Sloth

else?”

“But then, the next night, I had another dream, and the car was black. I guess it was just a dream. Not, you know, a memory,” Harper added, wondering if Grace cops got trained in spotting liars. Detective Wells didn’t seem much like a human polygraph machine, but you could never tell. “That’s why I was, uh, avoiding your calls. I was embarrassed to waste your time.”

“It’s not a waste,” the detective assured her, without bothering to suppress a disappointed sigh. She shut the notebook and stuffed it back into her bag. “You thought you could help, and you did the right thing. No need to be embarrassed about that.”

“So…” She wasn’t sure she actually wanted to know. “Do you have any leads?” Did they even use that word in real life? she wondered. “You know, about what happened? I mean, the other car?”

She shook her head. “We haven’t been able to match the paint samples-the van was red, by the way.”

“Oh.” She wondered why no one had told her that before. She tried to imagine a red van speeding toward her and tried to picture her hands on the wheel, jerking away; but visualization exercises were tough to do when you had to keep your eyes open and smile at a cranky detective.

“We’ve ascertained that both vehicles were speeding, and that the collision took place on your side of the road, which implies that the driver of the other vehicle may have strayed into your lane, but I’m afraid that’s all we know. So far, of course.”

“Of course,” Harper repeated, although judging from Detective Wells’s hopeless and impersonal tone, she guessed that no one really expected to learn much more. “But if you ever did find the guy…?”

“Hit-and-run is a very serious crime,” the detective said, looking up at the posters lining the wall. “He or she would be punished to the fullest extent of the law.” She scratched the side of her neck, visibly uncomfortable with what she had to say next. “Look, I know it can be difficult, after a traumatic event like this-especially when no one’s taken responsibility, and you have no one to blame. There are people you can talk to, if-”

“I’m fine,” Harper half shouted. “Can I go back to class now?”

“Sure. Of course. Thanks for speaking with me.”

“Sorry you had to come out here for nothing.” As Detective Wells shook her hand and headed for the door, Harper could feel her split-second decision hardening into reality. She could still tell the truth-catch the detective before she walked out the door and explain everything- but then the door shut, and the moment had passed.

These are the things I know, Harper told herself.

1. No one knew she was driving, and Kane would never tell.

2. If the van had been in the wrong lane, the accident would have happened anyway, no matter who was driving.

3. Kaia was dead, and she would stay that way, no matter what anyone did.

4. Kaia didn’t believe in self-sacrifice.

That left plenty of gaping holes. She didn’t know where she’d gotten the drugs from, or why she had taken them. She didn’t know why she and Kaia were on the road in the first place, or where they were going. She didn’t know whose fault the accident was, not really, though she could pretend that she did. She didn’t know if she believed in Hell, so she obviously didn’t know if she’d end up there. And she didn’t know if she could live with herself-with what she knew and what she didn’t-in the meantime.

I have to, she told herself. And I will. She looked again at the posters-JFK, Gandhi, Anne Frank, Charles Lindbergh. They must have been from a set made specially for irony-deficient high school teachers, because they all bore some cheesy-beyond-belief quote designed to inspire students.

The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be. Socrates.

He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat. Napoleon.

It’s not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required. Winston Churchill.

That one appealed to her the most.

I will do what I have to do and no matter what, I will survive. Harper Grace.

“Where to?”

Beth leaned her head back against the seat and halfheartedly tried to wipe some of the grime off her window, as if the answer to his question might arise from a better view. “Wherever.” The word came out as a sigh, fading to silence before the last syllable.

“Okay.” Reed drove in circles for a while. He had nowhere to be. When she’d called, he had been at his father’s garage, tinkering with an exhaust system and ready for a break. “Can you come?” she’d asked. And for whatever reason, he’d dropped everything and hopped in the truck. He’d found her slouched at the foot of a tree, just in front of the school, hugging her arms to her chest and shivering. She wouldn’t tell him anything, but when he extended a hand to help her into the truck, she squeezed.

It’s not like they were friends, he told himself. But she needed something, and he had nothing better to do. He couldn’t help but notice that she relaxed into her seat, stretching out along the cracked vinyl, unlike Kaia, who almost always perched on the edge and sat poker-straight in an effort to have as little contact with the “filthy” interior as possible. Beth also hadn’t commented on his torn overalls or the smudges of grease splashed across his face and blackening his fingers.

Reed caught himself and, for a moment, felt the urge to stop the car and toss her out on the side of the road. But it passed. “Wanna talk about it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t even want to think about it,” she said. “Any chance you can take me somewhere where I can do that? Stop thinking?”

She said it bitterly, as if it were an impossible challenge. But she obviously didn’t know who she was dealing with.

Reed swung the car around the empty road in a sharp U-turn and pressed down on the gas pedal. She sighed again heavily, and without thinking, he reached over to put a hand on her shoulder, but stopped in midair-maybe because Kaia had trained him well: no greasy fingers on white shirts. Maybe because he didn’t want to touch her- or maybe because he did.

He put his hand back on the wheel and began drumming out a light, simple beat. “I know just the place,” he assured her. “We’ll be there soon.” It felt good to have a destination.

Adam crushed the paper into a ball and crammed it into the bottom of his backpack, then butted his head against the wall of a nearby locker-stupid idea, since all it produced was a dull thud and a sharp pain, neither of which went very far toward alleviating his frustration.

But a stupid idea seemed appropriate; after all, what other kind did he have?

Fifty-eight percent.

Maybe if he and Miranda had spent more time working and less time playing video games and talking about Harper… At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do. For those few hours, he’d felt more normal and more hopeful than he had in a long time. Though he and Miranda had never been close, they had history-and, more important, they had Harper. He hadn’t needed to confide in her, because she already knew how he felt. And he knew she felt the same.

She was a good friend, he’d realized.

Just maybe not a very good tutor.

Or maybe it’s just me, Adam thought in disgust. He’d actually studied this time, staring at the equations long enough that at least a few of them should have started to make sense and weld themselves to his brain. But the test had been a page of incomprehensible hieroglyphics, and Adam’s answers-what few he bothered to attempt-were mostly random numbers and symbols that he strung together in an approximation of what he thought an algebra equation should look like.

Thanks to Mr. Fowler’s supersonic grading policy-all tests graded and returned by the end of the school day, courtesy of a team of eager beaver honor students who gave up their lunch period for some extra credit and a superiority complex-he didn’t have long to wait for the results. Not that there was much suspense.

Fifty-eight percent. It was scrawled in an angry red, next to a big, circled F and a note reading Come see me.

Instead, Adam dumped his stuff in his locker and walked out of school. It was bad enough he’d had to show up in the first place. Haven teachers were “encouraged” to postpone tests and important lessons for Community