Gluttony (10 page)

“I was looking for you, actually,” Star
la said.

“Yeah?” Had his voice just cracked? She was surely only a year or two older than him; but he suddenly felt like he was thirteen again, covered in zits and begging his father for a real guitar.

“I just downloaded this new song and I thought you might like it,” she said.

“Why?” Shit, that was rude. “I mean, what made you think that I’d …?”

“I was standing outside listening to you guys practice. Does that bother you?” she asked defiantly.

Only because they sucked. “Whatever. What did you think?” Bad idea, he told himself. This girl was obviously totally into the music scene here—and
here
was about as far as you could get from home, where the Blind Monkeys were the only rock band in thirty miles, which meant they played every gig from birthday parties to funerals, despite their general level of suckitude. Star
la, clearly, would have higher standards.

She laughed. “I
thought
you might like this song I just downloaded. So … wanna hear it?” She pulled an iPod Nano out of her pocket—exactly the model he’d been craving but couldn’t afford, not when all his extra cash went to fixing the van and helping his dad with the never-ending stack of bills.

Reed nodded, not wanting to risk another humiliating falsetto moment. He reached out for the iPod, but instead she just gave him one earbud and stuck the other in her own ear. Tethered together, they sat down on the floor, backs pressed against the wall, legs pulled up to their chests, and arms just barely touching. She pressed play.

A scorching chord blasted through the buds. A sharp, syncopated beat charged after it, overlain by a twangy acoustic guitar solo—and then, without warning, the band plugged in. And the song took off. Reed closed his eyes, letting the music storm through him, banging his head lightly back against the wall in time with the drums, his fingers flickering as if plucking and strumming invisible strings.

Everything disappeared but the music—and then the music stopped.

The first thing he registered, as the song came to an end: He and Star
la had leaned in toward each other, their cheeks and temples pressing together as they lost themselves in sound.

The second thing: Beth’s face in the doorway.

She just looked lost.

chapter
5

“We’re going to die.” Harper gripped the bar until her knuckles turned white. One loose screw was all it would take to send her plummeting. She looked down—despite every instinct in her body screaming not to. The people were the size of pinheads. She wondered which one she would land on. “We are so going to die.”

“It’s just a ride,” Adam pointed out, stretching back in the roller-coaster seat as if it were a lounge chair and grinning up at the sky. (The clouds seemed—to Harper, at least—unnaturally close.) “Enjoy it.”

“I was enjoying standing flat on the ground,” Harper snapped, as the car continued its slow, terrifying creep up the track. They were tilted back at nearly a right angle, and the ascent seemed to last forever. Which would have been okay with Harper, except for one little problem: What goes up, must come down. Fast. “I was enjoying the view from nine hundred feet up without feeling the asinine desire to get on a
roller coaster
that some
idiot
thought it would be neat to build on top of a building.” She closed her eyes.

“You’re the one who wanted to suck up to the girl at the controls,” Adam pointed out.

“How are we supposed to suck up to her from here?” Harper shot back. “How are we supposed to enjoy a concert when we’re splattered on the ground a thousand feet down?”

“Why do you always have to look on the dark side of everything?” Adam complained.

“Why do you have to act like everything’s a game? Some things aren’t fun.”

“
I’m
having fun,” Adam countered.

“And that’s all that counts?” Harper asked.

“
You’re
going to lecture
me
about being self-centered?”

“I’m—” Harper’s next words flew out of her mouth and her mind as the cars rolled over the peak of the incline and …

“Aaaaaaaaaah!”
she shrieked as they whipped through the air, the wind slicing her cheeks and her head pressed back flat against the seat. They zoomed down the track, up a hill, around a loop, the sky beneath her and the ground above, her hair flying everywhere and her stomach knocking around, banging her intestines, crushing her lungs. She kept her eyes squeezed shut and screamed and screamed, waiting for the nightmare to end until, with a heart-stopping jolt, it did.

Harper took a deep breath, then another. “Are we alive?” she whispered, her eyes still shut tight.

“You were really scared, weren’t you?” Adam said, and she could hear the surprise in his voice. She would have shot back some snide comment about how he might have picked up on that from the hundred times she’d said it, back when he was dragging her into the seat. But she didn’t have the energy. She was too relieved that it was over, and they were still alive.

There was nothing fun about screaming metal, uncontrollable speed, spinning and plunging and waiting for the crash.

At least, not when you’d been through the real thing.

Harper realized that her hands were still gripping the thin metal bar, and they weren’t alone. Adam’s left hand was wrapped over the top of her right one, his grip warm and firm, as if he’d meant to keep her safe.

He let go first.

“Here at Heavenly Helpers, it’s all about
you,
” the attendant had chirped. “What
you
want, what
you
need, whatever makes
you
happy.”

It had, in fact, sounded a bit like heaven to Miranda, whose life was usually all about anyone and everyone else. But the spa’s slogan soon proved more fiction than fact, since whatever made Miranda happy most definitely did
not
include the Heavenly Peace Floral Skin Resurfacing and Pore Varnish facial.

“For your skin, dear,” the woman had chirped as she slapped and pulled Miranda’s face, then rubbed on a layer of acidic slime, ignoring Miranda’s protestations. “Those pores are enormous, and caked with bacteria—when was your last facial?”

How about never?

Nor would she have chosen the Warming Stone Mint Massage with Body Wrap.

“It’s a must!” The burly male masseur said, bustling her off to the steam room after a painful and slightly embarrassing hour of rubbing, pinching, and moisturizing. “The heat and the aromatherapy will fuse together in a blessed blend of healing vapors. It’s unforgettable!”

But as far as Miranda was concerned, it was just hot and boring. And when she emerged, still covered in a thin film of all-organic mint-infused mud and smelling like a bag of potpourri, she felt neither relaxed nor rejuvenated. She just felt slimy.

“Isn’t this heavenly?” the woman to her left asked, as they lay back on over-padded chairs, cucumbers covering their eyes and gauzy netting draped down over their bodies as if to protect them from mosquito sized bad karma.

“Mmm-hmmm,” Miranda mumbled, trying not to seem ungrateful for her birthday present, even though the stranger in the next chair obviously had no idea who Harper was or why it would matter that Miranda feigned gratitude. “It’s great.” She couldn’t help but wonder what Harper was thinking. Didn’t her best friend know her at all? Maybe, just
maybe
, if they’d done this together, they could have laughed at the manicurist’s beehive hairdo and tag-team flirted with the hot masseur. But Harper apparently preferred to spend the day without her, and Miranda was left to spend her last day as a seventeen-year-old alone, getting scolded.

The manicurist scolded her for biting her nails; the facialist scolded her for poor skin hygiene; the masseur scolded her for letting stress build up in her muscles and tie knots in her back.

Try living my life,
she’d wanted to tell him.
And then talk to me about stress management
.

“My sister and I come here every year,” the woman confided. “Our husbands go off and gamble or”—she tittered—“at least that’s what they tell us we’re doing. And we come here. It’s a tradition—we’ve been doing it for years.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Miranda mumbled again, wondering how she was supposed to relax when they stuck her in the relaxation room with someone who wouldn’t leave her alone.

“Who are you here with, dear?” the woman asked.

The door opened before Miranda was forced to admit the truth: She was alone.

“Miranda Stevens?” a scratchy voice called out. “Time for your wax.”

Miranda sat up and peeled the cucumber slices off her eyes, delighted to be leaving the so-called soothing sounds of the rain forest and her Chatty Cathy meditation-mate. Delighted, that is, until the woman’s words sunk in. She’d seen “bikini wax” on the schedule the spa had handed her when she first walked in. But she’d elected to ignore it. She’d never had one before, and would have been more than happy to leave it at that.

But that wasn’t the kind of happiness the Heavenly Helpers were shooting for.

“Nonsense,” the attendant told Miranda when she tried to talk her way out of the appointment. “It’s very freeing. And your boyfriend will love it.”

Miranda was all for the “if you build it, he will come” theory of boyfriend hunting, but as far as she was concerned, that applied to things like chic hairstyles and sexy miniskirts. A freshly waxed bikini line wouldn’t turn her into much of an irresistible draw unless she started parading around town in a bikini … in which case, unwanted hair would be the least of her concerns.