Gluttony (28 page)

The phone call sobered her up. Harper ran the entire way back to the Camelot, fearing that Beth would lose her nerve and disappear. And as she reached the top of the stairs, she discovered she’d been right to worry: The roof was empty.

Screw it,
Harper thought in disgust. She should have known better. For all she knew, Beth had never been here in the first place. Maybe she’d thought it would be fun to send Harper on a wild-goose chase. She was probably downstairs in the room—
Harper’s
room—right now, enjoying a good night’s sleep. Or worse, she was down there awake, and she wasn’t alone.

Harper refused to consider the possibility. Not because it wasn’t likely, but because she’d done enough vomiting for the night.

She hesitated on the rooftop, trying to plan out her next move, and that’s when she saw it: a hint of blond, just behind the walled edge of the roof.

The Camelot rooftop was shaped like a turret, with a flat, round top surrounded by a thin, waist-high wall of fake brick, assembled in a cutout pattern that looked like jack-o’-lantern teeth. The gaps were wide enough to sit on—and low enough to climb through.

Harper took a few quiet steps across the roof, as the tip of a blond head dipped below the brick and then, a few seconds later, bobbed into sight again. It wasn’t until Harper reached the opposite end that she got a good view of what was happening: Beth had climbed over the wall and found footing on a narrow ledge that ran around the outside of the turret. She was pressing herself flat against the fake brick, one hand clutching an ugly plaster gargoyle, the other balled into a fist.

“You can do it,” she murmured to herself. “Come on. Come on. Do it.”

“Holy shit.” The words popped out of Harper’s mouth before she could stop herself. “Beth, what the hell are you doing?”

Beth twisted her head up to see Harper, who caught her breath, as it looked for a moment that the movement might shift Beth’s balance enough to send her flying. “You weren’t supposed to see this.” She turned away again, and stared down—
way
down—at the ground. “But I couldn’t—”

“Then what was the plan, genius?” Harper snapped. “I was supposed to come back here and find you all splattered and bloody on the ground?” Beth flinched, and Harper pressed on. “Yes, splattered and
bloody
—what did you think would happen if you do something stupid like this? You float to the ground on a magical cloud and ride off into the sunset? Are you nuts? Oh wait, what am I saying? Look where we are. Of
course
you’re freaking nuts.”

Stop,
she begged herself.
Just shut up. Tell her not to jump. Tell her it will all be okay
. Harper knew her role in this script, and the ineffectual clichés she was supposed to utter. She was supposed to play the hero, to save Beth—and the thought enraged her. Where was Beth when Kaia needed saving?

Where was Beth when Harper was lying on the ground in pain, choking on smoke, waiting for sirens, waiting to hear Kaia scream, or move, or breathe?

“I don’t owe you anything,” she cried. “Do you hear me? I owe you
nothing
!”

Beth didn’t respond. From where she was standing, Harper could see Beth’s arm shaking and her grip on the gargoyle slip, then tighten. She could see the tears running down Beth’s face, and the way the ball of her left foot stuck out over the edge. And, if Harper leaned over, she could see all the way down, to the half-empty parking lot below. She could see the spot where Beth would land.

If.

Harper wondered if it would be possible to survive a drop like that, and wondered how you would land. If you dove forward, would you smash into the pavement gracefully, like a diver hitting an empty pool, arms first, crumpling into the cement, and then head, then body? Or would you twirl through the air in some accidental acrobatics and fall flat, a cement belly flop? An old Looney Tunes image flashed through her head, and for a second, she pictured a deep, Beth-shaped hole in the ground, Beth standing up and brushing herself off, flat as a pancake but otherwise intact.

This is real,
Harper had to remind herself. The edge was real. The drop was real. The ground was real. She could climb onto the wall and all it would take was one step, and everything would end. No equipment necessary.
This is real
.

“Beth. Don’t.” Her voice had none of the sugary sweetness of some touchy-feely suicide hotline. Harper, in fact, couldn’t associate the word “suicide” with this scene—that was a textbook word, a TV word, something ordered and comprehensible that happened to fictional characters and crazy teenagers on some other town’s local news. This was too messy to have a label, especially a label that predicted,
required
, a certain end. This was just some nameless thing that was happening, and she wanted it to stop. “Come back up here. We’ll talk.”

“You don’t want to talk to me,” Beth said dully.

“Yes, of course, I do.”

“You hate me.”

“No,” Harper protested. Lied. “I forgive you. I accept your apology. Just come back up here. We’ll figure it out.”

She wanted to mean it, but she couldn’t, and it showed. “Look, let me call someone,” she suggested. “Reed or—” Even now, she couldn’t say it. “Someone.”

“No!” Beth twisted around in alarm, again almost losing her grip. “Don’t call anyone! And don’t lie to me.”

You’re the liar,
Harper wanted to say. The hypocrite, the crusader for truth and justice, the perfect, principled princess, little miss cant be wrong. What a joke—what a fraud she had turned out to be. No one had ever guessed at what lay beneath the blond hair and blue eyes.

But had it always been there? Harper wondered. Or had circumstances created it?

Circumstances. Such a bland, passive, forgiving word. Circumstances, like heartbreak, manipulation, humiliation. Circumstances, as if they were beyond human control. As if, in the end, there was no one to blame.

Circumstances had propelled Beth over the wall, onto the narrow ledge, to the limits of sanity and the cusp of disaster. Circumstances had left only Harper as her would-be savior.

Circumstances, it seemed, were out to get them both.

“What do you want me to say?” Harper asked wearily. “What are you waiting to hear? Can we just cut to it?”

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking how pathetic I am. I can’t even do
this
right.”

Harper didn’t allow herself to question whether it was true. “You’re not pathetic, Beth.”

“I said don’t lie to me!” she wailed.

“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say here.”

“Try the truth,” Beth suggested bitterly.

“I can’t.”

“Because you know what you’d have to say. Because you
want
me to jump.”

The unspoken accusation:
You want me to die
.

Harper wanted to deny it. She didn’t want to hate anyone that much. Death was too final. She got that now, finally understood that Kaia was never coming back.

But Kaia didn’t have to die, she reminded herself. They could call it an accident all they wanted, but that didn’t make sense. Nothing so huge, and so horrible, could be so random; it didn’t feel right. There had to be a reason—there had to be someone to blame.

And didn’t that mean someone should have to pay?

“Let me in!” Reed shouted, pounding harder on the door. “Come on, wake up! Let me in!” Finally, just as he’d accepted the fact that no one was there, the door swung open, Adam in its wake.

“What?”

Now that he was here, Reed almost didn’t want to ask the question. What she wanted to do was her business. But he had to make sure. “Is Beth here?”

“What’s it look like?” Adam stepped aside and ushered Reed into the empty hotel room. Unless she was hiding in the closet, Beth wasn’t there.

He checked, just to make sure. The closet was empty.

“Where is she?” Reed asked.

“Hell if I know. I thought she was with you.”

“Why? Did she say something?”

Adam stifled a yawn. “When she ran out of here, I figured she was looking for you. Guess not.”

“If you hear from her, can you just tell her to call me?” Reed said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. “I need to see her.”

“Why? So you can mess with her head some more? Maybe get her high again? That worked great the last time. If I hear from her, I’ll tell her she’s better off without you. Or maybe she’s finally figured that out for herself.”

Reed wasn’t big on physical violence. Especially when it came to all-star athletes who could bench-press cars. But he didn’t even stop to think before grabbing Adam’s shoulders and pushing him up against the wall. “This isn’t a joke. I need to find her.”

Adam took a deep breath, then another. “Look, asshole, you want to take your hands off me,” he said, in a deliberate and measured voice.
“Now.”

Reed let his arms drop, and sagged against the door frame. “If you hear from her. Please.”

Adam’s scowl shrunk almost imperceptibly. “I’m not going to hear from her. She’s not answering her phone. But …” He grabbed for his cell. “Let me call again and—shit.”

“What?”

“There’s a message—I must have fallen asleep, missed the call. Hold on.” He dialed into his voice mail, his eyes widening as he listened to the message. He closed the phone, then hurled it against the mattress. “What the hell are you doing, Beth!”

“What did she say?” Reed asked urgently, though he could guess.

“She—it doesn’t matter. It’s personal. But … I need to get out of here. Find her.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Whatever.” Adam grabbed his jacket and his room key, opened the door, then doubled back to slip into his sneakers. Reed waited impatiently in the hallway, but Adam paused, just before stepping through the threshold. “You don’t think she … I mean, she wouldn’t …”

Reed was trying not to think at all. “Let’s just find her,” he suggested, striding down the hallway without waiting to see if Adam would follow. “Soon.”

“You want the truth? Fine. Truth.”

Beth dug her fingers into the pitted stone of the gargoyle and tried not to shut her eyes against the stinging wind. She wanted to see everything, even if it hurt.

“The truth is, I hate you,” Harper shouted down.

Big surprise there.

“I’ve always hated you. You’re weak, you’re bland, you’re spineless, you act like you’re this model of virtue who always does the right thing, as if you get to look down on the rest of us because you never make any mistakes. Everything about you is a lie.”

“Is this supposed to be helping?” Beth could feel the loose gravel between her left foot and wondered how big a gust of wind would be required to push her off balance. At least that way she wouldn’t have to do it herself.

This was humiliating. She’d lowered herself down here, she’d made peace with her decision, and then—she’d frozen. Unwilling to go back up, unable to let herself go down, she’d stood in this gusty limbo for what felt like hours—until Harper arrived, apparently determined to ship her straight to hell.

“Why should I help you, after what you did to me? And to
her
?”

“You shouldn’t!” Beth cried, her voice carried away on the wind, so that she didn’t know whether or not she would even be heard. “No one should. That’s the point.”

“That’s
my
point!” Harper shouted back. “Can’t you come up with anything better than that? Can’t you even defend yourself?”

“What am I supposed to say? I did it.” After keeping it trapped inside all this time, it almost felt good to say it—to shout it—to know that when she did fall, it would be without secrets.

“You could say Kaia was a bitch who slept with your boyfriend. You could say
I’m
a bitch who tried to ruin your life and drive you crazy—that I
did
drive you crazy, and you were just trying to get back at me. You could say you weren’t the one who was driving the car.”

Her perch was precarious, and she didn’t dare look up again to see Harper’s face. And Beth’s imagination wasn’t rich enough to come up with something that matched the odd mixture of rage, hysteria, and regret in her voice.