Bulletproof (Healer) (8 page)

             
I feign giggling easily because Gabe’s husky voice so close and breathing on my neck left me somewhat giddy. I’m not good at acting though as my brain overanalyses everything about the way I stand and talk I can’t relax and just be. Should I hold his hand differently? If I was his girlfriend would I touch his arm playfully, kiss his cheek, wrap my arms around his waist. My breathing becomes uneven as I get flustered thinking about all the way I would act if I was his girlfriend but find it too difficult to because I’m not.

             
Acting comes naturally to Gabe though. His moody face softens and he releases bouts of flirtatious laughter occasionally. He plays with the loose curls that sway around my shoulders and his fingers reach to stroke the back of my neck. I can see why most of my peers enjoy chasing boys and spending long afternoons watching television with their boyfriends. This is pretend. Imagine how good it feels when it’s real, I tell myself.

             
The man surveying us must have gone because Gabe relaxes and the boyfriend act lessens to just a limp hand holding and the occasional forced smile. I’m left with a sensation like I’ve been punched in the gut as I remember how much Gabe actually dislikes me. 

             
We check in and make our way to the departure lounge. Gabe asks if I want anything and screws up his face when I ask for an extreme sports magazine. “You never fail to amaze me, Cassie,” he says in a toneless manner.

             
I paw through the glossy pages of EDGE. A magazine which I’m subscribed to back at home, ever since I learned that my biggest aspiration in life was to become a renowned adrenaline junkie. Dad would pull ridiculous faces when he’d see me with my nose buried in an interview with an Olympic snowboarder. He hated that I loved it so much because he knew eventually I’d be old enough to fight back and live my dreams.

             
An announcement reveals it is time to board our plane. There is a stampede running a riot inside my stomach. I am glad that I am allowed to clutch on to Gabe’s hand as I make my way down the walkway into a plane for the first time in my life.

             
The interior of a plane is nothing exciting. It looks exactly how I pictured for the dozens of movies I’ve watched. But the feeling of take off is inexplicable. I haven’t felt this rush of adrenaline pumping violently in my veins for such a long time. Like chicken pox, once you’ve had it you don’t get it again; I have become immune to fear. I am sure I catch Gabe smiling at me as he watches my thrilled expression appear. 

             
Once we’re in flight Gabe turns to me, “You’ve really never been on a plane before?”

             
“No,” I shake my head, “My dad takes paranoid parent to a new level.”

             
“But why?” Gabe blinks at me. “You’re untouchable. Nothing can hurt you.”

             
“We don’t know that,” I shrug. I feel like a broken record player. This conversation has played out so many times in the past few years with different people. Eventually I just stopped talking about it. A vacant expression is easier than trying to make people understand a concept so foreign to them. After Dave, the genetic mutations researcher that befriended me for his own selfish reasons, I learned that even the nice guys will never see more than a girl void of physical pain. I live and breathe isolation from the world around me; I would gladly swap this mental anguish for a broken bone.

             
“What do you mean?” Gabe leans on the small plastic dinner tray that folds out in front of him and is staring at me peculiarly like I am a puzzle he is trying to solve.

             
“The accidents haven’t always been here. Sure, we always knew I was different because I didn’t get bloody knees like the rest of the kids my age but it was nothing serious but now there are car crashes and crazy stuff. There’s no formula to it and my dad worries that one day his luck will run out and I will meet a hazard that I can’t overcome,” I explain steadily. 

             
“Do you worry about that?” Gabe asks. “Your time running out?”

             
I shrug my shoulders and bite my bottom lip. Do I think about a day in the future when I will no longer be Miracle Girl? Yes. Does it worry me? I don’t know. It is evident I’m searching for something that is too perilous; something that I can’t overcome so I can show that I, like everybody else, have weakness. First, the extreme sports magazines and then the avid passion for vampires. Yes, I assumed, I prayed that one day the day would come when I could live and breathe an ordinary life but it didn’t frighten me. When it came I would embrace it like an old friend. “No, I don’t think so,” I say but I don’t explain why and he doesn’t ask me either. We revert to silence but for once it is comfortable. I read my magazine and look out of the window into the blue sky and white clouds which makes me think of Rose’s study. If I ever got to decorate a room, it would be exactly like that. Free as a bird, exploring the world at my own leisure, high in the sky.

 
              I must have dozed off during the flight because the next thing I know Gabe is digging his elbow into my side and telling me to wake up. “We’re here,” he whispers. 

             
I am dizzy with anticipation of what I will see, smell and hear when I step off of the plane. I am already having conversations in French in my mind with the limited vocabulary that I have. I can almost taste the alien foods on my tongue. The patisseries filled with creamy, spongy, delightful cakes of pastel pinks and yellows. 

             
I wish dad and Shannon were here with me. Especially Shannon. She has fought with my dad for as long as I can remember to convince him to take us away for a long weekend to see the sights we only know from postcards and television advertisements. Before she met my dad, when she was my age, Shannon dreamed of bag packing across Europe but little did she know in three years time she would meet a charming man, settle down and marry him only to discover he didn’t share the same enthusiasm for culture as she. 

             
We are back in another airport and Gabe and I are back in our pretence of couple status. He holds my hand but this time our fingers are completely intertwined. Although it is feigned, I’m comforted by this gesture. I am abroad for the first time. These emotions I’m feeling are as foreign to me as the exquisite food and thick accent. So Gabe’s cooling touch is the weight I need to steady me. 

             
He grabs our bags from the conveyor belt which amuses me momentarily. At the exit, we find a man standing with a piece of card which has the name CASSIE MUELLER and an adorable character of a grinning Frenchman complete with a twirling moustache and baguette in hand. The man is short, round and has a bright red face like he has been running up flights of stairs before meeting us. Gabe appears to know him but speaks to him with minimum interest, “Afternoon Chec.”

             
The plump man named Chec ignores Gabe and shakes my hand which startles me. I decide I must get used to strangers being overly zealous to me because it seems to be happening a lot. “Bonjour my dear Cassie,” disappointingly Chec is not French. “I’m Chester Wright but everyone calls me Chec.” I don’t ask why nor do I care. This man’s excessively cheerful face is infuriating me, I try to attribute this to my travelling as I might just be cranky. And try to be as pleasant as possible.

             
“Hi, it’s nice to meet you.”

             
“Maurice told me you were beautiful but I didn’t think you’d be this stunning,” he chuckles and I feel uncomfortable. It’s strange to me that Maurice would know what I look like but then I remember Gabe’s box of newspaper clippings. Maurice has probably caught a glimpse of the black and white photographs from those which unnerves me as I don’t like any of them. I can’t help wonder how I appear now, compared to the pictures of me in my school uniform, with my trendy bob and provocative ensemble. Chec is leering at me and I am desperate for Gabe to take the reigns in this conversation. It is clear from the look on Gabe’s face that he dislikes this slimy, portly man as much as I do. 

             
“Thanks,” I say awkwardly. Please don’t tell me I have to spend the rest of the day with him. 

             
“What do you want, Chec? Do you have a message or are you completely useless?” Gabe asks. 

             
Chec plays ignorant to Gabe’s aversion to him and continues to grin, pushing apart his massive pink cheeks even further, “I’ve missed you Gabby. It’s been too long. But let’s be serious, Maurice asked me to chauffeur you to your hotel in Paris for the night and make sure everything is running… smoothly” Gabe must just realise we are still holding hands because he drops mine as if it is explosive. 

             
We followed behind Chec who talks quickly about his first time in Paris when he was just a boy. He is talking so loudly that I have the chance to whisper to Gabe, “What happened to playing couple for the crowd?”

             
A part of me expects Gabe to laugh. To say something conceited about how I want to hold his hand but his lips remain pressed into a taught line, “The authorities in France don’t know or just don’t care about vampires so they won’t be troubling us. That’s why Maurice stays here. A lot less scrutiny than back in Britain.”

             
I nod and pretend to be relieved, “Oh good.” Really I liked the way his hand felt in mine, I liked pretending he was my boyfriend.

             
France has a stale air, I notice. It is early evening now but it has clearly been a warm day. The sun is still clinging on to every atom in the air, unwilling to let go of the daytime yet. There is no cool breeze like I’m accustomed to living by the sea in Scotland. It smells like a brewery on a hot Summers day but in fact it is only the beginning of April. 

             
The dead air is almost knocked out of me when I realise what Chec will be driving us in. A sparkling white limousine. I’m glad there are no secret agents watching the vampires’ every move here in Paris because with this lavish expenditure all eyes are on us. I think about Maurice’s letter which ironically lies neatly folded beneath the pages of an Anne Rice novel. There is something unsettling about how willing this vampire is to please me and coddle me in gifts. 

             
Gabe catches my dazed expression, “Are you okay?”

             
He hasn’t shown the slightest bit of compassion for me over the past few days so why start now? He doesn’t like me, doesn’t want to be my friend and frankly I am beginning to tire of his beautiful, brooding face. He’s big headed and walks around frowning like a martyr all day long but instead of giving him a piece of my mind, I clamp my tongue between my teeth and nod.

             
Chec loads, with great effort, our cases into the back of the limo. He opens the door for me and I slide in. Gabe hesitates to come in beside me and asks Chec whether he should ride with him in the front. Chec, with a sneer, says that it is up to me. Maurice wants my ever wish to be their every command, he says in a mocking tone. 

             
Gabe questions me with his haunting eyes, “Well?”

             
I could use some company. Being alone right now makes me feel nauseous. In an unknown city with an uncertain future. I wish Rose was here. Her effervescent personality would coax me into a more relaxed state but Gabe is the closest I’ve got to a companion right now. “Could you sit with me?” I ask shyly and I can hear Chec laugh heartily. The sound grates on me.

             
Gabe is tall so he has to dip his head considerably low to get into the limo so his face is so close it almost knocks into mine, “Sorry.”

             
Chec shuts the door behind us with his big clown face jeering at us and starts to drive us through Paris. I have never been in a limo before and I drink in the luxury of it slowly. The windows are tinted and it’s getting dark outside which makes it difficult for me to watch. I want to see the Parisians going about their day to day life. But from what I can make out, there isn’t much to see right now other than busy strangers wandering down pavements. 

             
“You can take that wig off now,” Gabe says. “We’re in the clear.”

             
I envision the world split into zones. My hometown being the red zone; there are sirens and red flashing beacons on every corner. When Gabe escorted me to Rose’s home in Manchester we were in the amber zone. Still dangerous and we could only stay there for a few days before the warning lights would begin again. Now we are safe. Paris is the green zone. People are tending to their own business either entirely disinterested in us or perhaps they do notice us and do suspect we are involved with the elite underground vampires but are too wary of becoming involved in such a risky situation. That’s what a sensible person would do, I remind myself, stay away from the fanged fiends but as I sit in a limousine being chauffeured around Paris, I am struggling to see the downsides.  

             
“Don’t you like it?” I ask, whipping off the wig and feeling a wave of relief. It was making my head hot and covering my scalp with a burning prickly feeling that I struggled not to scratch at. But I’m aware that my blonde waves are clamped to my head with sweat now.