Escape (4 page)

“No, it's fine,” Gaia stated numbly. “It's fine. You're right. We should just wait and see what happens.”

“Wait. Now you're not being honest with me,” Tatiana complained.

“No, I am.” Gaia's feet had already begun moving backward. “Let's just talk about it later, okay?”

“Gaia. . . Gaia, wait. . . .”

“Yeah,
later,”
Gaia muttered, swinging away from Tatiana to head for the door.

But the
Starbucks nightmare
still
wasn't over.

The moment Gaia turned around, she bumped straight into a wall. A wall named Jake Montone.

“Oompf,”
Jake huffed, gripping Gaia's shoulders tightly to slow her down. “Jesus, Gaia. You're awfully clumsy for an all-powerful karate master.”

Gaia shook free of Jake's grip. Her tolerance for his obnoxious martial arts-jock grin was at absolute zero. Jake could not have picked a worse time to mess with her. And his check-me-out gym-toned biceps and
perfectly floofed hair
only made her hungrier to drop him on his ass right here and now. “Can you move, please?”

Jake crossed his thick arms over his chest and stood his ground. “You know, Gaia, I've only been in this school for a couple of days, but I still feel qualified to speak for the entire senior class when I say. . . what the hell is your
problem?”

Gaia's blood had been boiling so long it was beginning to froth. Her violent tendencies had been building slowly ever since she'd entered penguin hell, and if Jake didn't make way, she might just have to take it all out on him. And why the hell not? She'd already given him the judo pounding of his life once. Mr. Handsome New Guy or not, he was probably the only one in the entire school who could take it.

“I try not to speak in clichés, Jake,” she uttered through clenched teeth. “But right now. . . my problem is
you. Move.”
She stepped to the left to pass him, but he countered with an ultra-annoying step to his right to block her again.

“Are you sure
I'm
the problem, Gaia?” He leaned a little closer. “Because I could swear you've had that same
screw-you-all
grimace on your face for the past. . . oh, say eight or nine
years.
Does that sound accurate to you?”

Just smack him, Gaia. Pummeling him with words takes too much time. When dealing with a primitive, there is no other choice but to use primitive tactics.
“Jake, you've got three freaking seconds to get out of my way. Three. . . two . . .”

“No, no,
five
seconds.” Jake laughed, waving his
hands wildly in fake desperation. “No, wait,
six.
Give me
six
seconds. . . .”

That was it. Gaia felt her restraint snap. Before she knew it, she had grabbed the front of Jake's tight T-shirt in her hand and yanked him violently forward so that they were face-to-face.

“Listen
to me, Jake,” she menaced, nearly ripping a hole in the center of his shirt. “There is an entire level that you are
not
getting here. The level on which my life, which you know
absolutely nothing
about, exists. The level on which I will
snap
your goddamn neck if you do not cut the seventh-grade-style antagonism and get the hell out of my way.
Do you understand?
Have I answered your questions to your satisfaction?”

Jake stared at her without budging an inch. He widened his excessively green eyes with
a bizarre kind of confrontational glee
and leaned in closer, nearly head-butting Gaia from above. If he was going to try the head butt, she was oh so ready to flip him straight onto his ass. Hopefully she could take a few penguins with her.

But he didn't go for the head butt. He surprised her and went verbal.

“Gaia,” he said, only inches from her face, “I fear that this is the only way you can get close to people. Just remember. . . violence is never the answer. If you want to get closer to me, then you should really call my father and invite me out on a proper date.” He smiled.

Gaia felt her free hand clenching up into a fist. He deserved it now. There was no question in her mind. He had earned it. She pulled back her fist and tried not to think about the lawsuit that would follow. . . .

“Whoa,
there.” Ed laughed, grabbing Gaia's arm from behind and gently guiding her away from Jake and his obnoxious grin. “Let's just
chill
for a moment, shall we?”

Ed pulled Gaia across the room as she watched Jake slowly disappear into the crowd. A moment more and Gaia realized how completely ridiculous she was being. She felt
like some biker trying to start a fight over who had the biggest Harley.
She felt like an idiot. And she had much bigger problems to deal with than the newest FOH jock and his tight T-shirt.

Ed pulled her to the farthest corner from the FOHs and settled back with her against a relatively private wall.

They sat for a moment in silence.

And then, out of nowhere, Ed smoothed her tangled hair behind her shoulder, leaned in, kissed her neck, and then released her hair, sitting back comfortably against the wall.

Ed truly knew her.
He knew that his strange little kiss on the neck would basically be the equivalent of flipping her “human” switch back to the on position. She instantly felt her lungs expand and she began to breathe again. It was as if she hadn't been breathing for hours. Maybe she hadn't. She turned to Ed, and
each of her senses began to return. As usual, his clear eyes showed no hidden agenda whatsoever, no ulterior motives. There was nothing behind his eyes that she couldn't trust. Just Ed. Ed, who was, as far as she could tell, perfect. Ed, who had sat her down here just to be next to her. And that was when she realized. . .

She had barely spoken to her boyfriend since she'd entered the room.

Why
do I always feel like I'm losing her? Always. No matter how many times we seem to reach some kind of finish line, I always feel like the next day is an entirely new race.

I've proved everything I can prove to Gaia. I've proved my love and my friendship and my devotion. For Christ's sake, I've laid my life on the line for her more than once. So exactly what else can I do? What can I do to stop her from hovering?

That's Gaia. This beautiful girl hovering over her own life. Spinning like a top over school, over her apartment on East Seventy-second Street. Over the entire city. But I don't care about the geography. The problem is, she's hovering over
me.
Totally obsessed with doom and destruction and depression when I'm
right here.
It's all right here for her. Ed and Gaia-the antidote to her madness. The anti-Gaia. Hasn't she figured
that out yet? Is it egotistical of me to think that? Is it totally self-aggrandizing and presumptuous of me to call our relationship an antidote?

Hell, no. Because it's not about ego. It's not that I'm the solution to Gaia's problems. If one thing has been made abundantly clear, it's that there
is no
solution to Gaia's problems. But “Ed and Gaia.” That's a solution to something. I know that much. I can feel it every time we're together. I feel it in her. I feel her breathing more easily, and I see her smile, and I hear her laugh. Every time we're together, it's like she comes back to earth. She lands. So why the hell won't she turn off the engines and dodge all of her goddamn tornados and
stay awhile?
Why do I always need to follow her flying shadow around like some kind of emotional cowboy, swinging my lasso up in the sky and roping her back down to the ground?

It's so exhausting. Such an endless challenge to my perfectly healthy ego. Truth be told, I'm not even sure it's worth it. There's a
world
of nondepressive, nonhovering, non-tragedy-magnet women out there for me to choose from. People who could love me back on a regular basis. People who could love me back without. . .

Oh, who am I kidding? I'll never be in love with anyone else for the rest of my life. Even if someday I was, I'd really just be pretending. Loving anyone other than Gaia would always be pretending. That is to say. . . I'm screwed.

He could practically feel his tail wagging with anticipation as he waited in his little doghouse for Gaia to walk through the door.

Thousands of Thoughts

GAIA TILTED HER HEAD BACK AGAINST
the Starbucks wall. The place was so crowded, the management couldn't even see them huddled in their little camp-out spot. She turned to Ed, keeping the back of her head glued to the wall.

“Thank you
so much,”
she sighed bitterly. “Thank you for getting me away from that monster. I swear I was going to—”

“Gaia, listen,” Ed interrupted, swiveling his head against the wall to face her. “Listen to me, okay?”

Her face turned a bit pale. It seemed the added gravity in his voice had come through. She now seemed to be dreading whatever it was Ed was going to say. That certainly was not his intention. Or, then again, maybe it was? Well, in any event, the goal was to get her attention, and he had certainly done that.

“I'm listening,” she assured him, locking her eyes on his.

“Okay. The thing is—”

“Ed, I must have seemed like a total freak when I came into Starbucks,” she announced. She banged her head twice against the wall. “And I didn't even say
hello
to you when I walked in. I'm crazy, Ed. I'm total Bellevue material, and I swear to God someone out there is trying to finish me off. They're trying to take
down my entire family, and they're trying to drive the last freaking nail into my sanity. And all I have is
you,
and I didn't even say hello to you when I walked in. Okay, sorry, I'm listening. . . .”

“No, no, go
on,”
Ed insisted.

But Gaia turned her head away.
He could practically see the thousands of thoughts and anxieties coursing through the veins of her forehead.
“Ed, there's so much going on. . . .” She trailed off as she shook her head. “I don't even know where to—”

“Go on,” Ed prompted her. “You don't know where to what?”

But he'd lost her again. He could tell. He'd lost her attention to that far-off star in outer space that was obviously far more compelling than her own supposed boyfriend.

“Gaia. . . ?” Ed sighed. “Gaia, where are you?”

Crawling with Lepers

THAT FACE. STANDING AT THE CASH
register. Gaia had seen that face before. The pockmarked skin and the chubby cheeks of an ugly manchild. She never forgot a face. He might
not have been wearing his shiny blue jacket with the silver stripes across the back, but it was unquestionably his bloated nose and his pudgy fingers.

It was one of the obnoxious dirtbags who had come for her father that night. The EMT worker who had shown up with the ambulance, strapped her dad into a gurney, and then refused to let Gaia ride along with her own father.

It seemed like such a cruel coincidence, but there he was, standing there in his rumpled, off-duty attire: filthy beige corduroys, a stained white oxford shirt, and a tattered black messenger bag over his shoulder.
There he was, ordering some beverage with a ten-word description and a Rice Krispie Treat.
At 8:00 in the morning. Disgusting.

Ed suddenly faded off into the periphery of outer space as Gaia followed the man with narrowed eyes. Her blood began to boil as images of her father's limp frame being strapped to that gurney began to invade her mind. She could still feel this bastard's pudgy hands holding her back from the ambulance, denying her the most basic right to stay as close to her father as possible, to hold his hand as this whole pathetic course of events began.

What the hell was he doing at Starbucks? At this Starbucks? Right now? Could it be a simple coincidence? She supposed St. Vincent's hospital wasn't that far from here, only seven or eight blocks away. He could just be getting his morning latte before starting his shift—before
starting
another day of being egregiously insensitive to other victims and their freaked-out relatives.
Maybe he lived around here?

But how often did the coincidences in Gaia's life turn out to be coincidences?

She could think of two other possibilities, as she watched him lumber over to the milk-and-sugar counter:

Though she was not particularly religious, this could be a sign from God. A sign that, like most signs from God, was meant to induce guilt. In this case, to slap a lazy-minded daughter in the face and remind her that while she was sitting here making goo-goo eyes at her boyfriend and bitching and moaning about Jake the Jock, her father was still out there somewhere, waiting for her to find him.

It was no coincidence. He was there for a reason—to check up on Gaia. Somehow, some way, due to a series of circumstances that made absolutely no sense. . . he was one of
them.

But that theory seemed just about as far-fetched as they came. How could St. Vincent's hospital be involved in her father's disappearance? Unless the ambulance
hadn't
come from St. Vincent's? But that made no sense either because the ambulance had
taken
him to St. Vincent's. So what could it be? How could this disgusting, obnoxious, poorly trained ambulance schlub be part of some massive conspiracy to kidnap Gaia's father
and put him out of commission? How could he be a part-time ambulance driver/part-time spy?

You're going crazy, that's how. Why don't you just head off to Texas and figure out who killed J.F.K. while you're at it. He's an EMT guy getting coffee before work, and he's the last person you wanted to see today. That's it. He can't do a damn thing for you.