Kiss

by Francine Pascal

Instead she just stood there, frozen in place, absently rubbing the knuckles of her right hand, watching Ella's shoulders rise and fall, rise and fall, inside the tight angora sweater.

  Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock.

  After another fifteen seconds Ella slowly crawled away from Gaia toward the foot of the stairs. Once there, she reached up and grabbed hold of the banister, then hoisted herself to her feet. Her spandex skirt had bunched up around her waist, and she took a moment to pull it back down. She smoothed down her sweater. Then, squaring her shoulders, she started slowly up the stairs.

  She was halfway to the second floor when Gaia found her voice.

  "Ella . . ."

  Above her, Ella paused but didn't turn around. Tilting her head slightly, like a sleepwalker hearing her name being called, she said softly: "Wait there." Her voice sounded strange. Thick.

  She continued up the stairs.

  Gaia watched as Ella's legs disappeared from view. Listened as the click of Ella's heels faded away, drowned out by the clock in the hall.

  Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock.

  It sounded remarkably like a time bomb.

  Dissolving

  BLOOD. SHE WAS TASTING HER OWN goddamn blood.

  Once she was out of Gaia's sight, Ella moved more quickly. Around to the next flight of stairs. Eighteen steps to the third floor. Right foot, left foot, right foot. Up, up, up.

  Her tongue felt too large for her mouth. It was too wide, too thick. As she mounted the stairs, she explored her tongue's surface with her teeth, wincing as her incisors sank into the gash she'd bitten into it when the little bitch had punched her.

  When the little bitch had punched her.

  The cut felt deep.

  The little bitch had punched her.

  Despite the pain she bit down harder now, feeling oddly energized as more blood welled into her mouth. It tasted sharp and bitter, like acid.

  Punched her. Her.

  It was acid, she decided, stepping swiftly onto the third floor. Acid, pumping through her heart, coursing through her veins. She could feel it -- couldn't she? -- burning in her cheeks, raging in her ears. It would dis-solve her. It was dissolving her. Eating her from the inside out. She had to hurry. There was no time to lose.

  Ten feet down the hall to her dressing room.

  Her gun was in the dressing room.

  She didn't care what Loki would say. Didn't care what he would do.

  She was tasting her own goddamn blood!

  Besides, she knew what had to be done now. It was obvious.

  Loki had been wrong. Loki was wrong.

  It was not of "utmost importance" that the "subject" be kept alive. That had been their mistake from day one.

  As long as his daughter was alive, Tom Moore wasn't going to risk her life by showing his face anywhere near her.

  But the bastard might come to her funeral.

  Go

  TICKTOCK. TICKTOCK. TICKTOCK.

  Gaia stood in the foyer. Watching the stairs. Waiting for Ella to return.

  Should she stay? Try to fix this gaping rupture? Was there any point? Could she make herself apologize for George's sake?

  Stay or go?

  Ella was insane. This night was insane.

  Stay or go?

  She could hear Ella's footsteps again. She was coming back down the stairs now, rounding the landing one floor above.

  Without realizing she'd made a decision, Gaia let her long strides carry her down the hallway. Numbly she pulled on her coat and threw her bag over her shoulder. The cold doorknob filled her hand, and she turned it with a click.

  "Good-bye, house. Good-bye, George," she whispered. "Sorry about this."

  She had a feeling as she stepped out the door that she wouldn't be coming back.

  GAIA

  I remember the summer I started carrying pennies.

  I was five years old, and we were living in our Manhattan apartment. My mom's dad got sick late that spring. He was dying, it turns out. Every weekend when we'd drive my mother to visit him in his hospital in New Jersey, my dad would take me to the Jersey shore.

  You see, when you're driving back into Manhattan from the Jersey side, you have to go through a tollbooth. Nowadays things are pretty high-tech, with laser scanners and special stickers you can get for your car, but back then my dad would pay using tokens.

  Of course, to a five-year-old, a coin's a coin. And to me, those tokens looked just like pennies.

  Somehow, in my little-kid brain, I concluded that in order to get back home, you needed pennies for the tolls. From that moment on, I started carrying extra pennies with me. Just in case.

  For some reason, I had this silly notion that my parents could somehow lose me. You know -- just take their eyes off me around a corner or something and not be able to find me again. Maybe all kids think like that when they're small. Anyway, I wanted to make sure that if I ever got separated from my folks, I'd have enough money to pay the toll and get back home on my own.

  Later on, when I was older and knew better, I still carried pennies. By then it had just become this sort of superstitious habit of mine. My talisman. My good luck charm.

  It wasn't until I was in sixth grade that my father finally noticed and asked me about it. When I explained the whole tollbooth story to him, he laughed. Told me I always worried about the wrong things.

  A year later my mother was killed and my father took off, leaving me behind.

  So I guess it wasn't such a silly notion after all.

  I don't carry pennies for good luck anymore. They don't work all that well, as it turns out.

  a reason to stay

  Mary attached herself to Gaia by the hand, and Gaia let herself be pulled toward a waiting group that, for the moment at least, could pass as friends.

  Red Light, Green Light

  THERE WERE TIMES WHEN A four-dollar vanilla latte with an extra dollop of foam seemed like the answer to every single one of life's problems.

  Tonight it just seemed like an overpriced cup of coffee.

  Sitting at one of the window seats at the Starbucks on Astor Place, Gaia forced herself to take another slug of the sickly sweet concoction. It wasn't easy. Ten minutes ago it had been lukewarm. Now it was closer to cold. It reminded her of the milk left over from a bowl of sugar cereal.

  Outside, across Fourth Avenue, the giant clock face on the side of the Carl Fischer building showed that it was almost eleven.

  God, what a night. Living with George and Ella had never been great, but it was a place to be. A place to keep what little stuff she had. And her tenuous toe-hold in their house had made her a New Yorker. She liked that.

  Now it was gone, and she had that slightly metallic, nauseating taste in her throat that came with running away. Or drinking syrup-sweet coffee soup. Or the combination.

  She knew the taste because she'd run away before. Never successfully, though. She always ended up back where she started or in a different foster home, facing even greater doubt and suspicion from her newest "family."

  This time would be different. Packed into the various zippered compartments of her messenger bag and parka were bills totaling over eight hundred dollars -- three months of chess winnings. She carried it on her all the time. It was ironic. She used to carry pennies for luck. Now she kept twenties for when her luck turned sour.

  It was a lot of money, but it wouldn't last long in New York City. She would be smart to leave town.

  With that thought, a picture bloomed in her mind. The face of Sam Moon, sitting across the chess table from her, drenched by rain, staring directly into her heart as no one, man or woman, ever had.

  It would be hard to leave him. It would be crazy to stay for him.

  Then there was Ed. Her first real friend since . . . forever. She was addicted to Ed.

  And to the park. And the action. The density of criminals. The number of places where you could buy doughnuts at 2 A.M. The sirens.

  But tonight Ed had taken off with his famil
y to drive to Pennsylvania for a classic Thanksgiving with bickering parents and adoring grandparents. He wouldn't be back until Sunday. It just pointed out how different they really were. How different they would always be.

  Sam belonged to somebody else (whom she incidentally hated). Ed was a decent, good person with a family who loved him. Far too decent for her.

  There was nothing for her here.

  She tipped her head and rested it against the cold glass window. The pale, late November color of her hands picked up a green glow from the traffic light at the intersection just beyond the window. Go.

  Predictably, a minute later, her hands were bathed in red. Stop.

  For minutes at a time she watched hypnotically as her hands changed from green to red.

  Go. Stop.

  Walk. Don't walk.

  She'd let the traffic light decide her fate.

  Behind her, there was a complaint of hinges and an inrush of street noise as someone pushed into the Starbucks through the side entrance. A second later Gaia was assaulted by a blast of arctic air. She felt its icy fingers snake around her neck and trickle down her spine and watched in morbid fascination as the skin of her arms pebbled into gooseflesh.

  The sight transfixed her. It always did.

  She traced a fingertip along the surface of her forearm -- slowly, exploringly -- from the crook of her elbow to her wrist. Every tiny, raised bump gave her a tiny, perverse thrill.

  Gooseflesh. A symptom of fear.

  Of course, in Gaia's case, it was just hair follicles reacting to an extreme change of temperature. That's all it would ever be with her. Still, she liked to believe that in some small, weird way, getting goose bumps was like getting a tiny glimpse into what fear felt like. The simple fact that she could experience one of fear's physical manifestations made her feel less ... different, somehow. Less freakish. More ... human.

  The goose bumps were beginning to fade.

  Gaia sighed. Who was she trying to kid? She would never know what fear was like. No more than Ed could know what it was like to tell red from green.

  Red and green. Gaia suddenly remembered her appointment with Destiny. Would she stay or would she go? Taking a breath, she raised her eyes and looked out the window.

  The light was yellow.

  Gee, thanks, Destiny. You sure know how to toy with a girl's emo --

  Gaia's thoughts were interrupted by something reflected in the plate glass window. Someone was rushing up behind her. Someone with red hair.

  Before she could turn around, something cold and metallic was pressed against the back of her neck. "Don't make a move," a female voice warned.

  Gaia didn't move. She just sat there, staring down at her arms.

  There wasn't a single damn goose bump in sight.

  No Folks

  MARY MOSS WAS EXPECTING THE girl's shoulders to jump or at least her muscles to tense. They didn't, although Gaia did turn her head quickly. "Your money or your life," Mary growled, pressing the metal tube of lipstick into Gaia's back.

  Mary snarled menacingly, waiting for a reaction.

  Gaia didn't look scared, but she didn't look quite tuned in, either. She was glowing red from a traffic light outside, and her eyes were wide and confused.

  Mary softened her expression and produced the tube of lipstick for Gaia to see. "Gaia, it's me. Mary. Are you okay?"

  Gaia seemed to pull her eyes into focus. She took the lipstick and examined it.

  "It's called Bruise," Mary offered. "Great color, poor firearm."

  Now Gaia was green. She handed the lipstick back.

  "How's it going?" Mary asked, taking the seat across the little table from Gaia and tucking the lipstick tube in the outside pocket of her backpack.

  Gaia looked pretty out of it. Her light hair was gathered in a messy wad at the back of her head. Her acid green jacket was half inside out, hanging untidily over the back of the chair, and her messenger bag was clamped between her feet on the floor. On the table before her was the better part of a once frothy coffee substance.

  Gaia rubbed her eyes. "Sorry. You surprised me. I'm -- I'm . . . all right. How 'bout you?" she answered vaguely.

  Mary studied the girl's face, wondering what was really up, knowing she'd probably never know. That was part of what made Gaia fascinating to her.

  "Great. I'm not going to sleep tonight," Mary announced.

  Gaia was paying attention now. "Oh, yeah?"

  "Yeah. The night before Thanksgiving is one of the great nights in New York. It's a night for locals."

  Gaia looked puzzled. "As opposed to . . ."

  "Tourists. Gawkers. The bridge-and-tunnel crowd. Hardly anything that New York is famous for is actually happening for the locals. Broadway shows. Carriage rides through Central Park. Those dumb theme restaurants. The stores on Columbus Avenue."

  "Um. Okay," Gaia said, not caring enough to argue if she did happen to disagree.

  "Obviously the parade tomorrow is a major gawk fest. But tonight, right outside the park, they blow up the floats for the parade. That part is still fun. It doesn't really get good until after midnight, so I'm going to a club first to hear this very cool neighborhood band. You want to go?"

  Gaia just looked at her, waiting for her to finish, clearly not feeling a big need to act friendly. That was another thing Mary liked about her. "Well. Thanks and all," Gaia said distractedly, tapping her fingers against the table. "But --"

  "You have other plans," Mary finished for her.

  Gaia cocked her head. "It's not that. It's --"

  "So come," Mary said.

  Still there was hesitation in Gaia's face.

  "You've got a curfew?" Mary tried.

  Gaia shook her head.

  "Your folks wouldn't be into it?" Mary suggested.

  Gaia shook her head. "No folks."

  "No folks?"

  "I don't have any," Gaia said. Just a statement of fact.

  "Jesus. I wasn't expecting that answer. God. Sorry."

  Gaia's eyebrows collided over her nose. She was angry. "Sorry for asking me a perfectly normal question? Why do people say that? Why do they always flip out and apologize for no reason?" Her eyes were intense, challenging.

  Mary's own anger reared up instantly. "I'm not sorry I asked you the question, you idiot," she snapped. "I'm sorry your parents are dead."

  Gaia's eyes widened, then her face got calm. "Oh."

  "Fine," Mary said. She got up to order a triple espresso from the lone counter person. Starbucks sucked, but her favorite cafÈ had just changed management and installed computers every five feet. She turned back to Gaia, pleased to see the girl had gotten over her anger just as quickly as Mary had. "So, you coming?"

  Gaia looked somewhat bamboozled. "I guess. Sure."

  Just Like Sam

  " . . . I'M BLIND. I'M EMPTY. I'Mstupid. I'm wrong. . . ."

  Gaia wasn't quite sure how this had happened.

  She'd gone from being a bleak New York casualty, a teenage runaway, to being a frivolous club kid. Here she was, sitting in a round, red velvet booth at a downtown club surrounded by New York's young indulgents, listening to a band, Fearless, whose name and lyrics dogged her life in the creepiest way.

  " . . . I need you to tell me I'm not what I am . . . ."

  The singer was ranting. Gaia stared into her vodka and tonic and tried not to think about it too much.

  Most of the people at the table, including Mary, were on their third drinks before Gaia had drunk a third of her first. She didn't like alcohol very much. For one thing, it didn't taste good. Maybe that was babyish of her, but it was true. Besides, from what she could tell, the real reason people drank was to dull their fear. Not what Gaia needed. What if alcohol consumption pushed her from zero fear into negative fear? Gaia slid the sweaty glass a few inches toward the center of the table. That didn't seem like a good idea.

  She turned her head as Mary tugged on a piece of her hair and then glided toward the dance floor. "You're having fun,
" Mary shouted over the din. It was more command than question. "Want to dance with us?"

  "No," Gaia mouthed. It did actually look like fun, but somehow it didn't seem right, punching Ella out cold and hitting the dance floor in the same two-hour period. She felt obligated to remain dysfunctional and sullen for at least another hour.

  Still, she couldn't help smiling at Mary, who was whirling like a dervish through the crowds. Mary was a wild dancer, not surprisingly, and her hair paid no attention to gravity. Gaia couldn't help admiring her. Mary had none of the self-consciousness that sometimes made it embarrassing to watch a person dance.

  Gaia glanced at her watch. If she was leaving town, she needed to get going. Traveling on Thanksgiving was notoriously bad. It would be smarter to catch a train or a bus tonight. That way she could sleep in transit and not have to pay for a place to stay.

  All of Mary's friends were dancing now. Gaia was alone in the booth. The place was packed, and she felt a bit self-conscious taking up this seating area for eight. She realized a guy standing by the bar was looking at her. No, make that staring. He appeared to be at least thirty. Ick.

  Oh, shit, he was coming toward her. She directed an intensely unfriendly expression at him. Go away now. I do not like you.

  He turned back to the bar. Ahhh. Good. Gaia had to hand it to herself. She could give a mean look like nobody.

  Gaia gazed around the club. She'd never been to a place like this before. It was loud. It was dark. People were having fun. It seemed like a great place to go if you were a bored New York City kid looking to hook up. It was a weird place to go shortly after you'd decked your so-called foster mother, on a night you were running away for good.

  But what if she were just a regular kid, stressed out and angst ridden in a contained, urbane, happy kind of way, looking to hook up? It was a fun game to play sometimes.

  She scanned the bar. There was a guy near the front windows who was sort of cute. He had hair the same color as Sam's. His nose and chin couldn't compare, though. And he appeared to be at least five inches shorter than Sam.