Sloth

“Seventy-five dollars!” Mr. Grady announced, fanning himself as if the bid had caused some kind of heat stroke. “Do I hear more?”

There were some murmured complaints from the crowd, but no one spoke up.

“Going once?”

“Going twice?”

Crack! Miranda jumped as the gavel slammed against the podium. “Sold, to the young woman in blue.”

Kane grinned and gave Cheryl a cocky wave before strutting offstage. At least that solved the mystery of why he would have deigned to participate in this kind of thing to begin with. Kane was the opposite of a joiner; he was the guy that-at least in junior high-joiners used to run away from for fear of wedgies. But Miranda supposed that the chance to watch a room full of girls practically throw money at the stage just for the privilege of spending an afternoon with him had been too much to resist.

And she didn’t care, she told herself. This was yet another example of why Kane was the last person she should waste her time thinking about-evidence, as if she needed any more, that just because he’d finally noticed her lips were good for more than snarky banter didn’t mean he wanted anything more, or ever would. She should just smile and clap unenthusiastically, as she had after Lark Madison’s brownie-baking lesson went for twenty bucks and Scott Pearson’s old golf clubs went for fifty. Pretend you care that your class is raising some money, she reminded herself. Pretend you don’t care about him.

”Now that you ladies have had your turn, it’s time for the fellows to pull out your wallets, because next up, we have the beautiful Harper Grace.”

Miranda almost choked.

Grady waved his hand toward the wings. Nothing happened. Nodding his head at someone behind the curtain, he beckoned frantically, then turned back to the audience. “As I was saying, the beautiful Harper Grace.” Harper walked slowly and confidently toward the center of the stage, where she rejected his offer of a chair and stood with her hands on her hips, facing down the crowd. “She’s auctioning off one dinner date, at the restaurant of your choice. Shall we start the bidding at thirty dollars?”

What the hell are you doing? Miranda asked silently, wishing she could send her best friend-if that was even the name for it these days-a telepathic message. She willed Harper to seek her out in the crowd, hoping that, if they made some eye contact, Harper could give her some kind of sign that would explain how she’d ended up as the poster girl for Grady’s manic auctioneering. But Harper wasn’t making eye contact with her, or anyone. She’d fixed her eyes on a point in the back of the room, above the heads of the audience, and remained frozen, expression serene, mouth fixed in a Mona Lisa smile. She looked almost as if she wanted to be up there; which, Miranda supposed, must somehow be the case.

“Do I hear thirty dollars?”

Miranda suddenly realized that the auditorium was silent. Not just normal high school assembly quiet, where the air still buzzed with gossip and commentary, but the eerie, ominous Who died? quiet of the kind you find in lame horror movies, when the heroine puts her hand on the doorknob, just before it turns beneath her grasp and the spooky sound track kicks in.

”Okay… do I hear twenty-five dollars? Twenty-five dollars for a night on the town with Harper Grace?”

More silence. Miranda wanted to place a bid herself, just to end the misery, but that, obviously, would be the most humiliating blow of all. She kept her mouth shut. And onstage, Harper seemed barely aware of her surroundings or Grady’s swiftly fading enthusiasm. She just smiled.

”Twenty-five dollars!” a nasal voice called out from the front row. Miranda didn’t have to crane her neck to see the bidder; she would recognize Lester Lawrence’s voice anywhere after sophomore year, when he’d called every Tuesday night for three months, waiting for her to change her mind about a date and succumb to his well-hidden charms. Harper didn’t even wince.

”Thirty dollars!” A Texan twang from the back, owned by Horace Wheeler, who also owned an extensive gun collection he was fond of exhibiting to creeped-out visitors who’d made the mistake of stopping by his parents’ Wild West-themed ranch.

Out of the frying pan, into the firing range.

“I have thirty dollars,” Grady said, feigning excitement. “Do I hear more? Going once? Going twice?” He was talking quickly, as if eager to end the awkwardness and move right along to the next victim.

”A hundred dollars!” someone shouted.

Harper flinched.

Oh, no. Miranda slumped down in her seat, shaking her head. He really was the dumbass of the year.

”A hundred dollars!” Grady repeated, a smile radiating across his face. “Going once? Going twice? Sold, to our very own basketball champion!”

Oh, Adam, she moaned silently. You poor idiot.

He’d just wasted a hundred dollars on what he probably thought was the ultimate chivalrous gesture, sweeping in to rescue Harper from her humiliation, saving the day as all heroes can’t help but do. And he’d obviously failed to notice that the rest of the school would see it as nothing more than a hundred-dollar pity date, a fresh sign of just how far the mighty Harper had fallen.

Miranda knew how much Harper hated to be rescued; she knew better than most, since she’d been trying to do exactly that for a month now, to no avail. The harder you pushed, the faster Harper ran away, and poor, oblivious Adam had just guaranteed a record-breaking sprint.

Not that you’d know it from looking at her, of course. As Grady banged the gavel to a smattering of applause and a growing tide of laughter, Harper just gave the audience a curt nod, as if she’d done them all a favor by gracing them with her presence but was too polite to accept their gratitude. Then she turned on her heel and walked off toward the wings, where, Miranda knew, she would remain calm and dry-eyed, proud to the bitter end.

Miranda was the one who bent over in her seat, burying her head in her hands, ignoring the arrival of Inez Thompson onstage to auction off a painting from her father’s gallery of cheesy desert-sunset paintings. Feeling like she’d been the one to stand up onstage weathering the silence, wishing that she could have been the one, or could at least have done something, anything to help, rather than, as always, remaining quiet and ineffectual in the face of Harper’s pain, she squeezed her lips together against a wave of nausea.

This was how it always was in their friendship: Miranda waiting on the sidelines, while Harper fought the battles and reaped the rewards. It was better that way, Miranda had always told herself. Harper was the strong one, who could take anything, as she’d just proven to herself and everyone watching.

Miranda was the one who cringed at every blow, as if she were the one being struck. And when it was all over and Harper was left battered but still standing, Miranda was the one who cried.

Beth woke up as someone laid a cool, damp washcloth across her head, but she didn’t open her eyes. It was too easy just to lie there, on the small cot in the nurse’s office, and let someone take care of her. The nurse’s small radio was set to an easy-listening station, and the numbing sound of light jazz, punctuated only by occasional static or a soporific DJ, had lulled Beth to sleep shortly after the nurse laid her down for “a little R & R.” She would have been happy to stay that way. But the cot was uncomfortable, the washcloth was dripping down her face, and eventually, as Beth shifted around, trying to force her body back to sleep, the nurse realized that her patient was finally awake.

”Feeling better, dear?” she asked, sounding significantly more sympathetic and nurselike than she had the last time Beth encountered her, trying to teach sex-ed to a horde of hormonally crazed teenagers. She seemed much more relaxed and competent here in her natural habitat. “Ready to sit up?”

Beth had only passed out for a few seconds, but when she awoke to find herself flat on her back in the middle of the hallway, twenty or thirty faces gawking down at her, the nurse had insisted on taking her down to the office. Beth wasn’t about to resist; her mind was still sluggish and fuzzy, and she was happy to leave it that way for as long as possible.

They didn’t trust her to drive herself home; probably for the best-she didn’t trust herself. And she couldn’t pull her parents out of work and make them lose a day’s pay just because she couldn’t handle her stress. She’d be burden enough, once they found out the truth. So the nurse had let her recuperate in her office for the rest of the day, and Beth had stayed there, sleeping on and off, hiding out from her tests and her projects and her meetings