Wrath - 4 (18 page)

Reed shrugged.

“Maybe you’ve been framed, is that it?” Sorrento suggested sarcastical y. “Someone’s out to get you, right? And who might that be?” Reed shrugged again. “For al I know, it was you.”

That’s when his father spoke for the first time. “That’s enough! For God’s sake, boy, just tel them you did it and that you’re sorry, and we can get out of here.” Reed was sorry, but only that the school had bothered to drag his father out of work for this. His father usual y didn’t care what Reed did—but he
did
care about missing his shifts. And, like everything else, this would somehow become al Reed’s fault.

He would have been happy to speed things along, even if it meant sucking it up for a parental lecture, but he wasn’t about to admit to something he hadn’t done.

Bring it on,
he thought, staring at the vice principal.
You don’t scare me
.

Sorrento couldn’t threaten Reed, not with anything that mattered, because you could only threaten someone who cared.

“Mr. Sawyer, I hope you realize that your son is putting us in a very difficult situation here,” Principal Lowenstein said. “I simply can’t have this brand of … disruptive element pol uting my student body.”

Reed’s father took off his cap and rubbed his bald spot, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Reed wondered what kind of memories this office held for the old man, who’d been a proud Haven High dropout, would-be class of’88.

“I understand, ma’am, you gotta do what you gotta do,” Hank Sawyer said, and Reed winced, hating the way his father talked to the people who ran his life. “You wanna suspend him for a week or so, I’l put him to work, set him straight.You don’t have to worry.”

Not his life,
Reed vowed to himself, not for the first time.
Not for me
.

“I’m afraid you
don’t
understand me,
Mr.
Sawyer.” It seemed to physical y pain the principal to address Hank with even the barest term of respect. “If Reed here refuses to take responsibility for his actions—his very serious actions, I might add—we might be forced to take harsher measures. As I always say, if a student truly doesn’t want to learn … wel , I’m afraid sometimes there’s just nothing we can do.”

“I’m not sure I get what you mean,” Hank mumbled.

But Reed got it. He wasn’t as thick as people thought.

“She means if we can’t settle this to our satisfaction—if we see no signs of … remorse, it may no longer be possible for Reed to attend Haven High School,” Sorrento explained with a barely hidden smile.

Hank Sawyer looked dumbfounded.

Lowenstein looked apologetic—or rather, what she thought a suitably apologetic expression might be.

Sorrento looked triumphant.

Powel looked satisfied.

And Reed looked away. Whatever happened, he’d stil have his job. He’d stil have his band. He’d stil have his buddies, and his stash.

There was nothing in this place he wanted or needed, so maybe Sorrento, for once in his miserable tight-ass bureaucratic life, was right.

Maybe it was time for Reed to go.

“I know I said I’d do the lab for you, but don’t you think you should at least
pretend
we’re working together?”

“Sorry, what?” Harper looked up from her doodles to discover her geeky Girl Friday had put down her beaker, turned off her Bunsen burner, and was waving the lab instructions in Harper’s face.

“I
said,
how about you actual y help me out here, before Bonner catches on?” The girl jerked her head toward the front of the empty room, where their robotic chem teacher was nominal y supervising them.

Harper had cut class again today, unable to face Miranda across the lab table, but that meant a makeup lab—and
that
meant a big, fat zero unless she could find someone to do the work for her.

Enter Sara—or was it Sal y? Sandra? whatever—a Marie Curie wannabe who always aced her labs and whose semester-long services could apparently be bought for the price of an outdated dELIA⋆s sweater and a setup with debate team captain Martin somebody the Third.

“Trust me, you don’t want my help,” Harper said, laughing..

“But it’s easy,” the brainiac argued. “If you just balance the equation and calculate the molarity of solution A, then you can estimate …” Harper tuned out the droning. Back in the old days, with Miranda doing their labs, she hadn’t been subjected to any of this chemistry crap; instead, Miranda had just measured and stirred and poured, al the while keeping up a running commentary on Harper’s latest rejects or the possibility that the Bonner was naked under her ever-present lab coat.

Miranda had always known the perfect thing to say; she was never judgmental, patronizing, or—the worst crime, in both Harper’s and Miranda’s minds—boring. Harper had taken her for granted—and driven her away.

She got that now. Miranda and Adam were right: They’d been too good for her. Maybe she was lucky it had taken so long for them to realize it. And maybe she stil had time to change.

“Thanks for your help, Marie, but I’l take it from here,” she said suddenly, grabbing the lab instructions.

“Uh, my name is Sandra?” the girl pointed out, sounding slightly unsure of it herself. “And I’m not sure you want to do that. We’re at kind of a delicate stage, and last time you—”

“I
said
I’ve got it,” Harper said, accidental y sweeping one of the beakers off the table. Both girls jumped back as some of the solution splashed through the air.

Young Einstein pushed her glasses up on her face and began backing away. “Sure. Okay. No problem. I’l just get out of your hair then, uh … good luck!” She turned and raced from the room.

No one’s got any faith in me,
Harper thought in disgust. No one realized that she could be diligent and virtuous if she set her mind to it. Hadn’t she managed to manipulate and connive her way to the top of the Haven High social pyramid?
That
took strategy, brains, and forethought. Compared to that, being a good person would be easy.

Harper sighed. Okay, maybe not easy. But it wasn’t impossible; she was just out of practice. Whatever Miranda and Adam thought, she had it in her. She’d prove it to herself, and then she’d prove it to them. “Okay, what’ve we got here?” she mumbled.

Step 3: Combine 10 ml of your titrated acid solution with 10 ml of water. Record the pH.

What had Marie Curie Jr. said about balancing the molarity and calculating the equation of the solution? Or was it estimating the equation and balancing the solution? And what was a titrated acid, anyway?

Harper threw down the work sheet. She didn’t need to get a perfect score on her first try, right? The important thing was making it through the lab on her own. So al she needed to do was concentrate and—

CRASH!

Oops. Hopeful y that wasn’t the beaker of titrated acid that had just smashed to the floor.

“Everything al right back there, Ms. Grace?” the Bonner asked nervously, too nearsighted to see for herself.

“Just fine, Ms. Bonner,” Harper chirped. “Don’t worry.”

Harper picked up something that might or might not have been her titrated acid solution and dumped some into the remaining beaker. Then she spotted a test tube fil ed with a clear liquid. Marie must already have measured out the water; now, al she had to do was dump it in and …

A huge puff of smoke exploded out of the beaker, blasting past Harper before she had the chance to move out of the way. “Ugh,” Harper moaned in alarm, “what’s that—?” The Bonner looked up in alarm, wrinkling her nose as the stench wave hit her. “Harper!” she cried, pinching her nostrils together and backing toward the door. “What did you do?”

“I don’t know!” Harper waved away the foul greenish smoke, trying to hold her breath and escape the noxious combination of rotten eggs and raw sewage. She dumped the beaker into the sink, grabbed her backpack, and ran out of the room, joining the Bonner in the hal way.

“Oh dear oh dear oh dear,” the Bonner was muttering to herself. “I’l have to contact the principal, I’l have to have the room fumigated, I’l have to—” She caught sight of Harper, or rather, caught
scent
of Harper. “Smel s like we’l have to get
you
fumigated too,” she said, stepping away.

Harper took her hand away from her nose and breathed in deeply, her eyes widening in horror. She smel ed like she’d gone swimming in a toilet.

The Bonner shook her head sadly and pul ed her lab coat tighter around herself, as if it would offer some protection from Harper’s cloud of stench. “Ms. Grace, I’m afraid I’l be forced to give you a zero on this lab.”

Harper looked down at her soiled clothes and back at the lab-turned-toxic-waste dump, took a big whiff of her new eau de sewer, and nodded. “Zero sounds about right,” she muttered. Apparently, these days, that’s al she was worth.

When Kane had coaxed Miranda out for a post-detention aperitif, he hadn’t intended a torture session at the Nifty Fifties diner. But when Miranda had suggested it, her face flushed with pleasure, he’d said yes almost instantly.

Not that there weren’t plenty of good reasons to stay away from the diner, even above and beyond those the local health inspector published in the town paper every year. He could have cited the watery milk shakes and five-alarm chili, aka heartburn-waiting-to-happen. He could have reminded Miranda of the grating Chuck Berry anthems piped through tinny speakers, punctuated by scratches, squeaks, and the high-pitched whine of a grimy waitress announcing “order’s up.” Then there was the burned-out neon, the scratched, faux-leather bar stools, the vintage movie posters peeling off the wal , and the Route 66 junk clogging the counter, longing for impulse buyers to give them a new home.

But al of those would have been excuses, skirting the truth of why he’d hoped never to set foot inside the dilapidated diner again. It was Beth’s turf, and he didn’t want to face her there. He’d spent one too many long afternoons lingering over a greasy plate of fries, waiting for her to finish her shift, and he could do without the flashback to happier days.

But when Miranda had raised the idea, he hadn’t hesitated before agreeing, “Shitty Fifties it is.” His own reluctance was reason enough to go; he wouldn’t let Beth’s presence scare him away from anywhere, especial y one of Grace’s few semi-tolerable dining establishments. Reluctance stemmed from fear, and fear was a sign of weakness, to be attacked wherever it appeared. Better to do it yourself, Kane believed, than wait for someone to do it for you.

He and Miranda kept up a steady stream of banter as they settled into a booth and waited for their food to arrive. She was so much easier to be around than most girls, neither boring nor demanding, just … there. Like one of the guys, only with a better ass.

“You sure you don’t want some?” he asked, waving a spoonful of ice cream under her nose.

“You’re a growing boy, Kane—I can’t take food out of your mouth.”

He shrugged and swal owed another mouthful of the flavorless vanil a.

“Not quite Ben & Jerry’s?” she asked, grinning wryly at his expression.

She was okay, he supposed—physical y, probably even a seven, thanks to her long, slim legs and model’s body. The chest was a little flat for his tastes, but she compensated for it with a tight ass. Her long, thin face wasn’t complemented by the long, thin hair—but it wasn’t bad. It was the rest of her that brought the total package down to a five: the way she never quite looked you in the eye, the plain white T-shirts, boxy jeans, the fight-or-flight reflex on overdrive, and, most problematical y, the way she seemed so content to fade into the background.

She was a fixer-upper, basical y. The raw materials were al there. It would just take some effort—a project best saved for a rainy day.

Beth, on the other hand, was ful y formed, and a perfect ten. She’d have to be, for Kane to be giving her a second thought. As Miranda longingly eyed the milk shake he had insisted she order—and from which she’d yet to take a sip—he eyed Beth. Her long, blond hair was pinned back from her face, and her ful lips glistened with a see-through gloss.

He stil wanted her, he realized. Despite everything, he missed her.

It only made him more determined to wash her out of his system for good.

“Waitress,” he cal ed loudly, “we need you over here.” He’d sat in this section deliberately, knowing how much she hated to be watched at work. That was the thing about being in a relationship, he’d discovered:You learned people’s weaknesses.

It was why he planned never to get ensnared in one again.

“What are you doing?” Miranda hissed, as Beth approached. She clucked her tongue. “Play nice.”

“Do you need something else?” Beth asked thinly. “Or just the check.”

“I need you to clean up this spil .”

“What spil ?”

True, the table was clean. He’d have to remedy that. Kane took a sip of his Coke, and then, with a slow and deliberate turn of the wrist, dumped it out al over the table. The sticky brown liquid spread across the metal ic tabletop, spattering onto her white sneakers. “Oops.”

Beth took a deep breath, then tossed a filthy dish towel in his face. “Clean it yourself.”

“Excuse me?”

“Kane, drop it,” Miranda said sharply.

He glanced at her in surprise, raising his eyebrows questioningly.
What? What did I do?

“Can you, just for once, not be an asshole?” Miranda asked, as if genuinely curious to hear the answer.

“Now, where’s the fun in that?” he drawled, waiting for the inevitable smile.

But Miranda’s face was indecipherable, her lip twitching slightly, as if choosing between potential expressions. Final y, she settled on a scowl. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she announced, standing up and throwing down her napkin. “I’l be back, maybe. Try to behave yourself.”

She hadn’t walked out on him, Kane thought with pleasure; he disliked melodrama of al kinds, unless he’d created it himself. But she hadn’t egged him on, either, or sat there with an adoring look the way the bimbos al did, chastising him with their words while rewarding him with their eyes. No, the original go-along-to-get-along girl, Miss Gumby herself, had actual y taken a stand-of sorts.