Sloth

“Good morning,” she chirped, her face a gruesome imitation of a smile. “Would you like a pennant?”

“I’d like to know if you’re lobbying for sainthood.”

The smile collapsed into a frown-this one looked real. “Get off of there.” A pause. “Please.”

“She’s not going to thank you,” Kane pointed out. “But you know that. And you’ve got no reason to want to help her, unless maybe you just feel sorry for her… but even the kind and generous Beth Manning wouldn’t go that far.” He leaned toward her, squinting as if to peer more deeply into her eyes and uncover the real motive.

“Can you just leave me alone?” Beth snapped. Her face was turning pale, and she looked nervously down at the stack of papers she was shuffling and reshuffling as she spoke.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you owed her in some way,” Kane mused. “But what could you possibly owe Harper?”

At first, he’d just been enjoying himself watching her squirm-but Kane was beginning to suspect that his instincts were right, and something really was going on here. And it turned out that, accompanying his natural curiosity was an uncharacteristically sincere urge to protect Harper from whatever it might be. The second surprise of the morning.

“Just drop it,” she pleaded in a choked voice. “Just go away.”

“Where’s all this hostility coming from?” He gave her a wounded look. “I thought we were supposed to be friends now-isn’t that what you said?”

“Forget what I-”

“Is this jerk bothering you?”

Ah, the knight in shining armor, Kane thought, without turning around. Just in time.

“Chill out, buddy,” he told Adam. “Your ex and I are just having a little chat.” Kane stopped, and then, laughing as if the thought had just occurred to him, continued, “I guess she’s my ex too. Share and share alike.”

“Get out of here, Kane.” Adam grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and pulled him off the table. Kane wrestled his arm away, but that was it. He didn’t leave; he also didn’t fight back. Adam was the one with the problem, Adam was the one with the grudge-Adam was the one who, despite an apology and plenty of time, refused to get over it. He liked to act the wounded party, but he was the one who’d called an official end to their friendship. Over a girl. Adam was the one who just couldn’t deal.

“You okay, Beth?” he asked now, pulling that Mr. Sensitive act the girls couldn’t get enough of. (Except for Beth, Kane noted, with more than a flicker of pride- thanks in part to him, she’d had plenty.)

“I don’t need you to protect me,” she snapped, rising from the table.

“Can’t you both see that I’m busy?” she cried suddenly “I’m taking care of a million things, and the two of you…” She slammed down the cover of her thick binder and grabbed it off the table, hugging it to her chest.

“Beth-”Adam smiled and held up his hands in supplication.

“No. Not now. Just leave me alone. Both of you.” No one moved. “No? Fine, then I’ll do it for you.”

She spun away, her blond hair whipping against Kane’s face, and walked off.

Kane and Adam stared at each other, Adam looking like he’d just taken a swig of sour milk.

“So,” he said finally, rubbing a hand against his close-cropped blond hair.

“Yeah,” Kane agreed.

“What did you-?”

“Hey, nothing,” Kane protested quickly, shaking his head. “She’s just wound too tight.”

“Ya think?” Adam laughed, sounding not particularly happy, but not particularly angry, either, which was a change. “I’m starting to think all girls are crazy. She ‘forgive’ you, too?”

Kane nodded, and the two exchanged a wry smile, their first in weeks. “Wonder what she acts like when she holds a grudge.”

Adam was waiting for his tutor in the “computer lab” (really a closet-size space with a couple of stone-age PCs) when Miranda wandered in.

Great. Just great.

He’d hoped to keep the whole humiliating tutor thing under wraps, but if Miranda got wind of it, surely she’d run straight to Harper-who, in her current mood, might spread it all over school.

More good luck for me, he thought sourly.

“Hey, Adam.” Miranda didn’t look particularly surprised to see him, just uncomfortable. “What’s up?”

“Just waiting for someone,” he said brusquely, hoping she’d take the hint and leave.

And then the other shoe dropped-on his head.

“Uh, yeah… I know.” She gave him a tight smile, and the truth sunk in.

”You’re my tutor?”

“Guilty.” Miranda rubbed the back of her neck and hovered in the doorway. “Look, if this is too weird for you or anything, I’m sure you could get them to assign you someone else-”

“No, no,” he said without thinking, not wanting to be rude. But, on second thought… he’d known Miranda for years, and though they’d never been close, they’d always had one big thing in common: Harper.

Maybe this wasn’t such bad luck after all.

“I’m glad it’s you,” he told her, “and not some jerk who’d go bragging to the honor society about what an idiot I am.”

Miranda set her stuff down and pulled up a chair. “You’re not an idiot,” she said firmly.

Adam spit out a laugh. “I can see Campbell didn’t give you the full story. Trust me,” he boasted, clasping his hands together over his head like a champion, “you’re looking at the official winner of the Haven High dumbass award.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Miranda said, grinning. Adam was suddenly certain that she didn’t know he was on the verge of not graduating; he wasn’t about to fill her in.

“So, where should we start?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I guess I’ve got a math test this week,” he mumbled. Most of his friends were in calc or pre-calc this year, but he was stuck taking basic algebra. It was really for juniors-and it was still way over his head.

“Cool, I love math.” As the words slipped out, Miranda looked up, horrified. “You tell anyone I just said that and I’ll have to kill you.”

“How about a deal?” he suggested. “You keep this whole tutoring thing to yourself and I won’t tell anyone that you’re secretly a total geek.”

They grinned, and shook on it.

That was the end of the fun-Miranda dove right into the work, struggling to explain to Adam how to apply the quadratic formula and what it meant when an equation had an imaginary solution. But he couldn’t focus, and not just because it all sounded like a foreign language.

“How is she?” he asked suddenly, looking up from the books.

Miranda didn’t even pretend to be confused. “She’s okay…” She sighed. “That’s what she says, at least. I don’t ask anymore. It’s just… it’s better that way, you know?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know, of course. But he knew Harper, so he could imagine.

“Have you talked to her? I mean, have you two been…?”

“You don’t know?” Adam wrinkled his forehead. “I thought girls talked all that stuff to death.”

“Well, lately…”

“Yeah,” he said again. “Lately.” He wouldn’t make her say it. “She won’t talk to me,” he admitted. “I don’t know why.”

But that was a lie, wasn’t it? He knew exactly why-he couldn’t accept it.

She looks much better this time. Her skin is pink, her breathing strong and steady, the machines gone. And her eyes are open.

For two days, she refused to see anyone. And then, today, he was summoned.

She waves weakly when he comes into the room. She doesn’t smile.

”You look good, kid,” he says. Comparatively, it is true.

”They say I’m going home tomorrow.”

”Great!” His smile feels fake. Hers is nonexistent.