Sloth

And, even more puzzling: He didn’t completely regret it.

“Grace, listen to me, okay?” He leaned against the wall next to her and stared off into the grayish morning haze. “I’m trying to help you, so you have to listen to me. You cannot talk to the cops. You’ll ruin your life.”

“So?” she muttered. “I ruined hers.”

Kane pretended not to hear. “At least don’t do anything yet,” he insisted. “Just think about it. Give yourself some time. Don’t be an idiot about this. It’s too big.”

“And why should I listen to you?” Her voice had lost its anger and was now just a flat, tired-sounding monotone.

Because I’m your friend, he wanted to tell her. Because someone has to look out for you since you’re doing such a shit job of it yourself “I know about getting into trouble,” he said wryly. “And I know about getting out of it.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get out of it,” Harper snapped, opening the emergency exit door and slipping back inside the school. “Maybe I just want what I deserve.”

Beth shoved her fist against her mouth to stifle a scream. Then she bit down, hard, tears springing to her eyes-not from the pain.

Above her, she could hear Kane pacing back and forth on the landing, muttering to himself. She couldn’t make out his words, but then, it didn’t matter-she’d already heard enough. Beth tugged her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them tight, rocking back and forth, trying to drive the new knowledge out of her brain.

She’d cut class for the first time ever, needing to be alone. Kane had shown her the spot, long ago. That day, they had lounged on the landing, kissing in the sun. Today she had slunk down the rickety stairs and retreated to the dank, narrow space below. She had pressed herself up against the concrete retention wall, closed her eyes, and hoped, just for a few minutes, to hide from her life.

But the truth had found her.

Harper had been driving the car.

Harper had been drugged up, and Harper had gotten behind the wheel.

Kaia was dead. And Beth was to blame. It was that simple.

Not my fault, she’d insisted, over and over again. The mantra had been a wall between her and an ocean of terror and guilt.

And now the wall had crumbled. And she was drowning. She couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but rock back and forth as two words battered her brain.

My fault. My fault. My fault. Her lips moved, but no sound came out, not because she had no air left but because she was a coward. Kane was still up there. She could-should- stand up and scream out the truth about what she’d done, but the thought of moving made her dizzy. “Give yourself some time,” Kane had told Harper, and it was as if he’d been talking to Beth.

And in a way, he had-he’d been talking to Kaia’s killer.

Me.

She needed to slow down; she needed to think.

“Shit!” Kane’s voice. There was a loud clang, as if he’d kicked the railing. Then the door opened, closed. And she was alone.

I killed her, Beth thought, testing the way the words sounded in her head. She almost laughed out loud; it sounded ridiculous. She’d never stolen anything, never gotten a speeding ticket, never been in a fight, still felt guilty when she lied to her parents. She was responsible, she was caring-she was good. And yet…

She squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath, willing herself to wake up and discover that the last month had been a stupid nightmare, that the box of pills was still sitting on her nightstand and Kaia was still alive. She would do anything, give up anything, to go backward. Maybe, if she wished for it hard enough, if she made enough silent promises, she could open her eyes and be back in January None of this seemed real, anyway; maybe it wasn’t.

She opened her eyes and she was still huddled on the ground, facing a blank wall. Nothing had changed.

It didn’t matter what she’d meant to do, she told herself. All that mattered were the consequences.

You say you’re a good person, she thought. Prove it.

Beth stood up, hyperconscious of every breath as if, without constant monitoring, she might forget to take another one. She trudged up the stairs and opened the door, squeezing the handle so tightly that it left an angry red slash across her palm. Now what? She would have to find Harper, or maybe the principal-or maybe she should just go directly to the police. She didn’t know how these things worked, aside from the stray detail she’d picked up from Law & Order. Maybe she’d get to face off against Jesse Martin in the interrogation room. That wouldn’t be so bad. Or Chris Noth. Except he was kind of old and bloated these days, and-

She almost burst into laughter again, and stopped herself just in time, fearing that once she started, she might never stop. She was losing it.

“Hey, watch it!”

Someone slammed past her as she stumbled blindly down the hall, and she suddenly realized that she was surrounded by people. The bell must have rung. She should be getting to her second-period class. She wouldn’t want to get in trouble for being late-

The crazy laughter threatened to bubble up again, as she remembered herself. What was detention, compared to a jail sentence? What was facing down an angry teacher, compared to facing down the knowledge that she was a killer?

“Beth! Thank God I found you-” A short girl with dirty blond hair grabbed her and pulled her over toward the wall, out of the stream of students. It took a moment for Beth to register her identity: Hilary, the perky vice-chair of the Senior Spirit committee. “Listen, we have to talk; the auction this afternoon’s going to be a total disaster if we don’t figure this stuff out.”

“What?” Beth asked weakly, backing away.

“The auction” Hilary repeated. “You missed the meeting yesterday, and we still need to get final approval on the list of participants and talk to Mr. Grady about-”

“I really… I really can’t deal with this right now,” Beth protested. “I’ve got to… I can’t talk.”

“Okay, okay, then let’s pick a time to meet.” Her words tumbled out at lightning speed, and Beth could barely follow her; or maybe Beth’s mind was staging a slowdown. “I can’t do third period because I have a test, but maybe I could get out of fourth if I got Grady to sign off on it or fifth period lunch-when are you free?”

“I don’t…” Beth tried to battle her way through the fog and come up with something coherent to say. She had a test next period, she realized, and a project to present in the next, and at lunch she was supposed to be assigning articles for the next edition of the Gazette and then doing an extra credit project for chem lab, and-and she gasped. Because all of that was irrelevant now. If she walked down the hall and into the principal’s office and turned herself in, it wouldn’t matter that she’d skipped her calculus test or ditched a newspaper meeting. She felt like she was living out two lives, or worse, was split between two levels of reality, and one was about to consume the other. She was about to lose everything, and the weight of what she’d done and what she needed to do pressed down on her like a vise, squeezing her chest until it felt like her organs would mash together and it would all finally stop.

“Beth? Are you okay? You look a little… pale.”

The voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance. “I’m fine,” Beth said, and her own voice sounded even farther away. She tried to say something else, but she couldn’t breathe, much less speak. Hilary’s concerned face slowly faded out of view as her field of vision turned to white, then gray, like poor TV reception breaking the world down into a blank screen of scrambled light. Beth felt her control slipping away and, along with it, her panic.

Maybe now I don’t have to decide what happens next, she thought as her knees buckled and Hilary caught her just before her head smacked against the linoleum floor. Someone somewhere was shouting and footsteps were pounding and Beth didn’t care about any of it anymore. She just closed her eyes and let it all fade away. Maybe this is the end.