Sloth (27 page)

There were no lights on the road, and she had some trouble finding the right spot, but the thin white cross glowed in the moonlight. Harper hadn’t been back since the accident, and in her imagination she’d pictured a burned strip of land strewn with torn metal and ash. But, aside from the small memorial, the spot looked no different from any other stretch along the road.

She sat down on the ground, tugging her sweater around herself, and waited. There was no reason to expect that he’d come. Even if he got her message, the odds were low that he’d bother to show up. Especially after the way she’d treated him these last few weeks.

But she was holding too much inside. If he didn’t show, maybe she could just scream her pain into the night; maybe that would make everything somehow better. She stared at the thin, white wooden boards and wondered why she didn’t cry. Being here should offer some kind of release, she thought in frustration. Instead, it just made her feel
disconnected; it didn’t seem like anything that had happened here could have any connection to her.

The road was empty, and when the headlights appeared on the horizon and drew closer, splashing her with light, she knew he’d come for her. The car pulled off the road and stopped. A door slammed, and footsteps approached.

“Okay, Grace. I’m here. Now what?”

Harper stood up to face Kane. The smirk dropped off his face. “What the hell is wrong?” he asked. “You look like shit.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Seriously, Grace, what is it?”

“It’s . . . everything.” Harper rubbed her hand against the back of her neck, trying to ease the tight knots of muscle. “I just wanted to ... I need . . . I—” She wanted to tell him everything: how she couldn’t even remember what it felt like not to be miserable; how every night she went to sleep dreading the next morning; how she wanted to escape from inside her head and just become someone else, with a normal, happy, guilt-free life. But the words froze somewhere in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning away from him. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t.” She shook her head. “Sorry I dragged you out here. You should just go.”

“I don’t think so.” Kane grabbed her arm and spun her back around. “Talk to me, Grace. What do you need?”

“What the hell do you care?” she sneered, pulling her arm away.

“I’m beginning to wonder that myself,” Kane said, arching an eyebrow, “if this is the thanks I get. . . .”

“Whatever.” Harper walked away from him, wishing she
could just keep walking, into the darkness, and disappear.

“Hey!” Kane followed. “Harper!” he grabbed her again.

“Get off of me!”

“I’m not leaving you here alone!” he shouted.

Harper forced a laugh. “As if you care about anyone but yourself.”

“Insult me all you want, but I’m not leaving.”

She smacked his arm, then his chest. “I am.”

But Kane threw his arms around her and pressed her fiercely against him.

“Let go of me!” she cried, banging her fists into his back. He ignored her and just held her tighter. “Kane, please! Please. Just let me go.”

“And then what? You get to finally be alone? You think I don’t know I’m your last stop?” He stopped shouting. “I’m not like the rest of them—you can’t push me away. Come on, Grace, you know I always stick around until I get what I want.”

She burst into laughter, letting herself sag against him, and in that moment of release, everything she’d been holding down so tightly came flooding to the surface, her laughter quickly turning into gasping, wracking sobs.

And Kane held her as she cried.

“This is natural” she hears the doctor say to her mother as she lies still in the bed, unwilling to move, or speak, or do anything but stare at the ceiling and wait for the nightmare to end. “She’s in shock. Give her a chance to absorb things. It’s all a part of grieving. “

It doesn’t feel like grieving. It feels like falling.

“I killed her!” Harper screamed, shaking. “I did it. She’s dead. I did it.” Tears gushed down her face and she gasped
for breath, wishing she could just pass out so the pain would end.

“It was an accident.” Kane insisted. “It wasn’t your fault.”

But she wasn’t listening. She was remembering.

They won’t tell her what happened to Kaia. They won’t tell her anything. Until, one day, when she is “strong enough,” they do.

“Kaia didn’t . . . didn’t make it, hon. I’m so sorry.”

Harper doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t feel anything— just . . . empty. It doesn’t seem real. Things like this don’t happen to people like her. She doesn’t cry.

“It should have been me,” she moaned.

“No.”

“Yes. “

“Harper, no.”

The memories flowed faster, beating her back in time through the misery, through the pain.

Everything hurts.

“Where am I?” she asks. Her voice sounds like two pieces of metal scraping together.

“There was an accident,” her mother says, hovering over her. “You and Kaia. . . . Do you remember what happened?”

She doesn’t remember anything. She feels like the past doesn’t exist, that there is only the present—pain and confusion.

It isn’t the first thing she asks. But, eventually, it occurs to her: “How’s Kaia?”

“It should have been me,” she said, letting herself fall limp in his arms. If he hadn’t been holding her up, she would have fallen.

“Stop.”

“It should’ve,” she insisted.

“It shouldn’t have been anyone,” Kane said softly, smoothing her hair down.

“I wish I could just go back.” She closed her eyes and lay her head against his shoulder. It was wet with her tears.

“It’s going to be okay, Grace.”

The tires screech as she spins the wheel, but the car won’t move fast enough. The van is bearing down, and next to her, Kaia screams and screams as the car shakes with a thunderous impact and rolls off the road. The world spins, Kaia screams, and everything goes dark.

Harper shuddered. “Nothing’s ever going to be okay.” But her sobs had quieted and she realized she could breathe again. She took a few deep breaths.

“Better?”

“Don’t let go,” she murmured. Not yet. She wasn’t ready.

“Never,” he promised.

The wind rushes past them, and Harper can feel everything fall away until nothing is left but a crisp, clear certainty that life is good, and that she is happy. Kaia turns the music up, and they shout the lyrics into the wind, their voices disappearing in the thunder of the engine.

She presses her foot down on the pedal. Faster, faster, the world speeds by, her life fades into the distance, she can leave it behind if she just goes fast enough and far enough.

“Let’s never go back!” she shouts to Kaia.

“Never!” Kaia agrees, tossing her head back, laughing.

They have everything they need. A fast car. A sunny day. Freedom. Each other.

She has been so miserable, so angry, so afraid, for so long, and now all that has burned away, and there is only one thing left.

Joy.

Here’s a taste of the next
sinful
read

“Now
this
is more like it,” Harper gushed as they turned onto the Strip. “Civilization. Thank god.”

“Mmm hramm.”

“Okay, how much longer are you going to give me the silent treatment?” Harper asked, exasperated. “I already told you I was sorry. How was I supposed to know that you’d find—”

“Don’t say it!” Miranda shrieked. “I’m trying to block it out of my mind forever.”

“Okay, okay. How was I supposed to know you’d find that thing in the sink? I only volunteered to take the toilet because I thought it would be the easier job, and it is your birthday weekend, after all.”

“Celebrate good times,” Miranda deadpanned, and suddenly, in sync, they both burst into laughter. “Did all that really happen?” Miranda sputtered through her giggles. “Or was it just some mass hallucination?”

“I wasn’t hallucinating the smell,” Harper gasped, waving her hands under Miranda’s nose. “I washed them ten times back there, and they still stink.”

Miranda wiggled away, trying to focus on the road. “Don’t even talk to me about smells,” she groaned. “It’ll just remind me of. . .”

“Don’t even go there,” Harper cautioned her. “You’re just going to make us both sick.”

“Again.”

They shook with hysterical laughter, and Harper closed her eyes, soaking in the moment. It may have been the most disgusting night of her life, but things between the two of them were actually starting to feel back to normal. There was a time when Harper had feared they would never be close again; mostly because of the things she’d done and said, and all the things she couldn’t bring herself to say. I’m sorry. I need you. But somehow, they’d found their way back to their bickering, bantering norm, and that meant that the long ride, the many detours, and the adventures in raw sewage had all been worth it.

Well, almost.

When they finally found the hotel, they pulled into the lot without registering much of the medieval tackiness of the garish white tower. It was nearly two in the morning, and they could only focus on two things: a hot shower and a soft bed. Both were now, finally, in reach.

They checked in, ignoring all the other Haven High seniors who littered the hallway—it seemed half the school had hit Vegas for the long weekend, and they were all staying at the Camelot, less for its bargain-basement prices than for its widely renowned attitude toward its underage denizens: Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Usually Harper would have lingered among the admiring crowd; she never let a moment in the spotlight go by without putting on a suitable show. But the fewer people who saw—and smelled—her in this state, the better. The girls trekked down a dingy hallway and arrived in front of
room 57. Harper swung open the door to discover a small, squalid room with two full-sized beds and little else. Miranda immediately dropped down onto the one closest to the door, stretching her arms with a satisfied purr. “1 could fall asleep right here, right now.”

“Perfect, because I call the first shower,” Harper said, dumping her bag and rushing to the bathroom before Miranda could object. She could feel the stink and filth crawling over her skin and needed to scrub it away before she could enjoy the fact that she was finally, after a lifetime of waiting, spending a weekend in Las Vegas.

And after nearly drowning in misery for three months, she planned to enjoy the moment as much as humanly possible.

She opened the door of the bathroom, stepped inside— and screamed.

Adam grabbed a towel and tried to cover himself, but it was too late. Harper had seen everything. Every tan, muscled, gleaming inch of him. She felt faint, and it was all she could do not to lunge across the bathroom and sweep him into her arms, perfect body and all. But she forced herself to stop and remember: she and Adam were no longer best friends, as they’d been for half their lives. They were no longer in love—lovers, she told herself, her mind lingering on the word—as they’d been for far too short a time. They were . . . nothing. And she intended to treat him as such.

“What the hell are you doing in our room?” she snapped, trying to regain her equilibrium.
Don’t look at his chest
, she told herself.
Don’t look at his shoulders. Don’t look at his arms. Don’t look
. . .This was maybe not the most effective strategy.

“Your room?”
Adam tugged the towel tighter around himself and took a step forward, as if to escape the bathroom—which would mean his half-naked body brushing right past Harper’s, a fact he seemed to realize just in time. He stopped moving, and Harper refused to allow herself a moment of disappointment. “This is our room. We checked in hours ago!”

“And ‘we’ would be . . . ?”

“Me. Kane. We. Our room.”

And then it all made sense. From the sour look on Adam’s face, Harper could tell he’d figured it out, too. “Very funny, Geary,” she muttered to herself. “Very cute.” When Kane had offered to pay for her and Miranda’s room for the weekend, Harper had figured it was just an uncharacteristically gallant gesture, an extravagant birthday present for Miranda. (And not that extravagant: According to the website, rooms at the Camelot went for sixty dollars a night.) She should have known better.

“Harper, look,” Adam began, “since you’re here, maybe we can—”

“I’m out of here,” Harper snapped. Adam refused to let it rest. He couldn’t get that if he didn’t want a relationship with her, she wasn’t about to accept the consolation prize of his friendship. Not when she knew what he really thought of her. But he just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and kept forcing her into these tedious states of the union talks without realizing the torture they inflicted on her. As if she didn’t want him in her life, desperately. As if it didn’t kill her to remember all the things he’d said when he’d broken her heart, how he hated her, how he could never trust her again, all because she’d made a few not-so-tiny
mistakes. And then his belated and halfhearted offer of forgiveness, just because of the accident, just because she’d gotten hurt and Kaia had—