning to the newspaper office, alone. Doing what she"d signed on to do-run the paper, make it great. She forced herself to return, hating the sound of her key in the door, hating the sight of the couch she used to nap on, the table at which she"d spent so many hours lost in her work. She was so different now-but everything there, it was exactly the same. And maybe in the end, she just couldn"t stay away.

Neither, it seemed, could he.

She"d spent half an hour staring blankly at the computer screen, trying to finalize the page one layout for the next edition, but mainly just concentrating on keeping her body calm and still-she felt that if she relinquished control for even a moment, she"d start to tremble uncontrollably. Or just flee.

Maybe she"d known that he was on his way.

Because at the sound of the k.n.o.b turning, the door opening, she didn"t need to turn around-she knew it was him. Not by the jaunty footsteps or the faint whiff of his Calvin Klein cologne. She"d just known. As if the room had suddenly gotten chilly, or the walls had begun to press in.

"Beth," he said quietly.

Still she didn"t turn around.

"You"ve been avoiding me," he said, finally.

"You noticed," she said drily, her back to him. She focused on keeping the pain and panic out of her voice-she knew, somehow, that if she could pull this off, if she could face him without crumbling, prove to both of them that she could do it, that this could be the end of it.

"Beth, if I did anything that made you feel uncomfortable ... If you thought that I-well, sometimes it"s easy for people to get the wrong idea about situations, imagine that certain things happened, when they didn"t, really. Blow things out of proportion ..."

She grabbed the edges of the desk, pressing down until the tips of her fingers faded to white, and forced herself to take a deep breath and turn around slowly.

"What is it, exactly, that you think I imagined?" she asked in a measured tone.

"Well, you obviously thought that things somehow crossed a line, and if I sent you any confusing signals, I just want to apologize-I"d just hate to see you overreact."

"Overreact?" Her voice almost broke on the last syllable, and again she forced herself to breathe. She would not yell, and she would not cry, even if it killed her. She hoped that from across the room he couldn"t see that she was shaking.

"You"re obviously upset," he pointed out, taking a step toward her. "If we could just-"

"Stay away," she blurted out, jumping out of her seat and away from him.

He backed off, holding his hands out in front of him as if to demonstrate they weren"t hiding a secret weapon. Of course, he didn"t need one.

"Okay, okay, I"m back here, okay?" he retreated to the doorway. "Just tell me, what can we do to fix things here? How can I convince you I"m not the big bad wolf?" He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow and gave her a patented Jack Powell grin, and Beth suddenly realized that this was a man who"d discovered that, with his accent and his dimples, he could get away with pretty much anything.

She also suddenly realized that he needed her help to get away this time-that he was running scared. She had the power, and she could use it.

"There"s nothing you can do," she said simply. "Just stay away from me. I"m not dropping out of French and I"m not dropping the newspaper-but I don"t ever want to be in a room alone with you again. So make sure that doesn"t happen, or I"ll make sure of it for you."

He took a step toward her again.

"Are you threatening me?"

She was almost as surprised as he was.

"I"m just explaining things for you," she replied. "Stay away from me, or I"m going to the administration."

"And say what?" he asked, in a low, dangerous voice.

"You know what."

He came closer, and closer, until he was looming over her, only a few inches away.

"That I came on to you? That I wanted you? That I fell madly in love with you and you rebuffed my nefarious advances?" he hissed, curling his lip in derision. "Is that what you"ll say?"

She stayed silent, lip trembling, back now pressed against the wall, eyes searching for an escape. He was blocking her path to the door.

"Because I"ll tell you what I"ll say," he continued. "I"ll say it"s a silly schoolgirl crush gone out of control. That I made the mistake of getting close to you, helping you out, not realizing what a sad, pathetic, unstable little girl you really were. p.r.o.ne to tears and hallucination." He smiled coolly. "What do you think they"ll say to that? Who would you believe?"

"Stop," Beth begged, hating the soft, whispery sound of her own voice. "Just stop."

"Because I think they"ll believe me," he pressed on. "I think they"ll ask themselves, why would he ever risk everything for someone like her?"

Beth had no response-it was all she could do just to stand there, stare up at him, not lose control and break down. But her control was slipping. He reached a hand toward her, and she skirted away-but there was nowhere to go.

If he touches me, I"ll lose it, she realized. I can"t stop myself.

But she couldn"t stop him, either, and he smiled cruelly and put a hand on her shoulder as she felt her knees buckle and- "Am I interrupting something in here?"

Mr. Powell jumped back from Beth and spun toward the door. Kane stood in the doorway, one arm slung against the frame, a quizzical expression painted across his face.

"That"s up to Ms. Manning." Powell turned back to Beth. "Are we done here?"