Old Gaia couldn’t. She’d proved that with Sam. She’d proved it with Ed. Old Gaia couldn’t make it work. Not with her life in a continuous shambles. Not with sick, twisted assholes chasing her down and ripping her heart out all the time. But new Gaia . . . new Gaia didn’t have all that crap to contend with anymore. At least, she wasn’t supposed to. . . .
But God help her, she still couldn’t shake it. She couldn’t shake off all the times she’d been burned before—all the innocent people she’d hurt. She couldn’t drag another boy in. Even if the danger seemed miles away—even if it seemed like it was never coming back—she couldn’t trust it. She couldn’t bring another boy into the middle of that danger ever again.
Except . . . in Jake’s case . . . maybe she could?
Jake could handle himself. If that danger ever presented itself again, they could help each other. They could protect each other.
And what if the danger never did resurface? What if the danger was truly over? She could go on for years like this, never letting anyone into her life, only to find years later that she’d lived her whole life alone for no good reason.
No. She had to take the leap. She had to. She had to believe that the danger was gone. If she couldn’t take that leap, then there was no way she could truly start her life as new Gaia. And if she couldn’t be new Gaia, then there was really no point in anything anymore. New Gaia was the entire and only point now.
She had to tell Jake that she was ready. Whether she was or not. She had to tell him that she was ready to go there. . . .
“Oh, that is so her, man. That is so the very same bitch!”
The repellent voice had blared out from the bushes just across the pavement. Gaia dropped her eyes from Jake’s and scanned the bushes, trying to target the origin of the voice.
No, no. Not now. This has to be a joke. Someone is trying to play a practical joke on me here, and they just don’t know that they’ve chosen a very, very bad time.
“Oh, man, what the hell was that?” Jake growled, pounding his fist back against the tree. He was clearly just as frustrated as Gaia was with this asshole’s timing. If the dude wanted to pick a fight any other night, any other time, that would have been just fine by Gaia. One more god-awful street spat in the park for old times’ sake. If it had to be, it had to be. But not now. Not at this particular moment.
“Gaiaaaa,” another voice called out. “Is that Gaiaaaa?” Then he howled out the most disturbing and pathetic cackle.
Great. Now there are two of them. That’s just exactly what I need right now.
“Let’s just take ’em,” Jake said, moving in front of Gaia to protect her. “We deal with them, and then we get back to our conversation.”
“No, Jake, let’s just go,” Gaia complained, pulling him back behind her. “We don’t need anymore of this—”
“Let’s slice and dice!” another voice howled out.
And before Gaia and Jake could even move, they suddenly found themselves in the middle of the fastest ambush she had seen in quite some time.
There were at least six of them. No, seven. Then eight. Skinheads, of course. The world’s most ignorant brotherhood. With their offensive swastika T-shirts, and their ten thousand piercings all chained together, and their stupid hard-core combat boots, and their phallic-substitute Leatherman knives. All the same old crap.
Only something was different. Something was very different. In their eyes. In the expressions on their faces. Even their voices . . .
“You’re going to eat this knife,” one of them bellowed, creeping quickly toward her. “You’re going to swallow the entire thing, and you’re going to bleed.” He seemed to be the leader. He had no shirt on, and his body was covered in white-power tattoos. A big silver swastika earring was dangling from his left ear. His black eyes were stretched twice as wide as they should have been, darting from side to side with the manic speed of an insect. He was practically foaming at the mouth.
They all had that look. The same wide vibrating eyes. The veins bulging out from their necks like they were about to burst. What was this? What the hell was wrong with them?
Gaia and Jake both began to crouch into a fighting stance.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for this?” the leader said as his boys moved closer and closer from all sides like starving wolves. The words were pouring out of his mouth like vomit, one after the other, faster and faster. “Do you know how long we’ve all been hiding like freaking girls from the big bad Gaia bitch?”
Gaia could practically see his heart pounding, trying to rip its way right out of his chest. His head was shaking harder and harder with every word. What the hell was he on?
“What’s wrong with you?” Gaia uttered. “What’s wrong with all of—?”
“We were goddamn cowards!” he shouted. “We were all cowards! We didn’t have the power.”
They all hollered their agreement as their mouths spread into wide, manic grins.
“The power of God!” one of them shouted.
“Hell, yes! That is the power of God, bitch. The power to reach down your throat, tear your freaking heart out, and eat it. And tonight’s the night. Tonight is dead Gaia night! This is for my cousin.”
And then he lunged. He lunged hard and fast. Faster than she’d expected. Faster than either one of them had expected.
“Jake!” Gaia hollered, dropping and rolling to her right.
Jake whipped his body back against the tree, just barely dodging the full-force swipe of the blade.
“Bye-bye!” The leader had started to giggle as he took another full swing at Jake with wide-eyed abandon. “Bye-bye! Bye-bye! Bye-bye!” Jake leapt for the bushes and rolled to safety, but he was met with a stiff black combat boot to the head.
And then they were all shouting it—choruses of gleeful “bye-byes” as they mercilessly stormed Gaia and Jake.
Gaia shut out every sound. Her eyes took over as her body locked into a purely unconscious focus. Knife by knife, face by face, she began picking her targets and her order of moves. And then she sprang into action. Literally.
Her body floated over the grass as her leg snapped out at the first knife, ripping it from one of the psycho’s hands. She landed directly in front of him, cramming her knee into his groin as he doubled over and then shooting her foot forward straight at his chin, sending his entire torso back like a rag doll.
Jake leapt off the ground and grabbed one of their wrists, twisting the skinhead’s entire arm back and then tossing him overhead. His chain-covered body careened forward headfirst into the tree with a loud, jangling thud.
“Gaia, behind you!” Jake warned.
Before she’d even turned her head, she snapped her elbow behind her, cracking the nose of whoever it was standing there. Then she reached back, felt for his center, and flipped him directly onto his pathetic bony ass. He let out a loud sound as he writhed on the ground.
But it wasn’t the sound of pain. . . .
It was the sound of laughter. His writhing body had given in to fits of laughter. And then, quite suddenly, he pounced back up off the ground and came at Gaia again. Even harder and faster this time.
She had to move double time to deal with his insanely adrenalized speed. And she had to hit harder to take him out. She leapt up for a huge sweeping roundhouse kick to the face. His face snapped to the right as blood gushed from his mouth, but then he came at her again. She needed a second roundhouse kick at double the strength to send his entire body three feet back and finally knock him out.
This wasn’t right. This was all wrong. Skinheads were easy. Skinheads were the bottom of the barrel as far as fighting was concerned. The trained martial artists were supposed to be the problem, and the Navy SEALs and those SWAT-like sons of bitches in black. These kids were street trash. Gaia had dumped the likes of them into trash cans without breaking a sweat. But these sons of bitches had changed. They were the same assholes she’d seen around the park a hundred times before,
but they weren’t the same. It wasn’t that they were skilled in any way. They just . . . wouldn’t stop.
“You idiot!” the leader howled at Jake. “You idiot!” He laughed. “You can’t freaking scare me! I don’t bleed anymore. Nothing hurts. I don’t bleed. You bleed.” He drove his knife at Jake’s chest—straight for the center of his chest with every intention of gutting him. And for just one moment Gaia could see it in Jake’s eyes: actual terror. Real live child like terror.
“Jake!”
The knife ripped through Jake’s T-shirt and pierced his skin.
But Gaia reached out in time. She swung her hand around the leader’s neck and ripped him backward right off his feet as they went tumbling to the ground. His six-foot frame nearly crushed her to the ground as he lay on top of her on his back.
“Drop it!” Gaia shouted, pulling tighter and tighter around his neck as his breaths became fewer and farther between. He was bucking and kicking his entire body, trying to break free from Gaia’s choke hold. His hand grasped his knife even tighter as he tried to lunge behind him for any part of Gaia’s body over and over again. He was lunging so wildly that he actually sliced open his own arm.
But it made no difference. Blood was pouring from his left arm and he hadn’t made a sound. Not even the least indication of pain. He only swung back harder and harder. “I don’t bleed,” he choked out between strangled giggles. “I’m invincible, bitch. You can’t touch me. . . . ”
Jake had obviously been enraged by his near-death experience. He went off on the bastards in a frenzy, disarming their cackling attacks with a kick and then snapping some bones when he had to. Whatever it took to take these mindless psycho-skinheads out.
But Gaia had to stay focused on this one lunatic—the boy who seemed totally unaware that not only did he bleed, but that he was in fact bleeding profusely from his own self-inflicted wound. “I . . . said . . . drop it,” Gaia uttered.
She finally applied enough pressure to his windpipe that he passed out. His body went completely limp on top of hers, and she hurled him off of her, leaping back onto her feet in one smooth motion. She snatched up his knife and ran for the last psycho still standing.
She waved the knife right in his face. “It’s over!” she warned him. “Unless you want to end up in pieces, I suggest you get the hell out of here!”
But he only laughed harder, like he’d just shared the most hysterical joke with himself. “Go ahead,” he chortled. “Cut me! Try to cut me!” He jumped up and down in place like a hyperactive child. “I want you to. I dare you to. It’s not going to hurt. It’s not.” And then his laughs began to give way to a terrible coughing fit. “Oh Jesus,” he spat out between coughs. “Oh God, I love it. Thank you, God . . . I love it.” And then he dropped down to his knees and clasped his hands over his eyes. “Oh God.” He coughed again. “My head. My freaking head.”
Slowly Gaia let the knife drop to the ground as she watched this pathetic sight. The boy gripped his head tighter and tighter, and then finally he collapsed, falling back into the grass with a light thud.
Gaia stared down at his body with utter puzzlement. She knelt down next to him and checked for a pulse. He was still breathing. He was just gone for the night.
She felt a hand come down on her shoulder. But she instantly knew that it was Jake’s. This particular nightmare was finally over.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “It’s them I want to know about. What the hell happened to them?” She scanned the unconscious bodies strewn about her and tried to make sense of the strangest attack she’d ever experienced.
“Can you stand up?”
“Of course,” Gaia said. She made a move to stand up, and then all of Washington Square Park began to spin in huge swooping circles. “Or actually, Jake, will you help get me back uptown?”
“Of course,” Jake said, kneeling down next to her and checking the bruises on her face.
“Good. Because I think I’m going to . . . ”
The last thing she felt was Jake’s arms catching her before she hit the ground.
Kaia
GOD, WHAT IS THIS, “LOVERS’ NIGHT” or something?
Ed’s annoyance level was spiking as he scanned the line of bowling lanes at Bowlmor. Couple after couple after couple. All of them slapping fives and swigging from their beers and then, of course, kissing. A kiss for every strike, every spare, every gutter ball; it didn’t seem to matter. Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” was blaring through the speakers, and somehow Bowlmor had been transformed into some sort of fifties-style make-out palace. And it just kept inducing the same damn flashback over and over again in Ed’s head.
Jake and Gaia. Jake and Gaia smiling. Jake and Gaia gleaming with the light of teenage love in the afternoon.
Jake and Gaia kissing. Over and over.
It was only in the last few minutes that Ed had begun to understand why this nagging image refused to leave his head—why it was making him so excessively annoyed. The reason wasn’t jealousy. The reason was this:
If there was such a thing as an alternate universe—some reality that existed somewhere else in time and space—and if Ed and Gaia just happened to be existing in that alternate universe somewhere . . . then it should have been them kissing across that table in Starbucks. Not that Ed wanted that now, but back then . . . back when they’d been together, back in that alternate universe, a simple moment like that was all he had wanted.
A moment of normalcy. That’s what he’d wanted so badly for them. A series of moments, actually. Just the day-to-day aspects of love. Renting some movies, having some burgers, a daily kiss in the coffee shop . . .
But that was never Gaia’s life. Everything had always been drama. Everything had always been life or death. Everything had always been jam-packed with confusion and doubt and betrayal. That was why Ed had finally given up—because she could never just be there with him like that. There was always something else or someone else making things a hundred times more complicated.
But if Ed had believed that Gaia was capable of that kind of normal life, if he had believed back then that she was capable of having moments like that perfectly normal kiss with Jake, then he never would have given up on her in the first place.
It was the irony. The stupid, pointless irony. That was what was pissing him off. That was what kept images of Gaia Moore running through his head long after he’d gotten over her.
Kai suddenly plopped down in Ed’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Did you score it?”
“What?” Ed asked absentmindedly.
“My sweet, sweet spare,” Kai boasted joyfully. “Did you see it?”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, no. I was just about to—”
“Ed, were you watching me at all?” Kai poked her finger into his head.
“Was I . . . ? Of course.” He smiled. “Of course I was watching you.”
“Okay, what pins did I hit?”
Oh God, not a test. Come on. “You hit . . . the pins to pick up the spare.”
“Ugggh.” Kai clenched her fists and shook them with mock frustration. But Ed could tell it wasn’t exactly mock frustration.
“What?” Ed laughed, trying desperately to keep things light.
“You’re driving me crazy today.”
“Why?”
Kai looked deeper into Ed’s eyes as if to say, Are you kidding me?
“What?”
Kai removed her arms from around Ed’s neck and crossed them over her chest. The expression on her face was turning far too serious. It made Ed nervous. “Ed . . . do you want to talk about our little ‘moment’ at Starbucks today?”
Ed felt his chest begin to tighten. “What moment?”
Kai blew out a small, uncomfortable sigh. She turned away from him for a moment and then turned back. “Okay. Let me rephrase. Do you want to talk about Gaia?” Ed was beginning to feel a little sick. “Because sometimes that helps,” Kai
went on. “Sometimes it helps to get someone out of your system if you just talk a little about—”
“No,” Ed interrupted. “What are you talking about? Out of my system? Don’t be ridiculous. Gaia Moore is so utterly and completely out of my system.”
“Well, you just seem so preoccupied with—”
“God, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He laughed. “Preoccupied? You don’t get it. Oh, man, you’ve got it completely wrong. You want to know why I was just so preoccupied? You want to know why I missed your spare?”
“Why?”
“Because I was feeling jealous.”
This didn’t make Kai happier. “I know that,” she said quietly. “I know you were jealous at Starbucks—”
“No, not jealous of Jake. Jealous of them.” Ed pointed out to the rest of the bowling couples. “I was watching them. They’ve all been kissing this entire time, and I was jealous. Because that should be us. We should be kissing after every strike and every spare and every gutter ball. That’s what we should be doing.”
The smile suddenly crept back across Kai’s face. “Oh,” she uttered quietly.
Ed ran his hand up along Kai’s cheek and then cradled her chin, pulling her face closer to his until their lips connected. Gently at first, and then firmer and firmer—probing each other’s lips with force and with passion.
Now it ought to be crystal clear who Ed was thinking about tonight. He wasn’t thinking about Gaia, he was thinking about Kaia.
Kai. He was thinking about Kai.
home sweet home
Another false home—another room with another bed, for a short while, until things changed again.
Headaches and Homelessness
THE TAXICAB WAS FAIRLY NEW. THAT was good, because Gaia felt sick. Nothing too major—just a headache—but she was grateful for the clean vinyl smell and the fresh New York air blowing into the cab. The driver wasn’t making things any more pleasant—he was madly speeding up and slowing down—but Gaia could take it.
“How are you feeling?” Jake asked.
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