Wrath - 4 (5 page)

“Other than making asses of themselves,” Miranda said, and laughed. “Wel , thanks to us.”

They’d included some gossip about a bunch of randoms, too, just for cover. But that was a diversion. Soon everyone would know that KG was so desperate, he had to trick girls into sleeping with him; that sometimes HG stil stuffed her bra. Neither Miranda nor Beth knew much about the mysterious new girl from the East Coast, but before everything came down, Harper had passed along a bit of juicy info about Kaia and Haven High’s resident pothead that was too weird not to be true.

“Are we real y doing this?” Beth asked, as she split the pile in half and handed one stack to Miranda. It was almost 6 A.M., which meant there’d be plenty of time to spread them al over school before even the most diligent early bird appeared for his worm.

“Definitely.” Miranda swung her long, reddish hair over her shoulder and looked defiantly up at Beth. “It’s exactly what they deserve.”

“I guess …”

“No second thoughts,” Miranda ordered. “They screwed us. Both of us. Because they thought we’d put up with it.” And Beth remembered the surprise in Kane’s eyes when she’d pushed him away for the last time. The mocking look in Harper’s every time Beth dared confront her, as if knowing that sweet, quiet Beth would always be the one to back down first. And she remembered the way Adam had treated her when he’d thought she was the cheater, his cold, unrelenting cruelty, the unwil ingness to bend, to trust, to forgive.

Now
she
was supposed to just get over it? Because betraying Beth, wel , that didn’t real y count? “You take the science wing, I’l hit the lockers by the cafeteria,” Beth said determinedly. Forget moving on. Forget backing down.

“That’s better,” Miranda cheered, locking up behind them. “Let’s get this done.”

Did you hear?

Is it true?

I heard he was a
virgin
when he slept with Kaia
.

And when she blew him off, he
cried.

Well,
I
heard Kane wanted Beth so much he posed naked with Harper and they doctored the photos
.

They didn’t just pose—he and Harper totally did it on the locker room floor.

No, I heard it was on the soccer field, and Kaia was in it too. Threesome, baby.

So who was taking the pictures?

Could Kaia really be hooking up with that skeezy stoner?

Didn’t you hear? She’s a total nympho.

Why do you think they threw her out of her last school?

Did he really—?

And then she—?

How could they—?

I don’t believe it, but
…

You won’t believe it, but
…

It doesn’t make any sense, but
…

Trust me.

It’s true.

“Oooh, Harper, you must be soooo humiliated!”

Harper rol ed her eyes. She’d been (barely) tolerating her lame sophomore wannabe-clone for months now, but the Mini-Me act was getting old. Especial y now that the girl had dug up the nerve to speak to her in public. As if Harper was going to dent her own reputation by acknowledging Mini-Me’s existence—or, worse, giving people the impression that they were actual y
friends
.

“We just want you to know we’re
there
for you,” Mini-Me’s best friend gushed. Harper couldn’t be bothered to remember her name, either, and since the girl was decked out in the same faux BCBG skirt and sweater set that Harper had ditched last season, MiniShe would suffice.

“What are you talking about?” she hissed, through gritted teeth. Under normal circumstances she would have just closed her locker and walked away. But something strange was going on today. She’d been getting weird looks al morning, and once, difficult as it was to believe, it had almost seemed like someone was laughing—at
her
.

“Oh, Harper, we don’t believe any of it,” Mini-Me assured her.

“Of course not,” Mini-She simpered, her head bouncing up and down like a bobblehead dol . “Wel , except that thing about—”

“None of it,” Mini-Me said firmly, giving Mini-She an obvious
shut your mouth
glare.

“None of what?” Harper was getting increasingly irritated by the twin twits—and by the sensation that something very bad was about to happen. Or had already happened, without her knowing it, which was worse. Harper owned this school, and
nothing
happened without her say-so.

“You mean you haven’t …” Mini-Me’s eyes lit up. She tried to force a concerned look, but her eagerness was painful y clear. “Oh, I
hate
to be the one to show you this, but …” She pul ed a folded red flyer out of her back pocket. Harper had seen them floating around that morning, but assumed it was just another lame announcement about the next chess club tournament or some charity drive for the community service club. “Maybe I shouldn’t show it to you,” Mini-Me said, waving the folded flyer out of Harper’s reach.

“But at least we can be there for her, when she sees it.” Mini-She patted Harper’s shoulder, and Harper squirmed away with a grimace. “We’l
always
be there for you, Harper, no matter what anyone else says.”

“You’ve always got us,” Mini-Me agreed. “I mean, we don’t care if you wet your pants or slept with a mil ion guys or—”

“Give me that,” Harper snarled, snatching the flyer out of Mini-Me’s hand. She unfolded it slowly, forcing her hands not to shake.

The words leaped off the page.

Al her darkest secrets, al her most embarrassing moments, her deepest fears, al laid out in black print, stretching across the page for anyone to see. It had been published anonymously—the cowards way—but Harper didn’t need a byline to know whom to blame. There was only one person who knew al her secrets—the one person she had trusted never to betray her.

Harper smiled, though it felt more like a grimace of horror. Hopeful y the Minis would be too dim to tel the difference. Then she shrugged. “Is this al ?”

“
All?”
Mini-Me squealed. “Don’t you get it? ‘HG’—Harper Grace. That’s
you
.”

Harper rol ed her eyes, almost thankful for the Minis’ presence; the familiar sense of disgust was helping her suppress al those less desirable emotions. Helplessness.

Humiliation. Despair.

Focus on something more constructive,
she warned herself.
People can only hurt you if you let them. Don’t be a victim
.

“See?” Mini-She chirped. “Like it says right here, ‘HG was so desperate for AM that she …’”

Harper tuned her out—after al , she already knew the story. It was more important to regain her focus and start working on damage control. But cool, calculating strategy was impossible when one unquestionable fact kept dril ing into her brain.

Miranda had betrayed her. No one else knew what she knew.

She wouldn’t have done it on her own, Harper was certain ofthat. She didn’t have this kind of nastiness in her. She would have been goaded into it by someone else, someone so pure and innocent that no one would ever suspect her of spewing such poison.

“What are we going to do?” Mini-Me moaned. As if there were a “we.”

“Who needs to do something?” Harper asked, crumpling the flyer into a bal and tossing it over her shoulder like the trash it was. “You know what they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

“You don’t even care?” Mini-She asked, eyes wide and adoring. From the expression on the Minis’ faces—impressed and total y devoid of pity—Harper grew certain that she’d be able to fix this.

These last few weeks had been the most lonely and miserable of Harper’s life—something like this could have been a fatal blow. And yet, she marveled, perhaps Beth had done her a favor. Because she suddenly felt invigorated. She felt offended and insulted, righteous and wronged, empowered and enraged.

She felt like herself again.

And it felt good.

Beth and Miranda met up in the second-floor girls’ bathroom after third period to compare notes. The school was buzzing about the already legendary flyer—half the student body had memorized it, and the other half had used it as a springboard to create and pass along wildly unlikely rumors of their own.

“I can’t believe we actual y did it,” Miranda whispered, checking under the stal s to make sure they were real y alone.

“You should have—” Beth quickly stopped talking as two babbling juniors burst through the door. Miranda turned on the faucet, pretending to wash her hands, while Beth peered into the streaked mirror, applying a new coat of transparent lip gloss.

“You think she, like, did it to herself?” the tal brunette asked, smoothing down her hair and using her pinkie to rub in some garish blue eye shadow. “But, like, why?” She dug through her overstuffed silver purse and pul ed out a large gold hoop, wide enough to fit around her wrist, and clamped it onto her earlobe.

“Oh, puh-leeze,” the shorter, pudgier one said, locking herself inside an empty stal . Her bright yel ow platform shoes tapped against the linoleum. “She’s mad crazy for attention, you know she’d do anything.”

“But we’re talking total humiliation hot zone—”

“Massive meltdown territory, but does she seem upset? Negative. You know she’s, like, loving every minute of it.”

“I don’t know,” the tal one said, now perched on the sink, fiddling with her nails, which were painted cotton candy pink and so long that they almost curled back toward her fingertips. “Maybe it was some nobody, like, you know, some bitter loser who wanted—”

“As if.” A laugh floated out of the stal . “How would some loser know al of that? No, it had to be—”

Final y, Miranda couldn’t help herself. “Did you ever think that maybe—”

“Uh, excuse me?” the brunette said, glaring. “Were we talking to you?”

The shorter girl burst out of the stal and quickly slathered on a layer of hot pink lipstick. She didn’t bother to look in Miranda’s direction—or make a move toward the sink. “Was she, like, eavesdropping on our conversation?”

“Whatever. Forget her.”

“Her who?” the other girl cackled as she pushed through the girls’ room door, the brunette fol owing close behind.

Miranda and Beth stared at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Were they for real?” Beth asked in wonderment.

“Oh, yeah, like, total y, I mean, you know, whatever,” Miranda said, giggling. “For reals, dude.”

“And that makes
us
the losers?” Beth asked, grinning.

“Apparently.” Miranda stuck out her hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, I’m nobody. And who are you?”

“Someone who would
never
walk out of this bathroom without washing her hands,” Beth joked.

“I think we’re missing the key point here,” Miranda said, trying to stop laughing. “Did you hear the way
they
were talking about
‘her’
?”

“Harper,” Beth fil ed in.

“Right. Obviously. Like she was this pathetic nonentity, desperate for attention….”

“Humiliated,” Beth said, raising her eyebrows.

“Pitiful,” Miranda added, shaking her head.

“Defeated.”

Miranda grinned and slung an arm around Beth’s shoulders. “And al by a pair of bitter nobodies. Who would’ve thought?” The curiosity-seekers had been swarming Kane al morning—and by lunchtime, it seemed half the school had surrounded him, desperate for insider information and some notoriety-by-association. Outwardly, he smiled, preening under the attention. But underneath, he was fuming. It was Beth. It had to be. No one else could know some of the things she’d printed, the few secrets he’d been foolish enough to share.

That was the worst of it: the realization that he’d brought this on himself. After swearing to protect himself, he’d left himself raw and exposed.

Not again—never again.

After spotting the flyer, Kane had quickly started his own campaign of disinformation; judging from Kaia’s and Harpers animated smiles and the naked curiosity of their eager disciples, it seemed the girls had chosen to do the same. They sat at separate tables, each the center of a smal whirlpool of people, flowing past to catch a moment with the stars. The horde surrounding Kane was, of course, the largest.

“She begged me to take her back,” he confided to the second-string point guard. “It was getting pathetic. I mean, tears is one thing—you know girls. But when she started showing up at my house in the middle of the night? It’s not like I
wanted
to cal the cops….”

“Let’s just say, I now have a pretty good idea of what it must feel like to kiss a cold, dead fish,” he confided to the sympathetic blonde from the cheerleading squad.

“And the smel … you know, she works at that diner, and al the onions, the grease, the sweat …” He shook his head, and the busty freshman patted him sweetly on the shoulder. “It was nauseating. I have a very delicate stomach, you know, and sometimes …”

“Sure,
she
couldn’t get enough of it,” he bragged to the gawky junior who managed the basketbal team. “But what was I supposed to do? She was—wel , let’s just say Adam’s pretty lucky he never made it to home base.”

He almost felt sorry for Beth. She was like a dolphin, playing at being a shark. Which was a dangerous game: You were likely to get eaten.

The note the teacher had handed her had been short and sweet:
Report to my classroom. Now
.

Okay, maybe not so sweet.

“Jack,” Kaia said simply, stepping into his empty classroom and closing the door behind her. “Bonjour.”

Powel was perched on the edge of his desk, fingering a red sheet of paper. Kaia recognized it immediately, with little surprise.

“You said you’d stopped seeing him,” Powel said coldly, placing the flyer careful y down on the desk. “I thought I’d made my position perfectly clear: I don’t like to share.” Kaia strode toward him and took a seat at one of the desks in the front row, aware that his gaze was glued to her long, tan legs, barely covered by a green suede miniskirt.

“Do you real y want to discuss this
here,
Jack?” It was a violation of every rule he’d set for them, and it stank of desperation.