Shock (3 page)

GAIA WHIPPED HER ARMS BEHIND
her and grabbed whoever had their hands clamped over her eyes. With one brisk movement she had her attacker slammed on a library table, faceup, with her forearm against their throat, ready to rip out their…

It was Megan.

Her hazel eyes were wide with surprise, and she was making a faint choking noise. Gaia let go of her throat and stood up, snapping off the monitor behind her with her other hand.

“Huccch,” Megan said, rubbing her throat and giving Gaia a confused and angry stare. She sat up on the table. “You're such a freak. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Why did you attack me?” Gaia asked flatly. The truth was, she felt like a total idiot—she should have been able to tell the difference between a masked operative and the president of the Shakira fan club, for chrissake. And that made her even more aggressively angry.

“I was just trying to goof around with you,” Megan snapped, her hand still fluttering protectively around her throat. “Jesus. You were so wrapped up in the computer, I thought it was funny. I was just going to say ‘
guess who
.'”

“You can't sneak up on people like that,” Gaia told her.

“Oh, please. Would you give it up already?” Megan seemed exasperated. “When are you going to learn that you're not fooling anybody?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, nobody buys your ‘I'm so mysterious, try to figure me out' act. Like you're the tormented star of some movie of the week. Everybody just thinks you're pathetic. Your psycho party-pooper routine last night went a long way toward convincing everyone you've got serious emotional issues. And when I tell them you attacked me just to increase the faux mystique, your stock'll take even more of a nosedive.”

“Well, thank you so much for the insight,” Gaia said. “It's really comforting to know I'm being psychoanalyzed behind my back by someone who thinks swing dancing is a sport.”

Gaia didn't know whether to be relieved or insulted. Okay, she was both. Relieved that she
was
fooling everybody. And insulted that they thought she was a stereotypical tortured teen. Well, at least she had a plausible cover story.

“Why don't you do yourself a favor and take some advice,” Megan said. “Stop assuming I'm an idiot just because I'm popular. And join a team—
any
team—before you become one of those lonely old people with twenty cats whose only close personal relationship is with a phone psychic.”

“Yes, I'm sure spending time with people who share my intense interest in bowling will really draw me out of my shell and provide me with the life skills I need,” Gaia snapped.

“Suit yourself,” Megan told her. “You know, frankly, I don't give a crap what you do. I just felt sorry for you. When you're a lonely thirty-year-old writing memoirs about how miserable your younger days were, like Janeane Garofolo or Margaret Cho, don't you dare say nobody ever tried to get through to you.” She stalked off.

Gaia stared after her.
Well, well, well,
she thought.
Little Megan was on a mission to do some good works. I hope she gets a gold star for trying.

Whatever. Gaia had bigger fish to fry. She still had the information in her head, which was good, because when she turned the monitor back on, she could see that the message had already self-destructed. With a few flicks of the mouse she emptied the computer's cache, just to be on the safe side. The fun was over. Now she had to get to Midtown—fast.

“I SWEAR, ONE OF THESE DAYS WE'RE
going to see Gaia on the cover of the
New York Post,
being led into a squad car in handcuffs,” Megan complained to Tatiana five minutes later. “No offense, but I don't know how you can be friends with her. Let alone Heather. She's totally nutso.”

“It is not easy,” Tatiana agreed, checking her lipstick in her locker mirror. Her lilting Russian accent was still apparent, but her English improved by the day, and as it did, her shyness seemed to melt away. So much so that her position as nouvelle Heather seemed completely natural. “She can be a most unusual roommate,” she added. “Sometimes I expect to see her sleeping upside down, like a bat. Has she done something to you today?”

“Well, yeah. I just went up to her in the library and tried to be friendly—for your sake, I guess,” Megan answered. “But she was so wrapped up in her geekoid computer world that she flipped out the minute I touched her. I mean, it was so totally over the top, I could have had her arrested for assault. She must be involved in one of those on-line role-playing games. She probably forgot about reality for a second and thought she was really Astrella, Queen of the Dark Demons.” She gave an evil titter. “Do you think she dresses up like an elven waif on the weekend and meets up with Renaissance Faire weirdos for some naughty jousting?”

Megan let out a loud guffaw at the thought of Gaia in a green doublet and hose, but Tatiana just turned to her with a blank expression on her face.

“What was she doing on the computer? Did you see what was on the screen?”

“No. It was probably naked pictures of the cast of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
.”

“Was it e-mails? Did you see what any of them said?” Tatiana asked in a curiously intense voice.

“I don't know, maybe. It did look like she was reading e-mails, and she was totally focused, like they were full of secrets or something.”

“Are you sure you didn't see what any of them said?”

Megan looked at Tatiana. “Jeez, no, Tat. I mean, come on, who cares, right?” She gave a little laugh, then looked expectantly at Tatiana, who fixed her eyes on her new friend for a moment longer, then gave in and laughed, too.

“I just thought it would be such good gossip if you saw something.” She shrugged. “I never can figure out what Gaia is up to. I thought you might have seen what the big secret was.”

“The big secret is there is no big secret,” Megan said decisively. “Are you hung over? I'm hung over huge, and I think I'm going to run to Starbucks between classes. You want to come?”

Tatiana turned away and seemed to be staring into the black recess of her locker. Megan didn't notice that Tatiana's spine was curiously tense, that she was wound as tight as a coil ready to spring.

“No, thank you.” Tatiana's voice drifted over her shoulder. “I just remembered, there is a phone call I must make.”

Tatiana closed her locker and stepped toward one of the wide windows that would afford her cell phone the best reception. She flicked it open, murmuring into it in serious Russian tones that seemed out of place in the teeming high school hallway. If Megan had noticed, she might have found it odd. But she didn't notice. No one did. And after a little while Tatiana snapped her phone closed. Then she pulled a second cell phone out of her bag, checking closely to see if any messages had popped up on its small screen. Then she put both phones away and strolled down the hall as if she didn't have a care in the world.

The jangling bells of the alarm exploded in her ears.

ED STRODE PAST THE LIBRARY, AND
for the second time that day he caught the familiar sight of Gaia's long, straight blond hair. His reflex reaction was to rap on the window and say hi, but he stopped himself just in the nick of time.

When was he going to get it through his thick head—or his thick heart? Gaia: off-limits. He knew it intellectually, but the rest of him—every bit of him from the neck down, including the heart and various other regions—hadn't yet gotten the news.

Without realizing it, Ed leaned his head against the window of the library and sighed.

“Oh, my goodness, who is sad today? Perhaps you are hung over like Megan. Would you like to get some coffee?”

The musical Russian accent, the friendly voice—he hated to admit how good it felt to see Tatiana coming up to him.

“Hey!” he said. “How are you doing? You were pretty wrecked last night.”

“Oof!” Tatiana waved a hand in the air. “I have almost no memory of the party. My apartment is such a mess, I have to have someone help me clean. I hope you had a fun time?”

Ed shrugged. Actually, the party had been a nightmare: obnoxious girls, too much Sam Adams, guys who thought “woo!” was a conversation aid, and of course his horrible confrontation with Gaia after he'd found her in a love knot with Sam. He hoped Tatiana really didn't remember much. Jeez, she'd been so drunk, she'd come on to him, and he'd been so drunk, he'd almost let her. But as he studied her face, there didn't seem to be any awkwardness in her gaze.

“I had a fine time,” he said. “I don't remember much, either.”

There. They were both off the awkwardness hook, using the age-old beer-amnesia excuse. Gosh, it was handy. Now all the awkwardness he felt was the regular old I-don't-know-you-well-enough kind. Which was kind of okay, actually. Interesting. Possibly even a little exciting.

“Are you going to do an intramural?” Tatiana asked him.

“Yeah, a skateboarding clinic,” he told her.

“Oh, that is so perfect for you!” Tatiana cried, slapping him on the arm. “And after you couldn't do it for so long, now you'll be teaching it to the younger students—Ed, that is really cool.”

Now, see? How hard is it to just be happy and supportive? Is Gaia just lacking this skill altogether? This is how friends are supposed to act together.

“I'm actually pretty psyched,” Ed admitted. He shifted his feet, feeling self-conscious, not sure if he needed to explain. “I never thought I'd be teaching anything, but when they asked me, I was just like, what the hell. I'm sure they'll regret ever considering such a thing, especially when I take a bunch of freshmen into the abandoned pool in Williamsburg and we all get arrested.”

“Ed, don't be silly. They wouldn't have asked you if they didn't think you could do it. You'll be a great teacher.”

The way that Tatiana looked at Ed with her big blue eyes made him feel ten feet tall. Never mind that the eyes he'd prefer to see gazing at him were ice blue and belonged to Gaia. Never mind that Tatiana didn't hold quite the same fascination for him—that she was sweet and funny but didn't have quite the same spark as Gaia. Gaia had taken herself out of Ed's circle of friends. And Tatiana clearly wanted to be in that circle. Could you blame a guy for feeling good about that? It was just the antidote Ed needed.

“Yeah, well. So what about you? Starting a ski team or something?”

“I'm going to do something, but I'm not sure what,” she said. “Perhaps running track or something boring like that.”

“That's not boring,” Ed told her. “And it comes in handy when you're running late to catch a bus.”

“Now, you see, that is good common sense,” Tatiana told him. “I knew I would learn good life skills in your American high school.”

The banter between them was easygoing and fun, good-natured and friendly. After a while the heartbreak Ed was feeling receded from the front of his consciousness. Without realizing it, some of the lead in his chest leaked out, just a little. Tatiana had some kind of effect on him. Enough to make him stop seeing Gaia everywhere he looked and start having fun again. For a moment. For a little while.

And it felt—if not all better, halfway normal. For Ed, that was the hugest relief of all.

GAIA'S NEXT CLASS WAS AP ENGLISH.
The class was about halfway through a long discussion of
Hamlet
; today they were going to watch scenes from the movie versions starring Ethan Hawke, Kenneth Branagh, and Mel Gibson and compare them to one another. Literature via Hollywood.

Gaia had read
Hamlet
in sixth grade. She really didn't care what Hollywood had done with it. And quite frankly, the story of a guy whose father was
d-e-a-d
dead and whose son was haunted by the need to avenge him was completely not what Gaia needed—or wanted—to think about.

It shouldn't bother me,
she told herself.
Because my dad is not dead. He's just missing.

Right. And she was the one who had to find him. Pronto.

Before the between-class bell could ring a second time, Gaia was clear of any part of the school where she might be spotted by someone other than a stray mouse. Contrary to what Vice Principal Bob thought, she had done a lot of studying in high school. But the knowledge she'd squirreled away had nothing to do with
The Red Badge of Courage
or pi-
r
-squared—stuff she'd mastered years before and didn't feel the need to show off about. The most useful information she had acquired in recent months had more to do with blueprints—as in, the layout of her school, from top to bottom, complete with emergency escape routes for times just such as this.

She admired the purpose of the antitruant rules that were supposed to keep her here. But they were getting in the way.

Most of the doors to the basement were wired with alarms, but Gaia had noticed that the school janitors were easily annoyed—particularly by oversensitive bells that went off accidentally when they were just trying to clean up a chem lab spill. At least half of the doors were disabled, a fact she'd noticed when a gang of ersatz bad-kid freshmen had gone through a phase of daring each other to set off the alarms on purpose. It had kept not working. Gaia had noted the location of the dead doors for future reference.

That knowledge came in handy now. She made her way to a corner of the school near the sidewalk and hit the red lever of the door smack in the middle of the word
warning.
Seconds later Gaia Moore vanished from the smooth tiled hallways of her high school and into the dusty dank basement below.

She heard the metal stairs clank under her feet as she made her way down into the gloom. It was so gross down here, even the most hot-blooded adolescents wouldn't want to use it as a make-out spot. The heater and water boiler were ancient and had sprung quite a few leaks over the years, creating the kind of moldy environment that silverfish and millipedes found irresistible.

Gaia was sure nobody would be down here. Too sure.

“Who's that?” she heard a voice say. She froze, cursing herself for not having tiptoed down the metal stairs. The silence around her was broken only by the throbbing hum of the boiler. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she looked out into the open space of the basement and saw three nervous-looking students peering around, a triptych of paranoid self-preservation. One of them—a kid Gaia recognized as a self-styled wanna-be wise guy—was holding out a couple of mini-baggies of what looked to be weed. The other kids were holding money. This was nothing more than a low-rent drug deal, and it was none of her business.

But before she could melt back into the shadows, something conked her on the head from behind. Her relief turned to fury as she hit the ground, knocked off balance by the sneak attack.

“What the—”

Gaia saw an overgrown hulk standing over her with a lead pipe still held over his shoulder like a softball bat.

“What the hell are you doing down here?” he demanded.

Gaia saw the two buyers race up the stairs and disappear through the door back into the school, a momentary sliver of light announcing their departure. The back of her head burned, and she could hear a loud ringing in her ears. But the dizziness retreated almost immediately. The blow to her melon might have trounced a normal kid, but Gaia was anything but normal.

“Crap, they took their money with them,” the dealer groaned. As he turned toward her, Gaia got a good look at him. His mussy hair was in dire need of a bottle of Pantene, and he wore a denim jacket emblazoned with Megadeth patches over a hooded sweatshirt. Worst of all, his upper lip held a smudge of peach fuzz that she was sure he intended to pass off as a mustache. “Who messed up my deal? Brick, man, what do I keep you around for?”

Brick just glared down at Gaia. His bulk was the most noticeable thing about him: Some pituitary misfire had given him the body of a wrestler, and his shaved head only served to enhance the impression that he had absolutely no neck whatsoever. “She came out of nowhere, Skelzo,” he complained. “I didn't see her till she was practically on top of you.”

Skelzo walked over and glared at Gaia, who was patiently waiting for these two nonentities to get tired of talking so she could get out of there.

“Girlfriend, you wandered into the wrong part of school,” he told her.

“Oh, no, I'm petrified,” she said. “Can I leave now if I promise never to come back?”

“You'll run straight to the principal's office,” he scoffed.

“I won't, I swear.” Gaia was finding it increasingly difficult to play the part of terrified teen, however half-assed her attempt already was. “I'll get in as much trouble as you if anyone finds out I was down here,” she pointed out. “Just let me go and I promise I'll forget anything ever happened.”

“Oh, you'll forget, all right.” Skelzo's scraggly mouth twisted into a grin. “You'll forget because I'll make you forget.”

She rolled her eyes. “What does that even mean?” she asked.

“What?”

“I mean,
you'll make me forget?
What, did you read that in a comic book and think it would sound good? It doesn't even make sense as a threat.”

“Look, bitch, you better—”

“No, you bogus tool,
you'd
better.” Gaia kicked directly up and into Skelzo's crotch, lifting him into the air with the force of her blow. He gave a kitten-like mew of pain as he arced backward, and when he hit the ground, he curled into a ball without another sound.

Brick was faster on his feet than Gaia had expected, and he brought the lead pipe down toward her. She rolled to get out of his way, but the pipe still glanced off her shoulder, creating a searing white-hot flash of pain instantly.

“Ow,” she complained, rolling into a crouch and eyeballing her opposition. “Brick, why don't you just run? I promise you'll be better off.”

Brick only stared at her, crouching slightly as he poised to swing at her again the second she moved. He was a good fighter, she noted. Or he could be if he trained. This self-taught tough guy was about to find out that brawn wasn't the only thing he needed to beat some ass.

“I really don't have time for this,” she complained. Then she shot forward, grabbing him around the waist and pushing him backward onto the floor. Landing on top of his massive frame, she straddled his chest and grabbed both sides of his head, bringing it down to smack against the cold concrete. She heard an “uggh,” but when she leapt to her feet, the stupid doofus still wanted to come after her. Stealing a glance at Skelzo, she saw he was puking up his guts and clutching his stomach; at least she didn't have to worry about him. She stopped Brick with a foot to the chest, then moved her foot six inches higher to smack him back down with another shot to the forehead.

Blood splattered where his scalp scraped the concrete. “Shit,” Gaia muttered. These were just a couple of kids in her way, not a true threat, and she didn't want to do real damage to them. “You total idiot, why didn't you just back off before I hurt you?” she asked.

Leaving the Moron Twins flat on the floor, Gaia turned toward the trapdoor to the sidewalk that would lead her to freedom. Then she heard a groan. She turned back to look and saw more blood leaking out from Brick's head wound.

Forget him,
she told herself.
You have a job to do.

But some sneaky little sliver of conscience yanked her mind back into the basement. These weren't Loki's henchmen. They were a couple of stupid pot-dealing teenagers. And if she left them bleeding in the basement, they might not be found for hours—even days.

She gave a hefty sigh and ran across the basement, leaping up the metal steps of another set of stairs toward a door that would trip the alarm. She leapt up and snapped her foot out, hitting the door with percussive force and shoving the door open with whatever was the direct opposite of delicacy. It slammed open with a clang, and the jangling bells of the alarm exploded in her ears.

It would only be a matter of moments before someone came in the open door. She raced back across to the trapdoor set into the ceiling under the sidewalk, throwing herself against it with the strength of a bucking horse. It held fast. She cursed, then threw herself against it again. Obviously it was padlocked from the outside. Gaia looked around wildly, feeling her adrenaline rise as the alarm bells continued to jangle. She wasn't worried about being punished. She was worried about how this would slow her down. And getting slowed down was not an option.

Her eyes rested on a red fireman's ax. Never mind that a high school was a horrible place to leave a lethal weapon; she was glad to see it. Angling it between the door and its frame, she placed the sharp edge against the crack and whacked it. Once, twice…and on the third hit she felt the metal hinge snap and give above her hands. She pushed the door open and leapt up, swinging her legs and pushing her arms down so she could reach the sidewalk. She rolled away from the gaping door and came face-to-face with Karl, the hot dog vendor who tortured the students with his heaven-scented Sabrett cart.

“Now, I know you're not supposed to be out here,” he said, giving an amused shakeof his head.

“I'm not planning on sticking around,” she told him.

“Hey, you want to cut school, go right ahead,” he said. Without another word Gaia stood, kicked the door closed, and raced uptown.

“But you oughta go back,” Karl yelled after her. “Unless you wanna be selling wieners for a living when you're my age!”

By the time anyone noticed she was gone, Gaia was halfway to Midtown on the 1 train.