Sex (15 page)

Without a word or even another glance in anyone's direction, Gaia shot out of her chair, launched herself through the rusty swinging doors of the cafeteria, and stumbled her way to the pay phone at the end of the
hall. As she reached for the dial pad, she was able to recall Gen's pager number instantly. At least whatever Oliver had put in that crazy injection hadn't messed with her photographic memory.

Gaia was in dire need of an escape. An escape from this world of BS artists,
herself
now very much included. An escape from the whole two-faced world of girls like Tatiana and Heather. And Natasha, too. Makeup and pretty faces to cover their scheming little eyes. She had to see Gen. The one girl she knew who wasn't full of crap—the one girl who, near as she could tell, didn't have a hidden agenda.

Memo

From:
G

To:
L

Subject is approaching abandoned boathouse near the pond in Central Park. Awaiting instructions.

Memo

From:
L

To:
G

Stick to the prime directives. Get as close as possible. Gather as much info as possible. Report all pertinent details.

“WAIT, I'M CONFUSED,” GEN COMPLAINED. “Joe Crutches is your boyfriend, or he isn't? Which one is it?”

In Cold Blood

Gen and Gaia were lying on either side of a dusty wooden rowboat in the old abandoned boathouse next to the Central Park pond. It was a wide, spacious shack There were a couple more dead wooden boats stacked on the ground, and there was one large old sailboat hanging by thick braided ropes from the ceiling. Piles of dusty, splintered oars littered the corner, and a few cases of obsolete life jackets sat under the window. Everything was covered either in rust or in thick green paint, but you couldn't beat it for privacy. Of course, Gen had known how to shove open one of the old windows so they could climb in and step down off the piles of life jackets.

Gaia had been looking forward to some confessional conversation, but she'd neglected to consider just how complicated any honest explanation of her life would be. She kept trying to give Gen the short version, but it wasn't translating very well.

“Well, he isn't my boyfriend, but even if he isn't my boyfriend…”

“Princess Prissy Bitch is still a bitch,” Gen said, finishing Gaia's sentence.

“Exactly.”
Gaia laughed. “I mean, even if Ed and I—and his name is
Ed,
by the way. Not Joe Crutches. I'm
all for ‘Princess Prissy Bitch,' but that ‘Joe Crutches' thing has got to go.”

“That's cool,” Gen agreed.

“Anyway,” Gaia went on, staring up at the cobwebs on the hanging sailboat, “I swear, even if Ed
were
my boyfriend, I think she'd be trying to move in on him. I mean, she's just shady. I don't trust her. I wouldn't trust her any further than I could throw… Well, actually I could throw her pretty far.”

“I know, right?” Gen howled with laughter. “That chick's like a little blond javelin or something. That should be some kind of Olympic event. The Princess Prissy Bitch toss. I think I could capture the silver on that one.” They gave in to a contagious laughing fit until the laughs finally began to die down.

Gaia was extremely glad she'd called Gen. It had definitely been the right choice. She hadn't felt this comfortable bitching with someone since Mary, and bitching was, of course, a natural and necessary part of human existence. Ed had always tried to be a decent bitching partner (a memory Gaia quickly had to block from her head), but there was still a kind of communication that could really only take place between two girls. Gaia hadn't even realized how much she'd missed it until she'd met Gen.

Unfortunately, the more Gaia's thoughts swayed toward memories of Mary, the more she began to focus again on the problems Mary and Gen shared. The
problems that Gaia had committed herself to solving.

“So here's what I was thinking…,” Gaia announced.

“Uh-oh,” Gen complained. “Here we go.”

“No, come on, just hear me out. My friend Mary once told me about this… you know… some program that she went to somewhere upstate. She said it was like living in a goddamn country club. Three meals a day, sauna, gym. It was like—”

“Gaia,”
Gen interrupted. “Come on, now. I already asked you to be my bodyguard. You don't need to be my drug counselor, too.”

“Well, as your bodyguard,” Gaia said, “your safety and well-being are my prime directives. And I happen to believe that if you were off the stuff, then you wouldn't have to deal with scumbags like Casper, that's all.”

“We really don't have to worry about Casper,” Gen reiterated. “The guy's a punk.”

Gaia could literally hear Mary's voice in her head, saying the exact same thing about Skizz. “Don't worry about Skizz. The guy's a punk. I can handle Skizz.” That was the one drawback to being a ballsy girl with attitude like Mary or Gen. They were so confident, they never even knew when they were in over their heads. It was a problem Gaia knew a little something about.

She sat up in the dusty boat and looked down at Gen. “Look, you're obviously very smart,” she said with a sudden shift to extreme seriousness, “but on this
Casper issue… you don't know what you're talking about Trust me, I've seen this go down before.”

“Okay, chill.” Gen smiled, basically blowing her off again.

“No, I'm serious!” Gaia snapped. “I'm
telling
you. This Casper guy is going to do something
bad,
Gen. I can feel it.”

“Boo!” a voice hollered from the window.

Gaia shut her eyes in frustration, knowing instantly who it was before he'd even pushed his greasy, platinum-streaked head through the window. He'd probably been outside listening to Gaia's warning, just waiting to make the most dramatic entrance he could. Though “boo” didn't exactly qualify as dramatic in Gaia's book. And while she might be having some confusing issues with fear and paranoia, she was, thankfully, still quite impervious to “boo” as an effective means of terror. It could, however, elicit quick and overwhelming amounts of hatred.

One by one, Casper and his two thick, leather-clad thugs climbed through the boathouse window and landed their feet on the floor with a thud. This secluded spot was obviously a hideaway for both Gen
and
Casper. As Gaia's eyes drifted down to the rowboat she was sitting in, she wondered what Gen and Casper might have done in there. She leaped out of it with disgust, wiping the dust off her clothes. Gen just let out a frustrated sigh. She and Gaia both knew there was no other way out but that window.

“Don't be scared.” Casper smiled as he approached them. “It's just the friendly ghost.”

“He loves the whole friendly ghost thing.” Gen groaned, rolling her eyes as she climbed out of the boat. “He thinks it's real clever.”

“For him, it probably is,” Gaia replied, crossing her arms. She fixed her eyes on Casper. “Don't worry,” she said, staring him down, “in spite of your hair, we're still not afraid.”

Casper let out a loud fake laugh, attempting to indicate that he could take a joke. He stepped much closer to Gaia, looked her up and down, and then breathed out a faint insulting laugh. “You know they make this shit that can make you look like a
girl
now? It's called
makeup
—look into it.”

He and his friends shared a huge laugh, slapping hands before he stepped back in her face. “We've been looking for you,” he said, his words nearly drowning in his Brooklyn accent. Gaia noticed for the first time that his rather large nose swerved over to the right side. “'Cause that shit you pulled last night… I mean, those self-defense classes definitely paid off, and you should be real proud—‘grrl power' and all that shit”—he laughed, making air quotes with his fingers—“but you know, you really hurt my friend.” He pointed back to the thug on his right, who'd apparently recovered from his run-in with his friend's knife.

“Gee, I'm sorry,” Gaia said. “I was so busy trying not
to get stabbed, I wasn't thinking enough about your friend”

“Yeah, well, we don't have to worry about anyone getting cut again.” Casper smiled, stepping far too close to Gaia.
“Psst,”
he whispered to her, motioning down toward his waist. Gaia looked down as he pulled a .38-caliber gun out of his pants and jabbed it into her stomach. “There… how's that feel?” he asked with a disgusting, lascivious moan. And then, as though performing a well-choreographed dance routine, his friends both pulled out their .38s in perfect unison.

Amazingly, Gaia's fearlike symptoms hadn't kicked in yet. She hoped perhaps that the remnants of her uncle's injection had finally left her system, but she did have an alternate theory. It was also quite possible that any fearful feelings she might have had were being over-powered completely by the swirling, rocking, thunderous tropical storm of rage that had just kicked up inside her chest as she looked in Casper's eyes.

Because at this point, Casper's face had all but disappeared, along with his voice. All that Gaia could see now was Skizz. All she could
hear
now was Skizz. Skizz's voice, Skizz's face, Skizz's gun pressed to the very spot where he'd shot Mary Moss and left her for dead.

“Cas, leave her alone,” Gen insisted.

He whipped up the gun and placed it right between Gen's eyes.
“You,
I will deal with in a second.
Because
you're
the one that sicced this bitch on me in the first place. But first things first.”

He jabbed the gun back into Gaia's stomach, leaning his disgusting Guido face even closer to hers. “So what do you think, bitch?” he whispered. “That is your name, right? Bitch? What do you think you could do to convince me not to pull this trigger right now?”

With the gun digging straight into her gut, there was still no room to maneuver. And he was going to shoot. A misogynist asshole like him who'd swung his knife at her with no hesitation? Who'd just gotten beaten up by a
girl
and was looking for payback? Yeah. He was going to shoot. No question about it.
Think, Gaia. You've got to remove the guns from the scenario, and you've got to do it fast.

“Casper, come on,” Gen said, her voice losing its usual confidence. “Don't do this, okay?”

“I told you,” he shouted, “we talk after this is done.”

Don't get involved, Gen, let me deal with this. I just need time to think.

“Whatever,” Gen argued nervously. “She's scared, all right? You scared her. Congratulations, tough guy.”

Casper shoved Gaia out of the way, dug his fingers into Gen's tattered sweater, and pulled her up to his face, cramming the gun into her stomach with a repulsive sneer.

No. Back to me. Get away from Gen and come back to me.

One of his thugs stepped next to Gaia, poking his gun to her right temple to hold her still.

“You want to start with the attitude again?” Casper shouted in Gen's ear. “You want to start that screaming shit you pulled last night when we were supposed to be having a good time?”

“A good time?” Gen squawked. “Is
that
what you call it when you put your greasy hands all over me? A ‘good time?'”

“Oh, now you don't like the way I do it? Is that what you want this bitch to believe?”

“Gen, just leave it alone—” Gaia warned. But as per usual, Gen wasn't listening.

“Well, I wouldn't call it
a good time,
that's for sure.” She laughed in his face.

“Oh, is that right? What would you call it?”

“I'd call it ‘scoring drugs for free,' that's what I'd call it.”

Gaia caught a glimpse of Casper's vicious glance before he brought his left arm back and slapped Gen so hard across the face that her entire body collapsed to the floor.

No.
The moment his palm collided with her cheek, Gaia felt her entire body ignite. It was as though she could feel the slap herself. She could feel Casper's pathetic little hand lashing out across her cheek, stinging her eye, sending her down to the floor in a heap.

Gaia bit down on her tongue, replaying the slap again
and again in her head as her blood started burning. Each time she replayed it, there was less and less Gen and Casper, and more and more Mary and Skizz, until they were all she could see. Just Skizz standing there again with a satisfied grin, while Mary lay dead in a heap on the floor.

Gen jumped up and made a break for the window. “Gaia, run!” she screamed, launching her body through the window. “He won't shoot, just run!”

One of Casper's thugs made a move toward Gen, but Casper called him off. “Let her go,” he ordered. “Where the hell is she gonna go? She lives in this freakin' park, junkie
bitch.”
Gen made it through the window and ran as Casper turned back to Gaia. “We've still got what we came for.” He smiled at Gaia, inching closer and closer, waving his gun, while his pathetic henchmen stood on either side of her, holding a gun to either side of her face.

They obviously had no idea how stupidly they'd arranged themselves. One of the first rules of gunplay: Never sandwich a target. Gaia had already forgotten about them. It was Casper she was focusing on. Or more specifically, Casper's body and Skizz's face.

She could taste her own blood leaking from her bitten tongue, and she couldn't help noticing how appropriate that was. Because once she'd witnessed that slap, the majority of her civility had melted away. It was as if her pupils had dilated and her claws had extended. She was out for blood now. She could
literally taste it. Casper probably thought
he
was stalking her as he took each menacing step toward her, waving his little gun. But in actuality… Gaia was now stalking
him.
Just waiting for the right moment…