Envy - 2 (17 page)

But Kane remembered.

She had chosen Adam over Kane. She’d fal en for Adam’s good-boy looks, his good-boy charm. She’d brushed Kane away from her like a gnat and given herself to Adam.

And ever since then, everything had been different. Adam was different, ignoring every other girl, most of the time ignoring Kane—al he wanted was Beth. To be with her, to talk about her, to hold her. Kane couldn’t stand it. Partly because he hated to see a friend morph into one of those relationship pod people, jettisoning al the interesting parts of his personality.

Trying his best to behave—to obey.

But more than that, Kane couldn’t stand the possibility that Beth wasn’t “just a girl,” that she real y was something special, something new—and that she belonged to someone else. Kane was not, by nature, a covetous person. Envy was too passive for him. To envy something, after al , you had to be sitting on the sidelines, watching what someone else had.

Wanting it, longing for it, and powerless to get it.

Kane didn’t do powerless. He didn’t waste his time wishing he had someone else’s life, someone else’s possessions. He was who he was, he had what he had—and when he discovered something out there in the world that he needed? He took it.

Harper didn’t usual y associate with Beth and her little clique during gym class. Of course she had to be nice to Adam’s girlfriend, and
pretend
they were friends, but that didn’t mean they needed to be bosom buddies. So usual y, after suffering through the forty-five minutes of torture better known as phys ed, she stayed on the other side of the locker room, sliding out of her hideous orange and black uniform and back into her real clothes as quickly as possible so that she could get the hel out. (The girls’ locker room, although lacking the overpowering stench of sweat ever-present in the guys’ locker room, was stil not the type of place in which you wanted to kick back and relax.) But today was different. Today she had a mission. Kane and Harper had conferred, and agreed: It was time to set Kaia’s plan into motion.

She moved into position—a few feet away from Beth and the group of mousy blondes who surrounded her. When Beth, with her watered-down personality, managed to be the center of attention, you had to wonder about the quality of the company. Imagine a group that found the Queen of Bland riveting, Harper marveled to herself.

Far enough away to be unobtrusive, but close enough to … to do what she had to do.

She felt a smal twinge of guilt about the whole thing, but quickly squelched it. She was doing al of them a favor, she reminded herself. Beth and Adam’s rickety relationship was being held together by a Band-Aid—and it would be less painful for al involved if someone just ripped it off, nice and quick.

Lucky for them al , Harper was up to the task.

“God, if I never have to run laps again, it’l be way too soon,” Marcy sighed, stripping out of her sweaty gym uniform.

“Who invented gym, anyway?” Marcy’s best friend, Darcy, chimed in.

Beth laughed, letting the familiar chatter wash over her. It was the same every week with these girls: Gym sucked. School sucked. Guys rocked. Gym sucked. Rinse and repeat.

They weren’t her friends, exactly—beyond Marcy and Darcy (one never went anywhere without the other), they weren’t even friends with one another. But they were al dating guys on the team—the swim team, the basketbal team, the lacrosse team, depending on the season. It didn’t real y matter. At a school this smal , there was pretty much only one Team.

And whatever the season, Adam was its captain. Which somehow made Beth—what, exactly? She was never sure. Not the most popular, certainly. That would always be Harper, who kept herself aloof from “the girlfriends” but stil managed to gain their unadulterated admiration. Not the best liked—for Beth was unsure whether these girls actual y
liked
anyone. She was certain, however, that if she and Adam ever broke up, the flock of giggling girls would disappear along with him. But at the moment she seemed to have a certain cachet. It was as if they were al drawn to one another by some elusive girlfriend pheromone, and hers was—by virtue of dating Adam, Big Man on Campus—the strongest. Maybe it was some kind of evolutionary reflex.

Or maybe you’ve just been spending too much time staring at your AP bio book
, she thought, laughing at herself and her insatiable need to overanalyze everything. Why couldn’t she just accept these girls for whatever they were? Comfortable acquaintances, just another perk of dating Adam, like free tickets to footbal games and a ride to school whenever she needed one.

So what if they were vain and vapid? It’s not like she could afford to be choosy—she didn’t have too many friends these days, beyond Adam. So she should probably stop being so judgmental and just take what she could get.

“So
are
you, Beth?” Marcy asked insistently.

“Am I what?” Beth asked in confusion, suddenly realizing al eyes were on her. She pul ed off her gym uniform and began brushing out her long, blond hair. Back in ninth grade, when she’d walked into the locker room for the first time, she’d been insanely bashful about letting the other girls see her change. Over the course of a few months, she even developed a system of contortions that would al ow her to change from her clothes into her gym uniform and back again without revealing a square of naked flesh to anyone. Four years later the whole thing seemed ridiculous. She was total y comfortable now wandering around the locker room in her underwear—it was just another part of the high school experience, like cafeteria food. And trigonometry. She couldn’t even remember what her problem had been. Of course, she mused, back then
no one
ever saw her naked, and the very thought of revealing herself to another person had made her skin crawl. Then came Adam.

“Are you going to the championships?” Darcy repeated on behalf of her best friend. “You heard the student council got together enough funds to pay for a bus to take us al up to Val ey Glen, right?”

“Yeah, I heard.” Beth smiled, remembering how delighted Adam had been when she told him she would final y be there to see him swim. And hopeful y, win. This year’s regionals were being held at Val ey Glen High, a huge school up north, and a school bus had been chartered to take half of Haven High along to cheer on the swimmers. (Given the footbal team’s 0-9 record—three years in a row—Haven fans had plenty of time and energy on their hands.) It would be a long day, but Beth wouldn’t miss it for anything. She knew how important it was to Adam. And seeing how much he wanted her there had just reminded her how much he loved her. And how much she loved him. Not that spending five hours on a bus with Marcy, Darcy, and the rest of the Haven High cheering section sounded particularly appealing to her—but it would be worth it to get to see Adam in action again, to show him that she cared. Besides, she’d promised him. She was, after al , his good luck charm. “I’m definitely going,” she answered, grinning. “I can hardly wait.”

“Looks like you won’t have to,” Marcy said.

“What do you mean?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Darcy asked. “We were just talking about how great it is that they rescheduled the championships for this week.”

“This week?” Beth asked in alarm. “But the SATs are on Saturday!”

“Exactly, that’s what’s so great—you know they’re giving the seniors Thursday and Friday off.”

“So we can
study
’” Beth pointed out.

Darcy laughed. “Yeah, but who’s actual y going to do that? No, it’s perfect—we’l ride up on Thursday morning, watch the meet, do some victory partying, and then ride back late that night. And we have al of Friday to sleep it off!”

“Are you sure about this?” Beth asked, her throat tightening.

“Yeah, Kyle just told me.”

Kyle was Darcy’s boyfriend, and the swim team’s cocaptain. If he’d said it, it must be true.

Shit.

“I can’t do that, I can’t go away two days before the test,” she cried. “That’s insane.”

“Breathe, Beth. It’s no big deal. It’s just …”

But Beth tuned out the rest of the prattle, her mind frantical y racing to find a way around the problem. There wasn’t one. She was just going in circles, always coming back to the same basic certainty.

She was going to have to back out—and Adam was going to freak.

As the rest of the girls filtered out of the locker room, Harper lingered. Once she was on her own, she snapped open her cel and quickly flipped through the images she’d captured. Perfect. She’d gotten everything she needed—and more. This swim meet development was quite the windfal .

That had been the only flaw in Kaia’s ruthlessly bril iant plan—the when. And now Beth had supplied them with the perfect solution. If Adam went out to Val ey Glen and Beth stayed here … Wel , if she’d had any doubts before about whether this was the right thing to do, they were gone now. Why else would al this good luck be raining down on her if this weren’t exactly what she was meant to do? Why else was everything working out even better than expected?

It would be the ideal setup, but it would mean they had to move fast. And Kane, who was on the swim team too (at least when he felt like going to practice) would have to give up a shot at athletic glory—somehow, Harper was pretty sure he wouldn’t care. Why would he want to go al the way to Val ey Glen for a pathetic plastic trophy, when the real trophy would be right here, conveniently close to home?

She slipped out of the locker room and sprinted down the hal to e-mail Kane and Kaia. They needed to know that step one was taken care of and step two needed to happen ASAP. Beth had just dumped a giant gift in their laps. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.

Beth steeled herself al day for the inevitable. But when the moment came, she stil wasn’t ready. She sat in the car next to him, looking out the window as the familiar scenery whizzed by, nodding absently as he fil ed her in on the details of his day at school. She was too nervous to pay much attention, instead plotting out the conversation in her mind, striving for some angle that wouldn’t cause an eruption. She’d yet to find one—but a couple miles from her house, she realized she just couldn’t wait any longer.

“I’ve got bad news,” she blurted out, interrupting some story about his history teacher’s toupee.

He flicked his eyes off the road for a quick second, flashing her a look of concern. “What is it?”

“It’s your swimming championships.”

“Oh, right, I’ve been meaning to tel you, there was some kind of scheduling screw-up, so they changed the date and—”

“I can’t go,” she said flatly.

“What?”

Something suddenly occurred to her—and she didn’t like it. “Adam, if you knew they’d changed the date, why didn’t you tel me?” she asked suspiciously.

“I was about to,” he said uncomfortably.

“It’s two days before the SATs—you
knew
I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

“Yeah—wouldn’t
want
to do that.”

“Wouldn’t want to blow the test, no,” she agreed. He could be such a baby sometimes. “Look, I’l come see you some other time, I promise.”

“Some other time? This is
it
, Beth, this is the time. It’s the end of the season—it’s the championships, for God’s sake. I thought you understood that this was important to me.”

“And the SATs are important to
me
,” she retorted. “Look, it’s not like I’m asking you not to go.”

“No, you’re just saying you can’t be bothered to come along,” he countered.

“Don’t do that.” She was getting so sick of having the same conversation again and again. Was she supposed to plan her entire life around him? “Don’t try to make this about you and me. You know this test means everything to me.”

“And I don’t?”

She was running out of patience—if she wanted to spend the afternoon dealing with a whiny child, she’d be home babysitting her little brothers.

“Adam, it’s not that I don’t want to be there for you—but this is my life we’re talking about here. I can’t throw everything away for some stupid swim meet.”