I kept looking over at Gideon, who had started the game by insisting he didn’t want to play as the shoe. I didn’t understand how he could be evil, when he acted just as crazy and normal as Jake and Dan when he had to make a payment.
“Someone has a crush,” Sarah said when the two of us had ducked into the kitchen to make a pitcher of lemonade.
“Who?”
“Don’t ‘who’ me,” she said, handing a glass down from a cupboard shelf. “I’ve noticed you checking Gideon out.” Crap. I thought I’d been discreet. “You two are so obvious.” Wait. We two? So he was checking me out, too?
Focus, Abigail. “What? I do not have a crush on him.” To be frank with myself, I thought I did, but that was before my father had died and before I’d found out who and what he was. Now, we were… I didn’t know what we were.
“Why not? I’d have been swept off my feet by the rose and the green eyes and the, well, the rest.”
“I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now. I don’t have time for any romantic stuff.”
“Deny it all you want, but I know you, and I know you have a crush.” She took one of the glasses and took a sip, and immediately she spat it right back out. “Jesus Christ, Abigail, what the hell is this?”
She dumped the glass into the sink just as Gideon came into the kitchen. I silently prayed he hadn’t overheard our conversation. That would make whatever was happening with us even more awkward than it already was. I was trying to repair the friendship we had before everything, and I didn’t want any complications with that.
“Oh good, you two finished up the lemonade” Gideon said, and reached for one of the glasses. He too took one sip and rushed to spit it out. “That’s awful.” His cup joined Sarah’s in the sink.
“Come on, it’s not that bad!” I took a sip myself, and then I spat it out too. “Yeah, that is awful.” We started laughing.
Sarah caught my eye and said, “I’m going to… check something. Gideon, how about you help Abigail make another batch of lemonade? Drinkable this time.” She rushed out wearing a wide, mischievous grin, leaving me alone with Gideon.
Gideon started pouring all the cups I’d filled into the sink. “OK, I’ve seen two or three humans run a lemonade stand, and I’m pretty sure I can make this stuff.”
Really? Big bad Gideon was going to serve us drinks?
“What?” he asked, because I was still laughing. I couldn’t stop.
I tried to get a word out. “It’s just… you… you’re Gideon, and evil supernatural beings don’t go around making pitchers of lemonade.” The smile on his face vanished, and I knew what I’d just said hit home. I didn’t even get a proper chance to tell him I was sorry, because that was the moment Jake and Danny decided to walk in.
I wanted to apologize, but I didn’t get to be alone with him the rest of the afternoon, and we barely spoke to one another. When I got home and went to my room, hoping to have a chance to explain, he wasn’t there, and Tristan told me he didn’t know where he’d gone.
THE PRESTIGE
I was sitting in the front row in my third-period class. Gideon, not surprisingly, sat at the back of the classroom. When I worked up the courage to walk back to him to offer an apology, the distance between that first and last row seemed much further than a mere classroom could allow for. There were a hundred, a thousand opportunities to turn back, to talk myself out of approaching him, during that walk.
I took a deep breath when I reached his side, steadying my nerves, and then I said. “I’m sorry about yesterday at Sarah’s. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s all right. You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. Hitler? Not big on serving refreshments.”
“That’s um, good, I guess.” And then I turned around to go back to my seat, because I knew class would be starting soon.
“You can stay back here with me,”
“Are you inviting me to sit with you?” I asked, a teasing little lilt in my voice, because I wanted to get rid of the sick feeling rolling around in my stomach.
“I guess I am.”
“Oh. OK. I’ll go and get—” and just like that, my bag was on the chair beside him. “—which is already here.” I tried to make light of the whole situation. That’s me. Light. Yup. “Can you do the same magically-appearing thing with the homework that was due today? Because I didn’t do it.”
“Miss Cells, I’m surprised at you. Cheating is really bad.” He thought cheating was bad? All of a sudden he had a limit?
“You’re kidding me, right?”
He didn’t need to answer, because I got an insight into how he really felt when he made the homework appear in front of me. I wanted to take it, but damn if he hadn’t been right, even though he was only kidding. Cheating was wrong, and I wanted to make my father proud and get into Harvard, like he’d wanted, by my own honest efforts.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said, and pushed the homework papers aside.
Gideon and I started laughing together, just as Mr. Bernard called for silence.
THE DAYS NO longer dragged on, and Wednesday afternoon, during lunch break, Sarah dragged me into the ladies room with her. I was the extra talking mirror she needed.
“So? Am I right? Or am I right?” Sarah asked, turning away from the bathroom mirror to look at me.
“Right about what?” I was feeling a little shy. There were a few other girls in the bathroom who were also busy redoing their makeup. Really, didn’t anyone come to bathroom to use it anymore?
“Right about you liking Gideon. That you two are, like, together now.” She touched her hair and checked her eyeliner and lipgloss. Yet again, I couldn’t tell what she might have done, or what she might have changed, because she was gorgeous when she started and gorgeous when she finished, and to my eyes, there was no change at all.
“Sarah, there’s nothing going on between me and Gideon,” I whispered, hoping those around us wouldn’t hear and sell their stories to the tabloids tomorrow.
“So you say you aren’t dating? Because I am your best friend, woman, and you need to tell me these things. As a matter of fact, it’s my right to be the first to know.”
“Sarah, relax. Gideon and I are not dating.” She turned back to the mirror and continued with her mysterious beauty routine. “You know, I don’t even think he likes me.”
“You, my poor friend, are naïve. Trust me, he likes you. I can tell.”
“Sarah you can not tell.”
“All right, maybe not, but I’m sure that...”
“Drop it, Sarah.”
Sarah’s assumption bothered me, but not enough to make me stay away from Gideon.
“You did?” I asked as I tried to muffle my laughter.
Gideon tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t contain it any longer. “OK fine,” he said, “maybe I overreacted, but you didn’t see the size of this dog.”
“How old we were you?”
“I was eleven. I had gone to the park because the children there looked so happy, playing. I wanted to join them, but then suddenly this huge scary dog came out of nowhere and started barking at me, and when I ran it started chasing me.”
“You were scared of a dog? You? Oh, man, it was a Chihuahua, wasn’t it? You ran screaming from a Chihuahua.”
“What? No. He was scary. He wasn’t a Chihuahua.” And then we were both laughing, and all eyes in the class were on us.
“Mr. Chase, Miss Cells, if you cannot be respectful of your classmates you can leave, now. And make that two hours of detention after school.”
I forgot for a moment that the whole class was watching and completely freaked out. My first-ever detention?
“My mother is going kill me.” I said the moment Gideon and I were out the door. The hallway was quiet, not a student around.
Gideon took my hands, and stopped me in my tracks. “You know, I could make the teacher forgot about the detention.” Of course he could.
The idea was tempting, but I demurred. “I
can’t. I earned this detention. It wouldn’t be right to walk away from it.”
“Well, since we are going to have some free time on our hands, what would you like to do?”
I wanted to go back inside, to do my best to keep up my A average so I could actually have a chance of getting into Harvard Medical School. I knew that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, though.
“I don’t know. What do you have in mind? Something that won’t get us into trouble, though. One detention is bad enough.”
“Where do you want to go? Name anywhere in the world.”
Anywhere in the world? Really, anywhere?
“I’d like to see the Library of Alexandria,” I said. “I know it’s not the ancient one, but just the same, I’d like to see it.”
Gideon took my hand in his. “Egypt it is.”
“What you are talking about? Egypt is what?” And then I was screaming because I looked down and realized we were hovering above the clouds. I buried my face in his neck and shut my eyes. “Heights! I don’t like heights!”
Gideon started laughing, and then patted my head in a gesture that might have been reassuring if I weren’t certain we were seconds away from plunging to our deaths. “OK, Abby. You can open your eyes now.” I didn’t dare open my eyes. I tightened my grip on him so I wouldn’t fall. “Trust me. It’s safe.”
Slowly, I opened one of my eyes, and instead of seeing the hallway like I’d expected, I was looking at a set of library bookshelves, lit by the dim glow of an exit sign. “Are you telling me we’re in Egypt?” I loosened my grip on him, and only then realized how tightly my arms had been around his neck, and close, how very close we were. I tried to pull away, but his arms went around my waist and he held me still.
“You all right?” he whispered, searching my eyes.
I noticed the play of light over the intricate, unmistakeable latticework of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s ceiling. I was really here. “All right? I’m more than all right!”
Since it was late morning back home, I knew it would be around five here, which meant I only had an hour, tops, until closing time. I’d spent enough time clicking dreamily through the library’s web site to know its hours, and the time difference between San Francisco and Alexandria.
“You are my hero, Gideon!”
“Really? You sure you wouldn’t have rather have an AK-47?”
“You were there when Logan brought me the AK-47?” I asked, remembering how I’d acted when I saw the gun. How long had he been around, and what else had he seen?
Gideon nodded. “You were like a kid on Christmas Eve.”
“Well, now I’m like a kid on Christmas morning. Let’s go look around.” I then walked through the enormous, beautiful reading room toward the book stacks. “I could just picture myself living here, forever.”
Gideon practically glowed, happy to make me happy. I knew he didn’t like books, but he patiently listened to me go on and on about books I’d read, and ones I’d been dying to read. Sometimes, I’d take a book from the shelf and praise it and he’d just smack his palm to his forehead, asking me exactly how an autobiography of Steve Jobs was interesting.
Gideon was great company. He stayed with me and watched me go crazy over the various books. I didn’t even realize when the library closed, because as each of the lights were going out, Gideon was making them reappear.
We stayed for a couple of hours, and then for a couple hours more, until it was time for detention.
Detention went by in a blur, because Gideon, being Gideon, had duplicated all the books I’d wanted. I hadn’t asked him to, but I couldn’t help myself; those books needed to be on my shelf. I’d spent detention trying to convince him to give the books a chance, but he assured me he wouldn’t read a book even if his life depended on it. I took that as a challenge.
I don’t know exactly how I exacted my victory, but at the end of the day, I was curled up on my bed with my head on Gideon’s chest, and he was lying beside me, reading me a book. I fought falling asleep, because there were no dreams possible that could be happier than these moments. I caught sight of Tristan, and he had a knowing look on his face, just as Sarah’d had. If I hadn’t been so happy, it might have bothered me.
The next day was Friday. “Guess who is having a pool party?” Danny asked me after school.
“Don’t tell me. I won’t be able to go anyway. The less information, the less it will hurt,” I said.
Danny and Jake exchanged looks, “I’m sure you’ll be allowed to attend this one.”
I doubted that. After my mother heard about my detention she threw a tantrum. She’d insisted I was grounded until I was thirty.
“The party is at your house. Your mom actually asked us.” Jake added.
Actually, I had no idea what to say to that.
“I was invited right?” I asked, and everyone laughed. I had to make sure. I wouldn’t put it past my mother to have me locked away doing homework while my friends parted at my house.
When Ben arrived, all of us packed ourselves into the back of the car for the ride to my house. When we got to the pool enclosure, I saw that Morgan had laid out more food than we could ever possibly finish. It was unreal. I pinched myself more than once, just to reassure myself it was all really happening.
Jake, Tristan and Danny jumped right into the pool. Sarah insisted if she went in her hair would be a mess. I assured her we had a few swim caps available, and set off with Tristan to find one. It took awhile, but eventually we found one that Sarah felt comfortable trusting, and soon Tristan was splashing her mercilessly and she was chasing after him, hoping to exact her watery revenge.
“Abby, aren’t you going in the water?” Gideon asked.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Why not? It looks like fun.”
“Then why aren’t you swimming?” I asked. “Just take off your shirt and jump in.” Worst suggestion I ever made, because the moment the words came out, Gideon pulled his shirt over his head.
Oh. Oh my. My eyes were locked on his body. My face felt warm, and my heart rate flew out of control. For a second, I imagined tracing my fingers along his hard stomach, feeling the heat of his body, and…
Oh, my God!
“I don’t like water,” I mumbled, spouting out the first thing that came to mind, and Gideon laughed. “I meant I don’t feel like swimming.”
He took the soda from my hand and put it back on the table. “You sure about that? This is your pool, Abby.” He took my hand and pulled me toward the water.
“I’m as sure as—”
The rest of my words never came out. Gideon grabbed me around the waist and dived in. I tried to hold my breath, but I quickly resurfaced, gasping for air.
“Gideon!” I smacked him on the chest. “That was so—”
I realized my hand was still on his chest, and his arms were still around me.
And then I started chanting in my head: He’s just a friend. He’s just a friend. He’s just a friend.
“Gideon, don’t you know pool water isn’t good for the hair!” Sarah said, saving me, as she rushed over. “Come on, Abby. You should either put on a cap, or slather on some conditioner. Or maybe some shea butter.”
I caught my breath and looked back at Gideon, who was smirking. Sarah had definitely saved me. Definitely.
OUR FAIRYTALE
Gideon
“Heroes are too good to be true,
this is why every story has a villain.”
Abigail sat beside me on the floor of my room. I’d invited her to Grands, and she’d said yes. Tristan had seemed pretty comfortable with the idea, simply telling Abigail to call him if she wanted something, by which he meant if I tried to kill her.
Abigail was bombarding me with questions, and I was happy to answer her. I was happy, period. Imagine that.
“So you understand and speak every language, and you don’t sleep?” Abigail asked.
I nodded, “Angels have to be able to c
ommunicate with humans, so we do. The how isn’t all that clear to me. And no, I don’t sleep. Angels are only able to sleep when they’re little. After you turn thirteen, and you’re assigned a human, you can’t anymore.”
Abigail seemed to understand this.
“So Tristan is a prince? I didn’t see that one coming.”
“That’s not a question, Abby. It’s a fact.” An annoying one.
“Prince Tristan, it has a nice ring to it,” she laughed.
“Yeah, yeah. Now it’s my turn for questions.”
“Fire away,” she said.
“How were you able to save your friends that night during the accident?”
“I panicked, and the next thing I knew, we were safe.”
She panicked? If that’s how she responded when she was in panic, she must be a ninja when she’s clear-headed. “You are unbelievable.”
“So, my turn again. What did you think of me, that first day at school? You know, when I bumped into you.”
“My mother always says if I can’t say something nice, I shouldn’t say anything at all.” We both laughed. Laughing without sneering! It was new to me.
“Well, I thought you were rude and boorish.” She looked away. “I didn’t like you.”
“Ouch. Didn’t like me? The moment you first met me?” I put one hand on my heart, keeping the other firmly clasped in hers. “That would be what’s-his-face’s fault. He gave you a nightmare about me. He admitted it.”
“What’s-his-face’s name is Tristan, and I want to ask why you don’t like him, but I’m afraid I won’t like the answer.”
“I hate him,” I said honestly. “Frankly, I wish he would disappear.”
“That’s a bit harsh. Besides, you two seems friendly lately, and he’s always around.” I situation I’m trying to work my way out of.
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