The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be. Socrates.
He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat. Napoleon.
It’s not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required. Winston Churchill.
That one appealed to her the most.
I will do what I have to do and no matter what, I will survive. Harper Grace.
“Where to?”
Beth leaned her head back against the seat and halfheartedly tried to wipe some of the grime off her window, as if the answer to his question might arise from a better view. “Wherever.” The word came out as a sigh, fading to silence before the last syllable.
“Okay.” Reed drove in circles for a while. He had nowhere to be. When she’d called, he had been at his father’s garage, tinkering with an exhaust system and ready for a break. “Can you come?” she’d asked. And for whatever reason, he’d dropped everything and hopped in the truck. He’d found her slouched at the foot of a tree, just in front of the school, hugging her arms to her chest and shivering. She wouldn’t tell him anything, but when he extended a hand to help her into the truck, she squeezed.
It’s not like they were friends, he told himself. But she needed something, and he had nothing better to do. He couldn’t help but notice that she relaxed into her seat, stretching out along the cracked vinyl, unlike Kaia, who almost always perched on the edge and sat poker-straight in an effort to have as little contact with the “filthy” interior as possible. Beth also hadn’t commented on his torn overalls or the smudges of grease splashed across his face and blackening his fingers.
Reed caught himself and, for a moment, felt the urge to stop the car and toss her out on the side of the road. But it passed. “Wanna talk about it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t even want to think about it,” she said. “Any chance you can take me somewhere where I can do that? Stop thinking?”
She said it bitterly, as if it were an impossible challenge. But she obviously didn’t know who she was dealing with.
Reed swung the car around the empty road in a sharp U-turn and pressed down on the gas pedal. She sighed again heavily, and without thinking, he reached over to put a hand on her shoulder, but stopped in midair-maybe because Kaia had trained him welclass="underline" no greasy fingers on white shirts. Maybe because he didn’t want to touch her- or maybe because he did.
He put his hand back on the wheel and began drumming out a light, simple beat. “I know just the place,” he assured her. “We’ll be there soon.” It felt good to have a destination.
Adam crushed the paper into a ball and crammed it into the bottom of his backpack, then butted his head against the wall of a nearby locker-stupid idea, since all it produced was a dull thud and a sharp pain, neither of which went very far toward alleviating his frustration.
But a stupid idea seemed appropriate; after all, what other kind did he have?
Fifty-eight percent.
Maybe if he and Miranda had spent more time working and less time playing video games and talking about Harper… At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do. For those few hours, he’d felt more normal and more hopeful than he had in a long time. Though he and Miranda had never been close, they had history-and, more important, they had Harper. He hadn’t needed to confide in her, because she already knew how he felt. And he knew she felt the same.
She was a good friend, he’d realized.
Just maybe not a very good tutor.
Or maybe it’s just me, Adam thought in disgust. He’d actually studied this time, staring at the equations long enough that at least a few of them should have started to make sense and weld themselves to his brain. But the test had been a page of incomprehensible hieroglyphics, and Adam’s answers-what few he bothered to attempt-were mostly random numbers and symbols that he strung together in an approximation of what he thought an algebra equation should look like.
Thanks to Mr. Fowler’s supersonic grading policy-all tests graded and returned by the end of the school day, courtesy of a team of eager beaver honor students who gave up their lunch period for some extra credit and a superiority complex-he didn’t have long to wait for the results. Not that there was much suspense.
Fifty-eight percent. It was scrawled in an angry red, next to a big, circled F and a note reading Come see me.
Instead, Adam dumped his stuff in his locker and walked out of school. It was bad enough he’d had to show up in the first place. Haven teachers were “encouraged” to postpone tests and important lessons for Community Service Day, but Adam’s math class was for sophomores and juniors. Which meant enduring both a brain-busting test and the curious stares of his classmates who obviously wondered what kind of loser he was to get left so far behind. Now that he was free for the day, he wasn’t going back.
He stomped out of the school, the pounding of his footsteps mirrored by the rhythmic battering of a single word against his brain:
Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.
His basketball was in the trunk, and the court across from the school parking lot was empty. It was a no-brainer- fortunately, since his brain was otherwise occupied.
Adam dribbled up and down the court, forcing himself to take it slow and easy. At first the word beat louder, in time with the ball slapping his palm and then slamming into the concrete.
STU-pid.
STU-pid.
STU-pid.
But then he sank his first basket. Adam had always been able to lose himself in the soft sigh of the ball sinking through the net, and today was no different. He emptied his mind and let his body take over, relaxing into the familiar thwack and crack and swoosh that made him feel more alive. Chest heaving, muscles aching, sweat pouring down his face, he didn’t notice the time passing or the sky darkening. He stopped only briefly to take a few swigs of water, and again to pull off his shirt and toss it to the sidelines, dimly registering that the scalding afternoon sun had given way to a cool breeze.
He didn’t notice Kane step onto the court-it wasn’t until the rebound dropped into Kane’s hands that Adam looked up. It wasn’t the sight of Kane’s tall, angular figure poised under the basket that knocked Adam out of the zone; it was the break in the rhythm, when suddenly the expected crack of the ball against pavement was replaced by a soft slap and then silence, as Kane cradled the ball to his chest.
They hadn’t faced each other on a basketball court since the game last month, when Adam started a fight with the other team and, in the chaos, flattened Kane, accidentally on purpose. The bruises had taken a couple weeks to fade; Kane’s basketball career had dissipated more quickly, as he hadn’t returned to practice since.
Kane held the ball and looked at Adam expectantly, his infuriating smirk gone. There were a lot of things Adam could have said-many that he’d said before, many he’d been holding in for a long time:
I thought we were friends.
Did you want Beth, or did you just want to screw with me?
Are you happy now?
We both slept with someone who died.
Are you as freaked out by that as I am?
What happens now?
“Check it,” he called, reaching for the ball. Kane bounced it toward him. “First to fifteen.”