Chase

by Francine Pascal

  Gaia stepped out of the foot traffic of the sidewalk, her mind reeling. What if Loki’s men had caused her father’s coma? What if Loki was responsible for her father being kidnapped from the hospital and taken who knew where? That would have to mean that Natasha was working with Loki’s men . . . and maybe even Loki himself.

  I haven’t checked up on him since he was put in the hospital, Gaia thought. Not once.

  Gaia had never had a chance to find out who Natasha and Tatiana were working for. Were they employed by some unknown agency—some new adversary—or were they just more of Loki’s operatives? Was it possible that Loki had woken up and somehow escaped? Was it possible that he was calling the shots once again?

  It was a slim chance, but it was the only lead Gaia had. If Loki was out there somewhere, she needed to know. At least she would have some idea of what she was up against. And if he was still safely tucked away in his coma, then she would know for sure that she and her father had another enemy.

  With an actual purpose, an actual destination in mind, Gaia finally felt her nerves start to relax. She rolled back her shoulders and headed for the subway.

  TATIANA

  Gaia is starting to crack. I can tell. She’s been wandering the city without purpose all day. The longest she has stayed still was the half hour she spent at our old apartment. I imagine she was tearing it to shreds. It doesn’t bother me, however. I know she didn’t find anything there. My mother is nothing if not careful.

  Since then she has been through Central Park, across Columbus Circle, through Midtown, down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square, where she played a game of chess for five minutes, and then into the East Village, where she found a fight. Of course. For a moment I was concerned that she was headed for the safe house–she came very close to that neighborhood–but then she suddenly stopped. She stared at nothing for a few moments and got on the subway. And all this time she has never looked behind her. She’s had a crazed sort of look in her eye all day, and she never even suspected I was following.

  Like I said, she’s cracking up.

  And I could have killed her so many times. So many times I almost pulled out the gun and ended it. It was as if the weapon was calling to me, taunting me, telling me to finish her off. It is, after all, what my mother wants.

  But I can’t. Not yet. Without Gaia I will never find out where my mother is.

  There has to be some way to get to her. Some way to trick her into meeting with me. Someone I can use as a decoy. But as far as I can see, I have only two not very attractive options.

  One is Ed, but I will not put him in the middle of this. I could not bear it if he were killed. He is the one mistake I have made in all this time. I was not supposed to care for anyone, but I do care for Ed. Until I met him, I did not believe that any person in this world could be truly good. I didn’t believe in friendship or in pure intention. But Ed is different. He is a good person, and he does not deserve to die just because he was stupid enough to fall in love with Gaia and be friends with me. Maybe that is his one flaw. His stupid heart.

  But even if a small part of me wanted to be with him, I realize it is better that we were never really together. I would only break his heart like Gaia has so many times. Because once I’m done with Gaia, I’m gone.

  Two is Sam. But Sam has no reason to trust me. In fact, he has every reason not to.

  So I’m back at the first square. Too bad Gaia is such a friendless loser. It just makes my job harder. I have to think. There has to be someone, doesn’t there? There just has to be . . . .

  normal girl

  Was he going to have to date FBI chicks and cops and, like, vampire slayers or something for the rest of his days?

  Blister Busting

  “JAKE! JAKE! DUDE, WAIT UP!”

  Jake Montone heard his name but didn’t bother slowing his steps as he strode down the middle of the crowded hall at the Village School, all the underclassmen instinctively moving out of his way. He wasn’t in the habit of stopping for anyone. Except maybe the occasional beautiful girl. But Carlos Bernal could catch up with him.

  Besides, he didn’t want to break concentration. It was tough to find a person in a crowd without appearing as if you were looking for someone. It took a special kind of control to cover up riveted attention with removed indifference.

  “Hey, man, we have a problem,” Carlos began when he fell into step with Jake, only slightly out of breath.

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that?” Jake asked. His eyes scanned the hallway, his mouth lifting ever so slightly whenever he caught the admiring glance of a lovely lady. He could have any girl in this place if he wanted. Unfortunately, that fact made him not want any of them.

  “Rob Tesca has mono,” Carlos announced, covering his mouth with his hand and pretending that he didn’t want to laugh. Jake could tell he enjoyed being the bearer of this bad news.

  “What?” Jake blurted, looking fully at Carlos for the first time. His hair was extra gelled today, and he looked like he’d just walked off the set of Happy Days, with his tight white T-shirt and the chain hanging off his jeans. The kid even had dimples.

  “How the hell does a guy like Rob Tesca get mono?” Jake asked, the tendons in his neck tightening.

  “Dude may be butt ugly, but he does do well with the ladies,” Carlos replied, swerving around a klatch of gossiping freshmen and glancing behind his shoulder to check them out. “So what are we gonna do? The team is already hemorrhaging.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jake said.

  The intramural karate team that Jake had formed on arriving at this new school was not getting off to an auspicious start. A bunch of guys had shown up for the informational meeting, but it turned out that eighty percent of them had gleaned their martial arts expertise from hours of blister-busting Street Fighter tournaments they’d been having since the sixth grade. The talent pool in this place was so shallow, it wouldn’t even wet a person’s socks.

  Jake caught a glimpse of a blond ponytail from the corner of his eye and almost paused, but it turned out to be one of those perky chicks who were always giggling every time he walked into a room. Not the blond he was looking for.

  “So, anyway, what are we going to do?” Carlos asked.

  Jake stepped out of traffic and paused near a row of lockers, rolling his eyes and expertly appearing as if he was simply fed up with the crush of people.

  “I got an idea,” Jake said, glancing left at the locker that belonged to the blond who he was looking for. The blond who, conveniently, could also solve this new problem.

  “Yeah? What?” Carlos asked, gripping one strap of his backpack with both hands. “I’m all ears.”

  It was an unfortunate turn of phrase for a guy who was, in fact, mostly ears. Jake glanced from one of Carlos’s big flappers to the other slowly, and Carlos reddened. It wasn’t that Jake wanted to embarrass the kid. He actually kind of liked Carlos and his perpetual kinetic state. But if he were forced to reveal that Gaia Moore was the person he was thinking of to take Rob’s spot, that she was the person he’d been scanning the halls for all day, that she was owner of the locker they’d just stopped next to, then he’d also be forced to admit something that he was not willing to admit.

  That he couldn’t stop thinking about her. That he wanted to spend more time with her. That the karate team was the perfect excuse.

  “Why are we stopping here?” Carlos asked when he regained his happy-go-lucky self. “The bell’s gonna ring.”

  “No reason,” Jake said, shrugging one shoulder. He looked down the emptying hall, and there was no sign of her. Apparently Gaia had decided to take a vacation day. Jake tried to ignore the hot infusion of disappointment in his chest.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Carlos, just as the bell rang.

  He was not disappointed that he hadn’t gotten to see her before homeroom. He wasn’t. He just needed her. No. The team needed her. That’s what this was all about.

  And the fact that he’d been looking for he
r before he even knew the team needed her? Eh. That just meant he was psychic.

  Friendless

  THERE COMES A POINT IN EVERY MAN’S life when he has to ask himself, How did I get here . . . ? This, Ed Fargo, is that moment.

  “Uh, you gonna move?”

  Ed glanced over his shoulder at the scrawny little pale-faced, red-eyed Internet addict behind him and stepped out of his way. A group of four other such indoor beings, all of whom were probably still mourning the death of The X-Files, followed the kid out of the cafeteria line and over to a table in the corner.

  See? Even geeky freshmen who haven’t seen the sun since their diaper days have someone to sit with. You, however, have reached a point, as a senior, where you do not. How did you get here?

  Taking a deep breath, Ed shuffled over to one of the smaller tables by the wall farthest from the lunch line, kicked a chair away from the table, and slumped into it. He placed his tray down in front of him and shrugged out of his backpack, tossing it into the empty chair to his right. It wasn’t like anyone was going to be using it.

  Ed picked up his plastic fork and stared at it as if it held the meaning of life between its tines. But his brain was actually trying to avoid finding the inevitable answer to his more pressing question by focusing on the inanimate object.

  “I wonder why plastic forks grip pasta better,” Ed muttered to himself, sticking the utensil into his noodles.

  Unfortunately, this little quandary could only occupy his brain for so long, and the answer to the more important quandary finally came to him.

  You got to this point because of Gaia, his brain voice said.

  Ed’s jaw clenched. No. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t only Gaia’s fault that he was friendless. It was Heather’s, it was Tatiana’s, it was . . . hormones. (Not to mention the fact that all his skate friends had scattered the moment he’d landed in his wheelchair and hadn’t returned when he’d stepped out of it.) He’d spent the last few years, and the last few months especially, alienating everyone he knew in order to focus all his energy on women. Now all the women had up and left him, and he was friendless. It served him right.

  A burst of laughter caught his attention, and he glanced over at the table in the center of the room that had welcomed the Friends of Heather at lunch hour every day of every year since they were but breastless, brace-faced fourteen-year-olds. Heather was no longer there, of course, but today Tatiana was missing as well. If she’d been there, then Ed might have sucked it up and gone over to sit with them and listen to them pick apart Jennifer Aniston’s latest red carpet wear for forty-five minutes. At least then he wouldn’t be sitting alone.

  Of course, come to think of it, he might be better off where he was.

  He realized, as he took his first bite of spaghetti, that he hadn’t actually seen Tatiana all day. And Gaia was out as well—he’d noted that before the first bell. The dual absence couldn’t be a coincidence. With those two, a simple flu was easy to rule out. They were probably back at home, kicking the crap out of each other. Not that he’d ever known Tatiana to be violent, but the way those two were acting around each other lately, it wouldn’t have surprised him in the least.

  Where the hell were they?

  “Oh dear God, I have to get a life,” Ed muttered, dropping his fork. He tipped back his head and covered his face with his hands, letting out a groan.

  Enough with the Gaia obsession. Enough with the Tatiana “friendship” that could become something more. It had become clear to him over the past week or so that there was no way to be friends with Tatiana without constantly encountering Gaia, and he was never going to get over the girl if she was in his face all the time. And he had to get over her. It was for his own good. For his mental health. For his very survival.

  Somehow, somewhere, there had to be a normal girl for Ed Fargo. Someone who didn’t come with the lovely peripherals of gun-wielding psychos, vengeful thugs, and emotional issues too countless to list.

  Why couldn’t he find such a girl?

  “Um . . . are you okay?”

  Ed let his arms drop down and hang at his sides but barely moved his head. From the corner of his eye he could see a petite, pretty Asian girl in a pink-and-yellow T-shirt, with two short pigtails, tilting her head to look at him. She had a curious smile and a tiny diamond nose piercing.

  “Yeah, I’m cool,” Ed replied. He sat up straight and squeezed his eyes shut against the head rush.

  “Oh, cuz you looked like you were a little . . . you know . . . floopy,” she said, crinkling her nose. She was still holding her full lunch tray. She had a well-worn Birdhouse skateboard tucked under her arm.

  “You skate street?” he asked semiblankly.

  Her whole face lit up. “Yeah! And some vert,” she said, setting down her tray and pulling out the board to show him. “This is my deck.”

  Ed frowned thoughtfully as he checked out the bird graphic on the bottom of the board, chipped away from hours of good, hard use.

  “Nice,” he said.

  She grinned. Ed noticed that she had a nice smile. “Can I?” she said, gesturing at the chair across from his.

  Ed barely lifted his shoulders. “Sure.”

  “I’m Kai,” she said, shaking up her chocolate milk, her fifty rubber bracelets slipping up and down her arm.

  “Ed,” he replied.

  “I’ve seen you skating down by Washington Square, right?” she asked.

  “I’ve been known to,” Ed replied, staring down at his food.

  “You ever been to Extreme Skate up in Rhode Island?” Kai asked.

  “No,” Ed replied.

  “Omigod, you have to go,” Kai said, tearing into her salad. “I go every year, and it’s the coolest jam on the East Coast, I swear. It’s so not commercial, and when I was twelve, I entered the best trick contest and I totally won, but not before I slammed, like, fifteen hundred times . . . .”

  Ed smiled, but he felt himself starting to drift as Kai continued to talk about her many skateboarding exploits. He wondered where Gaia was at that very moment. Did she ever even think about him anymore? Did she realize she’d ruined him for life?

  What if he would never be attracted to a normal girl again? Was this it for him? Was he going to have to date FBI chicks and cops and, like, vampire slayers or something for the rest of his days? At this point Ed wasn’t even sure if he would recognize a normal girl if he found her.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Kai asked suddenly, ducking in toward the table to get into his line of vision.

  “Yeah! Sorry,” Ed said, pushing his hands through his thick black hair. “You were talking about Rhode Island . . . ?”

  “Exactly! Like I said, you totally have to go . . . .”

  Kai didn’t seem fazed by his zone-out. Which was good, because it was probably going to happen again. He glanced around the cafeteria, looking in vain for some sign of Gaia or Tatiana, but they were definitely nowhere in sight. Something was going on. He could feel it. And he was going to find out what it was.

  It wasn’t like he had anything else to do—those girls had already destroyed his social life.

  “. . . we could go over to the park after school and I could show you, if you want,” Kai said.

  But Ed barely heard her. He was too busy planning the trip up to Seventy-second Street after school and what he would say to Gaia when he found her.

  Still Alive

  THE NURSE BEHIND THE COUNTER IN the ICU looked up as Gaia walked out of the elevator and smiled a patented comforting smile, probably perfected after years of dealing with the families of the almost dead. Gaia glanced away, avoiding eye contact as she approached the woman. She didn’t feel the need to be comforted. At least, not for the reason this woman thought she did. The patient Gaia was coming to see could stay in a coma until the hell he’d come from froze over, as far as she cared. She was probably the only person who’d ever come here hoping for “bad” news.

  “Can I help you?” the nurse asked, l
acing her fingers together as Gaia placed her bags on the floor in front of the chest-level desk.

  “I’m here to see L—uh, Oliver. Oliver Moore,” Gaia said.

  The nurse’s heavily lined eyes widened in surprise and she stepped off her stool. “Really?” she said, sounding oddly happy. “Are you family?”

  Gaia swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat. “Yeah. I’m his niece,” she said, going for a smile but looking more like she wanted to throw up.

  “Well! This is wonderful!” the nurse said, coming around the desk, her white sneakers squish-squashing as she walked. “Oliver never gets any visitors. We were beginning to wonder if he had anyone left. You see, the doctors like to have people come in and talk to our comatose patients. We always see better results when loved ones spend time talking and reading . . . .”

  Gaia watched the nurse’s face illuminate at the idea that poor old Oliver finally had someone who cared.

  “Follow me,” she said to Gaia as she squish-squashed toward the closed door to one of the rooms.

  Gaia briefly considered turning around and bolting. The idea of actually laying eyes on the man who had made her life a relentless pit of pain wasn’t appealing. But if there was one thing Gaia knew, it was that she should always make sure to see evidence with her own eyes. Whenever she was simply told something, nine and a half times out of ten it turned out to be untrue.

  She picked up her bags again and followed the nurse over to the door she was now holding open. Gaia trudged up next to the woman and stood on the threshold, filling the empty doorway. There, lying flat on his back, was the man who was the spitting image of the father she’d loved and lost more times than she could count. Somewhere out there, if he was still alive, her father looked like an exact replica of the man lying before her. Hair combed back from his head, sensors pressed into his temples, arms placed neatly at his sides, machines beeping away all around him, stubble covering his strong chin.