Robin Wasserman - Envy

Baldy leered down at the two girls, his stained T-shirt exuding the stench of cheap beer.

“You ladies are at our table,” he slurred.

“’S our table,” Mountain Man agreed. “Everyone knows that.”

Baldy tried to squeeze into the booth with Harper, but with a yelp of anger and a sharp jab, she successfully pushed him away. He stumbled backward, but Mountain Man broke his fall.

“Wasn’t nice,” Mountain Man warned them. “You’re sitting at our table, you must belong to us too. Move over.”

Kaia wrinkled her nose and shot Harper a look of disbelief. “Why are these losers talking to us?” she asked.

Harper cringed at her choice of words-she’d spent enough time around Grace’s roughnecks to know that the best tactic was to shut up and get out of the way. But she wasn’t about to be bested by Kaia’s bravado. So she mustered some of her own.

“I don’t know-they must be as stupid as they are ugly,” she said, forcing a laugh. It felt good.

“Who you calling stupid?” Baldy asked menacingly.

“You sure ain’t too ugly yourself, babe,” Mountain Man leered, passing his greasy hand through Harper’s hair. That was enough. She jumped up from the table-and suddenly realized she was taller than both of them.

“Listen, buddy, get the hell out of my face,” she snapped.

“Who’s gonna make me? You? Or your hot little friend?”

As Harper searched for the words that would end this fiasco before it went any further, a scruffy guy about her age came wandering over.

“We got a problem here?” he asked, getting in Mountain Man’s face. “She asked you to leave her alone.”

“Who asked you, shithead?” Baldy growled, stepping up behind their knight in scruffy armor.

It was over in an instant.

Scruff Boy punched Mountain Man in the gut and, before Baldy had a chance to react, gave him a shove hard enough to knock both men to the ground. As the two losers lumbered up to their feet and began advancing on him, they got a nasty surprise-a tap on the shoulder from the Cactus bouncer, a WWE reject who looked like he bench-pressed losers like them for a warm-up. And, apparently, a friend of Scruff Boy’s.

Five minutes later the bouncer was back at the entrance, having barely broken a sweat, Mountain Man and Baldy were stumbling through the parking lot with a few fresh scars to show off to the ladies, and Scruff Boy? He was still standing there.

Harper looked him up and down-medium height, medium build, wildly curly black hair, and dark, catlike eyes. Kind of hot, really, beneath that stubble and the torn Clash T-shirt. She knew who he was, of course-she knew every guy in town. Especially the hot ones. He went to their school, barely (this was his second senior year in a row), played in a band, ran with a crowd that drank too much and smoked even more. Pretty much a total waste of space. But he had, after all, cleaned up their mess. They should probably be polite-

“Why are you still here?” Kaia asked him, curling her lip in disdain.

Or not.

“You two okay?” he asked, in a slow, zoned-out voice. “I’m Reed.” He stuck out his hand for Kaia to shake-she left him hanging.

“We’re fine,” Harper jumped in, again not to be outdone. “So you can just run off back to… whatever it is people like you do.”

He stood frozen in place, looking at them both with a mixture of disgust and disbelief.

“What are you waiting for?” Kaia finally asked. “A medal?”

“Actually, a thank-you,” he informed her. “My mistake.”

“You’re right. It was,” Kaia said, and turned back to Harper. “What was I saying?”

Harper watched the boy out of the corner of her eye. He stood there for another moment, as if waiting for them to let him in on the joke. Then reality sank in. He shook his head and trekked back across the bar to a booth crowded with deadbeat delinquents. They pounded him on the back and slammed him with high fives-impressed by the fight, she supposed. Good thing they hadn’t paid attention to the aftermath. Reed Sawyer could take on two drunken thugs with ease, but apparently in Harper and Kaia, he’d met his match.

“You were about to blow my mind with your oh-so-perfect plan,” Harper prodded Kaia, putting the whole sordid incident out of her mind.

Kaia laid it out for her, step by step, and when she was done, Harper leaned back and let loose a low whistle of admiration. It was breathtakingly perfect-beautiful, and a little complex, but if everything went smoothly, it would deliver the goods. She could already imagine herself in Adam’s arms.

And if Kaia really came through, and she owed all her happiness to her worst enemy? Well, if it got her Adam, it was a debt she’d be willing to spend the rest of her life repaying. And knowing Kaia, that might be exactly how long it would take.

The Wizard of Oz was playing at the Starview. It played there every year in October, and every year, Miranda and Harper went to the last showing and split a large popcorn and an overpriced box of Mike and Ikes. It was tradition, and had been ever since eighth grade, when they’d both desperately wanted to go but had been too embarrassed to admit it to each other. Finally, on the day the movie was set to close, they’d each secretly snuck off to the theater-only to run into each other in the lobby, both buying boxes of Mike and Ikes.

By now it was a ritual set in stone, down to the whispered comments they tossed back and forth during the show and the postmovie pizza and beer at Guido’s. (The beer had been a tenth-grade addition, but in some cases, it was worth making a change.) It was tradition-fixed, beloved, and unbreakable. At least, until now.

Now Miranda stood at Harper’s locker, waiting in vain for her friend to show, watching the minutes slip past and the other students fade from the hall, until only she stood there, patient and alone.

The movie started at five. By four, Miranda was done waiting. She’d already waited an embarrassing half hour too long.

And she wasn’t about to go to the movie herself, not alone, not as if the past five years had never happened and she was still a gawky eighth grader too worried about her status to admit a geeky love for Munchkins.

No, apparently Harper had better things to do-probably some guy had sworn his everlasting love and she’d taken him out for a quick spin-“quick” being the operative word, since use ’em or lose ’em got tedious if you hesitated too long before moving from the former to the latter. Or so Harper always said.

Not that Miranda hadn’t elimidated her share of lovestruck losers-it was just that the tan, dark, and handsome set didn’t usually flock in her direction. At five feet one, maybe she was just too close to the ground for them to see her.

She was tired of being invisible and-apparently-forgettable. Why should Harper have all the fun? Miranda found her car, one of the last in the largely empty lot, and took off toward the strip mall on the edge of town.

Her new and improved look had waited long enough, and outfit number one was there, ready and waiting for her.

Was it too risqué? Did it make her boobs look big? Did the skirt make her ass look huge? Maybe. So what? she fumed silently, trying to drown out Harper’s scoffing voice in her mind. At least it makes a statement. At least people will remember I’m there.

Never return to the scene of the crime. If it worked for Law & Order , it worked for Beth, so she’d spent the last weeks studiously avoiding the newspaper office as best she could. Every time she set foot inside, even with other people around (and she made sure there were always other people around), she could feel the weight of memory pressing down on her. The small space, a refurbished supply closet that she’d petitioned the school to allocate to the newspaper, had felt so cozy, so warm and familiar-a place she’d fought for and won. It had been a home. Now it was just a dank and claustrophobic cave-every time the door closed, her heart sped up, her throat constricted. She felt trapped by those walls, just like she felt in French class every time Mr. Powell’s eyes alighted on her. Sometimes their gaze locked before she could look away, and she felt his eyes boring into her, the way his tongue had when his arms were wrapped around her, pushing himself against her and-