Wrath - 4 by Robin Wasserman Page B

I have my ways.”
    “Someday, Kane, you’re going to find out you don’t know everything,” Miranda cautioned him.
    “And someday, Stevens, you’re going to find out I know even more than you think.”
    Do the right thing, or do the smart thing?
    She couldn’t flip a coin this time, not with Miranda facing her, waiting for some kind of answer. Miranda was flushed, and kept smiling and staring off into space, as if her brush with the vice principal had completely unhinged her.
    “I’d never ask you to turn yourself in,” Miranda said again. “I just thought you should know what was going on.”
    “And they didn’t mention me at all ?” Beth asked. She felt guilty for even considering weaseling out of responsibility, but she’d never been in trouble before, and the prospect of getting caught terrified her. They were huddled over a smal table in the library, just across from the shelf of col ege guides—a vivid reminder of how much Beth stood to lose.
    Maybe you should have thought of that before you broke the rules, a voice in her head suggested.
    “No,” Miranda confirmed. “They know there’s someone else, but they have no idea who it is.”
    “A month of detentions …” Beth couldn’t imagine it. She’d never even had one.
    And it wasn’t just the fear of spoiling her record—her permanent record—that stopped her. She worked at the diner after school. On off days she babysat for her little brothers and bounced between countless applicationpadding extracurriculars. She couldn’t spend a month in detention; it would ruin everything.
    “Do you want me to turn myself in?” Beth asked, knowing already that the ironclad rules of the teen honor code would force Miranda to say no, regardless of the truth.
    “No, of course not. I mean, unless you …”
    “I could,” Beth offered. “I mean, I would, if you wanted me to. Of course.”
    “Oh, I know you would, of course.”
    “But, you know, if you don’t real y think it would change anything …,” Beth hedged.
    “No, I guess … no reason for us both to go down, right?” Miranda said weakly“! mean, it seems sort of sil y, for you to just—out of solidarity, or something.”
    “But if you wanted me to—”
    “No, only if you wanted to—”
    She deserved that month of detentions, every bit as much as Miranda. But then—what was the difference?
    Did she deserve for her boyfriend to cheat on her? Did she deserve to bomb the SATs after al her studying? To cry herself to sleep every night? To be screwed over by Adam, by Harper, by Kane, to be left alone? What had she ever done to deserve any of that?
    But what had Miranda done, either, other than come along for the ride?
    She opened her mouth, intending to say one thing—and then said another thing entirely.

    “Okay, I guess I’l keep quiet,” she told Miranda, who gave her a thin smile. “Thank you.”
    Beth had always thought of herself as someone who did the right thing, but now she knew the truth. She only did the right thing when it didn’t cost her anything. She opened her mouth to take it back, but Miranda was already standing up and walking away. Not that it mattered: Beth didn’t have the nerve, even if the alternative meant hating herself.
    I’ll make it up to you, she promised Miranda silently. Somehow .
    Kaia didn’t know he was there until he’d crept up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. She almost knocked over her coffee when she whirled around and realized he had approached her in a public place, in a coffee shop, where anyone could see. Powel was on permanent orange alert at the possibility of anyone seeing them together, and if he’d elected to throw his obsessive caution to the wind, it could mean only one thing: He was losing it.
    “How did you know I was here?” she asked, wondering if he’d been fol owing her.
    “I needed to see you,” Powel said, ignoring the question. He wrapped his fingers tightly around her forearm and pul ed her toward a