Rebel (9 page)

"Hello?" Mary's mom answered after two rings.

"Hi, Mrs. Moss," Gaia said. She realized she felt a little funny about calling--and not only because she had some explaining to do to Mary. No, it was also because the last time she'd spoken with Mary's mother had been Thanksgiving night: the very same night Gaia had discovered Mary hunched over a pile of cocaine in her room and bolted from the scene. She wondered for a moment if Mrs. Moss thought that
she

did cocaine, too. "It's Gaia Moore. Is Mary around?"

"Oh, hi, dear!" Mrs. Moss exclaimed. "She's in the middle of dinner. I'll have her call you as soon as she's finished."

"Uh ... thanks," Gaia murmured. She breathed a little sigh of relief. "I'll be home all night."

"You know, Gaia, I never had the opportunity to thank you," Mrs. Moss said. "If it weren't for you, Mary never would have gotten on the track she is now. We owe you."

Gaia's face grew hot. She'd never been good at accepting compliments--mostly because she rarely got them, except from old drunks who liked her blond hair. "No ... it was, it's uh, nothing," she mumbled clumsily.

"If there's anything we can do for you, just let us know," Mrs. Moss said.

"That's really nice of you. But I'm fine. Thanks. Bye." Before Mrs. Moss could get another word in, Gaia quickly hung up the phone. Jesus. She had nothing to do with Mary's sobriety.
Mary
did. She hated the idea of somebody's being indebted to her--almost as much as she hated the idea of being indebted to somebody else. Debts made it very hard to pick up and leave at a moment's notice. That was part of the reason she'd been so reluctant to be friends with Mary in the first place. Ed too, for that matter.

She sighed. Clearly Mary hadn't called; she was

eating. That left Ed. But after two rings the answering machine picked up at his apartment. "Hello, you've reached the Fargo residence...."

She dropped the phone down on the hook. So Ed wasn't home, either.

Who the hell had called her, anyway? Was Ella telling the truth? Was the call really for somebody else?

Gaia shook her head. No. The idea of Ella's being honest was far too disturbing.

ELLA WAS JUST BEGINNING TO FEEL
relaxed when she felt the silent buzz of the cellular in the front pocket of her sweater. Her face twisted in a scowl.
Loki always picked the worst times to call.
She could never enjoy a single moment's peace.

Oh, well. She stood and grabbed her leather coat from the hall closet. For an instant her gaze fell on a small red package--tucked back amidst a bunch of junk that Gaia would never think to search. Sam's gift. Ella allowed herself a little smile.
Poor, poor Gaia.
The girl would never know just how much

the boy cared for her. It was Ella's secret. And she had to be careful. If Loki found out that Ella was interfering so dramatically in Gaia's personal affairs, she would probably wind up at the bottom of the East River.

But a woman needed her diversions.

Ella stepped quickly out into the brisk December night and fished the cellular phone out of her pocket. She walked west on Perry Street toward the Hudson. Christ, it was freezing. Her nose burned in the biting wind. She probably could have stayed at home, but Loki insisted that she never communicate with him in the Niven household. He was obsessive about security.
Too obsessive.
But she couldn't afford to take chances. He very well may have been watching her right at this moment.

"Yes?" she answered.

"The Moss problem may solve itself," Loki stated.

Ella paused, smiling confusedly. She glanced up and down the block just to make sure she was alone. "How's that?"

"She owes money to a drug dealer. He's nothing more than a street thug, but he's dangerous. He's given her an ultimatum. Twenty-four hours."

Ella's smile widened. She began walking again, rounding the corner onto West Fourth Street to escape the wind. "What should we do?"

"Nothing. See how it plays. I'll contact you later.

Keep an eye on Gaia, though. Make sure she doesn't get involved."

"Right." Ella clicked the phone shut and shoved it back into her pocket.
Poor, poor Gaia indeed.
So there was a good chance she would lose her boyfriend
and
her best friend. All within the space of a few days. It was turning out to be a merry Christmas after all.

Top Ten Reasons I Should Avoid Gaia Moore Like the Plague and

Never Speak to Her Again

He'd learned a long time ago that it was wise to be paranoid when hanging out with Gaia.

ED WASN'T SURE EXACTLY WHAT DROVE
him to accept Gaia's invitation and meet her and Mary in Washington Square Park that night. He sure as hell wasn't psyched to play more truth or dare. No, he figured there were probably two reasons--a desperate need to be in Gaia's presence and utter boredom.

Pretty much the usual.

Plus he had been spending
way
too much time with his family the past few days. Christmas was already forty-eight hours behind him, and his parents were still planning holiday events--as if dragging him to New Jersey yesterday to visit his grandparents wasn't torture enough. For some reason, his mom and dad really seemed to believe that there were actually twelve days of Christmas--and each of those days required some kind of painfully awkward family gathering.

At least he'd escaped for a while. And it was a little warmer, which probably explained why the park was so crowded at this late hour. Well, that and the fact that all the I'm-too-hip-for-words NYU students were coming back early from Christmas break so they could be in the city for New Year's Eve. Ed snickered to himself as he entered from the southeast.
He almost felt sorry for these people
--the kids on the benches in their leather jackets and baggy jeans,

huddled around each other in tight circles for warmth. All of them wanted to pretend that they were native New Yorkers. But no amount of body piercing could alter the fact that most of them grew up in lame states like Iowa or Kansas or Montana.

He rolled slowly along the brightly lit pathway, scanning for signs of Gaia. There was a lot of action at the chess tables, but he couldn't see--

"Yo! Ed! Over here!"

There
she was--standing by the fountain with Mary, waving furiously. God, the more those two hung out together, the more they started to dress like twins. Gaia had bought the same black wool hat as Mary-- and Mary had bought Gaia's overcoat. Their outfits were practically identical. It was kind of scary.

But what was even scarier was that Gaia was smiling.

This had been happening a lot lately. It was a fairly strange development, as far as Ed was concerned. Before she'd met Mary, her facial expressions were pretty much limited to various forms of anger. Ed had gotten used to it. He'd come to
expect
it. The fearsome, unsmiling Gaia was the one he had fallen for. But Mary seemed to have some kind of
bizarre normalizing effect on her,
in a way that he never had. The new Gaia didn't seem to take life as seriously. The new Gaia acted like any other run-of-the-mill seventeen-year-old....

He shook his head. Maybe Gaia was just smiling

because she was psyched to see him. Or she was full of Christmas cheer. He should be happy that
she
was happy. So why wasn't he?

"What's up, guys?" he called as he rolled toward them. "You thinking of auditioning for a Doublemint commercial?"

Gaia smirked. "Very funny."

"Hey, my grandma bought me this coat for Christmas," Mary said. "It was out of my hands. I swear."

Ed shook his head, slowing to a stop in front of them. "Yeah, sure," he said with a lopsided grin. "Grandmothers never buy anything that cool. Trust me. I know. Mine gave me a pair of polyester 'slacks.' "He made little quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "Her word, not mine."

Mary laughed. "So how was Christmas, anyway, Fargo?"

"Boring," he grumbled. "Why do you think I came out here to hang with you guys?"

"Because you want to be seen in public with two amazingly hot chicks," Mary joked.

Ed flashed a fake smile.
Actually, yes,
he thought.
You're right.
The really sad thing was that Mary had no idea how beautiful she was. And neither did Gaia. They suffered from the opposite problem that Heather did.
She
thought she was God's gift to men. How could certain people be so insightful about others and

yet so utterly stupid about themselves?

"So do you feel like getting back in the action?" Gaia asked, rubbing her gloved palms together. "You've got a lot of turns to make up. We've been on a pretty wild ride so far."

"I'm sure you have," he mumbled.

"Let's get out of the park, though," Mary said quickly. "Let's go someplace we hardly ever go. Like Chinatown or something."

Ed stared at her, his brow furrowing. Mary seemed a little jumpy again. Her eyes kept flitting from one group of people to the next. And she couldn't stand still. She kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

"We just got here," Gaia pointed out.

"Yeah, but ... I--I don't know," she stammered distractedly. "It's just kind of dull."

"What's the matter?" Ed asked.

Mary shook her head--a little too emphatically. "Nothing," she said.

Ed exchanged a quick glance with Gaia. She shrugged.

"We can split," Gaia said. "Whatever. I've never been to Chinatown before."

Before Gaia had even finished, Mary was already hurrying toward the north exit, straight under the arch. Gaia jogged after her.

Ed frowned. Okay. Mary was freaking out about

something
. He was not imagining this. He followed them slowly, peering to his left into a darkened clump of trees. Maybe she had seen an ex-boyfriend, or--

Him.

Ed's chair jerked to a stop. There was a guy. A fat guy with a beard--standing under a tree, hidden in the shadows not thirty feet away. He was staring directly at Gaia and Mary. Ed shivered. The night didn't seem as pleasant as it had before. He was freezing, in fact. Cold air nipped at his nose and ears. That guy looked familiar. Ed had definitely seen him around the park before. In fact ... yeah,
he
was the guy who'd been staring at Mary the other day. So he must have been the reason she was freaking out. Ed's gaze flashed back to the two girls. They vanished briefly behind the right side of the Arc de Triomphe. He turned back....

The guy was gone.

For a few moments Ed craned his neck, trying to spot him--but all he saw were tree branches, swaying in the winter wind under the ghostly lights of the park. Had the guy figured out that Ed had noticed him? More important, was he following Mary? Or Gaia? That was a distinct possibility. In fact, it was a
probability.
He'd learned a long time ago that it was wise to be paranoid when hanging out with Gaia. Any real danger always ended up exceeding his wildest fears, anyway.

"Hey, Ed!" Gaia called. "Are you coming or what?"

His head whipped around. Gaia and Mary were already halfway down the block, heading east. His eyes darted around the street on the other side of the park fence. The guy was nowhere to be found. As quickly as he could, Ed sped out of the park, nearly tipping as he whipped through the arch and around the corner onto the sidewalk.

"Jesus." Gaia looked at Mary, frowning. "Are you all right?"

"Did you see something, Mary?" he interrupted, skidding to a halt beside them. His icy gasps filled the air.

Mary and Gaia exchanged a quick glance.

"What do you mean?" Mary asked. Her forehead wrinkled.

"A guy," Ed whispered. He glanced back over his shoulder. But the street was deserted. "A guy with a beard. A long beard."

Mary's face seemed to go blank. She blinked several times.

"What?" Gaia demanded.

Ed held his breath, waiting.

"Uh ... nothing," Mary said. Her voice was subdued. She shook her head and cast a brief glance back at the park. "No. I didn't see a guy with a long beard."

"Do you
know
a guy with a long beard?" Ed asked.

Mary didn't say anything. All at once Gaia started laughing.

Ed grimaced. "You mind telling me what's so funny?"

"Nothing," she muttered, shaking her head. She pulled her hat down tightly over her tangled mop of blond hair. "I just didn't know that you had such strong feelings against guys with beards."

"Uh ... we should go," Mary said. She turned back down the block and started walking east again. "It's too cold to be standing still."

Ed glared at Gaia. Obviously Mary knew this guy--whoever he was. Obviously she was scared of him. So why the hell was Gaia still smiling? Why was she turning this into a joke?

"What?"
Gaia asked defensively.

"Excuse me for being uptight, but I just get a little anxious when I know somebody's stalking us," he grumbled.

Gaia's shoulders slumped. "Give me a break, Ed. Nobody's stalking--"

"Come
on,
you guys," Mary called impatiently.

Gaia opened her mouth to say something else, then closed it and turned to follow Mary.

Ed's lips turned downward. He shook his head. Hanging out with Mary all the time
was
having an effect on Gaia. She never would have acted this careless in the past. The old Gaia would have told everyone to go home. Then she would have sought out the bearded guy and
kicked the crap out of him.

After that, they could have all enjoyed the rest of their winter break in peace.

But not the new Gaia. No. She opted for being a
major pain in the ass.
Before she met Mary, she used to listen to Ed. Now she didn't. Like when he'd told her about Charlie Salita. Had she paid any attention? No.

Now she was doing the same thing all over again. By not listening to Ed, she was walking right into another stupid situation....

But apparently the new Gaia didn't learn from past mistakes.

ALL OF CHINATOWN SMELLED LIKE ONE
giant fried dumpling. Gaia's mouth couldn't stop watering. Every storefront window on the narrow street was packed with a brightly lit display of food: either a rack of hanging meats or ducklings or doughy pastries. Most of it looked fairly gross, of course, but the smell was
incredible. She sucked in deep, huge breaths of the cold night air. She couldn't believe she'd never discovered this neighborhood. Chinatown was tailor-made for somebody like her--somebody who could pretty much live on desserts and fried foods until her heart gave out.

"I didn't know it was going to be so crowded," Mary said, raising her voice as she led Gaia and Ed through the throng of pedestrians on the sidewalk. She laughed once and glanced over her shoulder. "This is ridiculous. It's like Mardi Gras or something."

Gaia nodded, smiling. Coming here
was
like entering a foreign country. All the street and shop signs were in Chinese. The moment they turned off Mott Street onto Canal Street, every last trace of English vanished. And food was hardly the only exotic item being sold: There were all kinds of little trinkets and statues and electronic gadgets....

"The freaks come out at night," Ed grumbled. "What are we even
doing
right now?"

Gaia didn't answer. Ed's sour mood was getting more irritating by the second. So he'd seen a guy with a beard in the park.
Big deal.
Even if the guy
had
been watching them, they were far from Greenwich Village right now. And it was hard to think of any place safer than a well-lit city street, packed with tourists.

"I'll tell you what we're doing," Mary stated, stopping in front of a butcher shop. The glass window featured a

particularly nasty display of fatty sausage links hanging from the ceiling. "We're playing truth or dare." She turned around and shot Gaia a quick smile over Ed's head. "And Ed?" She nodded at the window. "I dare you to eat one of those sausages."

Gaia laughed.
That
would teach him not to complain.

"Don't I get to pick?" Ed protested. "I mean, it's truth
or
dare, right?"

Mary sighed disappointedly, folding her arms across her chest. "Fine, Ed. If you want to be totally boring ..."

"If you ask me, those sausages look pretty good," Gaia joked.

Ed scowled up at her, but the faint beginnings of a smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. Finally, she thought. Maybe he was starting to lighten up a little. Maybe he could actually enjoy himself.

"Are you sure they're even meant for human beings?" he asked, rotating the wheelchair so that he faced the window directly. His eyes wandered up and down the display case. His face soured. "I mean--"

Without warning, he spun the wheelchair a full one hundred eighty degrees--so fast that the leg rest nearly grazed Gaia's shin.

"Jesus, Ed," she gasped, jumping back.

His eyes were wide. His face was a ghastly white.

"That guy!" he hissed.

Gaia exchanged a baffled glance with Mary. "What are you--"

"I j-just saw him," he sputtered. He tried to push himself higher up in the chair to get a better view. "In the window. I saw his reflection...."

"Are you
sure?"
Mary asked.

"Positive," Ed whispered. His voice was trembling. "He was right behind us--two seconds ago." He jerked a finger toward the intersection. "Walking that way."

Gaia stood on her tiptoes--scouring the mob with her eyes. But all she saw was the same swarming sea of tourists and Chinatown locals. "I don't know, Ed," she murmured. "Maybe--"

"I
saw
him, all right?" he yelled. "I'm positive. He's following us."

Gaia glanced back at Mary. "Did you see him?"