“I almost got shot in the head.”
Ed made a sound somewhere between laughter and choking on a chicken bone. “You w-what?”
That was another thing about Gaia. She was always surprising. Though too often in an upsetting way.
Gaia let out her breath. “Oh, God. Where to start. You know that guy CJ?”
Ed slowed his chair to a stop and clenched the armrests with his hands. “The one who slashed Heather? Isn’t he in jail?” he asked with a sick feeling in his stomach.
“I guess he got out on bail or something,” Gaia said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, CJ’s friend Marco is dead, and he thinks I killed him.”
Ed groaned out loud. How had his life taken such a turn? Before he’d first laid love-struck eyes on Gaia in the hallway outside physics class, he wouldn’t have believed he would ever have a conversation like this.
“Marco is dead? Are you sure?”
“Only from what CJ told me.”
Ed sighed. The really crazy thing was, in the brief time he’d known Gaia, so many violent and alarming things had happened, this wasn’t so staggeringly out of the ordinary.
“Hey, Gaia? If trouble is a hungry great white shark, then you’re a liquid cloud of chum.”
Gaia’s laugh was easy and comforting. “That’s a beautiful image. I love it when you get poetic.”
Ed resumed his roll down the hallway and into the galley kitchen. His late evening phone reports from Gaia, distressing as they sometimes were, had become as precious a ritual as his eleven o’clock milk shake.
“So tell me,” Ed prodded, hoisting himself up a few inches with one arm to reach the ice cream in the freezer. “Tell me how it happened.”
“Okay. I was sitting in the park, minding my own business —”
“Eating doughnuts,” Ed supplied.
“Yes, Ed, eating doughnuts, when that loser came up from behind and shoved a gun into my neck.”
“Jesus.”
“I didn’t take it seriously at first. But it turns out this guy is half crazed and deadly serious.”
“So what happened?” Ed asked, milk shake momentarily forgotten.
Gaia sighed. “He actually pulled the trigger. I thought I was dead — a wild experience, by the way. It turned out he must have loaded the gun in a hurry because there was no bullet in at least one of the chambers. I took that opportunity to throw him.”
Ed’s mind was spinning. “Throw him?”
“You know, like flip him.”
“Oh, right,” he said.
“You’re making fun of me again,” Gaia said patiently.
Ed shook his head in disbelief. “I’m not, Gaia. It’s just . . . you blow my mind.”
“Well, speaking of, I think this guy CJ is dead set on killing me. I’m scared he’s really going to do it,” Gaia said.
“You’re scared?” Ed asked a little nervously. Having seen Gaia in action, he would have imagined it would take more than a pimply white supremacist with a borrowed gun to hurt Gaia. It would take something more on the order of a hydrogen bomb. But if Gaia was scared, well, he had to take that seriously.
“Figure of speech. I’m scared abstractly,” Gaia explained.
Ed rocked a tall glass on the counter. “Gaia, you worry me here.”
“Don’t worry,” Gaia reassured him. “I mean, think about it. CJ is kind of a moron, and I happen to be okay at self-defense.”
Ed felt reassured. That last part was an understatement to rival “Marilyn Manson is an unusual guy.” He could hear Gaia thumping her heel against her metal desk. He realized the ice cream was melting and spreading along the countertop. He absently scooped some of it into the blender.
Prrrrrrrrrrrrr.
“Ed! I hate when you run the blender when we’re talking,” Gaia complained loudly.
“Sorry,” he said. By the time she finished complaining, the milk shake was frothy and smooth. That was part of the ritual.
“I don’t want to die,” she said resolutely. “You know why?”
“Why?” he asked absently, sucking down a huge mouthful of vanilla shake.
“I haven’t had sex yet.”
Ed spluttered the mouthful all over his dark blue T-shirt. Cough, cough, cough. “What?”
“I don’t want to die before I’ve had sex.”
Cough, cough.
“Right,” he said.
“So I need to have sex in the next couple of days, just in case,” Gaia added.
Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough —
“Ed? Are you okay? Ed? Is somebody around to give you the Heimlich?”
“N-No,” Ed choked out. “I’m (cough, cough) fine.” In fact, he had about four ounces of milk shake puddled in his lung. Could you die of that? Could you drown by breathing in a milk shake? And shit, he’d like to have sex in the next couple of days, too. (Cough, cough, cough.)
“Ed, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yesss,” he answered in a weak and gravelly voice.
“So anyway, I was thinking I better do it soon.”
“It?”
“Yeah, it. You know, it.”
“Right. It.” Ed felt faint. Milk shake, as it turned out, was much less handy in your veins than, say, oxygen.“So, who . . . uh . . . are you going to do it with? Or are you just going to walk the streets, soliciting people randomly?”
“Ed!” Gaia sounded genuinely insulted.
“Kidding,” he said feebly, wishing his palms weren’t suddenly sweating.
“You don’t think anybody’s going to want to have sex with me, do you?” Gaia sounded hurt and petulant at the same time.
“Mmrnpha.” The noise Ed made didn’t resemble an English word. It sounded like it had come from the mouth of a nine-month-old baby.
“Huh?”
“I . . . um . . .” Ed couldn’t answer. The truth was, although she made every effort to hide it, Gaia was possibly the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life — and that was including the women in the Victoria’s Secret catalog, the SI swimsuit issue, and that show about witches on the WB. Any straight guy with a live pulse and a thimble full of testosterone would want to have sex with Gaia. But what was Ed going to say? This was exactly the category of conversation he couldn’t have honestly with her.
“Anyway, I do know who I’m going to do it with,” Gaia said confidently.
“Who?” Ed felt his vision blurring.
“I can’t say.”
Ed definitely wasn’t taking in enough oxygen. Good thing he was in a chair because otherwise he’d be lying on the linoleum.
“Why can’t you say?” he asked, trying to sound calm.
“Because it’s way too awkward,” Gaia said.
Awkward? Awkward. What did that imply? Could it mean . . .? Ed’s thoughts were racing. Would it be too crude to point out at this juncture that although his legs were paralyzed, his nether regions were in excellent working condition?
He felt a tiny tendril of hope winding its way into his heart. He beat it back. “Gaia, don’t you think you’ll need to get past awkwardness if you really plan to be doing it with this person in the next forty-eight hours?”
“Yeah, I guess.” He heard her slam her heel against the desk. “But I still can’t tell you.”
“Oh, come on, Gaia. You have to.”
“I gotta go.”
“Gaia!”
“I really do. Cru-Ella needs to use the phone.”
“Gaia! Please? Come on! Tell.”
“See ya tomorrow.”
“Gaia, who? Who, who, who?” Ed demanded.
“You,” he heard her say in a soft voice before she hung up the phone.
But as he laid the phone on the counter he knew who’d said the word, and it wasn’t Gaia. It was that misguiding, leechlike parasite called hope.
ONE SMALL
COMMENT
THE TIME HAD COME. HEATHER Gannis felt certain of that as she slammed her locker door shu
t and tucked the red envelope into her book bag. She waited for the deafening late afternoon crowd to clear before striking out toward the bathroom. She didn’t feel like picking up the usual half-dozen hangers-on, desperate to know what she was doing after soccer practice.
Okay, time to make her move. She caught sight of Melanie Young in her peripheral vision but pretended she hadn’t. She acted like she didn’t hear Tannie Deegan calling after her. Once in the bathroom she hid in the stall for a couple of minutes to be sure she wasn’t being followed.
Heather usually liked her high visibility and enormous number of friends, but some of those girls were so freakishly needy some of the time. It was like if they missed one group trip to the Antique Boutique, they would never recover. Their clinginess made it almost impossible for Heather to spend one private afternoon with her boyfriend.
Heather dumped her bag in the mostly dry sink and stared at her reflection. She wanted to look her best when she saw Sam. She bent her head so close to the mirror that her nose left a tiny grease mark on the glass. This close, she could see the light freckles splattered across the bridge of her nose and the amber streaks in her light eyes that kept them from being the bona fide true blue of her mother and sisters.
Her pores looked big and ugly from this vantage point. Did Sam see them this way when he kissed her? She pulled away. She got busy rooting through her bag for powder to tame the oil on her forehead and nose and hopefully cover those gaping, yawning pores. She applied another coat of clear lip gloss. For somebody who was supposed to be so beautiful, she sure felt pretty plain sometimes.
She wished she hadn’t eaten those potato chips at lunch. She couldn’t help worrying that the difference between beauty and hideousness would come down to one bag of salt-and-vinegar chips.
As she swung her bag over her shoulder and smacked open the swinging door, she caught sight of the dingy olive-colored pants and faded black hooded sweatshirt of Gaia Moore. Heather’s heart picked up pace, and she felt blood pulsing in her temples.
God, she hated that girl. She hated the way she walked, the way she dressed, the way she talked. She hated that pale blond hair, a color you rarely saw on a person over the age of three. Heather wished the color was fake, but she knew it wasn’t.
Heather hated Gaia for dumping scorching-hot coffee all over her shirt a couple of weeks ago and not bothering to apologize. Heather hated Gaia for being friends with Ed Fargo, her ex-boyfriend, and turning him against Heather at that awful party. Heather really hated Gaia for failing to warn Heather that there was a guy with a knife in the park, when Heather was obviously headed there.
All of those things were unforgivable. But none of them kept Heather up at night. The thing that kept her up at night was one small, nothing comment made by her boyfriend, Sam Moon.
It happened the day Heather got out of the hospital. Sam was there visiting, as he was throughout those five days. He had disappeared for a few minutes, and when he got back to her room, Heather asked him where he’d been. He said, “I ran into Gaia in the hallway.” That was all. Afterward, when Heather quizzed him, Sam instantly claimed to dislike Gaia. Like everybody else, he said it was partly Gaia’s fault that Heather got slashed in the first place.
But there was something about Sam’s face when he said Gaia’s name that stuck in Heather’s mind and wouldn’t go away.
Heather’s mind returned again to the card floating in her bag. She sorted through the bag and pulled it out. She needed to check again that the words seemed right. That the handwriting didn’t look too girly and stupid. That the phrasing didn’t seem too . . . desperate.
She’d find Sam in the park playing chess with that crazy old man, as he often did on Wednesday afternoons. And if not, she’d go on to his dorm and wait for him there. She’d hand him the card, watch his face while he read it, and kiss him so he’d know she meant it.
She was in love with Sam. This Saturday marked their six-month anniversary. He was the best-looking, most intelligent guy she knew. She loved the fact that he was in college.
She had made this decision with her heart. Sam was sexy. Sam was even romantic sometimes. He wasn’t a guy you let get away.
So why, then, as she wrote the card, was she thinking not of Sam, but of Gaia?
Dear Sam,
These last six months have been the best of my life. Sorry to be corny, but it’s true. So I wanted to celebrate the occasion with a very special night. I’ll meet you at your room at eight on Saturday night and we’ll finally do something we’ve been talking about doing for a long time. I know I said I wanted to wait, but I changed my mind.
You are the one, and now is the time.
Love and kisses (all over),
Heather
LONELY HEARTS
He smiled at her. This time it was sweet, open, real.
REMARKABLE GIRL
“THAT STUPID PUNK WILL NOT KILL Gaia!” he thundered. “Do you understand?”
He strode to the far end of the loft apartment and kicked over a side table laden with coffee mugs. Most rolled; one shattered. One of the two bodyguards who hovered in the background came forward to clean them up.
He spun on Ella. He hated her face at moments like this. “Do you understand?”
“Of course I understand,” she said sullenly. “I wasn’t expecting her to climb out the window,” she added in a scornful mumble.
“Learn to expect it!” he bellowed. “Gaia is not an ordinary girl! Haven’t you figured that out?”
Ella’s eyes darted with reptilian alertness, but she wisely kept her mouth shut.
“Gaia is no use to me dead. I will not let it happen. I don’t care how crazy the girl is. I don’t care if she throws herself in the path of a bus. I will not let it happen!” He was ranting now. He couldn’t stop now if he wanted to. He’d always had a bad temper.
“Show me the pictures,” he demanded of Ella.
Reluctantly Ella came near and put the pile in his hands.
He studied the first one for a long time. It was Gaia sitting alone on a park bench. Her face was tipped down, partly obscured by long, pale hair. Her gray sweatshirt was sagging off one shoulder. Her long legs were crossed, and a little burst of light erupted from the reflective patch on her running shoe. A box of doughnuts sat open on the bench next to her.
Her gesture and manner were so familiar to him, he felt an odd stirring in his chest. Though Gaia was undeniably beautiful with her graceful, angular face, she didn’t resemble Katia. Katia had dark glossy hair, brown eyes flecked with orange, and a smaller, more voluptuous build.
In the next picture Gaia’s head was raised, and in the shadow behind her was the boy pointing the gun at her head. The boy looked agitated, his eyes wild. Yet Gaia’s face was impossibly calm. He brought the picture close. Remarkable. Utterly fascinating. There was no fear in those wide-set blue eyes. He would know. He had a great gift for detecting fear.
Gaia was indeed everything he had heard about her. All the more reason why he could not accept another ridiculous close call like this one.
He glanced at the next picture. The boy was leaning in closer, his face clenched as he prepared to pull the trigger.
“Keep that boy and his stupid friends away from her,” he barked at Ella.
“Yes,” she mumbled.
“He will not get that gun anywhere near Gaia!”
“Yes, sir.”
He glared at Ella with withering eyes. “Hear me now, Ella. If anyone kills Gaia Moore, it will be me.”
Ella’s gaze was cast to the ground.
He studied the next picture in the pile. This one showed Gaia standing in all her ferocious glory, flipping that pitiful boy over her shoulder. Her face was wonderfully alert, intense. She was magnificent. More than he could have hoped for.
No, Gaia didn’t resemble Katia, he decided as he studied the lovely face in the picture. Gaia resembled him.
LIKE A DRUG
SHE PROBABLY WOULDN’T EVEN BE there. Why would she
? She’d be avoiding him if she had any sense.
Sam Moon hurried into Washington Square Park with his physics textbook tucked under his arm. Then again, if he had any sense, he’d be avoiding her. Instead he was darting around the park at all hours like some kind of timid stalker, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
He approached the shaded area where the chess tables sat, surveying them almost hungrily. No. She wasn’t there. It verged on ridiculous, the physical feeling of disappointment that radiated through his abdomen.
He kept his distance, reviewing his options. He didn’t want to plunge right into chess world because then all his cohorts would see him and he’d be stuck for at least a game or two. And he’d found out the hard way that when Gaia was on his mind (and when wasn’t she?), he was a lot worse at chess.
Maybe she had come and gone already. Maybe she’d caught sight of him from a distance and taken off. Maybe she really did hate him —
“Moon?”
Sam practically leaped right out of his clothes. He spun around. “Jesus, Renny, you scared the crap out of me.”
Renny smiled in his open, friendly way. He was a wiry-looking, barely adolescent Puerto Rican kid who was quickly becoming a lethal chess player. “You looking for Gaia?”
Sam’s face fell. Was his head made of glass? Was his romantic torment, which he believed to be totally private and unique, available for public display? Was everybody who knew him talking and snickering about it? Even the chess nerds, who wouldn’t ordinarily notice if you’d had one of your legs amputated?
“No,” Sam lied defensively. “Why?”
“I figure you’re getting tired of whipping the rest of us. Gaia could probably get a game off you, huh?”
Sam studied Renny’s face for signs of cleverness or mockery. No. Renny wasn’t being a wise guy. He wasn’t suddenly Miss Lonely Hearts. Renny was thinking the same way he always thought, like a chess player.
Sam let out a breath. He tried to relax the crackling nerve synapses in his neck and shoulders. There was a word for this: paranoia.
Sam Page 2
