Sloth

Adam crushed the paper into a ball and crammed it into the bottom of his backpack, then butted his head against the wall of a nearby locker—stupid idea, since all it produced was a dull thud and a sharp pain, neither of which went very far toward alleviating his frustration.

But a stupid idea seemed appropriate; after all, what other kind did he have?

Fifty-eight percent.

Maybe if he and Miranda had spent more time working and less time playing video games and talking about Harper ... At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do. For those few hours, he’d felt more normal and more hopeful than he had in a long time.

She was a good friend, he’d realized.

Just maybe not a very good tutor.

Or maybe it’s just me,
Adam thought in disgust. He’d actually studied this time, staring at the equations long enough that at least a few of them should have started to make sense and weld themselves to his brain.

Fifty-eight percent. It was scrawled in an angry red, next to a big, circled
F
and a note reading
Come see me.

Instead, Adam dumped his stuff in his locker and walked out of school, the pounding of his footsteps mirrored by the rhythmic battering of a single word against his brain:

Stupid.

Stupid.

Stupid.

SEVEN DEADLY SINS

Lust
Envy
Pride
Wrath
Sloth

SOON TO BE COMMITTED:
Gluttony

SEVEN DEADLY SINS

ROBIN WASSERMAN

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2006 by Robin Wasserman
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon &
Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Ann Zeak
The text of this book was set in Bembo.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Simon Pulse edition December 2006
10   9   8   7   6   5   4
Library of Congress Control Number 2005937176
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-0718-3
ISBN-10: 1-4169-0718-1
eISBN-13: 978-1-442-40812-8

For Aunt Sherry and Uncle Jim,
and for Brandon,
who likes to sleep

How heavy do I journey on the way
When what I seek, my weary travel’s end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
“Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.”
—William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 50”

Nothing to do
Nowhere to go
I wanna be sedated
—The Ramones, “I Wanna Be Sedated”

“I’m in heaven,” Harper moaned as the masseur kneaded his supple fingers into the small of her back. “You were right, this is exactly what we needed.”

Kaia shooed away her own masseur and turned over onto her back, almost purring with pleasure as the sun warmed her face. “I’m always right.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Harper snarked, but there was no venom in her tone. The afternoon sun had leached away most of her will to wound—and a half hour under Henri’s magic fingers had taken care of the rest. “Mmmmm, could life get any better?”

“Zhoo are steeel verreee tense,” Henri told her in his heavy French accent.

“And zhoo are steeel verreee sexeeeee,” Kaia murmured, in an impeccable accent of her own. The girls exchanged a glance as the hunky but clueless Henri smoothed a palmful of warm lotion across Harper’s back.

“This weeel help you reeelax,” he assured her. As if
anyone could relax with a voice like that purring in her ear. “I leave you ladies now.
Au revoir, mes chéries.”

”Arrivederci,
Henri!” Harper cried, giggling at the rhyme.

“That’s Italian,” Kaia sneered. “Idiot.”

“Who cares?” Harper countered. “Snob.”

“Loser.”

“Bitch.” Harper narrowly held back a grin.

“Slut.” Kaia’s eyes twinkled.

“Damn right!” Harper pulled herself upright and raised her mojito in the air. Kaia did the same, and they clinked the plastic cocktail glasses together. “To us. Good thing we found each other—”

“—since no one else could stand us,” Kaia finished, and they burst into laughter.

It was the kind of day where the clouds look painted onto the sky. The scene was straight out of a travel brochure—five star all the way, of course. Storybook blue sky, turquoise ocean lapping away at the nearby shore, gleaming white sand beach, and a warm tropical breeze rustling through their hair, carrying the distant strains of a reggae band. The girls stretched out along on their deck chairs, their every need attended to by a flotilla of servants.

“I could stay here forever.” Harper sighed. She let her leg slip off the chair and dug her bare toe into the sand, burrowing it deeper and deeper into the cool, dark ground. “I wish we never had to go back.”

“I don’t know about you,” Kaia drawled, “but I don’t
have
to do anything.”

“Right,” Harper snorted. “The great and powerful Kaia Sellers, with the world at her fingertips. As if you can ditch real life and just stay here in paradise.”

“I can do anything I want. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

Harper rolled her eyes.

“Why not?” Kaia continued. “What do I have to go back for? What do you? Isn’t that why we came out here in the first place, to leave all that shit behind?”

Harper sighed. “You’re right. And it worked. I can barely even remember what we were escaping from, and—” Her eyes widened. “You’re bleeding.” A small trail of blood trickled down Kaia’s temple; Harper raised her hand to her own face, as if expecting to feel a similar wound.

Kaia frowned for a moment, dabbing her head with a napkin. “Just a mosquito bite,” she said with a shrug. She took a closer look at Harper, whose face had gone pale. “You were totally freaked, weren’t you?”

“No,” Harper lied. “It’s just gross. All these bugs ...” She swatted at a mosquito that had just landed on her bare leg, then another whizzing past her nose. “They’re everywhere.”

“Easy way to fix that.” Kaia stood up, her bronze Dolce bikini blending seamlessly into her deep tan. “Come on.” Without waiting to see if her orders were followed—after all, they always were—she bounded toward the shoreline, kicking up a spray of sand in her wake.

Harper raced after her, and they reached the ocean’s edge at the same moment. Harper stopped short as a wave of icy water splashed against her ankles, but Kaia didn’t even hesitate. She waded out, the water rising above her calves, her knees, her thighs, and then, submerged to her waist, she turned and flashed Harper a smile. It was the eager, mischievous grin of a little kid sneaking into the deep end even though she’s not quite sure how to swim.
Harper waved, frozen in place, unable to force herself to go any deeper into the churning water, unwilling to go back.

Kaia took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and dove under the surface, her arms slicing through the water, pulling her into the deep. She resurfaced, gasping for air, and leaned back into an easy float, the salt water buoying her body, the gentle waves bouncing her up and down. Harper’s shouts, dim and incoherent, blew past with the wind, but Kaia dipped her head back and the roaring water in her ears drowned out the noise.

Harper stood in the same spot, the tide carving deep rivulets around her feet as the waves washed in and back out again. The wind picked up, but the sky remained clear and blue. Harper stood, and Harper watched, and Kaia floated farther and farther out to sea—

And then she woke up.

She’d hoped the dreams would stop once she weaned herself off the Percodan. They hadn’t. Just like the phantom pains that still tore through her legs when she tried to sleep, they’d outstayed their welcome.

For a long time, the pain had kept her awake.

Ambien had helped with that, the little pink pills that carried her mind away. But when sleep came, so did the dreams. They weren’t always nightmares. Sometimes they were nice, carrying her away to somewhere warm and safe. Those were the worst. Because always, in the end, she woke up.

It was better just not to sleep.

But she needed her strength, they were always telling her.
For what?
she wanted to ask. For tolerating her disgustingly bubbly physical therapist? For avoiding phone calls
and turning away visitors? For limping from her bedroom to the kitchen and back again? For zoning out through a
Little House on the Prairie
marathon because she was too lazy to change the channel? For turning two weeks of recuperation into four, inventing excuse after excuse until she no longer knew how much of the pain was real and how much was just expedient?

Maybe they were right. Because her strength had finally given out. She’d run out of imagined excuses, and the big day had arrived: back to school.

She’d already picked out the perfect outfit: an eggplant-colored peasant top with a tight bodice and sufficiently low neckline, a tan ruffled skirt that flared out at the bottom, and, just for added panache, a thin, gauzy black scarf woven through with sparkly silver.

After a long, too hot shower she slipped into the outfit, certain it made the right statement: I’
m back.
She brushed out her hair and mechanically applied her eye shadow, mascara, a touch of gloss, barely looking in the mirror; it was as if she went through the routine every morning, and this weren’t the first time she’d dispensed with her cozy gray sweats since—

Since the accident. Since what had happened.

It still hurt her to say the words. It hurt to think them. And that was unacceptable. She couldn’t afford to indulge in that kind of frailty, especially not today, when everyone would surely be staring at her, the walking wounded, waiting for a sign of weakness.

So she’d been practicing. Every day, she forced herself to think the unthinkable, to speak the hateful words aloud. She whispered them to herself before she drifted off to
sleep, in hopes of forestalling the dreams. She murmured them while watching TV, while waiting for the doctor, while pushing her untouched food around on the plate— she had once shouted them at top volume, her stereo turned up loud enough to drown out her voice.

Speaking the truth didn’t make it seem any more real. In fact, it sounded just as strange, just as surreal, each time it trickled off her tongue. And it always hurt. But she was hurting
herself,
and that gave her power. It made her feel strong, reminding her that there was nothing left to be afraid of.

She said them to herself now, as she hovered in the doorway, gathering her strength to face the day. The first day. She ran a hand through her hair, willing it not to shake. She zipped up the new boots that rose just high enough to cover the bandage on her left calf. She applied a final layer of Tarte gloss, then practiced her smile. It had to look perfect. Everything had to look perfect.

She took a deep breath and held herself very still. And then, softly but firmly, she said it:

“Kaia is dead.”

And with that, Harper Grace was ready to go.