Gluttony

“What are you, a mind reader now? How could you know what she wanted? She’s crazy. She’s evil. She wanted me dead. And she almost got it.”

Miranda took a deep breath. “Harper, I think all Adam’s trying to do is look at it from her side. He’s not betraying you. He’s just… well, imagine what she must have been feeling-what could have made her do something so stupid.”

“What the hell are you trying to say?” But it was obvious. Harper would never have thought Miranda would have the nerve for bullshit like this. Kane, maybe. But not Miranda. Never Miranda. But if this was where she wanted to go, Harper was damn well going to make sure she went all the way. “Do you mean what made her-or who made her?”

“She was hurting,” Miranda said. “And… I can kind of imagine how she felt.” Harper could tell from her expression that Miranda was remembering her own pain; she was remembering her own anger. At Harper. “Maybe she just wanted to strike back, hurt someone the way she-”

“Maybe I deserved it,” Harper snapped. “That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it? Maybe you agree with her-maybe you wish I was the one who’d died!”

Miranda flinched, and her lip began to quiver the way it always did just before she started to cry. “Don’t say that. You know that’s not what I mean. I’m not trying to hurt you.” She tried to touch Harper again, but wised up when she caught the look on Harper’s face. She stepped away. But she refused to stop. “I know you don’t want to believe this. I know you want it to be simple, and have Beth be evil, and everyone on your side-”

“Because that’s the truth,” Harper insisted. “That’s reality.”

“Or maybe that’s just what you want to be true, because then you wouldn’t have to face the fact that maybe you-”

“You want to talk about what’s true?” Harper said, hopping off the sink and charging toward Miranda. She couldn’t let the conversation go any further-she didn’t know what would happen if she let Miranda finish her thought. “You’re going to tell me about making my own reality? Avoiding the harsh glare of truth?” She forced a bitter laugh. “That’s hilarious. That is fucking hilarious.”

“Harper, I’m just trying to-”

“And here, of all places.” Harper spun around, flinging her arms out toward the filthy stalls. The anger coursing through her felt good. It swept away the misery, and gave her strength. Power. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing, rushing off to the bathroom after every meal? You think I haven’t figured out your pathetic little problem, even if you want to pretend it doesn’t exist?”

“That’s ridiculous, Harper, I do not-”

“What was that about facing the truth? Oh, ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’” Harper said, pouring a bucket of fake sympathy into her voice, “‘but it’ll be good for you to face reality.’ Life isn’t always what you want it to be, after all. You want to be sexy, desirable, and stick thin-but instead all you are is a pathetic closet-case bulimic who’s so incompetent at keeping your oh-so- special secret that the whole world knows what a head-case you are.”

“Harper, stop it,” Miranda whispered, backing away. “Please.”

“And if you want to talk hard truths, here’s another one,” Harper yelled. “Kane will never love you. He knows how you feel, and he’s playing with you. Like a toy. Get it? You’re a joke to him. You’re nothing.”

Harper wanted to stop herself now. She’d gone too far. She pressed her hand against her lips, to stop the flood of words. But the dam wouldn’t hold for more than a second. Screaming at Miranda, forcing the tears out of her, was the only way to drown out everything that Miranda had said. And everything she hadn’t said.

Because Harper could fill in the blanks.

You wouldn’t have to face the fact that maybe you caused this.

Beth would never have done it, if it hadn’t been for you.

Kaia might still be alive if it hadn’t been for you.

You destroyed everything good in Beth’s life-what did you expect her to do?

You still got in the car. You’re still the one who was behind the wheel.

“Shut up!” she screamed, even though Miranda hadn’t said anything. “You’ve been following after Kane like a sick little groupie for all these years, and where has it gotten you? You’re alone, you’re bitter, and you puke your guts out every day like the before version of some Oprah charity project. And you want to lecture me about avoiding the truth? You make me sick.”

Miranda fled, flinging open the door-and slamming into Kane, who was waiting just outside. It was obvious he’d heard everything. She took one look at him, let out a thin cry of despair, and ran away. “Miranda!” he called. “Wait-” But she kept running.

Kane stared after her for a moment, then turned slowly toward Harper. “How could you?” he asked, his voice icy.

She just wanted to crawl into a corner and die. “Kane, I-”

“Don’t.” He’d never looked at her that way before: stern and serious. Disappointed. “Just don’t.” And he spun around and left her behind.

Harper gulped in one deep breath after another, trying to summon up the strength to figure out what to do.

She needed to do something. She needed to fix this, fix everything. But it was all so screwed up. How could all of her friends turn on her like that-why couldn’t they see that Beth was the enemy? Why were they so ready to give her their sympathy and to leave Harper to fend for herself?

You drove them away, a voice in her head pointed out.

But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear someone rage against Beth for what she’d done. She wanted to hear that she wasn’t the only one who cried herself to sleep most nights, imagining that she could still hear Kaia’s icy laugh.

Or Kaia’s screams.

She wanted someone to blame for everything that had happened. She wanted someone to punish.

And though her friends may have abandoned her, she suddenly realized that she wasn’t alone.

It took a few phone calls and a little detective work, but in Grace, CA, there were far fewer than six degrees of separation between Harper and, well, anyone. She had the phone number in under five minutes. It only rang once.

“Beth?” a voice asked hopefully. “Where did you-”

“It’s not Beth,” she snapped. “Is this Reed?”

“Yeah, but who-”

“This is Harper Grace. We need to talk.”

Sleep was impossible. But Beth had gotten good at pretending. She lay on her side, Adam’s arm curled protectively around her, his face pressed against her shoulder, and kept her eyes closed, listening to his steady breathing. Her arm was twisted at an odd angle and had long ago fallen asleep; her neck ached, and she longed for a tissue with which to blow her stuffed-up nose or to clean the dried tears off her face. But she didn’t want to move, lest she wake him.

She didn’t want him to leave.