Too bad Adam had lost his appetite.
Beth fidgeted in her seat by the corner of the stage, fuming. When the principal had asked her, as a special favor, to participate in the governor’s assembly even though her speech hadn’t been chosen, she’d figured it was a decent enough consolation prize. Some prize.
It turned out that “participate” had meant “introduce Harper and tell the school what a wonderful girl she is.”
Upon realizing that, Beth had been too horrified to back out-she’d just frozen, bobbing her head up and down in response to the principal’s babbled comments about poise and eloquence.
There wasn’t enough poise in the world to pull this off, Beth thought, glancing to her left, where Harper was playing with a long thread fraying off the pocket of her jeans. The principal had insisted on having a run-through before the main event-and it wasn’t like Beth had anywhere else to be. After all, work wasn’t an issue anymore.
Get out, her manager had said. Take off your uniform, leave your time card, and get out.
All those months of sucking up to him, with his bad breath and greedy comb-over, all those late nights and double shifts, all wasted in a single, fatal failure of her impulse-control system. She’d trashed everything just because Kane Geary couldn’t leave her alone and, for once in her life, she couldn’t just grin and bear it.
Part of her believed it had been worth it, just for the look on his face-at least, the patches of his face visible beneath the dripping milk shake. But the other part of her knew she needed the job: for her family, for college, for keeping herself on track, and sane.
Still, it had felt good.
“Beth?” the principal called. “You’re up.”
“Good luck,” Harper whispered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beth snapped.
“Just… good luck,” Harper said with no trace of a smile. “I’m, uh, sure you’ll be… great.”
Beth stared at her, waiting for the punch line, but there wasn’t one. Harper had never said a friendly word to her-not without an ulterior motive-and there was no reason to think she’d start now. “Don’t talk to me,” she hissed. “I don’t want to hear it.”
Beth walked slowly toward the podium at the center of the stage, thinking that something was wrong here. It should have been Harper delivering the saccharine opening lines, forced to stroke Beth’s ego and choke on her words. It should have been Beth welcoming the governor, awing the auditorium of students and faculty and media with her stunning prose.
For a moment, Beth wondered: If she tried hard enough, could she wake herself up to find that she’d fallen asleep in Adam’s arms three months ago, and all this was just a bad dream, brought on by pre-SAT stress?
“Ms. Manning? Any day now will do,” the principal said dryly.
If it was a nightmare, it wasn’t ending anytime soon.
Beth unfolded the small sheet of paper she’d brought with her, a two-paragraph intro she’d jotted down the night before. She took a deep breath and faced the sea of empty seats. “Thank you, Principal Lowenstein. And thank you, Governor, for visiting Haven High School. We’re all so honored to have you here.” Pause for applause, Beth told herself. But she was just delaying the inevitable.
“I’m now pleased to introduce one of Haven High’s most distinguished students, someone who deeply cares-”
Beth stopped. This was a joke. As if Harper Grace had ever deeply cared about anything except herself.
But they were just words, she reminded herself. Lies, yes, but not important ones. She just needed to talk fast and get it over with.
“Who deeply cares about the future of this school. As everyone knows, Harper Grace-”
She stopped again. She may not have had the nerve to speak the truth, but she didn’t have the stomach to tell the lie.
“Are you okay, Beth?” Harper called from the side of the stage. At the sound of her voice, Beth only felt weaker.
Principal Lowenstein walked over to the podium and put a hand on Beth’s shoulder. She flinched away. “Is everything all right?”
No.
When was the last time the answer hadn’t been no?
“I’m just not feeling very well,” she said softly. “I think… I think I need to go, if that’s all right.”
She fled before the principal had a chance to respond, and before she could see the jeering look on Harper’s face.
Every time she thought she’d scored a point, it seemed like she just got kicked down into the mud again, trampled and humiliated. Everything she tried to do blew up in her face, while every move Harper made was flawless-and deadly.
Beth still had the moral high ground. She had all the principles in the world on her side. But Harper had the strength, the will, and the ruthlessness. Which meant Harper had the power, and maybe she always would.
Miranda had heard the rumors.
That Rising Sun Casino was a desert oasis, filled with bronzed guys and buxom blondes, high-roller tables and penny slots, drama, intrigue, adventure, a twenty-four-hour buffet and all the cocktails you could stomach. And they didn’t card.
It seemed an unlikely setting for Bacchanalia, Miranda thought, as the silver Camaro pulled into a space by the entrance of the casino. A few neon lights flickered on and off, and an old man lounged in the doorway smoking a cigarette. It didn’t scream intrigue so much as infection.
But at least some of the rumors were true, Miranda discovered, as Kane held the door open and she walked down an aisle lined with withering potted palms. The cocktails were abundant, as were the buxom blondes ferrying them around the casino floor.
And indeed, they didn’t card.
“You like?” Kane asked, sweeping his arms wide to encompass the place as if it were his handiwork.
Miranda couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose. “It has a certain… charm.” To her right, a line of older women looked up from their slot machines, their hands fixed on the levers with a death grip. (And they seemed determined to stay there until “death grip” became a literal description.) Eventually, having ascertained that neither Miranda nor Kane looked likely to infringe on their turf, they looked down again, back at the buckets of coins and spinning dials that always came up one short of the jackpot.
Kane laughed. “Never brought a girl here before,” he admitted. “But, somehow, I thought you’d enjoy it.”
Miranda flushed with pleasure. When he’d proposed the impromptu road trip after detention, she certainly hadn’t worried about her curfew, or asked where they were going or when they’d be back. She’d just basked in the glow of his attention.
“So what’s first?” he asked. “Blackjack? Slots? Maybe you want me to teach you a little poker?”
Miranda and Harper had been playing poker late into the night since junior high. They used M &M’s and Vienna Fingers for chips, then ate their winnings. She shook off the memory and grinned up at Kane. “Please. Point me to the poker table. I’ll kick your ass.”
And she would have, too, if he hadn’t pulled out a straight flush at the last second.
It was hard to tell when he was bluffing.
After a full circuit around the casino floor, it was clear: Kane couldn’t lose-not at games of skill, not at games of chance.
They eventually ended up in the gift shop. Kane had declared they needed a souvenir to commemorate the occasion. “How about this?” He held up a teddy bear in a bright blue shirt reading I ♥POKER.
“Congratulations. That may be the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Kane clucked his tongue. “Oh, Stevens, you’re not trying hard enough. Just look around us-this is a cornucopia of crap.”
Miranda had known Kane for a decade, and had studied his every move for almost that long. She’d seen him sardonic, sarcastic, sullen, supercilious-but never quite like this. Never silly.