Blind

by Francine Pascal

  “I understand,” said Ed. He gave his cold potatoes another shove across the plate. “Glad I’m not one of those friends of yours.”

  “Oh, no, Ed.” Heather put down her cup and levered her tired eyes open to look at him. “You know you’re my friend. You’re more important to me than, well, than any of those people down at Starbucks.”

  Ed was almost as surprised as he had been by Heather’s appearance. Since he had gotten together with Gaia, there hadn’t been many warm and tender moments with Heather. And since he had broken up with Gaia, there hadn’t been many moments with Heather at all. Ed wondered what other expressions of love would come from this Strange Bizzaro Heather. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Heather nodded. She held up her cup to catch a refill of coffee, then downed half the cup in another gulp. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” She stifled a yawn. “Just fine.”

  “Okay,” said Ed. “Good to hear it.”

  Heather suddenly smiled. “Did I tell you about the guy I’m dating?”

  “Coffee-in-the-lap guy?” asked Ed.

  “How’d you know?”

  “We talked about him in the cafeteria the other day, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” Heather chuckled and rolled her blue eyes.

  “So, how many times have you gone out with this guy, anyway?”

  Heather looked off into space. “Three. Or is it four?”

  Ed looked at her and felt a little nervous. Heather’s pilot light definitely seemed to be burning low. He glanced at his watch and tossed a buck onto the table. “Look, I need to get to school. You coming?”

  “Huh?”

  “To. School,” Ed said slowly. “You. Come?”

  “Not right now,” said Heather. She took another swig of coffee. “I’ll be there later.”

  Skipping class wasn’t exactly normal Heatherness, but in Bizarro Land…

  “Sure,” said Ed. “I’ll see you there.” He pushed himself up onto his crutches and wove through the crowd to the door. Once he reached the sidewalk, Ed paused and looked back through the glass. Heather was still sitting there, the coffee cup clutched in both hands. Once Heather had been his girlfriend. Then after the accident they broke up but stayed pretty close. At times Ed had thought of Heather as his closest friend. But the pale Heather Gannis in there drinking coffee seemed like a stranger.

  Little White Tablet

  IT TOOK FOUR CUPS OF THE AWFUL, bitter, oily coffee to get Heather on her feet. Even then she felt exhausted.

  A day off, she thought. My grades are good enough. And one day off doesn’t mean I’m falling apart or anything. She dug in her purse and came up with enough change to cover the coffee, then headed for the door. If anyone asked, she would say that she was sick. That was true enough. And a few hours in bed would be all she needed to get over this. It was probably nothing more than the beginnings of the flu. She went out onto the street and started the walk back to her apartment.

  “Heather?”

  She looked up, and her mouth dropped open. “Josh?” Her cheeks warmed in embarrassment. He shouldn’t see me like this. I look terrible.

  But Josh didn’t seem to notice her appearance. He smiled at Heather and reached out to take her hand. “I didn’t expect to run into you this morning.”

  “Yeah, I was just going to, urn, school.” Admitting she was going home meant admitting she was sick. And being sick meant no chance to go out.

  Josh nodded. “Right. Maybe I should talk to you later. Don’t want to stop the education train.”

  Heather shook her head, then did her best to cover up the pain it caused her. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Good. I wanted to ask you about tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Heather was glad she hadn’t said anything about going home. “What are we going to do tonight?”

  Josh gave her hand a squeeze. “Something special. Very special. I have something I want to show you.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see tonight,” said Josh. He looked at her and frowned. “You feel all right?”

  “Sure!” Heather gave the best smile she could manage. “I’m fine.”

  “You look a little tired.”

  “Just… just didn’t get much sleep.”

  Josh nodded. “I understand. Here, why don’t you take one of these?” He dug into his pocket and came up with a small vial. He gave it a quick shake, and a little white tablet fell out into his hand.

  Heather eyed the pill. All at once, she felt tired in another way. Not tired in her body so much as tired in her head. Josh was offering her drugs. “I… uh… I don’t take drugs.”

  “That’s good because I don’t, either.” Josh squeezed the little pill in his hand. “These babies are drug-free.”

  “Then what are they?”

  “One hundred percent all natural,” Josh insisted. “Scout’s honor.” He held up two fingers, then three. “Okay, I admit it, I was never a scout. But the tablets are only herbs and vitamins.”

  Heather took the white pill from his hand and held it between her fingers. “Like a diet pill?”

  “Not even that strong.”

  The coffee hadn’t done much to help Heather wake up. Maybe a few herbs were what she needed. She raised the little pill to her mouth and swallowed it down.

  Blueprints

  MEGAN STOOD WITH HER HANDS ON her hips and her pointy chin thrust out. “We have just one more chance to get this thing right,” she said.

  Gaia wondered what it would be like to give her lab partner a nice hard shot to that sharp little chin. Just one. She’d probably run into that pesky little problem of being expelled from school, but it would certainly be satisfying. Maybe then Megan wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get in someone’s face. “You mean I have one more chance since you and Melanie are just sitting on your asses.”

  “Well,” Megan said with a sniff, “you are the one that messed it up in the first place. It seems only fair that you get to fix it.”

  Gaia thought about pointing out that she had done all the work in the first place, but she didn’t bother. Logic obviously wasn’t Megan’s best subject. Once again Gaia started through the steps of the experiment. Carefully adding the chemicals, one by one, that would turn the invisible DNA into a measurable mass. She was only about halfway through the experiment when Heather came through the door of the classroom, passed a note to the teacher, and came over to the lab table. Megan and Melanie greeted Heather as if she were the cavalry riding in to save the day.

  “Thank God you’re here!” said Megan. She gave a sideways glance at Gaia. “She’s already ruined the experiment once”

  “We have to finish it today or we’ll get a zero for the lab,” added Melanie.

  Heather flashed them both a bright smile. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll help.”

  Gaia studied Heather. The pants and top she was wearing didn’t look like they were part of the Gannis Fall Collection. There was a pinched look to her face, and Gaia thought she could detect the remains of dark circles shining through a double layer of makeup. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Of course,” said Heather. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” She grabbed the lab sheet away from Gaia and scanned the instructions. “How far along are you?”

  “About here.” Gaia tapped the sheet. “A couple more titrations and then a little cooking and we’re done.”

  “If Gaia doesn’t ruin it again,” Megan said.

  Gaia pressed the tips of her fingers hard against her forehead. What was the caption on that poster in the guidance counselor’s office? “Stress is what you feel when you can’t choke the living daylights out of the idiot who actually deserves it.”

  “I messed up,” she said. “I think we all understand that I messed up. Now, let’s get done so I can get out of here.” Before I’m forced to kill you. She turned to Heather again. “So, where were you this morning? And yesterday.”

  Heather frowned. “I was
feeling a little sick before,” she said. “Not that it’s any of your business. But I’m all better now.”

  She moved in beside Gaia, and for a few blessed minutes the two worked in silence. As they got down to the bottom of the sheet, Gaia paused again beside the description of DNA. Four compounds. And those compounds could only be mixed in a few ways. Why did that keep sending off little buzzers in her brain?

  Gaia was so preoccupied with the note, she barely noticed that Heather and the Heatherettes had started talking. But when something they said caught her attention, she raised her head.

  “So,” Melanie was saying. “Are you going to see him again this weekend?”

  Heather finished stirring the mixture and turned down the heat on the burner. “We’re not waiting till this weekend. We’re getting together tonight.”

  “You don’t mean with Josh, do you?” asked Gaia.

  “Of course with Josh,” Heather replied. “Who else would I be seeing?” She grinned at Megan and Melanie. “The next time we’re getting together near the school, I’ll call you. You need to see this guy. You won’t believe how gorgeous he is.”

  Gaia gritted her teeth. “Didn’t I warn you to stay away from Josh?”

  “You did, but…”

  “The guy is a freak.”

  “Gaia…”

  “He’s dangerous.”

  “Gaia…”

  “He’s a psycho murderer!” Gaia stopped and realized that she had been talking maybe a little too loud. Maybe a whole lot too loud. Megan and Melanie were looking at her like she was nuts. Nothing too unusual there. Only this time the rest of the room was joining them. The lab seemed momentarily frozen, with everyone staring at Gaia.

  Gaia waited until people started to move again, then she lowered her voice and went on. “You need to stay away from Josh if you want to stay alive.”

  Heather gave her a pitying smile and actually reached out to pat Gaia on the arm. “It’s okay. Josh told me.”

  “Told you what?” asked Gaia.

  “About how you broke up. I understand, it must have been very painful.”

  Gaia shook her head. “What are you talking about? Josh and I were never together.”

  Heather continued to play the pity pipe. “I know it had to hurt. Especially when he dumped you.” Heather glanced toward Megan and Melanie as she made this last sentence. Both girls grew wide, knowing smiles.

  The pencil snapped in Gaia’s hand. “Josh did not dump me.”

  “Of course not,” said Heather. “Because he’s not just your everyday psychopathic murderer who just happens to be gorgeous and dress in designer clothes, he’s also a compulsive liar with delusions of grandeur.” Before Gaia could reply, Heather stuck a glass stirrer into the beaker full of DNA and came out with a pile of shiny, translucent strands. “I think we’re done with the experiment.”

  Megan leaned in closer, her nose prewrinkled in case of smells. “Is that how it’s supposed to look?”

  Gaia wasn’t too sure, either. The mess looked kind of like glass spaghetti, not like the neat double helix that was shown in all the textbooks. Of course, that was just what DNA looked like on a microscopic scale. It was probably stupid to expect any structure like that when dealing with a cup full of the stuff. The transparent strands slipped off the stirrer and fell back into the beaker with a plop.

  DNA. Four little compounds in a few simple arrangements. Cytosine, guanine, thymine, and…

  Gaia froze. The alarms in her head weren’t little buzzers now. They were air raid sirens. She snatched the lab sheet back from Heather and confirmed what it said about DNA. Four compounds. Arranged in pairs. Only four combinations.

  Now she remembered where she had seen something like that before. It was on the note, the note she had taken from her father’s apartment. The whole bottom half of the note was covered with four colored symbols arranged in pairs. DNA? It had to be. That meant that the note described the DNA of… something. But what?

  A strange tickling started in the pit of Gaia’s stomach. Her uncle had told Gaia that her fearlessness was a result of experiments her father had performed on her as child. That he had given her some drug to drive out fear. Her father said that Gaia being fearless was a fluke. That she was born that way.

  What if they were both telling the truth? What if Gaia had been born fearless but born that way because someone had screwed with her DNA, rearranging the compounds to take away the feeling of fear shared by every other human being—every other animal? The note might have the explanation for what had caused the difference.

  It could be the blueprints for Gaia Moore.

  russian girl roulette

  He had done it, though. He had sliced open his chest and handed his heart to Gaia on a silver plate.

  Worldless Class

  “ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T WANT something more to eat, Edward?”

  Ed held up the cookie he had been handed. “Uh, no, thanks,” he said. “We’ll, um, we’ll probably get something to eat later, anyway. I need to leave some space.”

  Natasha smiled at him. “I’m glad that Tatiana met you. She’s really enjoyed your company.”

  “That’s great,” said Ed. “I mean, she’s great.” Ed shifted uncomfortably on his chair. He looked at the door hopefully. There was still no sign of rescue. Tatiana’s mother seemed perfectly nice. Kind of cool, as parents went, what with the Russian accent and the movie queen looks, but there was only so much time anyone could spend with anybody’s parents. And Ed had definitely reached his threshold the last time he’d spent quality time with Natasha.

  “Have you seen Gaia lately?”

  This broad sure knows how to ask the questions. Ed turned his flushed face back to Tatiana’s mother. “Not really. She’s been keeping a pretty low profile lately.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Natasha. “I think Gaia needs good friends. Perhaps even more than my daughter.”

  Ed wasn’t sure how to respond to this. I agree. And as a matter of fact, I happen to still be in love with Gaia even though I’ve been spending most of my time going out with your daughter on things that look a lot like dates. So glad you understand.

  For several very long, very uncomfortable seconds they sat and looked at each other. Finally Natasha rose and smoothed down her skirt.

  “You must pardon me, but I have to return to my work.”

  Ed struggled to get to his feet. “I guess I’ll clear out. I can come back later.”

  Natasha held out her hands. “No, no,” she said. “The girls will be home anytime now. You’re welcome to stay.”

  This display of hospitality was completely foreign to Ed. He hardly knew how to respond. “Uh… okay,” was about the most he could come up with as he collapsed back into his chair.

  Natasha went to a closet in the corner, took out a long red coat, and shrugged it on. There was an elegance to her movements. A wordless class. There were people from every country in the world all over New York, but something about Natasha made her seem very different from the Russian emigrants that Ed had met in the past. Both Tatiana and Natasha had the same high cheekbones and sculpted features, and a certain… attitude. Ed wondered if Natasha and her daughter were descended from some kind of Russian royalty. The Romanovs of the Upper East Side.

  “There is food and drink in the kitchen if you have to wait too long,” Natasha said. She gave one last, regal smile and stepped out the door.

  Ed relaxed a bit, but not much. He had come here early, knowing that he would beat both Tatiana and Gaia to the house. It was a game. Or a challenge. Russian girl roulette. He didn’t really have a name for this game.

  It’s called being such a totally unbelievable wuss that can’t suck it up and get on with life when a girl has dumped you.

  A hundred times over the last few days Ed had thought about confronting Gaia. He wanted to find out once and for all what was going on. Why, not an hour after they had made love, she had climbed out of his bed, out of his apartment, and ou
t of his life. Since that day, he had spoken to Gaia. Between classes. In the cafeteria. But they hadn’t talked. And he wanted answers.

  He just didn’t want the wrong answer.

  He didn’t want the answer that went, “I woke up and realized that being with you was a really stupid idea. I mean, what the hell was I thinking? Ed Fargo? Me? What a joke. So I got out of there as fast as I could, and I’m never going back.”

  The possibility of that kind of answer had driven Ed to invent this little game. He would get to the house early. If Tatiana got home first, Ed would take her out to dinner as he had promised. It might look like a date, but Tatiana understood about Ed’s Gaia fixation. This would be a nondate date. Nice evening, confrontation-free. If Tatiana and Gaia arrived together… Okay, there wasn’t much chance of that. Tatiana and Gaia were never together. If Gaia got home first, it would be a sign. Maybe not a sign from God, but a sign. Time to Confront Gaia Now.

  The front door rattled, and Ed’s stomach was suddenly filled with ice. He wondered if he could hide in the coat closet.

  Before he could even push himself to his feet, the door opened and Gaia stomped in.

  At first she didn’t seem to see Ed. She closed the door and started across the room toward the stairs. Gaia looked as gorgeous as Ed had ever seen her. She walked with strong, easy strides, her long legs pressing against the faded gray denim of her jeans. A black sweatshirt was draped over her toned but still curvy form. Her blond hair was held back in a thick, rude, unruly mass that spilled over her shoulders. Her expression was unreadable.

  If Tatiana was a Russian princess, Gaia was something else altogether. Gaia was a goddess.

  “Hi.”

  Gaia spun around, one foot moving back, her hands coming up to her sides. Her fingers were locked together, her shoulders slightly turned. Ed recognized the position. Gaia was ready to fight. If she was a goddess, it wasn’t the nice “oh, let me help you with those little flowers” kind. Gaia was more the “hey, I think I’ll turn your city into gravel” sort of deity.