Wrath - 4 (13 page)

The administration had worked overtime to get everything ready for the governors visit.The press—or, at least, a photographer from the
Grace Herald
and a reporter from the
Ludlow Times
—was due first thing that morning to take pictures of the school, which had been sufficiently buffed and shined for the occasion. A selection of high-achieving students had been careful y selected to speak with the reporter, and the crown jewel of Principal Lowenstein’s presentation to the media was about to be unveiled.

Hanging over the front doors of the school, hidden by a white drop cloth, was the principals pet project: a giant bil board, labored over by the art teacher and his most talented students. It would soon welcome the governor to town—but now, in an almost as important moment, it would serve as the face Haven High would show to the world.

Principal Lowenstein al owed herself a moment to dream—thanks to the governor s star power, the local story would be picked up by the state press, perhaps even national y syndicated. The paparazzi were everywhere, and you never knew what might excite the tabloids. She suppressed a smile, imagining her face staring back at her from the supermarket checkout aisle. She would be seen al over the country for what she truly was: a capable, zealous administrator destined for greater things.

Specifical y, destined to get the hel out of this dinky town and take on a
real
school, a place where the students cared about more than footbal scores and truck engines, and the teachers actual y understood the material they were supposed to teach.

Proud grin firmly planted on her face, Lowenstein waved to the reporters, posed for their flashes, and pul ed down the drop cloth.

And because she was so intent on staring into the camera, she was the last to see it.

The art department had gone above and beyond, pul ing a campaign photo of the governor riding a horse, and blowing it up so he appeared to be gal oping toward the doors of Haven High. In large type, the caption beneath the image read—or was supposed to read—HAVEN HIGH WELCOMES OUR GOVERNOR——THE BEST INTHE WEST!

It was a masterpiece of administrative banality—or would have been, had someone not snuck beneath the drop cloth, pul ed out their spray paint, and made a few … minor changes.

The governor was now truly
riding
the horse—as one imagined he might ride his wife. The new caption: HAVEN HIGH WELCOMES OUR GOVERNOR—THE BEST LOVER IN THE WEST!

It was juvenile, lame, inappropriate, grotesque and, al in al , a reasonably accurate representation of everything Haven High stood for.

The reporter scribbled madly, and Principal Lowenstein smiled uselessly for the camera, no longer looking forward to her front-page coverage.
Welcome to Haven High,
she thought dejectedly,
where dreams come to die
.

Everyone in school that day was consumed with the question of who had pul ed the prank. Everyone except Beth, who had only one thought in her mind: Who would the winner be?

That morning in homeroom, she, Harper, and the other contenders had traipsed down to the principal’s office and read their speeches into the PA system. Beth assumed no one was listening—the mornings gossip was too fresh for anyone to take a break and actual y pay attention—but she stil felt a tiny thril having her voice piped throughout the school, knowing that soon people would be voting on whether or not they’d been suitably impressed.

Beth wasn’t thril ed with her speech, but even in her nervousness she could tel it was better than anything anyone else had to offer. Harper’s, especial y—from the grammatical errors to the logical inconsistencies, to the blithe suggestion that school be made several hours shorter and students be al owed to choose their own subjects of study—Beth was sure she couldn’t lose.

Stil , she didn’t like waiting.

The announcement came in last period, toward the end of French class. Normal y, Beth detested sitting through those forty-seven minutes, feeling Jack Powel ’s eyes upon her

—it forced her to remember the day he’d kissed her in the deserted newsroom, a moment she’d been struggling for months to forget. She could, if she al owed herself, stil feel his hands gripping her body, and the flicker of fear that she wouldn’t be able to push him away. It made her feel dirty, and somehow trapped, as if a part of her were stil stuck there with him, in that cramped, dark room.

But today, she’d been too distracted by worries about the speech to pay much attention to Powel , and that, at least, was a blessing.

“Attention, students.” As the PA speaker crackled to life, Beth looked up from her desk. This was it, she knew it. Just as she knew without looking that, three rows back, Harper was watching her.

She looked, anyway.

“Students, I’m pleased to announce the results of our speech contest,” the principal announced, sounding distinctly happier than she had that morning. “Al the submissions were quite impressive, but after tal ying the votes, we have a clear-cut winner.”

Beth held her breath. Harper continued to stare.

“The student selected should report to me after school, in order to discuss the arrangements for the speech.” Beth tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and tried to look calm, as if none of this mattered.

“And the student selected for this great honor is … Harper Grace.” Beth felt al the breath leak out of her in a loud sigh. She felt like a flat tire, empty and ready to crumple.

Behind her, she knew, Harper was stil watching. Only now, she’d be smiling.

“I hope you’l al join me in congratulating Ms. Grace on her accomplishment. I know she wil represent the school with honor and—if you’l pardon the pun—grace.” No one laughed. And no one applauded, or whistled, or did anything to make it appear they thought this was a big deal. Which, Beth supposed, it wasn’t—except to her.

If she’d only turned in the other speech, the
good
speech, this wouldn’t have happened. If she hadn’t cared so much about fol owing the rules, she wouldn’t have lost. She was sure of it.

Harper, after al , never fol owed the rules—and she always won.

Harper caught up with her after class. “Why so glum?” she asked brightly. Beth tried to walk faster, but Harper picked up speed as wel , refusing to fal behind. “Oh, don’t be a sore loser,” Harper chided, her voice saccharine sweet. “Your speech was good … or at least better than mine.”

“I know,” Beth said quietly, bitterly. When would Harper final y leave her alone?

“But it didn’t matter, of course.” Harper shook her head sorrowful y.

“And why’s that?” Beth half expected her to admit she’d rigged the contest. After al , why leave things to chance? Only losers like Beth would be that stupid, right?

“It wouldn’t matter if you’d written the Gettysburg address,” Harper explained—and Beth would think her voice almost kind, if she didn’t know better, if she hadn’t seen the look in Harper’s eye. “You think anyone actual y cared what those speeches said? You think anyone but you was listening? It was a popularity contest. Everything in high school is a popularity contest.”
And how could you get this far before figuring that out?
her look said.
I thought you were supposed to be the smart one
. “That’s why I’l always win. People love me. You can’t beat that.”

“Not everyone loves you,” Beth pointed out, amazed that, for once, she wasn’t frozen and brought to tears by her anger. “Not Adam.” Harper didn’t even flinch. She just smiled indulgently, as if watching a child try fruitlessly to contact the outside world on a plastic telephone.

Certain she could crack the facade, Beth pushed ahead. “None of these people have figured out who you real y are. But Adam gets it—now.”

“What do you know about it?” Harper asked in a perfectly measured voice.

“I know that whatever you try to take from me, you’l never get what you real y want,” Beth snapped. “He won’t stop fol owing me around—but he’s done with you, forever.”

“Nothings forever.”

“Nothing’s more pathetic than watching someone chase after a guy who obviously wants nothing to do with her.” Harper shook her head. “Better watch out—this bitch thing doesn’t suit you. And it can’t possibly have a happy ending.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just a piece of friendly advice,” Harper said, offering a cool smile, “from one bitch to another.”

She walked away, leaving Beth alone in the middle of the hal way, surrounded by the surging crowd of students al with better places to be. She’d final y found the nerve to stand up for herself—and Harper had barely noticed. Maybe she didn’t real y care about Adam, Beth realized, or about anyone but herself. Maybe that’s the kind of person you had to be to wreck other people’s lives.

Yet again, Harper had stolen something from her—and obviously she’d only done it to make Beth more miserable than ever. It made her even more desperate to strike back.

But how could you hurt someone who didn’t have the capacity to feel pain?

She’s wrong,
Harper repeated silently, over and over again.

Beth didn’t know anything about Harper, and she didn’t know Adam as wel as she’d thought, and that should be enough to make her words powerless.
Words can never hurt
me,
she sang to herself, as if this were a Very Special Episode of
Sesame Street
: “B is for Bitch.” Beth was just lashing out, feebly trying to make herself feel better—and it was only an accident that she’d struck a nerve. But Harper couldn’t help wondering whether that mattered. A stopped clock is right twice a day; maybe every once in a while Beth’s bitter, nonsensical babbling stumbled into the truth.

She considered ditching her meeting with the principal and escaping in search of some way to clear her mind. And maybe she would have, if she’d had Miranda by her side, ready to ply her with cigarettes and chocolate chip cookies and assure her, with the certainty of someone who knew from personal experience, that soon enough, Adam would fal prey to her natural charm.

But since she was on her own, as usual, she strode down to the principal’s office, her step steady and with a hint of a bounce so that no one watching would guess the truth.

And the truth was that Beth’s words stil echoed in her mind:

He ‘s done with you
.

Forever
.

And every time she thought of them, it felt like her bones were snapping and her muscles dissolving, so that it soon took al her effort not to crumple to the floor.

“Congratulations, Ms. Grace!” the principal boomed, meeting her in the doorway with a hearty handshake. “How does it feel?” Harper returned the smile, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and looked the principal straight in the eye. “It feels great,” she said, wishing they offered an Oscar for Best Performance in a High School Hal way. “I couldn’t be happier.”

Suspension wasn’t al bad.

In fact, as it turned out, it wasn’t bad at al .

Adam slept late, ordered pizza, watched TV and, in other words, did whatever the hel he wanted to do. It’s not like his mother was home enough to care. She hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t going to school. (And, since he’d successful y forged her signature on the suspension form, there was no reason to think that she ever would.) It wasn’t a bad life. And the coach was right: It gave him plenty of time to think.

That’s what he did al morning, whether he was gnawing cold pizza or flipping aimlessly between ESPN and
The Backyardigans
. He thought about what had been done to him, and how he’d been wronged, and he thought about how there seemed to be no way out. And when the thoughts built up inside his head and it felt like the pressure would cause his eyes to bulge out, that’s when he final y threw on some clothes and a pair of old sneakers and shambled down the street to a dark bar where they wouldn’t bother to check his ID or ask why an eighteenyear-old local basketbal star would want to waste his afternoon slouched over a mug of cheap, stale Bud Light.

Like father, like son,
a voice in his head chanted.

After only a few days, he’d settled into a comfortable routine—and would be almost sorry when the suspension was lifted. Traipsing from class to class—facing his teachers, his ex-friends, his failures—was no match for long, lazy afternoons that turned into long evenings, hidden away in the dark, cozy recesses of the Lost and Found.

Sometimes he struck up a conversation with a regular—they were al regulars, here—and sometimes he kept to himself, his glowering expression keeping the prying strangers away.

“Hey, honey.”

Today, apparently, wasn’t going to be one of those days.

“What’s a nice kid like you doing in a dump like this?”

Adam looked up from his beer. The pickup line was almost older than she was, though not by much. The woman who’d scraped her bar stool over toward him and was now curling a stubby finger through a lock of her platinum blond hair was probably a couple of years younger than his mother. She wore a garish flowered blouse whose neckline plunged far lower than you might have wanted it to, and her nails were painted a bright pink that clashed with her red pants. Each had a little decaí painted on its tip. On the nail of her index finger—

which she was using to trace the rim of his half-empty glass—there was a tiny butterfly.

“How about it, hon, you got a story you want to tel ?”

“Not real y,” Adam mumbled. But he gave her a half smile. She’d been pretty, once—and at the moment, he had nothing better to do. “How about you?”

“Oh, sweetie!” She threw back her head and laughed, and he could see the blackened enamel fil ings lining her molars. “I got about a mil ion of them. Let me tel you—”

“Here I am, Adam.”

He froze as a pair of arms wrapped around him from behind, cool hands pressing his chest. Which might have been a good thing, were they not hands he knew.

“Have you been waiting long?” a too-familiar voice asked.

The older woman’s face reddened—though it was hard to tel , thanks to the several layers of pale pancake and blood red rouge. “I—I didn’t know you had company. I, uh, I’l get out of your hair.”