DARK KNIGHT
Abigail
You promised.”
“I didn’t sign a contract,” I answered, and pushed my way past Gideon so I could keep up with my friends.
It was lunchtime, and Gideon wanted me to give him my number. I wasn’t going to give him my number for a lot of reason, two of them being, 1.) He still scared me; and 2.) I was pretty sure he was a stalker. He’d been nearby during the accident, after all, and he’d shown up at my house. Unnerving.
My parents had questioned me for ages yesterday after he’d left. My father didn’t believe that we were just friends, largely because of the position we had been in when he first saw us. I insisted we were just friends, but they wouldn’t believe me. My mother hinted that the next time I wanted to invite someone over I should let her know first.
There was no convincing them he hadn’t been invited.
I’d wanted to know that I could defend myself, just in case he was the same Gideon from my nightmare. I’d wanted him to know it, too. That was why I’d gone all crazy on him. Now that I thought about it, I probably had hit him harder than I should have, not that he had any scuffs or bruises to show for it. He still looked as flawless as ever. I’d never expected to see him at my house; when I did see him, I thought I was having that nightmare again.
I’d avoided Gideon all morning, but now that we were all heading to the same lunch table, that wasn’t going to be possible anymore.
“You know,” he said, sidling up to me, “it’s not good to go back on your promises. I might just have to show up at your house again.”
I’d really covered that, “I told the guard to never let you in.”
“Why not? Your dad—”
I stopped, and so did he. “Please, you can’t tell anyone about my dad.” I didn’t want to tell him about the CIA thing. How do you explain that your father is in hiding, and it wouldn’t be safe to reveal that he was in town? “Or about yesterday. I don’t want my friends to know. By the way: my dad? He ordered the guard to shoot you on sight.” The truth was, if I were to tell my friends that my big fancy house was actually a well-armed compound, and that I knew how to take out an attacker with fifteen different weapons, they’d be much more likely to think I was a freak than to think that I was telling them the truth. It was simply easier to keep it all a secret from them.
Gideon studied my face, and then he broke out in a mischievous grin. “Well, if only I had something to keep my mouth shut.”
“Why do you even want my number?” I resumed walking. “It’s not like I’d even answer my phone when you call.”
“That’s my problem. I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.” And then he stepped in front of me, blocking my way. I heard the snap sound of his phone before I realized he was talking a picture.
“Delete that!” I tried taking the phone from him, but he moved it away, holding it up just out of my reach.
When I tried to pass him, he stopped me. “I wanted a picture of you in that sexy outfit you had on yesterday, but this one will have to do.” He leaned in close, so no one nearby would overhear, and whispered, “you looked really hot in that outfit. It suits you much better than this dress does.” My cheeks burned red. Flushed with anger. Yeah, that’s it. Anger.
I couldn’t see the students walking past us in the hall. All I could see was Gideon, those beautiful green eyes of his, and those lips. Wow, those lips. I opened my mouth, and out came my phone number.
Gideon pulled away, and I came back to myself.
Oh, no. Abigail, you cannot be attracted to him. You hate him! You have every reason to hate him. He’s annoying, a jerk, and he might be a stalker on top of all that! Your nightmares hint that he’s a murderer! But all of those reasons vanished like smoke in a stiff breeze when Gideon smiled at me.
“This isn’t a fake number is it?” he asked as he typed the numbers I gave him into his phone. I shook my head. “Goody, goody.” He started walking again, and I followed a few paces behind, trying to calm myself. I hated myself for finding him attractive, and for letting my attraction keep me off my guard.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t hot: he was really hot, but he was also Gideon, a creepy guy who appeared at my house uninvited, and who bore an eerie similarity to another Gideon, a nightmare Gideon who had murdered me. I was going to stay away from him, like I’d planned.
Which was a good plan, because the last guy I’d found attractive thought I was like a sister to him.
“Who do you think it is?” Sarah asked, nudging my shoulders. “Hello? Earth to Abigail. Where is your head at, woman? You’ve been here for about ten minutes and you haven’t said a word.”
When I came to, I realized everyone at our lunch table was staring at me. Tristan’s face was a mask of concern. Danny and Jake looked like they were expecting me to say something, and then there was Gideon, who looked very smug indeed.
I pulled myself together. “Sorry. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Gideon was just telling us he got a telephone number, and we were trying to guess whose it was,” Danny explained. I froze. Hoping no one would notice, I removed my phone from the lunch table.
“So, who do you think it is?” Sarah asked again. “I’m betting it’s Doreen.”
“I… I don’t know.” I looked everywhere but at Gideon.
“You might as well tell us, Gideon. Are you taking her to the Founder’s Day Dance next weekend?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t even thought of asking her. Why, I think I’ll call her right now,” Gideon chuckled. I turned to him lighting-fast when he said this.
I shouted before I could stop myself. “Don’t!” Everyone turned to me. “I mean, you shouldn’t call her, you should wait”
“She’s right,” Danny agreed. “You know Jake is into Doreen. Don’t call her right in front of him. Why rub his nose in it like that?”
“I’m all right. Besides, she might have a sister I could take to the dance. Call her,” Jake encouraged him.
Gideon picked up his phone, and I quickly stood up. “Bathroom,” I blurted. “I’ll be right back.” I didn’t wait to see his reaction, I just turned and started to head out.
Forget about how inhumanly handsome he was, I hated him. So what if I was somehow a little teensy weensy attracted to him? I was attracted to a lot of guys, like superman, Henry Cavill, and it didn’t mean anything at all.
I was almost halfway out of the cafeteria when my phone started ringing. I took it out and pressed the decline button.
“God, I hate that guy,” I whispered.
“I heard that!” Gideon shouted, loud enough for everyone in the cafeteria to hear.
When I turned back, he was looking at me, and so was everyone else. I gave a sheepish smile to those whose gaze I met, and then rushed quickly out of the cafeteria.
It took me a second to calm myself when I got to the ladies’ room, and then I started wondering why Gideon had been able to hear me from all the way across the room.
FLIPPED
Gideon
“Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”
Lao-Tze
This was one of those awkward moments when my little sister seemed to know a lot more than I did, and I didn’t like it.
“The CIA?” I asked as Valoel looked at me over the top of her magazine. She rolled her eyes.
I’d got back from earth about an hour ago. I’d left because one more minute of watching Abigail doing nothing would have driven me insane. It was like when she wasn’t training she was the most boring person in the universe. I couldn’t hurt her—and believe me I tried—because Tristan was always there to stop me, and she was too dull to be worth spying on, so I finally gave up and decided to go home.
&nb
sp; Valoel was already in my room when I got home, and after she’d finished ribbing me, saying that Tristan was going to win this Challenge and I was going to end up quitting, she decided she felt sorry for me and told me the reason Abigail owed a gun.
“It’s not like you’re Challenging Joe Schmoe from accounting, Gids. Tristan is a prince. And a hero. Everybody, well not everybody, but I know his assigned human is the daughter of a celebrity fashion designer and a CIA agent, and that she’s being given self-defense training by the agency. If you hadn’t been so dumb as to burn the file the king gave you, you might have known.”
I was about to interrupt and ask her why her mother was always in the spotlight if they wanted to keep their identities a secret, but Valoel neatly cut me off. “Her mother was already famous when she met her father. It was too late to do anything about it.”
Lots of questions. I had a lot of questions, but I didn’t know where to start.
“So what you’re saying is, if I want to kill her I have to do it the way a mere human would do it? Shoot her? Gain her trust and lure her into a dark alley and strangle her?”
Valoel laughed. “That’s exactly the sort of attack she’s been trained for. You know, D is wrong. Gaining her trust isn’t worth it. Befriending her won’t help you kill her. It’ll just get you into trouble.” And then she was gone.
Great, just what I needed: advice from someone who was only two years past collecting My Little Pony figurines. And what the hell did she mean, anyway? I’d get into trouble? I always got into trouble. It was kinda my thing.
Which reminded me: it had been two whole hours since I’d left Abigail. I really should get back and try to kill her. This time around I didn’t bother flying to Earth. Instead, I thought of Abigail, and in a second I was transported to the wide lawn behind her house. Once again she was in her cute little training outfit, chatting with Logan. Tristan was there, as always. He gave me a smarmy look and a wave. Jerk. I ignored him.
“See what I got?” Logan was saying. He slowly pulled aside a white cloth that lay on the table, revealing an assault rifle.
Abigail’s eyes went wide with awe. “Is that an AK-47?” She gently ran her fingers over the gun. “I’ve always wanted to play with one of these. I did mention my birthday is coming up, right?” Stroke, stroke. “Well, if you’re wondering what to get me… hint, hint.” She gave Logan an innocent smile.
Logan laughed. “Don’t girls usually ask for dolls, Abigail?”
“Eighteen-year-old girls? Are you serious? Anyway, screw the dolls. I wanna’ shoot something.” She picked up the gun, “Wow, that’s a beauty.”
I was fascinated by how much she admired the gun.
Logan took it from her. “Sorry, we can’t play with this today because we have archery practice.” He pointed at the quiver of arrows on the table.
“What? You can’t show me the damn thing and then just take it away. At least let me fire it, just once.” She tried to reach for the gun, but Logan pushed her hand away.
“Archery,” he repeated.
Abigail sulked, picked up her bow and turned to the targets lined up in front of her. “If I get an arrow in the heart of each one, then will you let me play with it?”
“You’re on.” Logan agreed to her bet. The determined look on her face told me Logan had just lost. I knew that look. It was the one I had when I really wanted something. The one that said nothing was going to stand in the way.
Abigail took aim, and her first arrow landed perfectly in the center of the bullseye. So did her second, and her third, all the way to her eighth. She lowered her bow when the quiver was empty.
Logan was trying to look stern, but he was beaming with pride. “That was OK, I guess. You’re almost as good as I am.”
“Don’t be jealous, Logan. Green’s not a nice color on you.” She handed the bow to him and hungrily picked up the AK-47. “Mmm. I think I might sleep with his under my pillow.”
“I feel like you cheated,” Logan said.
“I didn’t have to. I had a very good teacher. How does the saying go? ‘The student becomes the teacher’?”
“Please. You’re not that good.”
“Mm-hmm. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Now move over and let me take this baby for a test drive.” She pushed past Logan, and took her position. She slipped on her noise-reduction earphones, inserted a plastic magazine, and pulled the charging handle.
“Don’t ride the charging handle forward,” he instructed. “OK, you’re set for automatic fire when the selector there is in the middle position. Semi-automatic, lower position. Yeah, there.” Abigail aimed at a target seventy-five yards out.
And missed.
“Did you even try to account for the wind? My grandmother could have hit that, Abby. The blind one.”
“That was my first shot!” She tried again, a controlled burst of three shots, and this time she hit the head of the target. She fired again with the same result. She lowered the rifle to her side. “That was amazing!” she said. She was flushed with excitement and pride. “Woo! I’m keeping this. You can try all you want, but you have to pry it out of my cold dead hands.”
“Remember who you’re talking to. If I have to, I am quite capable of pulling it out of your cold dead hands.”
“Oh, you. It’s not as loud as I expected it to be.”
Logan laughed. “Everybody says that.” He tousled her hair, knocking her earphones crooked. “You look happy.”
But happiness wasn’t what I saw on her face. I saw something else, something I knew very well. That bright, fevered look in her eyes was power. I recognized it, and for a second, just a second, I realized that unlike the Abigail the world knew, this Abigail and I had something in common.
Something that made me to not want to kill her. That realization scared me so much that I left faster than I had come.
It was only then I realized what Valoel meant, that trying to get close to Abigail might get me into trouble.
YOU KNOW THAT saying, time flies when you are having fun?
Bullshit! Totally bullshit!
Time was flying, and I was miserable.
It had been three days, and Abigail Cells was still alive!
We were all sitting around the lunch table at school on Wednesday afternoon, talking about our Titanic presentation. Tristan and Abigail had already started brainstorming, and Danny, Jake, and I didn’t know where to begin.
“How about I write ‘The Titanic is sinkable’ on a piece of paper, and we read it out loud in unison?” I suggested.
“That’s brilliant!” Jake said, and Danny nodded in agreement.
“It’s stupid,” Sarah chimed in, but we just booed her.
“The project is fifteen percent of our grades,” Tristan said, though no one had asked him. Seriously, why would he waste his time with human schoolwork? It wasn’t like he needed the grades to get into collage.
“Way to put us under pressure,” Danny said around a mouthful of sandwich.
“That brilliant idea of yours, Gideon, is only going to get you guys an F.” Abigail caught my gaze as she said this, and then it happened—I babbled.
“It’s not… we… she’s right. We need to take this seriously.” I was completely and utterly—well, I didn’t really have words to describe my behavior.
And that wasn’t even the worst part of my day. The worst part was that I didn’t try to kill her even once the rest of the school day.
After school, Tristan and I invisibly followed Abigail to the community library where she read to the children.
“I know what you’re doing, Gideon,” Tristan said. “You’re trying to win over the girl just so you can—”
“—Kill her faster?” I finished Tristan’s pathetic assumption with a wicked smile. “Give yourself a pat on the back, brainiac. That’s correct.” I noticed how happy Abigail looked, reading for the children.
“Gideon, don’t hurt that poor girl because of me.”
“Do I need to tak
e a seat for this?” I asked. “Is this the part where you lecture me about good-guy stuff? How her life is in the balance, but this is really all about you?”
“Please. Don’t hurt her.”
“This is really sad.” Then I saw how distressed he was. Maybe his motives weren’t completely self-centered after all. He seemed genuinely concerned for Abigail’s life, even apart from his assignment and our Challenge. Oh well. “Look, I’d love to stand here and chat, but I’m on a mission,” I said with my eyes on Abigail.
“Gideon, what are—?” Tristan didn’t finish because at that very moment I slipped behind one of the shelves, made myself visible, and then quickly rushed into view.
“Is there room for one more student?” I asked as I joined the story group. Abigail looked up when she heard my voice and scowled.
“You’re too old, aren’t you?” a little girl asked in a tiny voice that made me want to slap the hell out of her.
“I’m sure there’s room for one more. Class, this is Gideon.” Abigail made space on the floor for me to sit beside her. Tristan gaped, not even blinking. Good. This had been worth it just to see him riled up. “You seem to be everywhere,” she said the moment I sat down.
“I came to borrow a book and saw you guys”
“And here I was thinking you were allergic to books,” Abigail teased.
“Just school books.”
Abigail was about to say something more when one of the boys asked, “Is Abigail your girlfriend?”
“Yes she is, and I’m going to kiss her right now.” I made a slight movement toward Abigail, and all the children started making noises of disgust.
“Ewwwww!”
Abigail hovered between a smile and an ewwwww! of her own, and then quickly looked away from me.
I smiled at Ben and Felix, who stood quietly off to the side, looking amused.
“I have a question,” a little girl asked. “How does it feel to fall in love?” Two of her front teeth were missing.
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