Envy - 2 (5 page)

“How about this?” Miranda crept out of the dressing room and timidly spun around to display the newest ensemble—bright red capri pants that looked like they’d been painted on, paired with a black lace corset whose tackiness quotient would have made Christina Aguilera cringe.

Uh, no.

Harper sighed. Three hours into the total transformation shopping trip (step one on the road to a new and improved Miranda, whatever that was supposed to mean) and she was bored out of her mind. Shopping in Grace was never the most thril ing of experiences since the options consisted of three or four sorry stores in a local excuse for a strip mal , a large thrift shop (useless, since the middle-aged Grace matrons who made up its pool of suppliers couldn’t real y be counted on to supply the type of “vintage” threads recommended in last month’s
Vogue
), and, of course, the Wal-Mart out on Route 53 (the less said about that, the better).

No, Harper preferred to buy most of her clothes online—and Harper’s parents preferred her not to buy clothes at al , as the meager profits from the family dry cleaning business rarely seemed to justify that kind of supposedly wasteful expenditure. Harper failed to see how a fur-lined J Crew raincoat or tan suede boots could be deemed wasteful—so what if the temperature never dipped below sixty degrees and it rained only eight inches a year? Sometimes fashion was its own excuse. Regardless, Harper had managed—just barely—to put together a wardrobe befitting her position in Haven High’s social strata. It didn’t mean that she wanted to spend a Sunday afternoon watching Miranda fork over daddy’s credit card in return for an armful of clothes she didn’t need and would never wear—
especially
when phase one of Operation Anti-Cupid was in ful effect and Adam was, even now, sitting home alone, ripe for the picking.

But Harper was stil feeling nagging guilt about helping the love of Miranda’s life pursue someone else. So here she was, figuring the least she could do was save her ever faithful sidekick from making a serious fashion faux pas.

After al , what are friends for?

“Wel … I suppose Hal oween is coming up,” Harper final y said, and gave her a thumbs down.

Miranda studied herself in the mirror from a number of angles before wrinkling her nose and sighing. “You’re right, as usual.” She disappeared back inside the dressing room.

“Just a couple more things,” she cal ed out.

Harper checked her watch and then leaned back against the wal , pressing her weight against it as she slumped to the floor. Was this going to drag on forever?

“What about this?” Miranda asked, popping out of the dressing room, a hesitant smile creeping across her face. She had slipped into a snugly fitting suede skirt, paired with a gauzy green shirt that laced up the front, offering a glimpse of cleavage and leaving just enough to the imagination.

It was stylish, edgy, slightly daring—it was, in other words, total y Harper.

It looked okay on Miranda, Harper judged, but she could almost feel that suede wrapping around her legs and knew that shade of green would light her auburn hair on fire.

Miranda had seen it first, true. And, more importantly, Miranda was the one with the credit card. She was also the one with the identity crisis, Harper reminded herself. Harper was just along for the ride—she was supposed to sit by and watch, do the loyal and supportive friend thing. But Harper wasn’t very good at being the sidekick—it was one of the reasons she and Miranda worked so wel together. Their friendship only had room for one star, and usual y Miranda was more than wil ing to let Harper bask in the spotlight while she waited in the wings.

“It’s … it’s not real y you, Rand,” Harper pointed out. And that much was true, at least. Miranda’s fashion choices usual y ran to white V-necked T-shirts and jeans, with the occasional brightly colored tank thrown in on days she was feeling a little wild.

“That’s the idea,” Miranda pointed out, her smile widening. She turned slowly in front of the mirror, craning her neck to try to get a glimpse of what she looked like from behind.

It was a contortion that Harper knew wel , and she knew exactly what Miranda was looking for—or, rather, looking at.

“Is that the right size?” Harper asked innocently. “It looks a little tight across your … hips.”

“You think?” Miranda asked, twisting herself around even farther. “It feels okay, but—oh God, it’s my ass, isn’t it? You can say it. Al this brown just makes it look huge.” Harper bit her lip. “It’s not
huge
, exactly.”

That was also strictly the truth, Harper told herself. Though it’s possible the message could have been delivered in a more confident tone. Miranda was only a few pounds beyond stick thin, but for some reason, when she looked in the mirror, al she saw was flab and cel ulite. Harper hated to encourage her, but how could she just sit there and watch an outfit like that walk out of the store in someone else’s bag?

“It’s just …” She let her voice trail off and gave Miranda an apologetic smile.

“Ugh, I knew it,” Miranda cried. “Look at me—I look like a tree! She flicked the low, loose green top with her index finger. “Big, thick trunk and a slutty green top. Great.”

“You do
not
look like a tree,” Harper assured her, half laughing and half kicking herself for getting Miranda started down this road. “It looks good, real y,” she insisted.

Too little, too late.

Miranda was already back inside the dressing room, and soon Harper saw the shirt and skirt drop to the floor. She looked at them longingly. She could always save up some money, come back in a few weeks—if they were stil there….

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Miranda’s disembodied voice complained from behind the curtain. “Sorry I wasted your time with this stupid trip.” She came out, in her own clothes, and extended a hand to Harper, hoisting her up off the ground. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“You’re not getting
anything
?” Harper asked in disbelief. There went three hours of her life she’d never get back—and with nothing to show for it.

“Just this,” Miranda sighed, holding up a shirt that was almost identical to the one she was wearing.

So—nothing to show for it except a pain in her ass from sitting on the floor and a white V-necked T-shirt that she didn’t even get to take home with her. Not that she would have wanted it.

Miranda slung an arm around Harper’s shoulder.

“Screw the shopping,” she said, leading her friend out of the fitting area. “Let’s go get some coffee. My treat.” Harper took one last longing glance at the pile of clothes dumped in the corner of her best friend’s dressing room. Too bad she and Miranda couldn’t be combined into a single person—with her body and Miranda’s wal et, they’d be looking pretty damn good.

Harper slipped a hand into the pocket of her fake Diesel jeans, just in case a few crisp twenty-dol ar bil s had decided to magical y appear.

Nope.

“Coffee it is,” she agreed. “Definitely your treat.”

Grace wasn’t a Starbucks kind of town. Big shock. If you wanted coffee, you had two choices. You could drink the black sludge they dished out at the diner, or you could step inside an unassuming and unnamed hole in the wal in the center of town and drink the finest blends this side of the Mississippi. The neon sign out front said only HOT COFFEE. (Or rather, it read HO CO FE .) But if you were a local—and in Grace, who wasn’t a local?—you knew it as Bourquins, after its owner, an angry, rotund woman who went by Auntie Bourquin. No one knew her first name—and no one had the nerve to ask. Auntie Bourquin was slow and surly, and her establishment was cramped and not too clean—but the coffee was delicious, and the fresh baked goods that appeared every morning tasted like chocolate heaven.

Miranda, who was feeling worn, deflated, and ugly after her unsuccessful bout with the shopping gods, had every reason to hope that a steaming diet mochaccino and an oversize chocolate chip cookie (it was the constant and bitter irony of her life that feeling fat and ugly made her want to run for the cookie jar) would cheer her up. They didn’t cal it comfort food for nothing.

But comfort wasn’t in the cards.

“Do you see what I see?” Miranda hissed to Harper as soon as they’d stepped inside the coffee shop. At Harper’s clueless look, Miranda jerked her head toward the far wal , where Beth was huddled over a stack of notebooks, clearly studying her bland little heart out. Not a big surprise. The surprise was sitting across from her—and his name was Kane. She pul ed Harper back out the door, hoping they hadn’t been seen. “What’s
he
doing with
her
?”

“Calm down, she’s just tutoring him for the SATs,” Harper said impatiently. “Can we please go back inside now?”

“
She’s
tutoring him?” Miranda asked incredulously.

“What’s the difference?”

Harper could be so dense sometimes. Miranda knew that when Kane looked at her, he didn’t see some babe he was desperate to bed. She knew he probably didn’t even see someone he was that eager to be friends with (fortunately for her, he was stuck with her by default—she and Harper were pretty much a package deal). But she’d always thought that he’d at least seen her as a brain. Who did he cal when he needed to copy some homework? Who did he go to when he needed to cheat on a test?

Miranda, that’s who. It had been her one thing, and she had always hoped that someday it might be her in. It was, if nothing else, a start.

So what had changed?

“The difference is, if he needed someone to tutor him, why didn’t he just ask me?” Miranda asked, staring at the two of them through the window. They were laughing about something, and she saw Kane briefly touch Beth’s arm. And she knew. “He’s after her, isn’t he?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harper said quickly. “She’s dating one of his best friends. Even Kane wouldn’t stoop that low.”

“But look at them in there,” Miranda said dubiously.

“Miranda, if he were after her, I would know. I promise.”

“I stil don’t understand what he’s doing with her,” she complained. “They’re not even friends.” And she wanted very much for it to stay that way. As far as she was concerned, she had one—and only one—advantage over the bimbos Kane constantly draped himself with. They were bimbos—and Miranda wasn’t. So if he ever got tired of making conversation with beautiful airheads, if he ever wanted a real relationship with a real girl, where else would he look but his old friend Miranda? Or, at least, that was her secret hope. But it al depended on the fact that, aside from Harper, Miranda was the only girl of substance he real y knew—until now. For al Beth’s blandness, she was sharp, serious. Real. If he befriended tal , slim, beautiful Beth, if she was in his life when he final y stopped playing the field—then Miranda’s last, best hope was dead.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, Rand, real y,” Harper assured her. “Can we go in now?”

But Miranda shook her head and turned away without a word, walking back over to the car. Her appetite was gone.

They had spent two hours buried in books, digging their way through algebra equations and an endless list of synonyms for good and evil. And there was stil so much more to do. Beth felt the familiar flutter of panic as she began to think about the massive number of practice questions she needed to get through and strategies she needed to memorize before the big test—but somehow, everything seemed a little less daunting than before. Maybe because, thanks to Kane, she was no longer alone. Maybe because he’d bought her a mug of chocolate milk and a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie, the best in town. (It was a little juvenile, Beth knew, but her sweet tooth demanded daily chocolate intake, and nothing was better than a Bourquin’s cookie dipped into a frosty glass of chocolate milk. Kane had been only too happy to oblige.) Maybe it was just Kane, sitting across the table from her, working, questioning, laughing—making the time fly by. They’d only had one afternoon together, but she could already tel that working with Kane was going to be nothing like she’d expected.

He
was nothing like she’d expected, Beth mused, watching him up at the counter grabbing them both refil s.

The Kane she knew was smug and self-absorbed, caustic and catty, and above al , lazy.

Not this Kane.

Not the guy who’d pul ed out her chair for her when she’d sat down, who’d thanked her so profusely for spending the time to tutor him, and who’d been working diligently, without a break—or a single snide remark—for more than two hours.

No, this was a complete stranger to her. But she hoped he wouldn’t be for long.

Adam flipped through the channels idly, too bored to watch anything for more than a few seconds. It was pretty slim pickings: a Food Channel documentary on the secrets of cereal (hot stuff), a stupid political show … even ESPN was showing some kind of greatest hits montage of old golf shots, and who wanted to watch that? No one under the age of sixty-five. Adam would be wil ing to bet on it. And thanks to
Secrets of Las Vegas
, showing around the clock on the Travel Channel, he now knew exactly how and where to do so.

Just because Beth had stood him up was no reason to spend the day lying around on the couch, counting the cracks in the ceiling, he reminded himself. It’s not like he didn’t have plenty of other friends and plenty of other options. It was just that there didn’t seem to be much of a point. Why go to al that effort just to do something he didn’t particularly want to do? He
wanted
to spend some time with his girlfriend. Was there something wrong with that?

So he’d told the guys to leave him out of whatever half-assed activity they’d come up with for the afternoon (last he’d checked, it had been a tie between bowling and shooting rats down at the town dump—neither a big draw, as far as he was concerned). But half-assed activity or not, he was beginning to regret the decision. Even hunting rats might be better than lying on the couch nibbling stale pizza al day.

Lucky for him—and for the rats—the phone rang.

“I thought you might be a little bored,” Harper said by way of a greeting.