Envy

“Who invented gym, anyway?” Marcy’s best friend, Darcy, chimed in.

Beth laughed, letting the familiar chatter wash over her. It was the same every week with these girls: Gym sucked. School sucked. Guys rocked. Gym sucked. Rinse and repeat.

They weren’t her friends, exactly-beyond Marcy and Darcy (one never went anywhere without the other), they weren’t even friends with one another. But they were all dating guys on the team-the swim team, the basketball team, the lacrosse team, depending on the season. It didn’t really matter. At a school this small, there was pretty much only one Team. And whatever the season, Adam was its captain. Which somehow made Beth-what, exactly? She was never sure. Not the most popular, certainly. That would always be Harper, who kept herself aloof from “the girlfriends” but still managed to gain their unadulterated admiration. Not the best liked-for Beth was unsure whether these girls actually liked anyone. She was certain, however, that if she and Adam ever broke up, the flock of giggling girls would disappear along with him. But at the moment she seemed to have a certain cachet. It was as if they were all drawn to one another by some elusive girlfriend pheromone, and hers was-by virtue of dating Adam, Big Man on Campus-the strongest. Maybe it was some kind of evolutionary reflex.

Or maybe you’ve just been spending too much time staring at your AP bio book, she thought, laughing at herself and her insatiable need to overanalyze everything. Why couldn’t she just accept these girls for whatever they were? Comfortable acquaintances, just another perk of dating Adam, like free tickets to football games and a ride to school whenever she needed one.

So what if they were vain and vapid? It’s not like she could afford to be choosy-she didn’t have too many friends these days, beyond Adam. So she should probably stop being so judgmental and just take what she could get.

“So are you, Beth?” Marcy asked insistently.

“Am I what?” Beth asked in confusion, suddenly realizing all eyes were on her. She pulled off her gym uniform and began brushing out her long, blond hair. Back in ninth grade, when she’d walked into the locker room for the first time, she’d been insanely bashful about letting the other girls see her change. Over the course of a few months, she even developed a system of contortions that would allow her to change from her clothes into her gym uniform and back again without revealing a square of naked flesh to anyone. Four years later the whole thing seemed ridiculous. She was totally comfortable now wandering around the locker room in her underwear-it was just another part of the high school experience, like cafeteria food. And trigonometry. She couldn’t even remember what her problem had been. Of course, she mused, back then no one ever saw her naked, and the very thought of revealing herself to another person had made her skin crawl. Then came Adam.

“Are you going to the championships?” Darcy repeated on behalf of her best friend. “You heard the student council got together enough funds to pay for a bus to take us all up to Valley Glen, right?”

“Yeah, I heard.” Beth smiled, remembering how delighted Adam had been when she told him she would finally be there to see him swim. And hopefully, win. This year’s regionals were being held at Valley Glen High, a huge school up north, and a school bus had been chartered to take half of Haven High along to cheer on the swimmers. (Given the football team’s 0-9 record-three years in a row-Haven fans had plenty of time and energy on their hands.) It would be a long day, but Beth wouldn’t miss it for anything. She knew how important it was to Adam. And seeing how much he wanted her there had just reminded her how much he loved her. And how much she loved him. Not that spending five hours on a bus with Marcy, Darcy, and the rest of the Haven High cheering section sounded particularly appealing to her-but it would be worth it to get to see Adam in action again, to show him that she cared. Besides, she’d promised him. She was, after all, his good luck charm. “I’m definitely going,” she answered, grinning. “I can hardly wait.”

“Looks like you won’t have to,” Marcy said.

“What do you mean?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Darcy asked. “We were just talking about how great it is that they rescheduled the championships for this week.”

“This week?” Beth asked in alarm. “But the SATs are on Saturday!”

“Exactly, that’s what’s so great-you know they’re giving the seniors Thursday and Friday off.”

“So we can study’” Beth pointed out.

Darcy laughed. “Yeah, but who’s actually going to do that? No, it’s perfect-we’ll ride up on Thursday morning, watch the meet, do some victory partying, and then ride back late that night. And we have all of Friday to sleep it off!”

“Are you sure about this?” Beth asked, her throat tightening.

“Yeah, Kyle just told me.”

Kyle was Darcy’s boyfriend, and the swim team’s cocaptain. If he’d said it, it must be true.

Shit.

“I can’t do that, I can’t go away two days before the test,” she cried. “That’s insane.”

“Breathe, Beth. It’s no big deal. It’s just…”

But Beth tuned out the rest of the prattle, her mind frantically racing to find a way around the problem. There wasn’t one. She was just going in circles, always coming back to the same basic certainty.

She was going to have to back out-and Adam was going to freak.

As the rest of the girls filtered out of the locker room, Harper lingered. Once she was on her own, she snapped open her cell and quickly flipped through the images she’d captured. Perfect. She’d gotten everything she needed- and more. This swim meet development was quite the windfall.

That had been the only flaw in Kaia’s ruthlessly brilliant plan-the when. And now Beth had supplied them with the perfect solution. If Adam went out to Valley Glen and Beth stayed here… Well, if she’d had any doubts before about whether this was the right thing to do, they were gone now. Why else would all this good luck be raining down on her if this weren’t exactly what she was meant to do? Why else was everything working out even better than expected?

It would be the ideal setup, but it would mean they had to move fast. And Kane, who was on the swim team too (at least when he felt like going to practice) would have to give up a shot at athletic glory-somehow, Harper was pretty sure he wouldn’t care. Why would he want to go all the way to Valley Glen for a pathetic plastic trophy, when the real trophy would be right here, conveniently close to home?

She slipped out of the locker room and sprinted down the hall to e-mail Kane and Kaia. They needed to know that step one was taken care of and step two needed to happen ASAP. Beth had just dumped a giant gift in their laps. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.

Beth steeled herself all day for the inevitable. But when the moment came, she still wasn’t ready. She sat in the car next to him, looking out the window as the familiar scenery whizzed by, nodding absently as he filled her in on the details of his day at school. She was too nervous to pay much attention, instead plotting out the conversation in her mind, striving for some angle that wouldn’t cause an eruption. She’d yet to find one-but a couple miles from her house, she realized she just couldn’t wait any longer.

“I’ve got bad news,” she blurted out, interrupting some story about his history teacher’s toupee.

He flicked his eyes off the road for a quick second, flashing her a look of concern. “What is it?”

“It’s your swimming championships.”

“Oh, right, I’ve been meaning to tell you, there was some kind of scheduling screw-up, so they changed the date and-”

“I can’t go,” she said flatly.

“What?”

Something suddenly occurred to her-and she didn’t like it. “Adam, if you knew they’d changed the date, why didn’t you tell me?” she asked suspiciously.

“I was about to,” he said uncomfortably.

“It’s two days before the SATs-you knew I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

“Yeah-wouldn’t want to do that.”

“Wouldn’t want to blow the test, no,” she agreed. He could be such a baby sometimes. “Look, I’ll come see you some other time, I promise.”

“Some other time? This is it, Beth, this is the time. It’s the end of the season-it’s the championships, for God’s sake. I thought you understood that this was important to me.”

“And the SATs are important to me,” she retorted. “Look, it’s not like I’m asking you