Sloth (25 page)

It was a narrow life, she saw now, sitting on the floor surrounded by half-open boxes and carefully sorted mounds of memories. There was the occasional homemade Valentine’s Day card from her little sister, and an entry pass left over from a long-ago family trip to some amusement park that had gone bankrupt only a few months later. But those were the exception; Harper was the rule.

Item: a torn scrap of lined paper, with the initials
HG
and
SP
written in neon, encircled by a light blue heart. (Pink had been out that year.) Harper had slipped Miranda the note while their sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Hernandez, had droned on and on about Lewis and Clark. Miranda knew exactly what it meant. For weeks, Harper had been drooling over
Scott Pearson, universally acknowledged to be the cutest boy in the sixth grade, except for Craig Jessup, who didn’t count because he smelled like mildew Everyone knew that Scott had been planning to take Harper behind the school at recess, and kiss her. They’d disappeared after lunch, right on schedule—and now they were back in the classroom, and here was Harpers note. Miranda got the story on the walk home: He’d kissed her. It was wet, and sloppy, and gross, and now he was her boyfriend. Miranda made Harper promise to tell her every detail of everything that happened, so that she, too, could know what having a boyfriend was like. And Harper came through, recounting every moment she spent with Scott for the nine days their relationship lasted. Then Scott moved on to Leslie Giles, a seventh grader with bigger boobs, and Harper pretended her heart was broken, to get sympathy from every girl in school. Only Miranda got to hear the dirty little secret: Scott had bad breath, kissing was boring, and she was glad to be done with the whole stupid thing.

Item: a wrinkled napkin from High Score, a sports bar that had closed a couple years ago, probably because its TV was only thirty-two inches wide and its waitresses, who mostly looked like they’d been around since the Eisenhower administration, preferred using it to catch up on SOAPnet reruns of Dynasty and Melrose Place. For her sixteenth birthday, Harper had given Miranda her very first fake ID. It was crude and cheap, and claimed Miranda was a twenty-one-year-old Virginian named Melanie DeWitt, born May 27, Gemini, residing on Applewood Road, Manassas, Virginia, 20108. All details Miranda had struggled to memorize before they set out to test her new identity at
High Score, where it was reputed that they’d let in a second grader if she flashed a homemade library card with her picture taped to it. Miranda was still nervous, forcing Harper to give her a pep talk before they strutted past the bouncer, flashing their ridiculous IDs, and sat down at a bar together for the first time. And despite the gross tables, nasty smells, and cheap beer, it had been the first truly great night of Miranda’s life.

Item: a program from the ninth-grade musical, Oliver! Miranda had wanted to try out—and, given the size of their school, “try out” really meant “write your name on the list and Mr. Grady will assign you your part.” But Harper had labeled it TLFU, Too Lame For Us. Lots of things were TLFU that year, which, not coincidentally, had marked the beginning of Harper’s rise to the top of the social stratosphere. White sneakers, boy bands, binders, the color pink (in the previous year, now out once again), eighth-grade boys, PG movies, sparkly nail polish—all TLFU. It was a lot for Miranda to remember, which was why, as in the case of the school musical, Harper had to keep reminding her. But they’d gone to see it, because Harper had scored them an invitation to the cast party, hosted by geeky Mara Schneider, whose brother Max was a junior and topped the official list of high school hunks. Max was supposed to be at the party, but didn’t show. Instead, Harper and Miranda got stuck in a corner with Barry and Brett Schanker. Barry had played the Artful Dodger, Brett had played the trumpet in the pit; both were pale, gangly, pockmarked, and intent on getting Harper and Miranda to play Twister with them in Mara Schneider’s rec room. Instead, Harper and Miranda had escaped into the
backyard, where they’d spent the night dangling their feet in the Schneiders’ pool, smoking a full pack of cigarettes (courtesy of Brett Schanker), getting drunk on the hot pink “Kool-Aid-plus” punch, and pretending that they were the only two people there, or at least the only two who mattered. By the end of the night, Miranda had thrown up in the bushes, Harper had nearly fallen into the pool, and, in an act of mad courage (or courageous madness), they’d snuck up to Max’s room and snagged a pair of his boxers. (White, size medium, and covered in bright yellow happy faces; Max, they decided, was definitely TLFU.)

Item: a dried carnation from tenth-grade Valentine’s Day, left over from the bouquet Harper had given Miranda when she freaked out about not having a boyfriend.

Item: a magazine clipping of a tropical island, where they’d dreamed of someday co-owning a vacation house with their unspeakably wealthy and unbelievably handsome husbands.

Item: a Scrabble tile, rescued from the trash, after Harper—tired of losing each and every rainy day—had dumped the game.

Item: a thin, green plastic ring purchased for a quarter from a gumball machine. They’d each bought one, pledging to wear them forever. Miranda had lost hers first—this was Harper’s, because they both knew that Miranda’s card board boxes were the only place it would be safe.

Miranda rubbed her eyes. She’d been looking through the boxes for hours, as if something in one of them would be able to explain what was happening. But there were no answers, only the record of a friendship that should have been enough.

It was enough for Miranda—it had, for all these years, been nearly everything, and here was the proof. So why did Harper need so much more? And why was she willing to trash it, for Adam, for Kane, for Kaia, for anything?

Miranda had been willing to put everything aside for Harper s time of need, because that’s what best friends do. But it was obvious now: Whatever Harper needed, it wasn’t her.

Sometimes, she knew it was a dream while it was happening.

“Where are we?” she asked Kaia, gaping at the tiny huts lining the cobblestone streets. They wound up and around into the hills, giving way to long stretches of emerald green vineyards. On the other side, the land dropped off abruptly, and at the base of a cliff lapped the waters of a calm, turquoise sea.

“Italy,” Kaia said, looking bored. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses, despite the cloudy sky. “A little fishing village on the Riviera.”

“But I’ve never been here,” Harper said, confused. She’d never been out of California, not that she would have admitted it to Kaia, with her passport stuffed full of stamps from glamorous getaways to international hot spots.

“I have,” Kaia said, shrugging. “It gets old.”

“But this is
my
dream,” Harper pointed out. She wandered down one of the uneven paths, stopping just before the land dropped off to nothingness. Keeping her back to the town and staring out over the cliff face, she felt like she was on the edge of the world. “How can—?”

“You want to argue?” Kaia asked, stretching out on the ground as if she were at the beach. “Or you want to get a tan?”

Harper tossed a small rock over the edge of the cliff She tried to follow its way down, but didn’t see it land. “What are we doing here? What are
you
doing here? You’re . . .”

“Can’t say it, can you?” Kaia laughed bitterly. “Dead. Kaput. Kicked the bucket. Passed over to ... woooooooh ...” She made her voice dramatically low and solemn, “the
Other Side
”

“I was going to say, ‘You’re
annoying
me,’” Harper corrected her. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

“I did leave you alone. Isn’t that the problem?” Kaia stood up and brushed herself off. “Why else are you acting like such a mental case?” Before Harper could answer—not that she had an answer—Kaia wandered over to a small storefront, where she haggled with a stooped old man. She came back a moment later with an ice-cream cone heaped high with dripping scoops of chocolate and handed it to Harper.

“None for you?” Harper asked.

“Some of us actually care about our figures,” Kaia said, giving Harper a pointed look. She ignored it and took a big, slippery mouthful. It was chilly and delicious and, just like everything else, seemed somehow more real than waking life. For weeks, everything had looked gray, tasted dull; but here, even the air tasted sweet, and the ocean blazed a brilliant blue.

She stared down at the jagged rocks at the base of the cliff. The waves slammed against them, frothy geysers spurting several feet into the air. Harper crept closer to the edge, feeling a strange sense of power and possibility. Taking another step seemed like such a small, routine choice—she took steps every day, thousands of them—but the next one
could launch her into midair, hundreds of feet above the ground.

What happens if you die in a dream? she wondered.

And maybe she wouldn’t die at all—maybe the water would cushion her and she would float away. Or maybe, since it was a dream, she would step off the ground and discover she could fly.

She was too afraid to find out.

“I don’t blame you.” Kaia’s voice was almost lost in the thunder of the crashing surf.

Harper didn’t turn around. It was all so easy for Kaia. It always had been. She just did whatever the hell she wanted, and then walked away. Disappeared. Harper was the one left to face the consequences. Harper was the one left to bear the pain.

She wanted to scream, as loud as she could, to see if her voice could fill the emptiness that lay before her, the vast ocean and sky bleeding together in a field of blue. She wanted to berate Kaia for leaving, to beg her to come back, to admit the horrible truth: More than anything, she wished she and Kaia had never met. Because then this whole nightmare—before the accident, and after—would disappear. But even though it was a dream, that was no excuse to let things get out of control, or to feel the things she wasn’t allowed to feel.

She opened her mouth, intending to apologize—for what she’d done, for what she’d thought, for what she’d wished. But something else leaked out.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” she told Kaia in a tight, level voice. “Maybe I blame
you
.”

It turned out school was just as boring when you weren’t high.

Reed’s experiment was in its fifth day, and so far, so ... okay. He hadn’t had any remarkable revelations; his newly clear mind hadn’t discovered the meaning of life or the secrets of cold fusion. (Though it did make it a bit easier for him, in remedial physics, to finally figure out what cold fusion was—school was mildly more informative when you bothered to show up to class, rather than skulk in the parking lot.) He hadn’t even decided whether his mind was actually clearer, to be honest. Things seemed to move faster, and matter more, but that just meant that more stuff crowded into his head, none of it making much sense.

Fish and Hale were a bit confused, but when weren’t they? And they didn’t care what he did. “Whatever, dude” was a one-size-fits-all response.

Reed was beginning to realize that no one much cared what he did. The teachers who ignored his absence didn’t
perk up at his presence. His father was happy as long as he kept his job and stayed out of jail. Fish and Hale just needed someone to snag them the occasional free pizza. Kaia was gone. And Beth . . .

Beth was avoiding him, her face turning red every time their paths crossed. Not that it happened often; she existed in a different world. Usually, people like her didn’t even see him—he was a part of the background, like the garbage cans lining the cafeteria or the gum stuck under every desk.

It was okay with Reed. Being invisible made it easier to watch. He saw Beth hovering on the fringes of crowds, always fidgeting, rarely speaking, never setting off on her own. He watched her spend lunch periods in the library, hunched over a book. Once, he glimpsed her slip away to the newspaper office, her hands covering her eyes to mask the tears.

It seemed like her eyes were always on the verge of filling with tears. But maybe that was just because they were such a shimmering, limpid blue.

He didn’t even know why he was watching, until the fifth day, when he made his decision.

He ditched school after lunch—that would give him plenty of time to be back before the final bell. It took him about twenty minutes to drive the familiar route, and with every passing mile, the lump of dread in his stomach grew bigger. But at the same time, the closer he got, the more he needed to be there, and the faster he drove.

Reed pulled off onto the shoulder and stared up at the imposing hulk of a building. He’d brought Kaia here, the first time he’d brought her anywhere, back when he’d thought she was just some stuck-up rich bitch. But she’d
understood what he saw in the place, and though she never said it, Reed was sure she felt the same way. They’d come out here a lot, sitting silently, staring at the abandoned machinery, the rusted barbed wire, the gaping maw of the mines themselves, and imagining the past.

He hadn’t been back since the accident. And he wouldn’t be coming back again. He just needed to say good-bye.

He stepped out of the car and forced himself to stare at the spot of their last night here together, as if he could still see the imprint of his blanket on the ground. It hurt like hell. But that was the point.