Robin Wasserman - Envy

Sometimes it seemed like everyone she knew had something she wanted. Money, men-it didn’t end there. She was even jealous of Adam’s good-natured honesty, Kane’s car-and his complete lack of scruples. Even Miranda had something Harper occasionally longed for: obscurity. She didn’t have to worry about people watching, judging her every move. She didn’t have to constantly perform. She could just be .

It was as if everyone had something , something that made their lives better, special-and what did Harper have?

For one thing, she had the admiration of every kid in school. But, late at night, deep in the back of her mind, a small voice questioned what they saw when they looked at her. Was it real? Or did it all rest on an elaborate bluff?

Because if Harper really was who they said she was, if she really did have anything a girl could ever want, why did she lie awake so many nights wishing she were someone-almost anyone -else?

Anyone else might have lain awake all night, every night, struggling with his conscience, worrying about his betrayal of a friend, wondering if he was doing the right thing.

Not Kane.

No, as he stretched himself out along the couch and tucked a thin blanket over himself, his mind was untroubled, his conscience clear.

And he did have a conscience-despite his constant boasts to the contrary. True, it didn’t get much of a workout. But it was, like everything else about Kane, fully functioning-and, he insisted to himself, in this case it just had nothing to say.

He flicked on the TV-he needed it to fall asleep, to fill the silence of his empty house-and closed his eyes.

So he was in hot pursuit of Adam’s girlfriend. So what? First, as he’d pointed out to Harper, he and Adam weren’t best friends. Spending time with people didn’t automatically make you close, it didn’t mean you could depend on them. He’d learned that the hard way, a long time ago. And he wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. He liked Adam, liked hanging out with him-he certainly out-classed the rest of the Haven High gang of losers-but they didn’t owe each other anything.

Second, Beth was just a girl. Sure, Adam would be broken up, for a while-but he’d recover.

And then, there was the third issue. The status of his so-called crime: Was it even possible to steal something that had already been stolen? Because Kane had spotted Beth first. Kane had pursued Beth first. And by the rules of the game-rules that, in the old days, Adam had readily agreed to-Beth had been his for the taking. Until Adam swooped in and took her away. Beth had forgotten. Adam had forgotten.

But Kane remembered.

She had chosen Adam over Kane. She’d fallen for Adam’s good-boy looks, his good-boy charm. She’d brushed Kane away from her like a gnat and given herself to Adam. And ever since then, everything had been different. Adam was different, ignoring every other girl, most of the time ignoring Kane-all he wanted was Beth. To be with her, to talk about her, to hold her. Kane couldn’t stand it. Partly because he hated to see a friend morph into one of those relationship pod people, jettisoning all the interesting parts of his personality. Trying his best to behave-to obey.

But more than that, Kane couldn’t stand the possibility that Beth wasn’t “just a girl,” that she really was something special, something new-and that she belonged to someone else. Kane was not, by nature, a covetous person. Envy was too passive for him. To envy something, after all, you had to be sitting on the sidelines, watching what someone else had. Wanting it, longing for it, and powerless to get it.

Kane didn’t do powerless. He didn’t waste his time wishing he had someone else’s life, someone else’s possessions. He was who he was, he had what he had-and when he discovered something out there in the world that he needed? He took it.

Harper didn’t usually associate with Beth and her little clique during gym class. Of course she had to be nice to Adam’s girlfriend, and pretend they were friends, but that didn’t mean they needed to be bosom buddies. So usually, after suffering through the forty-five minutes of torture better known as phys ed, she stayed on the other side of the locker room, sliding out of her hideous orange and black uniform and back into her real clothes as quickly as possible so that she could get the hell out. (The girls’ locker room, although lacking the overpowering stench of sweat ever-present in the guys’ locker room, was still not the type of place in which you wanted to kick back and relax.) But today was different. Today she had a mission. Kane and Harper had conferred, and agreed: It was time to set Kaia’s plan into motion.

She moved into position-a few feet away from Beth and the group of mousy blondes who surrounded her. When Beth, with her watered-down personality, managed to be the center of attention, you had to wonder about the quality of the company. Imagine a group that found the Queen of Bland riveting, Harper marveled to herself.

Far enough away to be unobtrusive, but close enough to… to do what she had to do.

She felt a small twinge of guilt about the whole thing, but quickly squelched it. She was doing all of them a favor, she reminded herself. Beth and Adam’s rickety relationship was being held together by a Band-Aid-and it would be less painful for all involved if someone just ripped it off, nice and quick.

Lucky for them all, Harper was up to the task.

“God, if I never have to run laps again, it’ll be way too soon,” Marcy sighed, stripping out of her sweaty gym uniform.

“Who invented gym, anyway?” Marcy’s best friend, Darcy, chimed in.

Beth laughed, letting the familiar chatter wash over her. It was the same every week with these girls: Gym sucked. School sucked. Guys rocked. Gym sucked. Rinse and repeat.

They weren’t her friends, exactly-beyond Marcy and Darcy (one never went anywhere without the other), they weren’t even friends with one another. But they were all dating guys on the team-the swim team, the basketball team, the lacrosse team, depending on the season. It didn’t really matter. At a school this small, there was pretty much only one Team. And whatever the season, Adam was its captain. Which somehow made Beth-what, exactly? She was never sure. Not the most popular, certainly. That would always be Harper, who kept herself aloof from “the girlfriends” but still managed to gain their unadulterated admiration. Not the best liked-for Beth was unsure whether these girls actually liked anyone. She was certain, however, that if she and Adam ever broke up, the flock of giggling girls would disappear along with him. But at the moment she seemed to have a certain cachet. It was as if they were all drawn to one another by some elusive girlfriend pheromone, and hers was-by virtue of dating Adam, Big Man on Campus-the strongest. Maybe it was some kind of evolutionary reflex.

Or maybe you’ve just been spending too much time staring at your AP bio book , she thought, laughing at herself and her insatiable need to overanalyze everything. Why couldn’t she just accept these girls for whatever they were? Comfortable acquaintances, just another perk of dating Adam, like free tickets to football games and a ride to school whenever she needed one.

So what if they were vain and vapid? It’s not like she could afford to be choosy-she didn’t have too many friends these days, beyond Adam. So she should probably stop being so judgmental and just take what she could get.

“So are you, Beth?” Marcy asked insistently.

“Am I what?” Beth asked in confusion, suddenly realizing all eyes were on her. She pulled off her gym uniform and began brushing out her long, blond hair. Back in ninth grade, when she’d walked into the locker room for the first time, she’d been insanely bashful about letting the other girls see her change. Over the course of a few months, she even developed a system of contortions that would allow her to change from her clothes into her gym uniform and back again without revealing a square of naked flesh to anyone. Four years later the whole thing seemed ridiculous. She was totally comfortable now wandering around the locker room in her underwear-it was just another part of the high school experience, like cafeteria food. And trigonometry. She couldn’t even remember what her problem had been. Of course, she mused, back then no one ever saw her naked, and the very thought of revealing herself to another person had made her skin crawl. Then came Adam.