again-and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do if that never happened.
He stuffed the joint into one pocket, and the plastic bag into another. He was tired of being confused. Maybe, just for a while, he’d stay clear. It was worth a try. And if it was too much, relief was no more than a few lungfuls away.
In the back of Miranda’s closet, behind the stash of liquor, cigarettes, old issues of Cosmo, and a single pack of condoms that she enjoyed owning but had no expectation of using anytime soon, there was a stack of cardboard boxes. There were seven of them, each labeled in black permanent marker; one for each year, stretching back to sixth grade, and one extra for everything that had come before.
Every year, Miranda set aside an empty desk drawer and filled it with all the detritus of life that most normal people threw out. When the year ended, she dumped the contents into a box and started her collection over again. There were the obvious-ticket stubs, photographs, birthday cards-but everyone with the slightest pack rat tendency saved those. Miranda had an eye for the more subtle mementos: take-out menus, empty cigarette boxes, fliers for concerts she’d never attended, notes passed in class, detention slips, matchbooks, napkins, receipts, anything that might someday bring faded memories back to full color. Her mother liked to call her “the connoisseur of crap,” but as Miranda saw it, she was curating the museum of her life.
It was a narrow life, she saw now, sitting on the floor surrounded by half-open boxes and carefully sorted mounds of memories. There was the occasional homemade Valentine’s Day card from her little sister, and an entry pass left over from a long-ago family trip to some amusement park that had gone bankrupt only a few months later. But those were the exception; Harper was the rule.
Item: a torn scrap of lined paper, with the initials HG and SP written in neon, encircled by a light blue heart. (Pink had been out that year.) Harper had slipped Miranda the note while their sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Hernandez, had droned on and on about Lewis and Clark. Miranda knew exactly what it meant. For weeks, Harper had been drooling over Scott Pearson, universally acknowledged to be the cutest boy in the sixth grade, except for Craig Jessup, who didn’t count because he smelled like mildew Everyone knew that Scott had been planning to take Harper behind the school at recess, and kiss her. They’d disappeared after lunch, right on schedule-and now they were back in the classroom, and here was Harpers note. Miranda got the story on the walk home: He’d kissed her. It was wet, and sloppy, and gross, and now he was her boyfriend. Miranda made Harper promise to tell her every detail of everything that happened, so that she, too, could know what having a boyfriend was like. And Harper came through, recounting every moment she spent with Scott for the nine days their relationship lasted. Then Scott moved on to Leslie Giles, a seventh grader with bigger boobs, and Harper pretended her heart was broken, to get sympathy from every girl in school. Only Miranda got to hear the dirty little secret: Scott had bad breath, kissing was boring, and she was glad to be done with the whole stupid thing.
Item: a wrinkled napkin from High Score, a sports bar that had closed a couple years ago, probably because its TV was only thirty-two inches wide and its waitresses, who mostly looked like they’d been around since the Eisenhower administration, preferred using it to catch up on SOAPnet reruns of Dynasty and Melrose Place. For her sixteenth birthday, Harper had given Miranda her very first fake ID. It was crude and cheap, and claimed Miranda was a twenty-one-year-old Virginian named Melanie DeWitt, born May 27, Gemini, residing on Applewood Road, Manassas, Virginia, 20108. All details Miranda had struggled to memorize before they set out to test her new identity at High Score, where it was reputed that they’d let in a second grader if she flashed a homemade library card with her picture taped to it. Miranda was still nervous, forcing Harper to give her a pep talk before they strutted past the bouncer, flashing their ridiculous IDs, and sat down at a bar together for the first time. And despite the gross tables, nasty smells, and cheap beer, it had been the first truly great night of Miranda’s life.
Item: a program from the ninth-grade musical, Oliver! Miranda had wanted to try out-and, given the size of their school, “try out” really meant “write your name on the list and Mr. Grady will assign you your part.” But Harper had labeled it TLFU, Too Lame For Us. Lots of things were TLFU that year, which, not coincidentally, had marked the beginning of Harper’s rise to the top of the social stratosphere. White sneakers, boy bands, binders, the color pink (in the previous year, now out once again), eighth-grade boys, PG movies, sparkly nail polish-all TLFU. It was a lot for Miranda to remember, which was why, as in the case of the school musical, Harper had to keep reminding her. But they’d gone to see it, because Harper had scored them an invitation to the cast party, hosted by geeky Mara Schneider, whose brother Max was a junior and topped the official list of high school hunks. Max was supposed to be at the party, but didn’t show. Instead, Harper and Miranda got stuck in a corner with Barry and Brett Schanker. Barry had played the Artful Dodger, Brett had played the trumpet in the pit; both were pale, gangly, pockmarked, and intent on getting Harper and Miranda to play Twister with them in Mara Schneider’s rec room. Instead, Harper and Miranda had escaped into the backyard, where they’d spent the night dangling their feet in the Schneiders’ pool, smoking a full pack of cigarettes (courtesy of Brett Schanker), getting drunk on the hot pink “Kool-Aid-plus” punch, and pretending that they were the only two people there, or at least the only two who mattered. By the end of the night, Miranda had thrown up in the bushes, Harper had nearly fallen into the pool, and, in an act of mad courage (or courageous madness), they’d snuck up to Max’s room and snagged a pair of his boxers. (White, size medium, and covered in bright yellow happy faces; Max, they decided, was definitely TLFU.)
Item: a dried carnation from tenth-grade Valentine’s Day, left over from the bouquet Harper had given Miranda when she freaked out about not having a boyfriend.
Item: a magazine clipping of a tropical island, where they’d dreamed of someday co-owning a vacation house with their unspeakably wealthy and unbelievably handsome husbands.
Item: a Scrabble tile, rescued from the trash, after Harper-tired of losing each and every rainy day-had dumped the game.
Item: a thin, green plastic ring purchased for a quarter from a gumball machine. They’d each bought one, pledging to wear them forever. Miranda had lost hers first-this was Harper’s, because they both knew that Miranda’s card board boxes were the only place it would be safe.
Miranda rubbed her eyes. She’d been looking through the boxes for hours, as if something in one of them would be able to explain what was happening. But there were no answers, only the record of a friendship that should have been enough.
It was enough for Miranda-it had, for all these years, been nearly everything, and here was the proof. So why did Harper need so much more? And why was she willing to trash it, for Adam, for Kane, for Kaia, for anything?
Miranda had been willing to put everything aside for Harper s time of need, because that’s what best friends do. But it was obvious now: Whatever Harper needed, it wasn’t her.
Sometimes, she knew it was a dream while it was happening.
“Where are we?” she asked Kaia, gaping at the tiny huts lining the cobblestone streets. They wound up and around into the hills, giving way to long stretches of emerald green vineyards. On the other side, the land dropped off abruptly, and at the base of a cliff lapped the waters of a calm, turquoise sea.
“Italy,” Kaia said, looking bored. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses, despite the cloudy sky. “A little fishing village on the Riviera.”
“But I’ve never been here,” Harper said, confused. She’d never been out of California, not that she would have admitted it to Kaia, with her passport stuffed full of stamps from glamorous getaways to international hot spots.
“I have,” Kaia said, shrugging. “It gets old.”
“But this is
“You want to argue?” Kaia asked, stretching out on the ground as if she were at the beach. “Or you want to get a tan?”
Harper tossed a small rock over the edge of the cliff She tried to follow its way down, but didn’t see it land. “What are we doing here? What are
“Can’t say it, can you?” Kaia laughed bitterly. “Dead. Kaput. Kicked the bucket. Passed over to… woooooooh…” She made her voice dramatically low and solemn, “the
“I was going to say, ‘You’re
“I did leave you alone. Isn’t that the problem?” Kaia stood up and brushed herself off. “Why else are you acting
