Escape

by Francine Pascal

  “I know,” she scoffed. Ed could see her start to breathe again. “I know that.”

  He gripped her hand tightly and leaned closer. “Gaia. . . if something has happened to your dad, tell me what it is.”

  She looked deeper into his eyes, barely blinking for the next few seconds as she seemed to consider his demand.

  “I don’t know what it is,” she stated.

  “What? What does that mean?”

  Gaia suddenly pulled her hand away, leaning back awkwardly against her seat. “Look, he’s. . . he’s been transferred out of the hospital, and we’re. . . they’re not sure where he is.”

  Ed’s eyes widened with disbelief. “The hospital lost him?” He didn’t doubt Gaia; it was just the most ludicrous thing he’d ever heard.

  “They just. . .” Gaia looked more and more anxious to make a run for it. Ed could see her eyes darting yearningly toward the staircase that led to the exit. He couldn’t believe, after everything they’d been through, that getting the truth from her about her struggles was still like pulling teeth. “I just need to find him,” she concluded. “That’s all.”

  Ed’s stomach twisted itself into a knot. He couldn’t fathom how she could have gone all this time without telling him something this massive. “Well, I’ll help you find him,” he insisted. “Jesus, we’ve been sitting here having dinner and you don’t know where your father is? Why didn’t you just tell me? We could have been looking for him this entire time. We could have been suing the crap out of that hospital. God, I hate hospitals. We should be making calls, we should be calling every goddamn hospital in—”

  “Ed, no!” Gaia snapped, slapping her hand down on the table.

  Ed went silent. He had no idea what to make of her sudden outburst. Every time she opened her mouth, she seemed to make less and less sense. “Gaia. . . what the hell is the matter with y—?”

  “Ed, I love you, but you are out of all of this, do you understand?” She lowered her voice to an intensely urgent Whisper. “I won’t drag you back into it, do you hear? Not any of it.” Ed could only sit and watch as tears began to well up in her eyes. She gripped the table tightly as her words became more and more frenzied. “I don’t want you to be my trusty sidekick, or my knight in shining armor, or the dead body lying on top of my dead body in some tragically romantic Romeo and Juliet death scene. I just want you to be my boyfriend. My boyfriend who is alive and. . . and safe and. . . here. Do you understand? I need to do it alone so that when it’s done, when it’s finally finished. . . I can come home to you.”

  Ed could see a thousand different thoughts tugging away at her mouth for airtime. This had to be more honesty than she had ever spewed out in one sitting, and Ed could tell from the look on her face that it hurt. It was physically painful for Gaia to talk like this.

  “Gaia, it’s all right,” Ed promised her. “I understand, okay? I do. You don’t have to be so—”

  “I have to go now,” she interrupted, swiping the tears too forcefully from her eyes as she stood up out of her chair.

  “Gaia, wait,” he said gently, standing with her. “Don’t go yet. Let me—”

  “No, I have to go. I’m sorry. I’m. . . I’m so sorry, Ed. I’m sorry for ruining the date and for lying, and for—”

  “Lying? When were you lying?”

  She cast her glassy-eyed gaze on him one last time. “I’m sorry for everything,” she said. “I’ll explain it all to you soon, Ed. So soon, I swear. When it’s safe. Just don’t give up on me, okay?” She leaned in closer and pressed her lips firmly against his.

  She was three feet behind him before he could even kiss her back. She was on the stairs before he could say another word. And she’d disappeared from sight before he could form any understanding of what the hell had just happened.

  From: megan21@alloymail.com

  To: ruskiegirl@alloymail.com

  cc: tammiejammie@alloymail.com

  Time: 9:58 P.M.

  Re: the party

  Love it! Love love love it.

  Parchment book sounds beautiful. (I love Kate’s. I go there all the time for cards and calendars.) And I’m lovin’ the black and white balloons.

  Can’t wait to see your other decoration ideas. Are you a pro or something? We should totally start a party-planning business. My mom and her partner started when they were sixteen. Can you believe that?

  But enough of my yakkin’. Love white roses, too. We are going to make Heather so proud. And party so hard!

  Tammie and I printed out awesome invitations on her printer. Card stock, silver on black. (Does that go with the balloons? Oh, hell, yes—we totally think alike.) We’ll give you a bunch tomorrow to hand out. I’m pretty sure you’ll approve. See you at the caf?

  –Meegs

  Stinking Laundry

  SHE’D ALREADY GIVEN UP ON THE shoes. Gaia ran barefoot along Seventy-second Street, scraping along the rocky granite, ignoring shards of glass and wads of chewing gum as she increased her speed. She could still see the ghosts from earlier in the evening as she approached her building. The sweet ghosts of Ed in his suit, and a majestic white horse, and a black iron carriage. She swallowed down another glob of guilt and regret and burst into her lobby. She jabbed the elevator button with rapid-fire precision, sliding through the door before it had even opened fully and pummeling the button for her floor. As the elevator lurched upward, she tried to sort it all out, piece by piece, like a daunting heap of stinking laundry.

  Her guilt about Ed went into the “tomorrow” pile. It had to. She had no other choice for now. It was just as she had said—she would explain it all to him as soon as it was safe. But Sam was the immediate matter at hand. Sam and her father. They were the massive pile that towered over her higher than the eye could see and wider than the Great Wall of China. They both needed finding now. No more distractions. No more doubts or delays. Starting right now, and ending with both of them sitting with her at a dinner table or on a park bench. Something normal and banal.

  She prayed that the Sam search would end in the next thirty seconds. He needed to be in her apartment, waiting just behind that closed door of his. He had to be there. And once she found him safe and sound in his room, they would lock every door in the house and make whatever plans they needed to make for tomorrow, and then they would sleep.

  One thing at a time, Gaia. You’ve got to find him first. She burst into her apartment and made her way toward his room as quietly as she could, even though she wanted to jump the two couches in the living room and kick his door down on the fly. She held up at his room and brought her hand to the door to tap out the secret knock. But as her hand grasped the knob, she felt it give way. . . .

  Oh God. The lock was broken. Gaia’s hands went numb. Someone had broken the lock on the door. Someone had broken in and done God knew what to Sam. She shoved the door open and bounded into the room, ready to rip someone’s head off his spine. But once she’d stepped inside, she nearly tripped over her own feet.

  Sam was couched deep in the comfy chair in nothing but a thin T-shirt and a pair of boxers. Tatiana was leaned back comfortably in his bed. In nothing but a stretchy white cotton nightie.

  Somewhere between shock and confusion, Gaia suddenly found herself in a purely paralytic state. Frozen solid. The only thing she felt capable of moving was her eyes, which continued to shift from one side of the room to the other, taking in this vision that she could only describe in understated terms as most unpleasant.

  “You’re home early,” Tatiana said with a smile.

  “I’m. . .” Gaia was still at a loss for words as she tried to accept the jolting sight of the two of them sitting happily (and damn near nakedly) together in the room.

  Sam’s eyes brightened with what looked like relief. “You’re back,” he said, a gentle smile spreading across his face.

  “How was your date with Ed?” Tatiana asked. Sam’s eyes instantly darkened again.

  Thank you, Tatiana, Gaia thought. Thank you so much
for asking. You’re making this incomprehensible moment so much easier. The silence in the room felt as thick as glue.

  “Why didn’t you stay over?” Tatiana added, tilting her head quizzically. “I hope there were no troubles of paradise. . . .”

  “In paradise,” Sam corrected her, turning his bitter eyes to Gaia. “I hope there were no troubles in paradise. . . .”

  Gaia would have paid any sum of money for another chair in this godforsaken room. She needed to sit down.

  “Well. . . ?” Tatiana pushed. “Okay, what grade would you give the date?”

  Was she trying to make this the most disturbing, unexpected, and uncomfortable moment of Gaia’s life? If so, she was doing a damn good job. Gaia hadn’t even managed to form a sentence about this situation, and Tatiana already had her tangled into a painful knot and praying for a seat.

  “I’m . . .” Yes, it was official. Gaia was now a mute. If she couldn’t form a sentence soon, she was sure this tragically awkward tableau might just be seared into her brain for all eternity. “I’m sorry,” she finally uttered. “But what’s. . . what’s going on here?”

  For a moment there was no response. But Tatiana finally came up with an answer. “I met Sam,” she explained.

  “Yes, I see that,” Gaia replied sharply as fury began to bubble up from her chest and into her throat. “And exactly how did you meet him?”

  Gaia realized that she was giving Tatiana the most ridiculous 90210 scowl. She had suddenly entered her very own nighttime soap, and she hadn’t even realized it.

  This was all so uncalled for. She should have just been elated that Sam was all right. She should have given him a hug and started in on their plans for the morning. She should have just accepted that Tatiana had somehow discovered Sam, as was bound to happen at some point in one’s own house, for God’s sake. And she shouldn’t have cared about Tatiana’s wardrobe. Why wouldn’t Tatiana be in her nightie? She always went to bed early, and she’d worn that thing to sleep at least twenty times before. Tatiana certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve the melodramatic feline scowl Gaia was shooting at her.

  Yet the scowl only deepened as Gaia compulsively scanned Tatiana and Sam’s scantily clad bodies again and again, watching their bizarrely friendly smiles flash on and off. That was the thing about jealousy. No amount of rationality could possibly. . .

  Wait. . .

  Jealousy? Is that why I’m glaring at her like a rich bitch heiress to an oil fortune?

  Yes, of course it was. It wasn’t the concern or frustration over Tatiana having found Sam; it was the jealousy. Gaia was still rather emotionally naive, but she knew jealousy. She just hadn’t expected to be feeling it at this particular moment. Two hours ago Gaia had been breaking the news to Sam about her relationship with Ed, and now she was giving Tatiana the classic stay-away-from-my-man look? When had Sam suddenly become Gaia’s “man” again?

  Okay. So maybe things with Sam were a little more complicated than Gaia had thought. Perhaps she was still wrestling with just a couple of denial issues. . . .

  “It was kind of funny how we met, actually,” Tatiana said, smiling over at Sam.

  Gaia began to grind her teeth again.

  “More like scary,” Sam said.

  “Yes, funny and scary,” Tatiana agreed.

  Can we get on with it? Gaia was happy that her friends were playing together so nicely, she really was, but this whole finishing-each-other’s-sentences shtick was a bit much.

  “I was half asleep in bed,” Tatiana went on, “and then I heard this phone ringing. . . .”

  “The cell phone,” Sam said, rolling his eyes to Gaia. “I forgot to turn off the damn ring, and when I put on the Walkman—”

  “I get it,” Gaia interrupted, shaking her head over the pointless double whammy of this evening, thanks to those stupid cell phones. She’d always hated those infernal things.

  “But it’s okay,” Sam said. “Tatiana and I talked.”

  “We talked,” Tatiana repeated, “and now that I understand everything, I hate him, Gaia, I hate him so much.”

  • • •

  Gaia knew right away that Tatiana was talking about Loki. Sam really had told her everything. He must have told her about the shooting and even about his time in Loki’s compound. For a moment Gaia felt her blood begin to boil again. How could he have let out all their guarded secrets like that? For God’s sake, Gaia had just damn near torched her relationship with Ed to honor their secret, and here was Sam blabbing the whole deal to Tatiana? A girl he’d never even met before? What the hell kind of honor system was that?

  But the more Gaia thought about it, the more she realized how unfair she was being. Tatiana and Sam had both come about as close as anyone could to being a couple of crossed-off names on Loki’s list. In fact, very few people had suffered through the war with Loki like the three people sitting in that room. And if Sam and Tatiana wanted to share their war stories, then they had every right. They had every right in the world. Gaia really needed to get her priorities straight.

  “Gaia, don’t you think we should tell my mother about this?” Tatiana asked. “Don’t you think we should tell her what’s going on?”

  “Not yet.” Gaia dropped down on the bed and slid closer to Tatiana. It wasn’t exactly a conscious decision, but Gaia let it happen. Because she was shoving her priorities back in line. Tatiana was in this now, whether Gaia liked it or not. And right now there were simply more important things to worry about than immature soap operas and stupid petty jealousies. She knew she had no reason to be suspicious of Sam and Tatiana. It was time to move past the initial shock of walking through that door and get on to the matter at hand. “Soon,” Gaia said. “We can tell everyone what’s going on soon, but just not yet. Sam and I are going to the compound tomorrow morning, and maybe we’ll have a better idea of things once we get back. But we have to wait until we’re sure that Sam, and every one of us, is safe.” Gaia looked into Tatiana’s eyes to make sure she understood how crucial it was to maintain secrecy.

  “I understand,” Tatiana stated, her complete commitment showing in her eyes. It was good to see Tatiana’s loyalty and intensity again.

  Just Voices

  JOYCE, THE RESIDENT ADVISER, HANDED Heather the phone in the hallway and pulled a chair over for her.

  “Don’t talk too long, okay?” Joyce whispered. “You really shouldn’t be on the phone this late, but he sounded so sad. And cute.”

  “Thanks,” Heather whispered. She still couldn’t get over how much nicer the authority figures were when you were blind. “I’ll try to keep it short.” She waited until she heard Joyce’s door close, and then she brought the phone to her ear. She had never loved the phone as much as she did now. It was one of the very few activities that was exactly the same whether she could see or not. No eyes required. Just voices in the dark. “Hello? Ed?”

  “Hi,” he said, sounding like a four-year-old who’d just lost his first goldfish to old age.

  “Oh my God, you sound awful.” She tried to cup the phone in her hand for optimum hallway privacy. Most of the girls in the dorm were probably already asleep, but they had awfully good ears. “What’s the matter, Ed? It’s almost midnight.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I tried not to call, but. . . well, I actually got out of my cab at the bus station, but there were no more buses to Carverton.”

  “What? What are you talking about? What happened?”

  “I don’t think she likes cheese.”

  Somehow the way Ed said it, it sounded like the saddest fact in the world. Heather suddenly felt like crying, even though talking to Ed on the phone should have been one of the second-greatest delights of her day, the first being his visit just fourteen or so hours ago. “What do you mean? They all like cheese, Ed, I swear. What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he complained, sounding not all that far from tears himself. “She just. . . left. She just left me there in the restaurant. It was all going so well. .
. I thought. But then, I don’t know, we started fighting, sort of, and she started acting all weird. . . and then she just left.”

  “Well, maybe she had an emergency?” Heather knew how lame that sounded, but it was all she could think of to say. Then again, when it came to Gaia, and given everything that had been going on, an emergency wasn’t such a far-fetched concept, was it?

  “Yeah, right.” Ed sighed. “That emergency is called her life. Her life is an emergency.”

  “Oh, Ed, I’m sorry. I loved your date. I think any girl would think it was the most beautiful date in the world.”

  “Yeah, well. . . Gaia’s not a girl, she’s just a. . . teenage. . . armageddonatrix.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just so freaking depressed.”

  Heather pushed her chair out of the way and settled onto the rug of the hallway, basking in the normalcy of the moment. Just sitting on the phone trying to cheer up a friend. No new skills to learn or hardships to grin and bear. Helping someone else instead of waiting for someone to show her to the goddamn bathroom.

  “Look, Ed, maybe something really did come up, if she was having a good time and then just suddenly had to leave. If you want to be with her, that’s the kind of stuff you’ll have to deal with.”

  “I know, but not tonight.” Ed groaned. “That was the whole point of the night. We weren’t supposed to deal with whatever apocalypse was happening tonight.”

  “Think about it this way,” Heather said, pressing her toes against the opposite wall. “Her life is pretty insane. My life isn’t exactly a holiday right now. But your life is pretty amazingly normal. You’re walking, and you’ve got your family and school. You’re lucky, Ed. You’re so lucky that your life is normal. Let Gaia deal with the awful stuff she has to deal with and enjoy your normal life, you know? Ed, I know you remember wanting that, and only that, when you were in the chair. Just to walk around like everybody else. Just to do stupid teenage nonsense because you can. Because nothing is stopping you.”