Wired

by Francine Pascal

  She flashed him a you’ve-gotta-be-kidding look. Who would she tell? “Uh, yeah. Promise.”

  “I, uh, actually kind of wish I could bring Heather. You know, for old times’ sake,” he clarified. “I think she’d really like to be there, and I feel bad that she won’t be able to go. I mean, I feel bad about everything, you know, with her. I think we could have had fun.”

  Ed knew Gaia understood. She and Heather had come to understand each other after all they’d been through. When Gaia had visited Heather in the hospital, they had really bonded. Ed knew that Gaia could relate to his feelings of nostalgia.

  “Yeah, Heather was definitely born for prom.” Gaia chuckled. “I’m sure she’d love to go.”

  “Yeah,” Ed agreed. He didn’t mention that as a general rule, he wasn’t especially impressed by girls who were born for prom. When Ed and Heather had been together, what he’d liked most about her was the side of her that her clotheshorse friends didn’t get to see (and probably wouldn’t have appreciated if they had seen). And ever since the second go-round with Heather, his standards were even higher. Kai’s open, friendly personality and adorable, skater-trendy looks weren’t even enough for him. Maybe he’d been sort of reverse spoiled by Gaia. Maybe he needed someone who posed a constant challenge, someone who never let things lie, someone who was always, somehow, steeped in adventure…. Crap, he thought. Maybe I won’t ever be satisfied with a normal girl.

  “But the more I think about it… maybe you should ask Kai,” Gaia broke in, as if thinking aloud. “Heather might feel uncomfortable back at the Village School, with everything that’s… happened. And you and Kai would definitely have fun. But you should ask her soon. You’re too good of a guy to string her along until the last minute.” She gazed steadily at him, an intimate knowledge and affection written across her features. Though when Gaia had brushed up on her knowledge of gender dynamics was a further mystery to him.

  Ed sighed, wishing he could muster up more enthusiasm for the pseudorelationship he had somehow fallen into. “Yeah,” he replied. “I guess I am.”

  GAIA

  So Ed and Kai are going to the prom as friends. That’s cool.

  Really. Ed’s had a hard time, after everything that happened with Heather and the accident. I know that a lot of his friends freaked when he was in a wheelchair, didn’t know how to deal, blew him off. He went from being “Shred” Fargo, daredevil skate rat, dating the most popular girl in school, to pretty much being a social pariah. I mean, no one wants to date the guy in the wheelchair. Or you know, even maneuver their way through a few awkward conversations to steer things back to usual. So that had to really suck for him, just to understate things a bit.

  I think that’s why he and I connected at first. We both knew what it was like to be singled out, to be the weird one, the person that’s a little different, that no one knows how to handle. We were both used to being avoided or ignored. And so when I tried to use my typical emotional defense tactics against him, he saw through my BS and wouldn’t take it. So of course I think he’s great. A great catch. Probably my best friend and definitely one of my only friends. And, as established, I’m not exactly one for winning friends and influencing people.

  I have no doubt that a relationship never would have worked out between us. For starters, I’ve proven completely incapable of the typical John-Hughes-movie-style high school romance. The closest I’ve ever gotten to true cheese was when Ed handed me a big, honking wheel of it on one of our dates. He was joking, of course, but he knew. He knew I needed help in the cheese department. A cheese tutorial.

  Then there’s also the fact that anyone I date for more than, oh, twenty-four hours finds their life in jeopardy. And I’m not being melodramatic. I wish to God I were. Ed knew this and was willing to cope with it, but I couldn’t do that to him. He was just too vulnerable, and I care about him too much. I couldn’t see the same thing happen to him that happened to Sam.

  So if Ed’s single right now, then Kai is pretty much the perfect prom date. She’s cute, she’s fun—as far as I can see—and she clearly likes him a lot. And she’s probably at least a little interesting, because I don’t think Ed could hang out with her if she wasn’t.

  And most of all, she’s normal. In a way that Ed hasn’t seen in a while, in a way that he deserves. She probably won’t be on the run from some ancient enemy of her father’s with a killer-eye for sharpshooting, and she probably won’t try and manipulate him financially or emotionally or expect him to be anything he’s not. She’s probably perfect for him. You know, as a normal, no-strings -attached, 1et’s-hang-out-after-school-and-chill friend.

  And since Ed is my best friend—let’s face it, the closest thing to a true soul mate that I’ve known, someone who understands me beyond the surface chemistry that often brings two people together—then of course, I want him to have that. A stable friend, without questions or drama.

  Which so isn’t me.

  So I’m cool with it. Really.

  Damn.

  ED

  Okay. Just when I think that 1) Gaia can’t get any stranger, or 2.) I’ve gotten so accustomed to her strangeness that it isn’t going to faze me anymore, some new form of weirdness comes and resets the charts, blows all of my theories to hell, forces me to update the Gaia files.

  Gaia Moore is worried about prom? Screw that-Gaia Moore is interested in attending the prom? I mean, I know that when we were dating, we took some baby steps toward standard dating procedures, and I’m not naïve enough to pretend that she and Jake don’t have at least some basic working knowledge of male-female relations, but still.

  This is all very odd.

  It’s as if she’s been possessed by the spirit of Heather Gannis-which I’m not saying is such a bad thing. Just radically unexpected.

  Gaia wants to go to prom. Gaia worries that she won’t be asked. Gaia wonders what she’ll wear. Gaia stresses over Jake. Gaia cries?

  I’m baffled, truly.

  I have to say, though, that this alternate universe into which we’ve stumbled makes me think twice. What would it be like to be dating this new Gaia? She might, for example, be more willing to expose herself to me (emotionally. Expose herself emotionally, I mean). Would she be more open to honesty and intimacy? Less afraid of being dependent? All of those issues that burdened our relationship… would they just be… gone?

  Probably not. I mean, people don’t just undergo entire personality transplants overnight (except for Heather, but, well, there were extenuating circumstances in that case). Gaia’s just too… Gaia. It wouldn’t work between us. No way.

  Good thing I’ve got that straight.

  date for the prom

  restored to red-blooded, daredevil, heartthrob status

  Remedial Fear Management

  INEXPLICABLY, GAIA FELT AN overwhelming rush of relief on stepping through the automatic doors of St. Vincent’s and back out onto the street. The air was no fresher than it had been on her journey to the hospital, but at least she was outdoors. Her conversation with Ed had left her feeling panicky, like she was suffocating—a sensation that was fast becoming all too familiar. She inhaled deeply, reveling in the slight release of tension, hastily resuming normal breathing patterns once she realized, again, that a New York City street corner wasn’t exactly the great outdoors.

  She shrugged, turned on her heel, and started off in the direction of the boardinghouse. She glanced briefly at her watch. It wasn’t too late, actually; there might even be an hour or two of shopping left. She wondered fleetingly about calling Liz. Didn’t other girls give their friends a call whenever they felt like it, just to hang out? Couldn’t they manage simple, casual, teenage social graces? Gaia’s head spun. Logically, she knew she was wasting precious emotional energy obsessing about something mundane.

  But she couldn’t stop.

  She gritted her teeth. She had known that there would be a downside to experiencing fear. She’d expected to feel more nervous, possibly more anxious, and
of course a little more cautious in the face of battle. But what she hadn’t counted on was this all-consuming anxiety. Was this really what other people went through every day? Second guessing every gesture and action, no matter how inconsequential? She didn’t think so. Other people had years of practice managing their emotions, their insecurities. They had learned to prioritize the real concerns and rationalize those that were merely a hindrance to basic human functioning. Gaia, conversely, needed some sort of crash course. Remedial fear management. Ha. Did they offer that at the Learning Annex? Was she going to have to sign up for industrial-level therapy? The idea made her giggle nervously—she wasn’t sure it was such a joke. Or if it was a joke, she wasn’t sure how fuhny it was.

  Turning down a quiet side street, she was startled by the sound of breaking glass. Glancing to her right, she was shocked to see three thuggy-looking boys—she thought the oldest was no more than fifteen, max—swinging something heavy and blunt at the basement-level window of a brownstone.

  Having spent so many evenings in Washington Square Park, it was rare for the sight of petty crime to surprise Gaia, but this—obviously an attempt to break into a private residence—was new. This was amazingly ballsy. This was broad daylight. Yes, it was a slightly quieter side street of the West Village, and yes, there weren’t a ton of people out and about, but really. She literally couldn’t believe her eyes. Either the boys genuinely hadn’t noticed her or they had noticed her but didn’t find her to be a threat.

  Her heart jumped into her throat. A big part of her hoped that the boys hadn’t seen her, would just go about their business, not bothering her if she didn’t bother them. But another part of her—the part that actually remembered fearlessness—couldn’t just let this go. She had no idea what these boys were up to: it could be an intended burglary, or it could be something more benign—low-level vandalism, cheap thrills, or something…. But she found that she couldn’t walk away, despite the adrenaline coursing through her system at warp speed. She’d already survived one battle today. Heck, she’d more than survived—she’d triumphed. She knew, intellectually, that she could do this. It was mainly an issue of getting her emotions on board.

  She sized the boys up mentally. All three were crouched over the window, bashing the remaining shards of glass with whatever object happened to be handy. The smallest was wiry and young looking. His shredded tan cords were hanging low, and Gaia could practically count the knobs of his lower spine through the pale strip of skin that was exposed. His two partners were bigger, but not by much. One wore a backward baseball cap that had seen better days and dusty black cargos. The other, the one she had presumed to be the oldest, sported a crew cut and a worn concert T-shirt. The Grateful Dead. How original. Like this kid was even old enough to have seen them perform the first time around….

  The Deadhead was the likely ringleader since he was, as quietly as possible while still using an authoritative tone, prodding the other two. “There, you got it, dude!” he exclaimed, as though pleasantly surprised that the window was, in fact, demolished. “We’re in.” He paused contemplatively. “D’ya think there’s an alarm?” The other two nodded as though they’d been thinking the exact same thing. Gaia herself had been wondering this, but they’d been at the window for a while, so if the cops were going to come, she figured they would already have arrived.

  No alarms, then. It was all up to her. There was that intellectual thought process again, the one that begged her emotions to come along for the ride.

  You can do this, she told herself. You’ve done it literally hundreds of times. Chances are, all you’ll need to do is put a scare in them, anyway. She realized that her palms were clenched tightly and that she was sweating profusely. Thank you, fear. She forced herself to work it out: all she had to do, she knew, was take out the Deadhead. Once he was overpowered, his sad little cronies would surely fall into line. And since they had their backs to her and were infinitely consumed with their work, she had the element of surprise working in her favor, in addition to her years of training. She willed her trembling limbs to steady and thought back to this afternoon, how she’d been able to break up the mugging with relatively little difficulty. It didn’t matter that she was terror girl these days. Frightened or not, she still had to bust a little ass kicking.

  She tiptoed up behind Deadhead and swiftly wrapped an elbow around him, yanking him backward in a forceful headlock. “Hey, wha—,” he cried in alarm.

  “I don’t know what you losers are doing, but it’s not going to happen,” Gaia growled. She could hear the nervous lilt to her voice and didn’t like the sound of it. She struggled to contain her emotions.

  “Let me go,” Dead yelled, obviously forgetting all about causing a scene. That wouldn’t do. Gaia didn’t want the cops to come any more than he did. Cops would only lead to questions that she wasn’t prepared to answer.

  “Shut up—,” she ordered as one of the others whacked her in the back of her knees with whatever they’d been using to break the window. It was a cheap trick, and she crumbled like a sack of potatoes. Focus, Gaia, focus, she commanded herself. She rolled to her right and swept her legs around, tripping and toppling Dead. Using the momentum of the roll, she leapt back to her feet, crouching into a ready position.

  “Yo, what are you on, bitch?” Cargo Pants snarled, which was ironic given that the chances that he was high far outweighed the chances that she was. He lunged at her, and she grabbed his arms and wrestled him to the ground. Clinging to her elbows, he flipped them over in tandem so that he had her pinned. He hauled off and slammed down, missing her nose by inches.

  Gaia tilted her head, absorbing the impact on her cheek. Her head ricocheted off the pavement and her ears rang. That can’t be good, she thought briefly. She was losing ground—losing the fight—fast. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the smallest was creeping closer. Mustering a burst of reserve energy, she drew her legs into her chest and released with full force, the flats of her feet connecting solidly with his lower shins. He fell to the ground, clutching his legs and moaning. “Let’s get out of here,” he whimpered.

  Dead’s eyes darted back and forth along the block. “Yeah. Someone definitely heard this. We gotta get out of here before the cops come.” He glared menacingly down at Gaia, picking himself up slowly and dusting his jeans off. “You got lucky, girl. We hafta hit the road.” He spat by way of punctuation.

  She glared at him as ominously as she could. “Lucky, my ass.”

  But the boys were already over it. They’d gathered their bag of tricks—whatever was in it was seriously heavy, Gaia knew firsthand, but they snatched it up and scampered away.

  She exhaled slowly. Her ribs hurt, and she guessed a bruise was already forming on her cheek. But she’d stopped the burglary or whatever it was. That was something.

  And oh, yeah. That level of exertion required to cause a total failure of Gaia’s system? The one that dictated that she pass out after any scuffle? Yeah, Still fully functional. Before she could attempt to clear her head and drag her weary body to a semi-safe location, the familiar darkness set in and the world dropped away.

  Memo

  From: L

  To: Team U

  Re: Genesis

  Subject spotted downtown intercepting a breaking and entering. As per the norm, subject rendered unconscious by exertion.

  Subject is not to be harmed under any circumstances. Order full-time surveillance, protection when necessary.

  No one will hurt her.

  Basic Human Niceties

  ED HEARD THE DOORBELL RING BUT couldn’t bring himself to rush to answer it. He knew his mother would race for the door, anyhow. She was so thrilled to have walking, talking, dating, and heck—even convalescing Ed back home that she didn’t mind taking care of him in these small ways. Ed knew she’d be ecstatic to open the door to his “cute little girlfriend” and show Kai to his room. It didn’t matter how many times he told her that he and Kai had broken up; Ed’s mother was deter
mined to imagine her son’s teenage experience to be idyllic. Short-term paralysis notwithstanding, of course.

  He was being bitter, he knew. The entire time he’d been wheelchair bound, he had resented his parents and his sister for being awkward and strange around him. Somehow they’d been embarrassed by his handicap, and since Ed himself was having a hard enough time dealing with it, he could have done with some more support from them. But it had never come.

  Now, though, his parents couldn’t dote on him enough. His sister, when she was home, cooed over him and teased him about what a lady-killer he’d become. She didn’t seem to notice that he and Kai had regressed to the realm of the platonic. And every time the phone rang or someone came to the door for Ed, the Fargos took it as another personal victory. They had won their son back from the land of the ill and disfigured.

  Today was no exception. “Why, hello, Kai!” he could hear his mother trilling, a shade too enthusiastically. Quelle Donna Reed. Her shrill voice echoed off the tiles of the front hallway. “How nice of you to stop by! Ed’s just gotten back—he’s in his bedroom.”

  It was a sure sign that they still, on some level, considered him an invalid: they had no qualms about sending girls straight to his bedroom. Maybe they were hoping they’d catch him in the throes of a passionate make-out session—proving his “recovery” complete, once and for all.

  Come to think of it, it would be a fun theory to prove. Too bad there weren’t any real, viable contenders these days.

  There was a hearty rap at the door, followed by his mother’s energetic singsong once again. He wondered if that level of perkiness was exhausting to her to maintain. “Ed? Ed, guess who’s here?”

  “I can’t imagine,” he mumbled to himself, softly enough that neither Kai nor his mother would hear from the other side of the door.