Fearless (14 page)

was angry and dangerous. When he was near her, his own mind betrayed him. The smartest thing he could do was stay away from her permanently.

The smartest and most rational thing he could do was to get himself back to Heather’s room and remember why he loved her.

2 KRISPY KREME DOUGHNUTS

1 Granny Smith apple

1 large coffee with milk and 3 sugars

5 roasted nuts

He refused to look up and pay her face any attention at all until he felt the metal barrel against his temple.

SHE WAS SO ANGRY, SHE’D PICKED a fight with George. She was so angry, she was wearing her highest heels. Even her aqua miniskirt wasn’t helping her mood.

Marco put his hands on her hips and pushed her against the wall.

The only thing the stupid, vain kid had going for him was his looks, and now he was monstrous with his swollen nose and misshapen lips.

“Come on, darling,” she whispered to him. “We need some privacy.” She removed his hands and used them to lead him down the narrow hall of the Gramercy Inn to room 402, their very own love nest.

Once he was in the room, she plucked the Do Not Disturb sign off the inside doorknob and hung it on the outside. She dosed the door hard and locked it. She clattered the key down on the glass-topped bureau.

He was already pulling his cotton T-shirt over his head. She saw deep bruises on his ribs and shoulder. Slob that he was, he threw the shirt on the ground and came toward her with those inexhaustible hands.

“Darling,” she cooed, “you know I need to talk to you. I asked you not to hurt my friend, and now I’ve learned she’s in the hospital.”

Marco, as usual, was in no mood for talking.

“Mmmm,” he said, burying his face in her neck.

This had been fun two days ago. Today it wasn’t.

“Marco, did you hear me?”

He had the unbelievable gall to throw her on the bed. She took her handbag with her. As he kissed her, she fumbled with the latch and opened it

“Marco, I asked you a question.”

His hands were gliding under her shirt They were cold today.

He refused to look up and pay her face any attention at all until he felt the metal barrel against his temple. His eyes grew round, and his lips opened. He spluttered but couldn’t find words.

Ella gave him another few seconds to fully appreciate her change of mood before she pulled the trigger and sent a silent bullet deep into his head.

She untangled herself from him and deposited the gun into her slim, square bag. She straightened her clothes and glanced in the mirror. Her lipstick was still perfect She smiled wide. None on her teeth.

This interlude had done nothing to quell her anger. But now it was three o’clock, and Gaia, the true source of her temper, would be home from the hospital. Ella slung her bag over her shoulder, enjoying the weight of the gun, and strode to the door without a backward glance.

She was so tired of that girl.

here is a sneak peek of Fearless TM #2: SAM

Tonight
, as I sat on the park bench waiting for my head to explode, I had one moment of clarity in which I learned two things.

I have to find my dad.

I just have to. As angry as I am, as much as I hate him for abandoning me on the most awful, vulnerable day of my life, I don’t want to die without seeing him one more time. I don’t know what I will say to him. But there is something I want to know, and I feel like if I can look in his eyes-just for a moment-I’ll know what his betrayal meant and whether there is any love or trust, even the possibility of it between us.

And, two I have to have sex.

Oh, come on. Don’t act so shocked. I’m seventeen years old. I know the rules about being safe. If my life weren’t in very Immediate jeopardy, maybe I would let it wait for the exact right time. But let’s face it, I may not be around next week, forget about happily ever after. Besides, I have been through a lot of truly awful things in my life, so why should I die without getting to experience one of the few great ones?

Who am I going to have sex with?

Do you have to ask?

All right, I have an answer. In my moment of clarity, the face I saw belonged to Sam Moon. Granted, he hates me. Granted, he has a girlfriend. Granted, his girlfriend hates me even more. But I ‘ l l find a way. ‘Cause he’s the one. I can’t say why, he just is.

I wish I could convince myself that CJ wouldn’t make good on his threat. But I heard his voice. I saw his face. I know he’ll do any crazy thing it takes. Am I afraid? No. I ‘ m never afraid. But the way I see it, dying without knowing love would be a tragedy.

beauty and hideousness

She hated that pale blond hair, a color you rarely saw on a person over the age of three.

“YOU SOUND WEIRD.”

“How do you mean?” Gaia asked.

“I don’t know. You just do. You’re talking fast or something.”

Ed Fargo was honest with Gaia and Gaia was honest with Ed He appreciated that about their relationship. With most girls he knew, girls like Heather, there were many mystifying levels of bullshit. With Gaia he could just tell her exactly what he was thinking.

Well, actually, not
everything
he was thinking. There was a certain category of thing he couldn’t tell her about. That’s why it was often easier talking with her on the phone, because when he couldn’t see her, which meant he had fewer of those thoughts he couldn’t tell her about.

“I almost got shot in the head a little while ago. That’s probably why,” Gaia suggested.

Ed made a sound somewhere between laughter and choking on a chicken bone. “What?”

That was another thing he appreciated about Gaia. She was always surprising. Though too often in an upsetting way.

Gaia let out her breath. “Oh, God. Where to start. You know that guy CJ?”

“The one who slashed Heather? Isn’t he in jail?” Ed asked with a sick feeling in his stomach.

“I guess he got out on bail or something,” Gaia said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, CJ’s friend Marco is dead, and he thinks I killed him.”

Ed groaned out loud. How had his life taken such a turn? Before he met Gaia, he wouldn’t have believed he would have a conversation like this.

“Marco is dead, huh? Do you know who did it?”

“Uh-uh. Do you?”

“Gaia!”

“What? Just asking.”

Ed clenched the portable phone between his ear and his neck and rolled his wheelchair from his room down the hallway of his family’s small apartment and into the galley kitchen. His late evening phone conversations with Gaia had become as precious a ritual as his eleven o’clock milk shake.

“Come on,” Ed prodded, hoisting himself up a few inches with his arms to reach the ice cream in the freezer. “Tell me what happened.”

“Okay. I was sitting in the park minding my own business—”

“Eating doughnuts,” Ed supplied.

“Yes, Ed, eating doughnuts, when that loser came up from behind and shoved a gun into my neck.”

“Jesus.”

“I didn’t take it seriously at first But it turns out this guy is half-crazed and deadly serious.”

“So what happened?” Ed asked, milk shake momentarily forgotten.

Gaia sighed. “He actually pulled the trigger. I thought I was dead—a wild experience, by the way. It turned out he must have loaded the gun in a hurry, because there was no bullet in at least one of the chambers. I took that opportunity to throw him.”

“Throw him?”

“You know, like flip him.” She was very casual about it.

“Oh, right Of course,” Ed said.

“You’re making fun of me again,” Gaia said patiently.

Ed shook his head in disbelief. “I’m not, Gaia. It’s just …” He laughed. “You blow my mind.”

“Well, speaking of, I think this guy CJ is dead-set on killing me. I’m scared he’s really going to do it,” Gaia said.

“You’re scared?” Ed asked. Gaia’s voice was grave, but he couldn’t help feeling it would take more than a pimply white supremacist with a borrowed gun to hurt Gaia. It would take something more on the order of a hydrogen bomb.

“Figure of speech. I’m scared
abstractly
,” Gaia explained.

He could hear her thumping her heel against her metal desk. He resumed his milk shake making.

PrrrrrrrrRRRRR.

“Ed! I hate when you run the blender when we’re talking,” Gaia complained loudly.

“Sorry,” he said. By the time she finished complaining, the milk shake was perfectly frothy and smooth. That was part of the ritual.

“I don’t want to die,” she said resolutely. “You know why?”

“Why?” he asked absently, sucking down a huge mouthful of vanilla shake.

“I haven’t had sex yet.”

Ed spluttered the mouthful all over his dark blue T-shirt. Cough cough cough. “What?”

“I don’t want to die before I’ve had sex.”

Cough cough.

“Right,” he said.

“So I need to have sex in the next couple of days, just in case,” Gaia added.

Cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough—

“Ed? Are you okay? Ed? Is somebody around to give you the Heimlich?”

“N-No,” Ed choked out. “I’m (cough cough) fine.”

In fact, he had about four ounces of milk shake puddled in his lung. Could you die of that? Could you drown by breathing in a milk shake? And shit, he’d like to have sex in the next couple of days, too. (Cough cough cough.)

“Ed, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yesss,” he answered in a weak and gravelly voice.

“So, anyway, I was thinking I better do it soon.”

“It?”

“Yeah, it. You know, IT.”

“Right. It.” Ed felt faint. Milk shake, as it turned out, was much less handy in your veins than, say, oxygen, for instance. “So, who … uh … are you going to do I T with? Or are you just going to walk the streets soliciting people randomly?”

“Ed!” Gaia sounded geniunely insulted.

“Kidding,” he said feebly.

“You don’t think anybody’s going to want to have sex with me, do you?” Gaia sounded hurt and petulant at the same time.

“Mmrnpha.” The noise Ed made didn’t resemble an English word. It sounded like it had come from the mouth of a nine-month-old baby.

“Huh?”

“I … um …” Ed couldn’t answer. The truth was, although she made every effort to hide it, Gaia was possibly the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life—and that was including the women in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, the SI swimsuit issue, and that show about witches on the WB. Any straight guy with a live pulse and a thimbleful of testosterone would want to have sex with Gaia. But what was Ed going to say? This was
exactly
the category of

conversation he couldn’t have honestly with Gaia.

“Anyway, I do know who I’m going to do it with,” Gaia said confidently.

“Who?” Ed felt his vision blurring.

“I can’t say.”

Ed definitely wasn’t taking in enough oxygen. Good thing he was in a chair, because otherwise he’d be lying on the linoleum.

“Why can’t you say?” he asked, trying to sound calm.

“Because it’s way too awkward,” Gaia said.

Awkward? Awkward. What did that imply? Could it mean … ? Ed’s thoughts were racing. Would it be too crude to point out at this juncture that, though his legs were paralyzed, his nether regions were in excellent working condition?

He felt a tiny tendril of hope winding its way into his heart. He beat it back. “Gaia, don’t you think you’ll need to get past
awkwardness
if you really plan to be doing IT with this person in the next forty-eight hours?”

“Yeah, I guess.” She slammed her heel against the desk. “But I still can’t tell you.”

“Oh, come on, Gaia. You have to.”

“I gotta go.”

“Gaia!”

“I really do. Cru-Ella needs to use the phone.”

“Gaia! Please? Come on! Tell.”

“See ya tomorrow.”

“Gaia, who? Who who who?” Ed demanded.

“You,” he heard her say, in a soft voice, before she hung up the phone.

But as he lay the phone on the counter he knew who’d said the word, and it wasn’t Gaia. It was that wretched, misguiding, leechlike parasite called hope.

THE TIME HAD COME. HEATHER GANNIS felt certain of that as she slammed her locker door shut and tucked the red envelope into her book bag. She waited for the deafening late afternoon crowd to dear before striking out toward the bathroom. She didn’t fed like picking up the usual half-dozen hangers-on desperate to know what she was doing after soccer practice.

Okay, time to make her move. She caught sight of Melanie Young in her peripheral vision, but pretended she hadn’t She acted as though she didn’t hear Tannie Deegan calling after her. Once in the bathroom she hid in the stall for a couple of minutes to be sure she wasn’t being followed.

Heather usually liked her high visibility and enormous number of friends, but some of these

girls were so freakishly
needy
some of the time. It was like if they missed one group trip to the Antique Boutique they would never recover. Their clinginess made it almost impossible for Heather to spend one private afternoon with her boyfriend.

Heather dumped her bag in the mostly dry sink and stared at her reflection. She wanted to look her best when she saw Sam. She bent her head so dose to the mirror that her nose left a tiny grease mark on the glass. This close she could see the light freckles splattered across the bridge of her nose and the amber streaks in her light eyes that kept them from being the bona fide true blue of her mother and sisters.

Her pores looked big and ugly from this vantage point Did Sam see them this way when he kissed her? She pulled away. She got busy rooting through her bag for powder to tame the oil on her forehead and nose and hopefully cover those gaping, yawning pores. She applied another coat of dear lip gloss. For somebody who was supposed to be so beautiful, she sure felt pretty plain sometimes.

She wished she hadn’t eaten those potato chips at lunch. She couldn’t help worrying that the difference between beauty and hideousness would come down to one bag of salt-and-vinegar chips.

As she swung her bag over her shoulder and smacked open the swinging door, she caught sight of the dingy olive-colored pants and faded black hooded

sweatshirt of Gaia Moore. Heather’s heart picked up pace and she felt blood pulsing in her temples.

God, she hated that girl. She hated the way she walked, the way she dressed, the way she talked. She hated that pale blond hair, a color you rarely saw on a person over the age of three. Heather wished the color were fake, but she knew it wasn’t.

Heather hated Gaia for dumping scorching-hot coffee-all over her shirt a couple of weeks ago and not bothering to apologize. Heather hated Gaia for being friends with Ed Fargo, her ex-boyfriend, and turning him against Heather at that awful party. Heather
really
hated Gaia for failing to warn Heather that there was a guy with a knife in the park, when Heather was obviously headed there.

All of those things were unforgivable. But none of them kept Heather up at night. The thing that kept her up at night was one small, nothing comment made by her boyfriend, Sam Moon.

It happened the day Heather got out of the hospital.-Sam was there visiting, as he was throughout those five days. He had disappeared for a few minutes and when he got back to her room, Heather asked him where he’d been. He said, “I ran into Gaia in the hallway.” That was all. Afterward, when Heather quizzed him, Sam instantly claimed to dislike Gaia. Like everybody else, he said it was partly Gaia’s fault that Heather got slashed in the first place.

But there was something about Sam’s face when he said Gaia’s name that stuck in Heather’s mind and would not go away.

Heather’s mind flashed again on the card floating in her bag. She sorted through the bag and pulled it out. She needed to check again that the words seemed right. That the handwriting didn’t look too girly and stupid. That the phrasing didn’t seem too … desperate.

She’d find Sam in the park playing chess with that crazy old man, as he often did on Wednesday afternoons. And if not, she’d go on to his dorm and wait for him there. She’d hand him the card, watch his face while he read it, and kiss him so he’d know she meant it.

She was in love with Sam. This Saturday marked their six-month anniversary. He was the best-looking, most intelligent guy she knew. She loved the fact that he was in college.

She had made this decision with her heart Sam was sexy. Sam was even romantic sometimes. She wanted him to be the one.

So why, then, as she wrote the card, was she thinking not of Sam, but of Gaia?

Dear Sam,

These last six months have been the best of my whole life. Sorry to be corny, but it’s true. So I wanted to
celebrate the occasion with a VERY special night. I’ll meet you at your room at 8 on Saturday night and we’ll finally do something we’ve been talking about doing for a long time. I know I said I wanted to wait, but I changed my mind.

You are the one and NOW is the time.

Love and kisses (all over),

Heather

… A GIRL BORN WITHOUT THE FEAR GENE

FEARLESSTM

A SERIES BY
FRANCINE PASCAL

FROM POCKET PULSE PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS

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