Gluttony

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.

“I can’t blame anyone else,” Beth insisted. “I did it. I killed her. And this is the only way to make things right… even.”

“Maybe you don’t get to just blame yourself!” Harper yelled. “Maybe you don’t get to decide who’s guilty.”

“So I’m supposed to blame you? For almost getting yourself killed? You want to join me down here?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Because that would make everything neat and even again, right? Because you can’t stand a fucking mess.”

“I can’t stand-”

“You can’t stand to face it. To deal with it. You think you’re doing the right thing? You’re just doing what you always do, taking the easy way out. Look, you did something horrible. And maybe I…”

Now Beth did look up, just enough to see Harper leaning over the wall, her hair flying across her face, close enough to touch.

“I did something horrible too,” Harper concluded. “But that doesn’t mean, that can’t mean-this. Kaia’s dead. But we’re not, and-”

“And that’s not fair!” Beth screamed.

“Oh, grow up! Life isn’t fair, you’re not perfect, everything sucks-get the hell over it.”

Beth wanted to believe her. She wanted to relieve her burden, hand out the blame like a pile of Christmas presents, climb back up onto the roof, go inside the hotel, and go on with the rest of her life as if nothing had ever happened. But…

“Harper, I don’t know if I can.”

The hallways were choked with clumps of drunken Haven seniors, talking, smoking, drinking, and grabbing at Adam as he pushed past. Everyone wanted something from him, and he just wanted to get away. He threaded his way through the crowd, tuning out the chatter and ignoring the gossip until one line finally penetrated:

“Dude, did you hear? There’s some crazy chick up on the roof and it looks like she might jump!”

It felt like a pair of iron hands had wrapped around his throat and started to squeeze.

Nothing to do with me, he assured himself. No one I know. But as a flood of people crowded toward the elevators, he shoved them all out of the way, hurtling down the hall in the opposite direction, searching for Reed, knowing that he shouldn’t waste the time but not wanting to go up there and face whatever there was to face alone.

And Reed deserved to know.

Adam found him, and without explanation-and maybe no explanation was needed, because maybe they had already known-they bypassed the clogged elevators and raced up the stairs, flight after flight, panting but never flagging, Adam several lengths ahead but pausing when he reached the top. They passed through the door together. A crowd of witnesses clustered in front of the door, hushed but disengaged, like they were watching it all unfold on reality TV. Adam knew he should push his way through the crowd, but he couldn’t help it. He hesitated.

Beside him, Reed hadn’t moved either.

All they had now were their fears-and a little hope. But when they saw what was really going on, there would be no more space for either. There would only be reality. And Adam wasn’t ready to face it. Not yet.

“Beth, listen to me,” Harper insisted with a new urgency, realizing somehow that this conversation-though it seemed too civilized a term for whatever was going on between them-was nearing its end, one way or another. “Maybe I started this, maybe you did, it doesn’t matter-the point is, this can’t be how this is supposed to end.”

This. If she were stronger, maybe she could be clearer. This never-ending nightmare of hatred and revenge and misery and death.

And if she were bolder, maybe she could be more accurate. I started it. You can’t be the one to finish it.

“You hate me,” Beth whined. “I don’t know why you even want… why you even care-”

“You hate me too,” Harper pointed out. “You hated Kaia. But it didn’t mean you wanted her-”

“No. No! I didn’t want that. I never meant for it to happen. I swear. I promise. It just…”

“Happened. I know.” And she wasn’t just saying it. She could still hate Beth, blame Beth; she could still blame herself. She did. But-

That was the thing. There were no buts. No excuses. No explanations. No apologies that could ever be enough. No way to make things right again, no way to make things even. And trying to do that, trying to go backward, reliving the moment over and over again, trying to justify and understand and escape the guilt-it didn’t work. It left you on a ledge, twenty stories up, staring down at an empty parking lot, working up the courage to die.

There was no going backward, only forward. There could be no forgiveness, only acceptance. This had happened. And that wasn’t going to change. So it was either live with the consequences, bear the guilt, and keep going-or the ledge. The parking lot. The other choice.

“This won’t fix anything, Beth. This won’t make anything even. You’re not making up for what you did-you’re just running away.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Stay. Fight. Feel guilty. Feel miserable. Hate me. Hate yourself. Live.” Harper hesitated. She had never told anyone what it was like, how bad it got at night, when she felt trapped inside her own body, when she wanted to punish herself, tear her own skin away or just crawl into a dark corner in the back of her mind, disappear into oblivion. But maybe Beth already knew. “It’s impossible. Painful. And sometimes you… I just want it to fucking end. But I…”

“You what?”

“I keep going. I make it through a day, and then I make it through the next one. I don’t give up. I try.”

“What if I can’t?” Beth’s voice was almost too quiet to hear. Maybe it was the wind. “What if I’m not as… strong as you? What if I just can’t?”

Harper paused, but it was too late for lies; there’d been too much truth. “Then I guess you give up,” she said bitterly. “I guess you quit. You jump. But don’t pretend that’s some twisted kind of justice. Don’t tell yourself that you’re doing the right thing. Just… please. Don’t.”

He had expected to recognize the figure on the edge, he had expected the terror