Twisted (15 page)

Maybe he wasn't coming.

David had probably wised up at the last moment. Maybe he had talked to someone else at school. Maybe he had finally come to his senses. Whatever the case, it was clear he had realized that dating Gaia was
a big mistake.

Disappointment settled into Gaia's empty stomach like lead, but there was an equal amount of relief. No David. No date. There was still some chance of potential irritation if the story
“How Gaia Got Stood Up”
became part of the next day's grind of boring school gossip. But Gaia doubted that would happen. The story was too dull, considering what was going on.

“So what do you recommend?” a voice asked.

Gaia turned to find herself
face-to-face
with David. She struggled for something witty to say, but her well of wit was experiencing a drought. “I, um . . . I see you found the place.”

David tapped a finger against the tip of his nose. “Able to detect taco sauce at a hundred paces.” He held up his arms and pretended to flex huge muscles.
“It's one of my secret powers.”

Gaia forced a smile. She actually
wanted
to smile, but her face wasn't responding to her brain, so she had to force it. “You have others?”

“Too many to number,” David said. He crowded in close to Gaia and leaned forward to look at the menu taped up against the window. “What's good here?”

“Depends on what you think is good.” He was very much in her personal space. Gaia stepped aside, hoping it wasn't
the wrong thing to do.
He didn't even blink.

“Anything,” he said. “As long as it's hot.”

“They have plenty of hot,” Gaia said. Another smile. This one didn't take as much effort.

“I am the terror of hot peppers everywhere.” David stepped past Gaia and pulled open the front door. “Jalapeño parents tell stories of me to frighten their children.”

This time Gaia
actually
laughed. Suddenly all the tension she had felt about this date seemed completely stupid. David was just a person. A funny person who, for some reason, seemed to like her. None of those things was bad. Not everything she did had to turn into a disaster movie. Did it?

She stepped through the open door and waited for David to follow. “I'm not talking about wimpy peppers like a jalapeño,” she said as he entered.

“Jalapeños are wimpy?”

“Extremely,” she said. She was bantering.
This was banter.
Who knew?

They walked past the newsstands inside the door. Gaia picked out a booth off to the side of the
restaurant and slid her butt across the red vinyl seat.

“They serve serious peppers here,” she said. “They don't mess around.”

David dropped into the seat across from her and pulled a plastic-coated menu from between two bottles of hot sauce.

“So what makes a serious pepper?” he asked. “I'm ready to
do battle
with any vegetable in the place.”

“Good.” Gaia reached across the table and plucked the menu from his hand. “Then I'll order for us.”

“Go ahead,” said David. “I'm not afraid.”

Gaia looked at his blue eyes. Something weird was going on. She actually felt, well, almost comfortable. This was not her. This was some other girl
who actually knew how to talk to other human beings.

A waitress approached, and Gaia delivered the order. David picked up the menu again after the waitress left. “What's the special burrito?” he asked.

Gaia snatched the menu a second time. “Just a burrito.”

David's eyes sparkled. “But what's so special about it?”

“You'll see,” said Gaia.

Much to her own surprise, Gaia was actually enjoying herself. So far, at least, she hadn't suffered from a
brain fart
causing her to say something inexcusably
stupid. It was only a matter of time, of course, before she was revealed as a hopeless social outcast, but at least she was enjoying a few moments of normal life.

“So . . .” David said.

Gaia stared at him. “So . . .”

They lapsed into silence. Uh-oh.
This was getting less good.
Gaia pressed her hands against the sticky vinyl. Was she supposed to say something? Was
he
supposed to say something?

That was when the emergency cop-out system flipped into action. Gaia stood up, nicking the edge of the table with her bad knee.

Ow.

“Where are you going?” David asked.

Gaia took a deep breath. “Bathroom.”

“SO YOU'VE PROVED YOU'RE AN IDIOT
with nothing to say,” Gaia told her dripping reflection. The cold-water-in-the-face splash had done nothing for her spirits. It had only served to form huge blotches on her shirt and soak the hair around her face. Lovely.

She might as well go back out there and seal the deal. Send him
running for the hills.
If the city had any.

Gaia opened the door and was headed back down the dark, grimy hall past the kitchen when she heard a huge crash, followed by a bloodcurdling scream. She stopped in front of the open kitchen door.

There was a fire.
A big one.

This could really put a damper on her already dampered date.

Without hesitation Gaia strolled into the kitchen, took the phone out of the hand of a trembling fry cook, and hung it up before he could dial 911. She grabbed the fire extinguisher and yanked it off the wall, walked over to the searing, leaping flames, and doused them with one good squirt.

The sprinkler system didn't even have time to kick in.

Gaia turned and looked at the three white-clad, grease-stained kitchen workers who were huddled in the corner, looking like they'd fallen there out of shock. From the way they were gaping at her, she could have been an angel plunked in the middle of their crusty linoleum floor directly
by the hand of God.

Gaia flushed. Sometimes she forgot her reactions to danger weren't quite normal.

She took a deep breath and tried to smile. “Uh . . . you can still make the burritos, right?”

“EVERYTHING OKAY BACK THERE?”
David's face wore a worried expression as Gaia returned to her seat.

“Fine,” she said, averting her eyes. She cleared her throat noisily. “And dinner is on the house.”

He glanced past her toward the kitchen, a question obviously forming. “Why did they—”

“So how do you like New York?” she interrupted, placing her hands flat on the table. Lame question.
Better than trying to deal with his
.

He narrowed his eyes at her, obviously mulling his options. Which line of questioning was better/safer/more intriguing? Finally he leaned back into his bench, resting one arm across the top.

“I'm not sure yet if I like it,” he said:

Gaia smiled, glad he'd made
the right Choice.

He looked toward the windows at the front of the restaurant. “It's great to get a burger anytime you want,” he continued, “and to find an open bookstore at three
A.M.
, but I think it's just too crowded for me.”

“I like crowds,” Gaia said, watching a group of people standing in line to pay their bill. “It's easy to get lost in them. Go unnoticed.”

She felt her skin flush. She stared at the chipped tabletop.
She hadn't just said that, had she?

“I can't imagine you'd go unnoticed anywhere,” David said.

Gaia blushed more deeply.
He hadn't just said that, had he?

“Anyway, I don't know if I'll be here long enough to adapt,” David said.

Gaia glanced up. “You just got here. Why would you be moving?”
Why wouldn't
he be moving? She'd waited seventeen years for a first date. She'd probably be waiting another seventeen for a second.

“You know.” David shrugged. “Family stuff.” For the first time he looked a little uncomfortable.

“Following your parents' jobs?”

Now David looked down at the table. “My parents are . . . I'm not with my parents.”

Gaia felt a nearly
irresistible urge
to touch him. “That's something we have in common,” she said. “My parents are gone, too.”

David raised his head. “That's weird, isn't it?”

For a moment they just looked at each other.
This silence wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as the first.

“What is this?” David asked.

“What?” Gaia asked back.

David pointed up. “This music,” he said.

A song played from invisible speakers. Gaia hadn't noticed it until that moment. She strained to hear.

Her waiting dark heart,
The violence in her eyes,
The hunger in my body,
The things she denies.

“It's this band called Fearless,” Gaia replied, shaking her head slightly. “They play around here.”

“Fearless?” David repeated, raising his eyebrows.

Gaia confirmed with a nod. At one point when she'd first moved to New York, it had seemed like this random band with this ironically appropriate name was following her around. It was almost too bizarre. But now it didn't even affect her. She was used to it.

The waitress came back with two oval platters loaded with burritos, corn flour tacos, and heaps of seasoned rice and beans. Gaia took her plate and dug in quickly, sweeping together a blob of sour cream, rice, and a chunk of steaming burritos. The combination of flavors was almost too good.

David eyed his plate. “What are all these little brown peppers?”

“Ever heard of
habañeros?”
Gaia asked through a mouthful of food.

His eyebrows scrunched together. “I don't think so.”

Gaia grinned at him.
“Good luck.”

David picked up one of the peppers between his fingers, examined it for a moment, then tossed it into his mouth. Gaia heard it crunch between his teeth. A
moment later David's blue eyes opened so wide, they looked like they might fall out of their sockets.

“Wow,” he whispered.

“Pretty hot?” asked Gaia.

He nodded. “I don't think I'm really tasting it. It sort of made my ears ring.”

Gaia took another bite of her own meal and watched as David chewed his way through a second pepper. “Most people are scared to death of those things.”

David took a third pepper and crunched it. A red flush spread over his face, and he trembled.

“I fear nothing,”
David said. “That's another of my special powers.”

Gaia looked at him. Maybe they had more in common than she thought.

SAM MOON WAS AN IDIOT.

Nope. Even
idiot
didn't sound bad enough. It was an insult to idiots everywhere.

He had started out in situation A. In situation A he was lying in bed with a beautiful girl. A beautiful naked girl. A beautiful
naked
girl
who wanted nothing more than to be with him. A girl with whom he had just had sex.

But from there Sam had proceeded straight to situation B. In this case he was up, out of bed, and running off to chase a different girl. Only this girl didn't want him. Probably hated him.
Definitely didn't want to have sex with him.

Oh, yeah, and she was on a date with someone else.

As Sam crossed the street and stopped in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, he hoped his parents would someday have another son.
He would be wrong ever to pass these pitiful genes along to the next generation.

Sam stood across from Jimmy's Burrito and watched Gaia eat her dinner with the guy she was dating. The back of the guy's head was nothing special. From what Sam could see, the pair were eating, talking, and even laughing.

Gaia was laughing.

Sam's heart squeezed. He tried to think of all the times he had been with her—which weren't many. Now that he thought about it, Sam wasn't sure he had ever gotten her to smile, much less laugh.

Gaia was having a good time. Meanwhile Sam was miserable in every way possible. He felt guilty. Tired. Jealous. Foolish. You name it. If it was bad, he
felt it.

Sam leaned back against a brick wall and tried to
keep his head down. He didn't have a hat, or a big trench coat, or even sunglasses to make him harder to recognize. If Gaia looked out the window and saw Sam looking back, it would be
the perfect end to a perfect day.

The radio buzzed in his pocket. Sam hated the sound. First thing in the morning these suckers were going back to the store. He dragged out the radio and squeezed the trigger.

“What do you want?
Over
.”

“A report,” Ed replied. “You haven't even told me if you found her.”

Sam said nothing.

“Sam?”

He smirked. “You didn't say
‘over.'”
He sounded like a child. He didn't care.

“Over,” Ed said.

“I found her,” Sam replied. “She's okay. They're eating.”

“Where?”

“Jimmy's Burrito.”

Gaia laughed again. Another slice to the heart.

“Jimmy's?” Ed laughed. “Man, he got off cheap.”

Sam glanced across the street and saw that Gaia was washing down a bite of something with her drink. He also saw that
at least two people
were giving him odd looks.

Sam turned his back to them. “Ed, I have to get off,” he said.

“I need more details,” Ed replied. “Booth or table?”

“Booth,” Sam said through clenched teeth. He braced his free hand against the wall “I'll talk to you later.”

“Same side or across from each other?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Across from each other.”