Blind (6 page)

“Then why did you break up?” Tatiana asked.

“I…” Ed paused, pulled in a deep breath, and shrugged. Still looking off into the shadows at the corner of the room, he went on in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “I don't know. I don't know what happened.”

Tatiana studied his face in profile. She didn't know what had caused things to end between Ed and Gaia. She had her own ideas, of course. The worst idea was that things weren't ended at all. “You still want her.” Ed only frowned in response and took another bite of pizza, but Tatiana went on. “It's all right. I know that you do. You can't change your feelings so quickly. After all, you are…” Tatiana waved a hand above the table. “What's the word I'm looking for?”

“In love?”

“No. An
idiot.”

Ed gave a sudden laugh that quickly turned to choking as he struggled to swallow a bite of pizza.

Tatiana waited until he recovered, then leaned across the table to bring her face closer to Ed's. “Gaia treats you like… like…” She tossed off a Russian curse and wished that her English were up to the level of swearing she needed. “She treats you so much worse than you should be treated. She really is a bitch.”

“She's not,” Ed said. Then he frowned. “Okay, so maybe she is. Sometimes. But she's not like that all the time. You don't really know her.”

“Gaia is living in my house,” said Tatiana. “I know how she treats my mother. I know how she treats me. I've seen how she treats you. From what I have seen, I don't think I want to know her any better.”

“Gaia is different. Not like most people.” From the tortured expression on his face, Tatiana could tell that Ed was also searching to find the right words. Even though they were speaking his language, Ed couldn't seem to explain how and why he loved Gaia Moore.

“Gaia is very pretty,” said Tatiana. “I can see that. Is it only because she is so pretty that you like her?”

“No. It's—”

“But she is pretty.”

“Of course, but—” Ed shook his head. “It's not like that. Gaia's… alive. Intense.”

“I see,” said Tatiana. She paused while the waiter came past and refilled their sodas. “I think I understand this now,” she said when the man was gone.

“You do?” Ed gave a weak grin. “That's good. Maybe you can explain it to me.”

Tatiana gave him back a smile of her own. “In Russia, I knew many girls who liked to date boys who were always in trouble. The handsome boys that wore black and frowned all the time. The boys that talked about crimes and how they'd hurt people. Even girls from good families do it.”

“Bad-boy syndrome,” said Ed. He put on a mock sneer. “The guys who might not be in gangs, but want you to think they are. They get a lot of girls here, too.”

“And this is Gaia,” said Tatiana.

“What?”

“I think you like Gaia because she is a bad girl. She is dangerous.”

Ed shook his head sharply. “No, that's not right.”

“I think it is.” Tatiana sat back in her chair. She brought the straw to her lips and took a long sip of soda while she studied him across the table. “I think that Gaia is always in trouble. You're not. She's hard and mean to people. You're not. I think that you love Gaia because she is so much of what you're not. When you are with her, you feel dangerous. That's what makes her so exciting.”

Ed's mouth dropped open, and he stared at her across the pizza. “That's not true.”

“I think it's very true,” said Tatiana. She picked up her slice of pizza and nibbled off another small bite. “I know it has been only a few days since you were with Gaia. You're too close to see the truth.”

The expression on Ed's face still looked like shock. “I love Gaia,” he said finally. “I don't know what else to say.”

“Bad-girl syndrome. Think about it.” Tatiana turned her attention to the pizza.

NOTE FROM TOM MOORE'S APARTMENT

(partially decoded by Gaia Moore)

TH# $#QU#N⋆# H%$ B##N !N$#RT#D %ND %LL T#$T$ !ND!⋆%T# TH# ⋆@D# H%$ B##N !N⋆@RP@R%T#D !NT@ TH# $UBJ#⋆T'$ @WN DN% $#QU#N⋆#.

T@ D%T# !ND!⋆%T!@N$ %R# TH%T TH# R#V!$#D ⋆@D# W!LL PR@DU⋆# TH# D#$!R#D R#$ULT$. TH# F#%R R#%⋆T!@N %PP#%R$ T@ B# T@T%LLY %B$#NT. ⋆%R#FUL M@N!T@R!NG W!LL B# R#QU!R#D T@ $## TH%T TH# $UBJ#⋆T'$ !N!T!%L ⋆@D# D@#$ N@T R#%$$#RT !T$#LF !N TH#$# #%RLY W##K$. H@W#V#R TH# ⋆H%NG# $H@ULD B# P#RM%N#NT.

!T !$ N@T P@$$!BL# T@ PR#D!⋆T %LL @TH#R #FF#⋆T$ TH# ⋆@D# !N$#RT!@N M!GHT G#N#R%T#. TH#R# !$ % P@$$!B!L!TY @F M#NT%L #FF#⋆T$. !MB%L%N⋆#. P$Y⋆H@$!$. #V#N D#%TH.

TH# B#$T ⋆@MPUT#R $!MUL%T!@N$ !ND!⋆%T# TH%T TH# $UBJ#⋆T W!LL #XP#R!#N⋆# %T L#%$T $@M# M#NT%L DY$FUN⋆T!@N B#F@R# %G# TW#NTY.

RED-BROWN GREEN-BLUE BLUE-GREEN RED-BROWN

BROWN-RED GREEN-BLUE RED-BROWN GREEN-BLUE

BLUE-GREEN BROWN-RED BLUE-GREEN RED-BROWN

RED-BROWN BROWN-RED GREEN-BLUE BLUE-GREEN

GAIA OPENED HER EYES AND STARED at the message. She was pretty sure she had enough to figure it out. She was good with codes, probably as good as anybody outside of some crypto-nerds in the government, and she was still better than most of them. Her first guess was that the message was in English. If that was so, then she could look at letter frequency, symbol-pair relationships, common phrases.

She held the note up to the light. The letters that she had already decoded might or might not be correct, but it looked like some words were already jumping out of the text.
Subject.
That word was in there twice.
Symptoms.
That was near the bottom. If both of those were right, then—

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door.

“I'm busy,” Gaia said. “Go away.” If
symptoms
was right, then the first word was
two.
This was going to be easy.

“Gaia?” came Natasha's voice through the door. “Can I talk to you?”

“I said go away. Away.” Gaia picked up her pencil and moved it across the page. This wasn't going to take minutes; it was going to be seconds. She could almost read the note right now.

The bedroom door opened, and Natasha walked in. Gaia spun around in her seat and stared at her. “I thought you were a translator. What part of ‘go away' did you not understand?”

Natasha gave her a tight smile. The smile that Gaia thought of as the you're-a-worthless-little-snot-but-I-promised-your-father-I'd-look-after-you smile. “Do you really have to be so rude, Gaia?”

“Have to? No. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop. Since you've apparently never heard of privacy, I'll pass on manners.” She gathered up the papers from the top of the table and shoved them into a drawer.

“Really, Gaia,” Natasha said with a sigh. “Tatiana and I are trying very hard to fit you into our life here.”

Gaia swallowed sour laughter. “Sorry to be so inconvenient.” It was clear that Tatiana was working very hard. Working very hard to steal the one guy that Gaia had ever made love to. Gaia had seen Tatiana flirting with Ed at school that afternoon. Flirting With Ed 101 seemed to be Tatiana's favorite subject.

Since school Tatiana hadn't made an appearance at the apartment, so Gaia figured the flirting was still in progress. Or maybe it was more than flirting now. Maybe Tatiana had al ready shown Ed what Gaia did wrong in bed. Maybe they were laughing about her right at that moment.

“Yeah, poor Tatiana,” said Gaia. She ground her
teeth together so hard that she could hear the bones in her jaw squeaking.

Natasha tried to keep the smile on her face, but it was slipping quickly. She pulled out the chair in front of the dresser—a dresser that was covered with Tatiana's makeup and Tatiana's brushes and Tatiana's jewelry. She sat down with a tired sigh. “Gaia, I'm doing my best to help you. Why do you always want to make it so difficult?”

“Difficult?” Gaia pushed her hair back from her face and stared at Natasha. “Hey, I know! How about we drive down the street, pick out a house at random, and stuff you inside. While we're at it, maybe we should kill the people you care about most.” She looked into Natasha's deep brown eyes. “What do you think? Maybe you could write me a note after you've been living with strangers for a year or two. I'm sure you'd be so happy because everybody is working so hard to be nice to you.”

“We are not strangers,” said Natasha. “Your father—”

“You
are
strangers. All of you. Even my father is a stranger.” Gaia slapped her hand against the table with enough force to make the pencil she had been using jump and roll off onto the floor. “This is not a Hallmark special, and you're not my family.”

“Your father loves you,” Natasha said. Her voice was soft, and there was a hitch in her words, a roughness that surprised Gaia. “You are not the only one in
this world who has lost someone, you know. You are not even the only one in this house. And you are not the only one who is away from the ones they care most about.”

“I don't care about my father.”

Natasha made a soft sound that might have been the ghost of a laugh. “You are not as good a liar as you think you are. You care. So does your father. He is doing what he thinks is best for you. And I…” She stopped and lowered her head into her hands. “I am very tired.”

Gaia felt a momentary touch of sympathy. Natasha did look tired. Her skin was normally pale, but tonight she appeared almost ghostly. She looked smaller somehow, fragile. But none of that meant she could get away with telling Gaia what to do. Gaia was through being told what to do. “If you're tired of me,” she said, “maybe I should leave.”

“Yes,” said Natasha, her voice muffled against her hands. “I think that might be for the best.”

The words sent an unexpected shock running through Gaia. “You mean that?”

Natasha raised her head and nodded. Her face still looked drawn and exhausted, but her mouth was set in a firm, hard line that Gaia hadn't seen before. “I promised your father I would care for you, and I have tried. But I will not be the subject of endless abuse in my own home. I will not sit and watch you
make my daughter miserable. I do not ask that you love us. I only ask for courtesy. If that's too much for you to give, I'll make arrangements for you to live elsewhere.”

She stood up sharply, gave a quick nod, and turned to leave the room. Gaia was so stunned by the sudden turn in the conversation that she didn't even know how to start on a reply.

Natasha began to close the door, then stopped and turned back to Gaia. “Oh,” she said. “I almost forgot. This came for you.” She gave a flick of her wrist and sent an envelope looping across the room. “If you decide to move, you'll need to tell me where to send your mail.” The door closed. The sound of Natasha's footsteps slowly receded down the hall.

For several seconds Gaia sat and looked at the closed door.
Did that really happen?
she wondered.
I just bought my freedom.

She certainly wasn't going to let Natasha make “arrangements.” It was bad enough having her father toss her to strangers. She wasn't going to let Natasha shove her farther down the line. Hot potato Gaia.

“I can go somewhere else,” she said to the empty room. “There have to be options.” A minute passed. Her set of options wasn't exactly longer than Santa's shopping list. She couldn't stay with Ed. Heather wouldn't exactly jump at the chance to have Gaia
move in. There were some youth hostels downtown. Or maybe the classic bench in Central Park.

Finally Gaia got up and went to retrieve the envelope Natasha had tossed into the room so carelessly. She didn't expect much. It was probably some note from the school.

Dear Ms. Gaia's Keeper,

Did you know the
filthy beast
has been sleeping in class? Please poke her with a sharp stick and keep her awake so we can tell her many tedious things she already knows.

Your School Administration

But as soon as she picked it up, Gaia knew that this note hadn't been written by some clueless guidance counselor with a master's degree in how not to tell parents that their kids were hopelessly stupid. The envelope was made of gray paper. Pale gray paper with a crisp, linen texture. It was the same paper that had been used in the note that had led Gaia to her father's apartment.

She tore it open quickly and tipped the small note inside into her hand.

Tonight. The Cloisters. Come at midnight.

AS SHE CAME THROUGH THE DOOR, Heather was careful to keep smiling. The truth was, she hardly felt like smiling. More like mainlining a few hundred CCs of aspirin and sleeping for a week. Even though the morning's monster headache was mostly gone, she couldn't remember ever feeling so tired, so worn down, so wrecked. But she kept smiling.

It wouldn't be good for Josh to see her looking sad or tired. Josh was beautiful. And Heather knew exactly how the game worked. The best-looking guys only went out with the best-looking girls. That was an absolute, unbreakable rule. You couldn't afford to let guys like that ever know that you were tired, or sick, or even sad. Good-looking guys, guys like Josh, they wanted only girls that were interesting and alive and always happy. Heather wasn't about to disappoint.

She bounced into the diner as if she had never felt better in her life. She scanned the tables for a moment and spotted Josh sitting at a booth toward the back. She flashed him a bright smile, gave a wave, and made her way through the crowded restaurant.

Josh slipped out of the booth and stood up as she approached. It seemed like an old-fashioned sort of
thing to do, but he didn't stop there. He actually made a little bow and reached out to take her hand. “My lady,” he said in a voice that dripped with a fake British accent. “You look particularly lovely tonight.” He brought up her hand and touched it lightly to his lips. Then he let her fingers go and gave her a smile of his own. “Hey, how was school?”