Gluttony

more than a whisper, but it was enough.

“What do I want? What do I want?” Beth held the phone away from her ear, but could still hear Harper’s tinny laugh. “You’re the one who called me, remember? Oh no, wait, you didn’t call me, you left a message. Like a coward. Afraid to face me, Beth? Too afraid I’ll tell you what I really think of you?”

“I think I’ve got that figured out already.”

Just hang up the phone, she told herself, and you can end this for good.

“Don’t pretend you know what I think,” Harper snapped. “If you knew anything, you wouldn’t leave some stupid message whining about how sorry you are, like that’s going to change anything. You don’t get to do that.”

“What should I do, Harper?” she asked, trying to sound tough, but failing miserably. “You tell me.”

“Grow a fucking spine for once, how about that? You face me. You face me and tell me what you did-”

“I already told you.”

“You tell me again, and you tell me how sorry you are,” she sneered, “and then you listen when I tell you exactly where to stick your useless apologies. You. Face. Me.”

“I can’t.”

“Where are you?”

Beth didn’t say anything.

“Where the hell are you!” Harper screamed, the last word sliding into a shriek of rage.

Beth just wanted it to stop; she wanted everything to stop. “I’m on the roof,” she whispered. “At the hotel. On the roof.”

“Stay there,” Harper commanded in a dangerous voice. “I’m coming.”

Beth hung up.

Why? she asked herself, the panic rising. Why tell her, when it would be impossible to face her without disintegrating? Just one more stupid decision in a lifetime of them. Harper would arrive soon, and Beth knew what she would say. And it would all be true. “Coward.” “Bitch.” “Murderer.” There would be no one to calm Harper down, and no one to hold Beth and assure her-lie to her-that it would be all right. There was no one left at all. The fear and loneliness threatened to overwhelm her-and then she remembered.

It didn’t matter how angry Harper was. It didn’t matter what she wanted to say.

Because by the time she got there, it would be too late. It would be over.

Chapter 13

The phone call sobered her up. Harper ran the entire way back to the Camelot, fearing that Beth would lose her nerve and disappear. And as she reached the top of the stairs, she discovered she’d been right to worry: The roof was empty.

Screw it, Harper thought in disgust. She should have known better. For all she knew, Beth had never been here in the first place. Maybe she’d thought it would be fun to send Harper on a wild-goose chase. She was probably downstairs in the room-Harper’s room-right now, enjoying a good night’s sleep. Or worse, she was down there awake, and she wasn’t alone.

Harper refused to consider the possibility. Not because it wasn’t likely, but because she’d done enough vomiting for the night.

She hesitated on the rooftop, trying to plan out her next move, and that’s when she saw it: a hint of blond, just behind the walled edge of the roof.

The Camelot rooftop was shaped like a turret, with a flat, round top surrounded by a thin, waist-high wall of fake brick, assembled in a cutout pattern that looked like jack-o’-lantern teeth. The gaps were wide enough to sit on-and low enough to climb through.

Harper took a few quiet steps across the roof, as the tip of a blond head dipped below the brick and then, a few seconds later, bobbed into sight again. It wasn’t until Harper reached the opposite end that she got a good view of what was happening: Beth had climbed over the wall and found footing on a narrow ledge that ran around the outside of the turret. She was pressing herself flat against the fake brick, one hand clutching an ugly plaster gargoyle, the other balled into a fist.

“You can do it,” she murmured to herself. “Come on. Come on. Do it.”

“Holy shit.” The words popped out of Harper’s mouth before she could stop herself. “Beth, what the hell are you doing?”

Beth twisted her head up to see Harper, who caught her breath, as it looked for a moment that the movement might shift Beth’s balance enough to send her flying. “You weren’t supposed to see this.” She turned away again, and stared down-way down-at the ground. “But I couldn’t-”

“Then what was the plan, genius?” Harper snapped. “I was supposed to come back here and find you all splattered and bloody on the ground?” Beth flinched, and Harper pressed on. “Yes, splattered and bloody-what did you think would happen if you do something stupid like this? You float to the ground on a magical cloud and ride off into the sunset? Are you nuts? Oh wait, what am I saying? Look where we are. Of course you’re freaking nuts.”

Stop, she begged herself. Just shut up. Tell her not to jump. Tell her it will all be okay. Harper knew her role in this script, and the ineffectual cliches she was supposed to utter. She was supposed to play the hero, to save Beth-and the thought enraged her. Where was Beth when Kaia needed saving?

Where was Beth when Harper was lying on the ground in pain, choking on smoke, waiting for sirens, waiting to hear Kaia scream, or move, or breathe?

“I don’t owe you anything,” she cried. “Do you hear me? I owe you nothing!”

Beth didn’t respond. From where she was standing, Harper could see Beth’s arm shaking and her grip on the gargoyle slip, then tighten. She could see the tears running down Beth’s face, and the way the ball of her left foot stuck out over the edge. And, if Harper leaned over, she could see all the way down, to the half-empty parking lot below. She could see the spot where Beth would land.

If.

Harper wondered if it would be possible to survive a drop like that, and wondered how you would land. If you dove forward, would you smash into the pavement gracefully, like a diver hitting an empty pool, arms first, crumpling into the cement, and then head, then body? Or would you twirl through the air in some accidental acrobatics and fall flat, a cement belly flop? An old Looney Tunes image flashed through her head, and for a second, she pictured a deep, Beth-shaped hole in the ground, Beth standing up and brushing herself off, flat as a pancake but otherwise intact.

This is real, Harper had to remind herself. The edge was real. The drop was real. The ground was real. She could climb onto the wall and all it would take was one step, and everything would end. No equipment necessary. This is real.

“Beth. Don’t.” Her voice had none of the sugary sweetness of some touchy-feely suicide hotline. Harper, in fact, couldn’t associate the word “suicide” with this scene-that was a textbook word, a TV word, something ordered and comprehensible that happened to fictional characters and crazy teenagers on some other town’s local news. This was too messy to have a label, especially a label that predicted,