Envy

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 if 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