Wrath

her long, tan legs, barely covered by a green suede miniskirt.

“Do you really want to discuss this here, Jack?” It was a violation of every rule he’d set for them, and it stank of desperation.

“There’s nothing to discuss.You told me you’d stopped. You told me you wouldn’t, with- that. And now I read…”

Kaia laughed. “Are you going to believe some piece of trash you probably confiscated from one of your clueless freshmen? Just how gullible are you?”

Powell’s skin turned slightly red, whether in anger or embarrassment, Kaia couldn’t be sure. She could put him out of his misery right now, confess to the dalliance with Reed, and suggest he find himself another student to play with-or maybe even pick on someone his own age. But Kaia wasn’t quite ready to finish things, and she certainly wasn’t going to let some loser with a printer and a grudge force her hand.

She got up and walked slowly to the door, as if to leave, then paused with her hand on the knob. “Do I really need to defend myself?” Kaia asked. “Or can we stop this game and play another…?”

Powell hopped off the desk, walked toward her, and then did something he’d never done before on school grounds. He touched her.

Placing his hand over hers on the doorknob, he turned the lock.

“We can table this for now,” he told her, his lips inches from the nape of her neck, his fingers digging into her skin. “You’re a smart girl, Kaia. You know better than to screw this up. Take this as a warning.”

He pulled her roughly toward him, and she let him, hyperaware of the people in the hallway, just on the other side of the door. Only a few inches separated them from discovery, a thought that turned her on far more than Powell’s hands roaming across her body.

Yes, Kaia was a smart girl, and she almost always knew better. She just never acted on it.

Where was the fun in that?

The whispers flew back and forth over Miranda’s head. No one thought to ask her what was true-most likely, no one thought of her at all.

Without Harper, I’m invisible, she thought, pushing around the soggy food on her tray. She had no appetite. Not when Harper was at the center of an admiring crowd, soaking in the attention. Miranda had just given her more of what she loved the most. From across the room, Miranda couldn’t see the self- satisfied grin on Harper’s face, but knew it was there. And she couldn’t hear the spin Harper would put on everything to cast herself in a good light-but she knew Harper would. A spotlight. It all seemed so obvious now, that this was how their feeble plot was doomed to end.

Teaming up with Beth, blandest of the bland, to take on Haven High’s dark queen? What had she been thinking?

Beth wasn’t as bad as Miranda had always thought, and was probably undeserving of all the hours she and Harper had put into mocking her behind her back. (Miranda had long ago perfected her Beth imitation, which never failed to send Harper into uncontrollable gales of laughter.)

But “not that bad”? What good was that, when you were going up against someone who had It? Someone who could mold minds, bend wills, make the world into exactly what she wanted it to be. Harper had It, and Beth didn’t. Neither did Miranda.

Together, they made one big, fat nothing, and Miranda was beginning to wonder if she might have been better off alone.

Spin control only took a small portion of Harper’s attention, and she devoted the rest of it to watching Miranda, pathetically slumped over a table on the other side of the cafeteria. They’d fought before; their friendship was built on fights. But this was different.

Miranda could never hold a grudge-and so Harper had never had to worry that, eventually, all would be forgiven. She’d learned that lesson in sixth grade, when the two of them had their first huge fight while rehearsing their sixth-grade performance of Macbeth (suitably abridged for attention-deficit- disordered twelve-year-olds). It had started small: an argument over who got to use the “real” (plastic) sword and who would be stuck wielding a wrapping-paper tube covered with aluminum foil.

Harper won, of course, bringing up the unassailable point that the whole show was named after her character. It seemed only logical that she, as the star, get the best of everything-lines, costumes, makeup, and, of course, swords. But Miranda had given in grudgingly, and only after hours of endless argument; by the time Harper finally took the stage, plastic sword in hand, she and Miranda hadn’t spoken for a week.

When the climactic scene arrived, Miranda had the first good line. “Turn, hellhound, turn!” she cried as Macduff, the one man destined to take down Macbeth.

Harper spun to face her challenger. They stared at each other across the stage, readying themselves for the sword fight, gritting their teeth and narrowing their eyes as if the fate of the kingdom truly lay on their shoulders. Their teacher had been very specific: Cross “swords” three times, and then Miranda would slice off Harper’s head. In a manner of speaking, of course.

Miranda swung, Harper parried, jumped back, sliced her sword toward Miranda, who blocked the blow with her wrapping-paper tube and danced around the stage, taunting Harper under her breath.

And Harper, who’d been planning to lie down and deliver the greatest death scene Grace Elementary had ever seen, couldn’t bring herself to lose the fight-and, by definition, her dignity-in front of all those people. She swung wildly, and Miranda’s flimsy sword bent in two-at which point Miranda screeched in frustration and launched herself at Harper. The two of them stumbled to the ground, writhing and rolling across the stage, pinching and poking, tickling and tugging hair… until their eyes met and, simultaneously, they burst into uncontrollable giggles.

Harper and Miranda had spent that weekend in an intense, forty-eight-hour catch-up session, sharing every detail of the painful hours they’d spent not speaking to each other.

“I was sooooo bored,” Miranda had complained.

“You were bored? I fell asleep standing up,” Harper countered.

“I had to play Jeopardy Home Edition all night with my parents.”

“I spelled out the names of everyone I know in alphabet soup.”

“I missed you,” Miranda had confessed, laughing.

Even then, Harper had known better than to confess that she’d missed Miranda more.They’d laughed about it for years, and sometimes even now when Harper was being particularly bitchy, Miranda would call her a “hellhound”; Harper always replied with her own favorite line: ‘Lay on, Macduff, and damn’d be he that first cries, “Hold, enough!’” It was the code of their friendship, and its meaning was simple. They would never turn into their characters; they would fight-but never to the death. They would always stop in time, just before landing the final blow.

But here she was, watching Miranda pick at her food, scared to go over to her, scared not to. If Harper stood over her pleading, “Lay on, Macduff”-meaning, Yell at me, hit me, hate me, and then, please, forgive me-would it fix anything?

Not likely, Harper decided-not if Miranda had been behind the gossip flyer. That was a death blow. Harper may not have seen it coming, but she knew when it was time to lay down her sword and leave the stage.

Chapter 4

“Okay girls, time for a vote: 13 Going On 30 or The Princess Bride?”

As 13 Going On 30 won by general acclamation, Beth tried to will herself to care. A few days ago, she would have said this was all she wanted-to be accepted back into the fold, to regress to the good ol’ days of sleepover parties and road trips to the mall, popcorn and girl talk.

“Beth, can you grab us another bag of Hershey’s Kisses?” Claire asked, and Beth traipsed upstairs, fighting against the suspicion that they’d start talking about her as soon as she was gone. They’d invited her, which was a step in the right direction-but no one seemed to particularly want her around.

“Have no fear, the chocolate’s here,” she said gamely, returning downstairs and pouring the Hershey’s Kisses into a bowl.

“Great, let’s stick in the movie,” Claire suggested. Beth couldn’t wait. As soon as the lights went out, she could