Hilary giggled, and responded in a thin, airy voice. “Oh, no, I’m home schooled—my parents think public school teaches you to be immoral.”
Beth and Adam both shifted uncomfortably in silence. What, exactly, was one supposed to say to that?
No matter—Hilary wasn’t waiting for an answer. She draped an arm around Kane’s waist.
“Of course,” she giggled again, “now I’ve got Kane for that. Right, sweetie?” She slapped him gently on the ass and he jumped in surprise, flashing Beth and Adam a bemused and slightly abashed look. At least, Beth read it as abashed—but maybe she was wrong, since the next thing he did was pull Hilary toward him and give her a long, hard kiss. How embarrassed by her could he be?
After a long moment he released Hilary, who looked up at him, flushed and adoring.
“I’m teaching her everything I know about bad behavior,” Kane explained.
Hilary put on a fake pout and a grating baby voice. “And now I’m a bad, bad girl, aren’t I?”
“You sure are,” Kane agreed, pinching her ass.
“Ooh!” she squealed. “I’ll get you for that.” And she lunged toward him.
It was the obvious start of some kind of tickle slap fight that Beth was sure would soon end in another grope match—not something she needed to see.
“Come on, Adam,” she whispered, tugging at his shirt. “Let’s go.”
They waved hasty good-byes and began to back away from the squealing couple.
“Off to win your lady love a bigger prize?” Kane called out from amid the tickle storm. He gestured to the small stuffed elephant Beth was holding in her arms; Hilary was toting a stuffed pink panda about four times as large.
“Actually, I won this for him,” Beth pointed out.
“A true champion, eh?” Kane called jovially. Then his voice grew serious and he locked eyes with Beth, ignoring the giggling and pawing going on around him. “I never had any doubt.”
Beth tore her gaze away with difficulty.
“Let’s go,” she urged Adam again. “Now.”
Once they were a safe distance away, Adam began to shake with laughter.
“He’s a real piece of work,” he said, shaking his head.
“Him? What about her?” Beth asked as they wandered toward the Ferris wheel.
“Ah, she’s no different from any of the other girls he picks up. Smarter, maybe.”
“Smarter? You’ve got to be kidding me.” Beth rolled her eyes and climbed into a Ferris wheel cart after Adam. They began to swing upward toward the stars.
“No, it’s true—think about it, any girl with half a brain at our school is too smart to go near him.”
“That’s a nice way to talk about your best friend,” she scolded him.
“What? He’d admit it himself—the guy’s a player. Besides, you’re the one always calling him a sleaze.”
“That was before I got to know him.”
“Trust me, Beth, if you knew him the way I do, you’d believe me. I love the guy and all, but I gotta call it like I see it.” He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him, running a warm hand up and down her bare shoulders. Beth shivered, suddenly noticing the cool night air blowing past.
“How about we stop talking about Kane and his latest bimbo and just enjoy the view,” Adam suggested.
“It is beautiful,” Beth agreed, looking out over the glittering sprawl beneath them. A range of low-slung mountains loomed in the distance, silhouetted by the full moon.
They sat quietly for a moment until Beth couldn’t take it anymore—the words boiled up inside of her and finally leaked out.
“I just don’t see why he does it!” she exclaimed, flinging her arms up for emphasis.
“Who?”
“Kane—he’s so much better than these girls.”
“Why are you getting so angry?” Adam asked in frustrated confusion. “What do you care?”
“I just—I just want him to be happy. Don’t you? He’s your friend.”
“That’s right, he’s my friend,” he repeated. “And I can tell you that he is happy. I’m the one sitting up here while my girlfriend goes crazy over another guy. Too jealous of Kane to care whether I’m happy?”
“I am not jealous,” Beth protested indignantly.
“Whatever.”
“I just think he’s a great guy,” she insisted. “He deserves better.”
“Like who? You?”
“Stop it, Adam,” she said irritably. “If you don’t want to talk about him anymore, we won’t talk about him anymore. You don’t have to make such a big deal about it.”
He crossed his arms and peered out over the side, away from her. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
And so they didn’t talk at all.
Kaia knew things. It was second nature now, after her long years of training—part skill, part talent, whatever. Everyone needs a hobby. In New York, after all those years with the same people, the same streets, the same hangouts, it had been easy. You just had to listen, ask the right questions, be in the right place at the right time, learn how to be invisible. This last, for Kaia, had been the hardest lesson to learn, as she’d made a life out of being seen, being noticed—but it turned out that didn’t always serve her purposes. Knowledge was power, and when you were a teenager, held hostage by the arbitrary whims of adults who mistakenly thought they knew best, you needed all the power you could get.
After sifting through the skeletons in the closets of half of the Upper West Side, the denizens of Grace, California, didn’t really pose much trouble for Kaia’s investigative skills, especially since, at the moment, she had very little else to do. So even though she’d been in town for only a month, she knew things, big and small.
She knew that the servants played poker together in the room above the garage every Sunday night—and that their drink supplies always came courtesy of the Sellers family liquor cabinet. She knew that Alicia, the married maid, was screwing Howard, Kaia’s father’s driver. She knew that the Haven High principal was having an affair with her English teacher, that Adam’s mother was well deserving of her reputation as the town slut, that her gym teacher was an alcoholic kleptomaniac, that her middle-aged mailman was still emotionally debilitated by the tragic loss of his mother in 1987, and that the woman who ran the local post office was a thirty-seven-year-old virgin. Of course she knew about Harper’s and Kane’s little crushes—that was child’s play.
And she knew that every Friday night from eight p.m. to closing, the bar stool on the far left in the Prairie Dog Bar and Grill was occupied by one Mr. Jack Powell.
Yes, knowing things could come in handy.
It was a hole in the wall, with room for no more than ten customers at once (though crowding was never a problem). The grill, if it had ever truly existed, must have broken long ago, for the only food available was the stale peanut and pretzel mix filling the spotted beer mugs spread across the bar, and the moldy cheese left as bait in the mousetraps in the corners. Other than the bartender, a smiling old man with no hair and plenty of rounded edges, Jack Powell was the only one there.
She sidled up to the bar and hopped onto the stool next to him. He was hunched over a mug of beer, reading a book. No Exit, by Sartre. How appropriate.
“Kind of a bleak choice for Friday night,” she observed, peering over his shoulder at the tiny print.
He looked up in horror and practically fell off his stool at the sight of her.
“Are you stalking me now?” he asked drily, regaining his composure as she laughed in his face.
“Please—you should be so lucky. I’m here for a drink and some peace and quiet, just like you.”
“And until a moment ago I thought I’d found it,” he grumbled.
“Can I get a Corona?” she called to the bartender, ignoring Powell.
“Don’t serve her,” Powell instructed him. “She’s under age.”
The bartender winked. “Hey, buddy, I won’t tell i
f you won’t.” He slid a bottle down the bar toward Kaia. “On the house, beautiful.”
“You must be pretty used to getting exactly what you want,” Powell said in disgust.
“Pretty much,” she agreed.
“You’re fighting a losing battle this time.”
“You think this is me fighting?” She shook her head. He could be so cute when he was being clueless. “Please—this is me on low gear, getting a drink. It’s just good luck we two lonely hearts happened to run into each other.”
“And you just happened to be wearing … practically nothing?” he asked sardonically, gesturing toward her barely-there silk top.
“So you noticed,” she said with pleasure, running her fingers lightly along her bare breastbone. “And here I thought it was just my imagination, your staring at my chest all the time.”
“It’s a bit difficult not to, with your shoving it in my face like that.”
“Jack, Jack, Jack.” She shook her head ruefully. “You can insult me all you want. I’m not leaving.”
“No, but I am.” He closed his book and stood up, slapping a ten-dollar bill down on the bar. “Thanks, Joey,” he called to the bartender.
“And where will you go?” Kaia asked. “Home? To sit alone in your pathetic little bachelor pad until you can force yourself to go to sleep? Or maybe to the library—would that be more your speed?”
“I’ll be quite happy to go anywhere you’re not,” he informed her. “Thanks for ruining my night.”
“I’m the best part of your night, and you know it. Or were you having more fun a few minutes ago, sitting here alone in this cellar, mooning over your beer like a drunken poet?”
“Fun doesn’t seem to be in my vocabulary these days,” he admitted with a dispirited sigh. “This isn’t the town for it.”
“You’re just not looking hard enough, Mr. Powell.” She put her finger softly to his lips and raised her other hand to his temple—and for once, she noticed, he didn’t twist away. “Stop talking, for once, and open your eyes.”
He raised his hands and gently removed hers from his face. But he let them linger in his grasp for a moment too long, and it was she who broke contact first—but not before raising one of his hands to her lips and grazing his knuckles with a gentle kiss.
He pulled away quickly.
“I’m seeing things pretty clearly right now,” he said sharply. “And I can see that it’s time for me to go.” He slipped out of the bar and Kaia sat down again, sipping her Corona thoughtfully.
He could run—but he couldn’t hide.
Kaia would always know where to find him.
It seemed the farther they got from the festival—and from Kane—the better things were. By the time they got back to Adam’s house, Beth was smiling, a look of glazed contentedness on her face. Maybe it was just the slow descent from a cotton candy sugar high—but whatever the reason, Adam thought as she snuggled close to him, he’d take it.
“It’s such a nice night,” she said, taking his hand as she climbed out of the car. “I almost hate to go inside.”
He checked his watch. There was only an hour left before her curfew, not enough time to go anywhere, but …
“How about we go around back,” he suggested. He led her into the backyard and over to the large, flat rock that lay on the dividing line between his house and Harper’s. He and Harper had played there when they were little and always—even these days—considered it “their” place. He snuck a guilty glance up at Harper’s bedroom window, which overlooked the yard. She wouldn’t mind—she would, in fact, never know.
Beth clambered up atop the rock and lay back on it, spreading her arms and looking up at the clear, starry sky.
“You could lose yourself in the stars,” she sighed. “Out here, in the dark, you could forget the whole world, and just—be.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Adam said, lying down next to her. “I could lose myself in you.” He took her face in his hands and turned it toward him gently, kissing her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her soft, smooth lips. She brushed her blond hair away from her face and pulled him closer to her, tangling her legs in his. The smooth rock surface was cool beneath his skin, but she was so warm, throbbing with heat as she grazed the lines of his body and began to rub the bare skin beneath his shirt.
“I’m sorry I was so … I’m sorry about tonight,” she murmured.
“It was nothing. Forget it,” he assured her, cradling her in his arms.
“I’m just stressed—there’s so much to do, and no time, and—”
“Shh.” She was trembling in his arms, and he put his hand to her cheek, then ran his fingers across her lips. “It’s okay. I know. It’ll be okay.”
“I miss you,” she whispered.
“We just need to make it through the SATs,” he suggested. “And then maybe you can take a break for a while. We can take a break, focus on us. No stress, no SATs, no homework. Just us.”
“It sounds perfect,” Beth sighed. “I can’t wait.” She lay her head on his chest. “I could just lie here forever, listening to you breathe.”
He ran his fingers through her hair and began softly massaging her back, rubbing and kneading her taut muscles, her tender skin.
“I wish you could,” he whispered. “Next week. Just keep telling yourself that. You’ll make it until then. We’ll make it until then.”
“I hope so,” she whispered.
So did he.
chapter
7
“No way in hell am I going out in public looking like this,” Miranda wailed.
As Harper had expected, Miranda had awoken with a raging hangover and a far stormier outlook on being a green-headed monster.
“Well, on the bright side …,” Harper began.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Miranda interrupted her. “It’s too early in the morning for bright sides.”
“It’s twelve thirty,” Harper pointed out. They’d rolled out of bed a few minutes ago and were now slouched in front of the kitchen table, trying to cure their hangover with juice and a handful of aspirin.
“Am I in my pajamas? Am I eating Rice Krispies? Am I still waiting for my first cup of coffee? Then it’s morning.”
Harper, whose own head was throbbing with the pain of one margarita too many, was in no position to argue.
“Look, we’ll fix this,” she promised.
“You’d better,” Miranda growled. “It’s your fault I look like the Jolly Green Midget to begin with.”
“We’ll take care of it, I promise. The box said it washes out in twenty to twenty-five shampoos, right? So all we need to do is wash your hair twenty-five times in a row, and that should be that.”
“That’s a lot of showers….”
“Do you want to go to school on Monday looking like a stalk of broccoli?” Harper asked wryly.
Miranda looked appalled at the thought. “Hey, it’s not like we’re in the middle of a drought or anything,” she said, reconsidering. “Bring on the shampoo.”
“Uh, actually, we’re going to need to go get some more of that,” Harper reminded her. They’d used the last of it the night before in their drunken beauty school efforts. But perhaps the less said about that, the better.
“We?” Miranda squawked. “Did I mention that I am not going out in public like this? Which part of that did you not understand?”
“Chill out—I’ll go to the drugstore and get more shampoo. Just let me throw on some clothes.”
“Fine,” Miranda sulked. “I’ll jump in the shower. Might as well get started.”
The two of them scampered upstairs, Harper to hastily throw on some clothes and Miranda to single-handedly bring on a drought. As she pulled on a T-shirt, Harper idly picked up her cell phone and noticed she had a text message waiting for her from Kane. 1:37, elementary school playground. Be there. Bring Adam.
Cryptic much? Harper thought grouchily. It was definitely too early in the morning for riddles.
/> She called Kane immediately.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, without saying hello.
“Can’t talk now—Beth and I are studying,” he said meaningfully. “Just trust me—you won’t want to miss this.”
“But what—?”
“Can’t talk now,” he repeated. “Just be on time.”
He hung up, and Harper sighed, casting a glance toward the bathroom door, where the water in the shower had just turned off.
“When you’re out getting the shampoo, can you grab us some lunch, too?” Miranda called from behind the door.
Harper cradled her head in her hands. Really, what was she supposed to do? Jeopardize the whole plan just because Miranda was having a hair crisis? It wasn’t even a tough call—she’d just need to come up with a good excuse.
“Rand, change of plans—I’m going to need to run you home,” she said casually.
Miranda swung open the door and popped out, towel hastily wrapped around her dripping body.
“What? I must have heard you wrong, because I thought you said you were abandoning me.”
“Rand—”
“But that can’t be right. Not you, my best friend, who just ditched me five days ago and promised never to do it again and who—”
“Rand—,” Harper helplessly tried again.
“Who, by the way, turned my hair green!” She grabbed some clothes and went back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. “So, lunch,” she said. “I’m thinking pizza? Or Chinese food?”
“Stop acting like a baby, Miranda. I have to take a rain check. It’s an emergency.”
Harper waited in silence for several minutes, until finally a fully dressed—though still dripping—Miranda emerged from the bathroom.
“What kind of emergency?” she asked suspiciously.
“Well, not an emergency exactly—I mean, it’s not life threatening,” Harper hedged, thinking fast. “It’s just, you remember that tooth problem I was having? That was the dentist on the phone—he says he can fit me in for a follow-up, but only if I come right away. Some kind of last-minute cancellation.”
“Follow-up?”
“Yeah, my tooth is still killing me.” Harper brought one hand to her jaw, hoping that Miranda wouldn’t remember which side of her mouth the fake toothache was supposed to be on, since Harper no longer had any idea. “Of course, if you really need me, I guess I could just suffer through the pain….”