Robin Wasserman - Sloth

But before she could say anything more, he shut the door and drove away.

“A little to the left, farther, no, now to the right, faster, faster, okay… not there-now! That’s it! Yes!”

“Awesome!” Miranda cried, tossing down the controller and shooting her fists in the air. “I rock!”

“You really do,” Adam marveled. He threw himself back on the couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. “Who knew?”

“High score!” Miranda cheered, pointing at the screen. “See that? I got the high score.”

“Mmph,” Adam grunted.

“Oh, don’t get cranky just because you got beat by a girl.” Miranda tapped her thumb against the buttons until her initials were correctly entered in as a testament to her glory. “Where has this game been all my life?” She glanced over at Adam, giving him a playful grin. “Think I could convince the phys ed department to give me some sort of credit for playing Wild Taxi?”

“ Crazy Taxi “Adam corrected her. “You’ve really never played before?”

Miranda shook her head. “My cousin gave me his old PlayStation, but that was, like, when I was a kid. And it broke after a couple days. This is much cooler.”

“Okay, so what’s next? Resident Evil or Tony Hawk?”

Miranda checked her watch and her eyes bugged out. “Adam, we’ve been playing for two hours.” She hadn’t even noticed the time passing, which was pretty much a miracle since the first ten minutes in Adam’s living room had dragged on forever. Without Harper around, the two had nothing to say to each other; all the more reason to consider Sega Dreamcast a gift from the gods.

“Yeah? So?” Adam hopped off the couch. “Hungry? I could order a pizza, and I think we’ve got some chips or something-”

“Adam, we haven’t even started looking at math,” she pointed out. “What about your test?”

“What about your high score?” he countered. “You really gonna leave it undefended and let me kick your ass?” He plopped down on the floor beside her, lifting a controller and restarting the game.

“But…” Miranda stopped. If he didn’t want to work, it was his funeral, right, she told herself. And after all, just one more game wouldn’t hurt…

They spent another hour glued to the screen, switching from Crazy Taxi to Tony Hawk to NBA 2K1 before they were interrupted again.

“No fair!” she yelled as he sank yet another three-pointer. “You’re captain of the basketball team and I’m barely five feet tall-how am I supposed to block your shots?”

“Miranda, it’s a video game,” he reminded her. “Your guy’s about seven feet tall and he was last year’s MVP. I think it’s a pretty fair matchup.”

She was about to confess that she didn’t actually understand the rules of basketball-a fatal weakness no matter how many all-stars her cyber-team was fielding-when her phone rang. She paused the game and checked the caller ID. Harper.

Adam caught the name on the screen and gave her a pained nod. “You take it. I’ll practice my free throws.”

Miranda flipped open the phone. “Hey, what’s up?” she asked, pretending it was no big deal that Harper had called, though Harper never called, not anymore.

“Nothing. I just… can you talk?”

“Of course.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing much. Just hanging out.” It wasn’t really a lie, Miranda told herself. And it was for a good cause-if she admitted she was busy, Harper would probably just use it as an excuse to hang up again. And if she admitted she was at Adams house, fraternizing with the enemy… she’d have to explain what she was doing there, and Adam had asked her to keep that quiet and, all in all, it was easier just to be vague. “How about you?” “Thinking.”

“You?” Miranda asked, automatically slipping into sarcasm before she remembered that the old days were over.

But Harper laughed. “Crazy, I know. I need to ask you something. Do you think-”

“Woo hoo! High score, baby!”

Miranda winced as Adam’s shouts echoed through the empty house.

“What was that?” Harper asked.

“What?” Miranda said. “I didn’t say anything.”

“The champion returns!”

“Is that Adam?” Harper asked, continuing on before Miranda had a chance to answer. “It is. What’s Adam doing there?”

Miranda sighed. It would have been easier to ignore the whole thing, but she wasn’t about to lie now, no matter what Adam had asked of her. It’s not like he had anything to be embarrassed about-it was just Harper. “Actually, I’m at his house,” she admitted.

Harper didn’t say anything, and for a moment Miranda worried that the line had gone dead.

“Hello? Harper?”

“You’re next door,” she finally said in a low monotone. She didn’t ask why.

Miranda laughed nervously. “It’s not like we’re hanging out, like we’re friends or something. I have to be here-I mean, I don’t have to, like it’s some horrible ordeal. Actually, when you called, he was teaching me how to play some video game, which actually turned out to be fun-crazy, huh?”

“Wild.”

She was babbling, the words spilling out before she had time to think better of it. Which was ridiculous, because there was no need to be nervous-it’s not like she had snuck over here behind Harper’s back. Yes, she’d walked thirty minutes instead of driving over, but not because she didn’t want Harper to spot her car, she reasoned. It was just a beautiful day, and she needed the exercise, and… it’s not like everything she did had to do with Harper, she insisted silently.

It’s not like Harper had any right to care.

“But, really, we’re supposed to be studying,” she tried again. “See, Adam-”

“Miranda.”

She stopped talking abruptly, as if Harper had flipped a switch.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Harper continued. “What do I care if the two of you want to hang out?”

“But we’re not hanging out, I’m-”

“I don’t want to bother you,” Harper said loudly, talking over her. “Sorry I called. Talk to you later.”

“Score!” Adam cried from the living room, just as the phone went dead. Miranda flipped it shut and pressed it against her forehead. However irrational it may have been, she felt like that was her one chance to fix things-and she’d blown it.

Reed hadn’t set out with a destination in mind; he’d just wanted to take the edge off his strangely unsettled mood. He felt like he’d forgotten something important, but his thoughts were too jumbled to pin down what it was. So he decided to ignore it and take a drive. He wasn’t too surprised to see where he’d ended up. He made a sharp right and pulled off onto the small access road that led straight to the glass monstrosity. He’d always hated this house, with its jutting corners and its smooth, shiny facade. It looked like a machine, some gruesome futuristic gadget blown up to unnatural size and dropped into the middle of the desert. It looked wrong, its sleek silver lines out of place in the rolling beiges of the desert landscape.

Kaia had always complained about the scenery-or, as she was quick to point out, lack thereof. They’d stood on her deck and looked out at the deserted space surrounding her house and she’d seen nothing but an ocean of beige. She’d called it a wasteland, but only because she didn’t see that what was sparse and clean could also be beautiful, precisely because it had nothing to hide. He hadn’t had the words to explain it to her, however, so he’d just shrugged, and then kissed her.

She hated the house, too, but for different reasons. It was her outpost of civilization, true, but it was also her prison, and she resented its cream-colored walls and architecturally avant-garde floor plan, and even its size. She’d explained to him that her mother’s penthouse apartment back home could fit into one wing of her father’s mansion, and that the giant empty house swallowed her up and made her feel small and alone. It was the same way Reed felt about the desert, except he liked it.