Missing (7 page)

That's my family,
she told herself.
These people are just a bunch of bad actors in the Lifetime TV version of my life. “People in Crisis: The Heather Gannis Story.”

Heather's dad threw his food down on the dining-room table and grabbed Phoebe's skeletal hand.

“Maybe we could be happy about the fact that our beautiful daughter is recovering from her illness?” he growled. “Wouldn't you say that's a happy thing? That she's eating again?”

Heather looked at her sister. Recovering? That was a nice way of putting it. Phoebe's skin was still almost
translucent, the blue veins bulging throughout her body. She was pinching a rubbery piece of steamed broccoli between the thumb and index finger of her available hand,
holding it as if it were some disgusting worm she'd just dissected in biology class.

“She's going back to Chelsea tonight,” her father hissed, “so let's enjoy these few hours, all right?”

Phoebe's recovery center was this oddly tasteful upscale town house in Chelsea, filled with Oriental rugs and pricey knickknacks. Heather didn't even want to imagine what her parents were paying to keep her there. Then again, up until the last few weeks, Heather had never even thought for a moment about what her parents were paying for anything. It had never been much of an issue before. At all.

“Well, would you like her to stay in the recovery center?” her mother asked. Her voice was dripping with sarcasm. “If you won't look for a job, I don't see why—”

“I'm looking for a job!” he shouted. “And if I need to find the money, then goddamn it, I'll find the—”

“Stop it!” Phoebe interrupted, yanking her frail hand from her father's grasp and slamming it on the table. “I know I'm skinny, but I'm not invisible. I'm sitting right here, so stop talking about me like I'm not. I'm sorry that I'm so expensive, I really am. I'm sorry. . . .” Her voice broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“May I be excused?” Heather asked. She couldn't take this melodrama for another second. It was too painful—not to mention too pathetic.
Family dinner was most definitely a bust.
She was half tempted to mention what Ed had told her the other night at dinner, that he would always take care of her and her family ...but no. She didn't even know if that was true or not. Yes, she trusted Ed. Of course she did. But sincerity didn't pay the bills. Besides, Ed's parents might not be thrilled with the idea of Ed's helping the Gannis family. Particularly given her and Ed's tempestuous past . . .

Her father glared at her but finally nodded.

Heather placed her hand gently on her sister's shoulder and mouthed the words: “I'll come visit you tomorrow.”

Her sister tried to smile through her tears. Then Heather bolted for her bedroom
. It felt a bit like having to reach the toilet before throwing up.
Money,
she thought as she slammed her door and collapsed on her canopy brass bed in tears.
It all comes down to money.

It was almost funny. She had been trying all week to convince herself that money couldn't buy happiness, but even if that was true (which she doubted), the lack of money sure seemed to ensure unhappiness.

She glanced over at her answering machine, hoping. Praying.

Nothing. Ed still hadn't called. He hadn't called once since he'd gone away.

Where are you, Ed?

If she could just go over to Ed's place tonight. Or why just go to his house? Maybe she could start a new life with Ed in Aruba or Antigua or something. Just the two of them on the beach. Maybe some fine dining ...maybe a fine hotel—

The phone rang.

Heather nearly burst out laughing. It was like a miracle from God. Just when she needed him the most . . . wow. She seemed to be living one cliché after another. But this one she welcomed with all her heart. She leaped from her bed and snagged the cordless phone off the recharger.

“Ed, you
jerk,
” she cried with a gleeful sniffle. “Where have you been?”

“Oh my God ...chill.”

Heather's heart sank—instantly. She almost felt like she'd been punched.

It wasn't Ed. It was Megan Stein. The girl laughed, her voice breaking up on a cell phone. “What's your damage, Heather?”

Heather hated it when Megan quoted from
Heathers.
Megan never seemed to understand that the entire point of that particular Winona vehicle was to expose the beautiful people for the petty, insecure, conformist
losers that they were.
But Megan still wanted to be a “Heather.” She thrived on privilege and superiority—and, of course, dissing the people who had neither.

“Hey, Meegs,” Heather uttered with as much normalcy as she could muster. “I was expecting someone else—”

“Okay.” Megan's voice cut her off, echoing through the distant land of cell phone. “I am currently in a cab with Tina and Shauna, and we have a message for you.”

Heather heard Megan mumble something to the other girls. And then, with the phone clearly pulled away from her mouth: “Ready? One, two, three . . .
loserrrrr!
” the three girls shouted in unison, followed by waves of self-congratulatory laughter. Heather cringed as she pulled the phone away from her ear.

“Loser, where
are
you?” Megan went on.

“I'm home,” Heather answered, frowning. “You called
me,
remember?”

“Um . . . duh,” Megan replied. She giggled again. “Look, we want you to come meet us at Serendipity for hot chocolates.”

“I can't tonight,” Heather answered automatically. “I . . . I'm having dinner with my parents.” She swallowed. She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep blowing off her friends due to lack of funds. But the simple fact was, she couldn't afford any of the usual activities—not even a hot chocolate. Nothing that her friends wanted to do seemed to qualify as “inexpensive.”

There was a brief silence.

“What's your problem, Heather?” Megan finally asked, with genuine annoyance. “Are you avoiding us or what?”

Heather opened her mouth, then closed it. She was getting so sick of coming up with stupid little stories to avoid her friends. But there was nothing she could do.
She couldn't tell them she was poor .
They wouldn't believe her, for starters.

“I can't tonight,” she repeated.

“Fine. Whatever.”

Click.

“Hello?” Heather called into her phone. “Meegs?”

Nothing. There was a dead silence on the other end.

Well,
she thought, slamming her phone back down on the recharger. Her throat tightened. Her eyes began to sting.
Could my life possibly get any worse? My family is screwed. My friends hate me. Ed is . . .

Maybe he'd e-mailed?

Heather hopped into her desk chair and jabbed the power button on her computer, holding her breath as it whirred to life.
Come on, come on . . .
grabbing her mouse, she clicked into her e-mail. She made a decision, fighting back tears: If there was no mail from Ed, she would have to start planning her life as a runaway right now....

But there it was: the little e-mail icon with [email protected] in the sender column.

Joy washed over her—a thirty-foot-high, hurricane-style wave of joy.

From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Re:
Return of the Mack
Time:
7:42
P.M.

Ed,

You have no
idea
how happy I am that you're back. You have no idea how much I've missed you.

I can't wait to see you. I mean, I
really
can't wait to see you. And I can't wait to hear your news!

What I'm trying to say here is
yes
, I would be most honored to accompany you to any number of trendy overpriced restaurants (although I do have a particular one in mind).

I'll tell you when and where.

And just in case you don't remember what I look like, I'll be the stunning brunette in black velvet.

I can't wait. Did I say that already?

Love,   
Heather

P.S. I know how silly this looks, and I know how stupid I sound. Please forgive me. I'm just really, really psyched to see you.

Okay.

So, about my being fortune's hamster . . .

I may have been a little extreme.

That is to say: I may not have considered, as we're trained to do in many disciplines ranging from physics to the martial arts, the potential for unforeseen circumstances.

That is to say: It seems that by some twist of bizarro unexplainable planetary misalignment or something, there seems to be this little . . . window—this little heretofore never-seen escape hatch whereby I seem to have landed in a sort of twilight zone where there's, like, this alternate universe, containing in it some sort of matter-antimatter reversal, causing a certain unexplainable, unidentifiable phenomenon that can only be defined as—

I'll stop.

I can't explain it away. I just have to say it. I'm just going to say it. But I don't want
to say it. If I say it, it dies, and I don't want it to die.

These last three days with my father, I've been . . . happy.

Yes, I've been confused. And enraged. And sad. And hurt. And thinking a lot about my mother. And thinking a lot about Uncle Oliver, of course. Or Loki. Or whoever. But what matters most is that I've looked into my father's eyes. I've seen the truth. And I know we have to be very careful right now. We've got to stay inconspicuous until my dad gets a confirmation that the FBI ambush was successful and Oliver is securely behind bars. Apparently prison isn't much of a problem for Oliver. That's part of the reason we went straight from Germany to Paris, via the train.

Paris is even more beautiful than I imagined.

Not that we've been getting out much. Mostly we've just been trying to catch up on five years of missing out and trying to forget five years of hell.

She felt a burst of adrenaline— that old familiar sensation she hadn't felt since she'd left New York . . . the one that came instead of fear.

 

GAIA HAD LEARNED A GREAT MANY
life-altering facts in the last seventy-two hours. She'd quickly realized that it was best just to prioritize—to shuffle the nonessential information to the bottom of the pile. So at the moment she was only concentrating on three points:

1. She still had a father who loved her (and wanted her around).

2. She never wanted to leave his side again.

3. She wanted to live in Paris for the rest of her life. Actually, she made that last decision on the fourth day—when her father decided to get out a little. He took her on a grand tour that wound up at the Musée d'Orsay, a museum just across the road from the Seine. She couldn't get over this city. In a weird way, Paris was like New York.
Only a lot more beautiful.
All the buildings looked like palaces. But both cities seemed slightly above the rest of the world—as if everyone and everything in them was more real, more genuine.

She was especially reminded of New York in the Latin Quarter. Quai St. Michel felt so much like some of the more secluded parts of Bleecker Street or West
Fourth—those narrow little streets where you were just as likely to find a falafel joint next to a quaint French bistro. But in the case of the Latin Quarter, there were no cars to get in the way. The streets of Quai St. Michel existed only for the people, making it so much more human, so much more intimate.

And there was also something special about Paris that New York lacked. Gaia could only describe it as a sort of “life force.” New York was filled with beauty and variety and culture, but somehow it always felt like it was deteriorating, always fighting to resist this inevitable decay.
It had to be constantly reinventing itself, or it would die.
The buildings of the rich became the hollow crack dens of the poor. The grand subways of the past became the graffiti-covered relics of the present. New York was always starting from scratch with something just a little more ugly and gritty.

But in Paris, it almost seemed like the river Seine was some sort of fountain of youth. Even though the city was much older than New York, everything had a strange, ageless quality. And it felt truly
alive.
The cobbled roads and cafés were breathing. Nowhere was this feeling more powerful, though, than at the Arc de Triomphe—the real Arc de Triomphe. The miniature version in Washington Square Park had marked the one place where she felt at home . . . under its shadow, at the chess tables, with her buddy Zolov and Mr. Haq
and the finest freaks New York had to offer. It had become the center of her universe. But the real Arc in Paris made the miniature version in the park seem like a papier-mâché toy.

Slowly but surely, Gaia was beginning to feel like Paris itself.
She was beginning to feel more alive, more significant.
She wasn't even tired by the time they reached the Musée d'Orsay— even though darkness had fallen, and they'd been walking all day. The building had once been a huge railway station, which made it an even more stunning museum—huge and vaulted.

Tom had brought Gaia here with a specific purpose in mind. Katia had always loved the impressionists, and this particular museum housed more of their works than any other in Paris. Tom wanted Gaia to experience them in person.