Naked

by Francine Pascal

  You know what it’s like? It’s like Sam and my father turned to stone. Like the Greek myth of Medusa. I always thought Medusa was so cool, what with snakes for hair, but apparently she was just so ugly that she turned people to stone. And that’s what it feels like with Sam and my father. First, of course, I turned them into my heroes. They became the two biggest figures in my life, golden gods, models of true love and true family and perfection.

  And then something went terribly wrong. I don’t really understand where or how it happened—or what even caused the trouble. But the next thing I knew. . . my heroes had turned to stone. That’s all they are to me now. Just these oversized lifeless white statues. Reminders of heroes past. Hollow, brittle tributes to what I thought they were. What they were supposed to be.

  And that’s not the worst of it. Because they didn’t just turn to stone. . . they crumbled, falling down all over me in an avalanche of arms and noses and legs. Now I’m submerged in the rubble. Buried under all their bullshit. Trying to pry my way out.

  I miss Ed. I wish I could talk to Ed. But maybe Ed isn’t real, either. Maybe he’s just a shell, too. Or an actor who was just pretending to be in a wheelchair. That’s how it felt. It felt like he had been my favorite character in my favorite movie—and then the actor who played him walked into school, and I knew it was the same guy, but it just wasn’t the same guy.

  I’m starting to sound like a bona fide lunatic. I know that. I’ve been watching it get worse and worse. But I swear to God, I’m sane. It’s my life that’s insane: a surreal tapestry made up of lies and phantoms and shadows and hollow statues.

  And looking out from under all the rubble, I can’t help thinking. . .

  Maybe my uncle Oliver is the only thing that’s real.

  LOKI

  It’s a strange thing about choices. People always like to think they’re making them, when in fact they are not. They like to think they’re deciding which movie to see, or which orange juice to buy, or where they’ll be taking their next vacation. And they are truly unaware that pages and pages of demographic studies, and tests, and focus groups have predetermined their “choices” long before they even get to the stage where they can decide. They are blissfully ignorant of being manipulated by a machine much, much larger than they.

  Of course, I think that in some part of their subconscious mind, they have an awareness of the fact that they’re being “helpfully guided” through life by powers far superior to them. I think they need that guidance. I think they’d feel completely lost at sea without it.

  Gaia needs my guidance right now. Just as she needs to feel that she has chosen to seek it out. She’ll make her choice as to whether or not she’s going to join me abroad, not understanding that the choice has already been made. All according to a plan.

  Control. There are so many misconceptions about it. All this foolishness about how there’s no such thing. People love to convince themselves that they have some kind of free will and that this free will plays any roll in their choices. It’s really quite ridiculous. But I am eternally grateful for the illusion.

  Because the illusion of free will is the one essential element in maintaining complete control.

  here is a sneak peek of Fearless™ #17: FLEE

  GAIA

  I’m considering giving up chess. As in never playing again. Not even in Washington Square Park with Mr. Haq or Zolov or Rennie. Definitely not with Sam. Not with anybody. The fact of the matter is that I can’t play anymore. I’ve lost my edge. The game confuses me. The last few times I played, I couldn’t strategize. I was losing left and right. And for a grand master, that’s humiliating.

  More to the point, my life has always felt like chess, like combat. Life makes its move, and I make mine. Maybe I haven’t been exactly comfortable with the setup, but at the very least I’ve been used to it. It’s all I’ve ever really known.

  Now it seems like I’m no longer even a player in my own game. I feel more like a pawn. And I’m not even sure of the sides. In the past, it was easy to make out black from white, but now the board is a blur of gray.

  Who is the white knight? My father or my uncle Oliver?

  I’ve had my doubts about all of this before. But I’ve never been as confused as I am now. The simple facts are these: my father is gone again, and Oliver is back—asking me to live with him. And Sam? I can’t even go there. My feelings about him are a negative image of what they once were: where I once had something pure and instinctive and a hundred percent right, I now have only empty, bitter pain.

  Yesterday I tried to think of one constant in my life. Instinctively, of course, I turned to my friendship with Ed. But I nixed the thought before it even made it to the surface. Ed is a new person. There’s no denying that I feel strange around him. I can’t put my finger on exactly what has changed between us, but now that he’s up and walking, there’s a self-conscious awkwardness between us that I’ve never felt before.

  Which, of course, makes me wonder if Ed isn’t the one who has changed.

  Maybe it’s me.

  And all of this thinking just sends me further into a spiral of uncertainty. I don’t have time for it. I need to make some cold, hard decisions. To live with Oliver or not? God. What I would give for some advice right now. I’ve never much been one for taking (or asking for) advice, but I’m fresh out of strategies. The chessboard is a blank slate. A tabla rasa, as they used to say in ancient Rome. I’m unable to think for myself at all.

  Sometimes I feel like confiding in Mrs. Moss, and I find myself almost bursting out and telling her or Paul everything, my whole story—complete with all of the shit and misery and loneliness. But then I remember myself. Living with the Moss family is a temporary arrangement. I’m not going to sleep in Mary’s room forever, no matter how hospitable her family is. Besides, these are good people. They don’t need to be burdened with my problems.

  Anyway, they can’t help me.

  No one can help me figure out if Oliver is just screwing with my head or if he’s really the well-meaning uncle he claims to be. So I have to rely on my own judgment. And that’s a shame since it migrated south for the winter a long time ago. So what do I do? Run to Oliver or away from him? Believe what he says—that my father is actually “Loki” and has been brainwashing me? Or do I tell Oliver to drop dead . . .

  I have to go back to the facts, though. I have to ignore my emotion. After all, emotion clouds reason. That’s one of the first lessons of martial arts. And the facts are indisputable. Oliver has come for me twice, while my father has abandoned me twice. He’s here now. My father isn’t. That should count for something . . . right?

  I’m not a girl who hesitates. I make my move and accept the consequences. So I should do it. Leave the Mosses and give Oliver another chance to prove himself. I mean, if I don’t go, how will I know?

  It makes the most sense.

  So why am I hesitating?

  the unexpected

  Car accident, mugging, hit, whatever. The means didn’t matter, only the end: Josh lying in a pool of blood.

  “THAT’S THE LONGEST SUBWAY RIDE I’ve ever taken.” Ed Fargo groaned as he and Gaia emerged from the dark stairwell and into the bright sunshine. “What’s with the sudden interest in Harlem?”

  Cheap Joke

  Gaia smirked. “This isn’t Harlem, Ed.”

  “Whatever.” He repositioned himself on his crutches, squinting for a moment at the bright blue sky—then he glanced up the winding street toward a shady little park, where the leaves were just starting to bud on the trees. “It’s the boondocks.”

  That’s why I came, Gaia answered silently. Because nothing that’s familiar feels right. So here they were, at the Cloisters: an old monastery-turned-museum that looked like a medieval fortress, perched over the Hudson River—way up at the top of Manhattan, in Washington Heights. If you lived in Greenwich Village, this was the middle of nowhere.

  Gaia was thinking that maybe a change of scene would help her see her
life below Fourteenth Street more clearly. Downtown, it was a landscape of confusion. Up here, maybe she’d get some perspective. She’d sort out her feelings about Oliver. Her father. Sam. She stole a sideways glance at Ed, then added him to that list.

  Maybe I should have come alone.

  Ed hobbled forward, swinging his legs between his crutches, limping with surprising precision. Gaia followed silently by his side as they entered the park. Normally she didn’t mind long silences with Ed. In fact, a lot of times she preferred them to his barrage of one-liners. But today she craved conversation. Yet still she didn’t say one word, not even when they stopped for a lemonade Slurpee. She couldn’t even be cheered by the extra-sweet fake-lemon syrup flowing into her cup. It was a good scene: a Slurpee, Ed, sunlight dappling the almost bare branches of the park, the rough stone walls of the Cloisters looming ahead of them. . . a perfectly excellent day, by any standards.

  But the knot in Gaia’s stomach didn’t loosen, and she doubted it would anytime soon.

  “Are there any monks here?” Ed asked, licking the syrupy ice and glancing at the imposing structure. His voice was light, but his dark brown eyes were searching. He knows something’s up with me, Gaia thought, shrugging by way of answer. Of course he knew something was up with her. He was Ed, for God’s sake. And usually, when she was pissed at the world, she couldn’t wait to spill to him, to get his take. She stared into space, feeling his curious eyes on her. She was desperate to share all the turmoil whirling like laundry in an endless spin cycle inside her brain. But somehow. . . she couldn’t.

  Something stood between them now. Some new gap. Some new. . . what? What was so different about him? Sure, he could walk. But he was still the same dry, no-bullshit Ed he’d always been.

  Maybe.

  Gaia averted her eyes from his gaze. She knew that this new eye-to-eye, face-to-face dynamic was part of the problem. It would just take some getting used to. That was all. Or maybe not. Maybe everything would deteriorate. Why should her friendship with Ed survive all of its rocky patches when every other relationship had bitten the proverbial dust?

  “. . . every bit as bad as rats, but somehow humans detest rats more,” Ed was suddenly babbling away, pointing at a squirrel hovering over a garbage bin. Clearly he didn’t enjoy the silence, either. Gaia nodded every few seconds like a marionette, floating off on a sea of self-pity. Pathetic, she chided herself. But feelings were feelings. There was no way to stop them from surfacing, from coming out of nowhere to smack you on the head and leave you dizzy.

  Or. . . maybe the real problem was hope. Like believing you could take some time out to get perspective when your name was Gaia Moore. Like hoping you could enjoy yourself, even for an afternoon. . .

  She swallowed hard. All at once she could feel one of those extremely annoying sobbing fits welling up inside her. With every ounce of her strength, she fought it back. She didn’t want to lose it here, now, with Ed. Hope: that was the problem.Hope was a cheap joke without a punch line. Gaia jump-cut her way through a series of images from the past six months, culminating with her father’s disappearance. A lot of reason for hope there, right? It was almost funny.

  Except that it’s my life.

  “. . . what’s going on in G-land?” Ed was asking.

  “Huh?” She jerked, then stared down at her sneakers, blushing. It was a first, she realized. She’d never blushed around Ed before. What the hell was her problem? Why did a goddamn wheelchair—or lack of one—mean so much?

  Ed just laughed mildly. “You haven’t exactly been your most verbal self today.”

  Gaia shrugged. “Yeah, well,” she muttered. “I guess what with everything. . . you know, my father. He took off again. I told you all this.”

  Ed’s laughter died. “Have you heard from him?”

  “Nope.” She took a slug of her Slurpee and held the ice chips in her mouth for a moment, in some attempt to freeze out the unwanted thoughts, to freeze out doubt, second guessing, endless questions. But it didn’t work. “I haven’t. And everything—” She paused, her voice catching as if on some invisible shard of glass. She couldn’t go on. And now she was truly embarrassed, tears rising in her throat. Christ. What is wrong with me?

  “Come on,” Ed murmured. His voice was soothing. He gestured toward a patch of grass under an old oak tree.

  Gaia followed him silently.

  He balanced the crutches against the tree, then eased himself down to the ground, lying on his side and propping his head up on his elbow. Gaia sat cross-legged—facing him but not meeting his thoughtful stare. She picked at the blades of grass.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he prodded.

  This should be Sam.

  The thought came from nowhere, slicing through Gaia’s brain like a bullet. But she couldn’t deny it. Sam was the one who should be there with her on the grass, helping her figure out what to do about Oliver, helping her sort through the mess that her life had become. And that was the real tragedy: it wasn’t Sam, and it never would be Sam. The Sam Moon chapter of her life had closed. Forever. She had to accept it and move on.

  “I’m. . . confused,” Gaia admitted at long last, opting at least to speak. “I can’t tell my ass from my elbow.”

  “One’s sharp and pointy,” Ed joked.

  Gaia mustered a smile. She turned a blade of grass in her fingers. Details of Sam assembled themselves in her mind: his sandy brown curls, his amber gold eyes, the freckles that dotted his shoulder blade. Her chest tightened. Suddenly being with Ed felt inexplicably uncomfortable again. She shifted her gaze over to the Cloister buildings, to a large stone cross adorning a sloping skate roof.

  “How anyone can believe in God is beyond me,” she muttered, almost to herself. “Everything is random.”

  “Yeah,” Ed agreed, rolling onto his back and staring up at the deep blue sky. “I’m down with the existential thinking myself. It’s all random. But you know, G, that means there’s just as much random good as there is random shit. Take my accident, for example. That was a random awful thing. Then take my walking again. That was random luck. Random experimental science.”

  Gaia forced another smile, then drained the rest of her Slurpee and placed the cup beside her. For a moment she closed her eyes. The cool breeze felt nice against her face. She wished she could stay like that for a year. Not thinking, not talking, not interacting. Just being.

  “No matter how bad it gets, remember: random luck can come your way,” Ed said. “The odds are just as good.”

  Maybe that was true. Gaia cracked open one eye. Sure, Ed’s words did make some sense. But where did it leave her? No closer to sorting the random good from the random bad, the wheat from the chaff, the Olivers from the Toms.

  “My uncle wants me to go live with him,” Gaia heard herself say.

  “He what?” Ed shot up on his elbow, his eyes widening. “The guy’s supposed to be in some loonybin supermax prison. Right?”

  Gaia bit her lip. “He escaped. He has his own version about what’s what.” She took a deep breath, and before she knew it, the entire story was pouring out of her: the note her father left, Oliver’s bizarre appearance at the Mosses’, the loneliness, the confusion, the betrayal. . . and as the words flowed, she felt the smallest hint of relief, from somewhere deep inside. Just a touch. Ed had a quick mind. He didn’t ask stupid questions. He simply followed the story, examined the scenario totally analytically, then gave his opinion.

  “I think you should stay with the Mosses for a while,” he said.

  Gaia nodded. It was the simplest answer and probably the best. But then, Ed didn’t know what it was like not to have a family. He didn’t know what it was like to live with someone else’s parents. To always wish for your own.

  “He could easily be playing you,” Ed said forcefully. “It’s too dangerous to go live with him.”

  “But what if he’s telling the truth?” Gaia mumbled, her eyes dropping back to the ground.

  Ed sighed. “This i
s a tough one. We’re talking probabilities here. It’s all hypothetical.”

  “So where does that leave me? Back at square one.”

  “Which is why you should stay with the Mosses,” Ed retorted. “You are absolutely sure of them. You’re not absolutely sure of your uncle. Or your dad. But you do know you’re safe with the Mosses, that no one there has any agenda.”

  She looked up into his eyes. “But I can’t stay with them forever,” she whispered.

  “So stay until you’re more sure of which way to go. After all, if Oliver really is the good guy he says he is, he won’t be going anywhere soon. So he can wait.”

  Gaia shot Ed a grateful smile. What was it about him? He could always find a way to untangle things, to take a pile of jumbled, ratty strands and pull them apart. He smiled back, and suddenly she became aware of how close together they were lying—his elbow almost touching hers, which was a weird thought because she was quite sure their elbows had touched before. . . and so what, anyway? But for some reason it was different now—Stop. She didn’t like the way her thoughts were going at all. She had enough drama in her life. She didn’t need to be making something out of nothing.

  “Let’s go see if there are any monks in there,” she said, standing up abruptly.

  “HOW MUCH?” SAM ASKED, POINTING at a bucket that was filled with big bunches of pink lilies wrapped in cellophane.

  Daydreaming

  “Ten dollars,” the shopkeeper answered curtly.

  Sam picked out a crumpled ten from his wallet, handed it to the man, and grabbed one of the bunches. It was only as he stepped away from the deli that he felt like a true idiot. Flowers. From a deli, no less. Such a cheap form of truce. Nothing says sorry quite like pink flowers! Sam shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. This kind of cliché had no place in his relationship with Gaia. It had nothing to do with them.