Twisted (4 page)

“I don't know” Gaia said, suddenly standing up straight

“Right” Heather said, her ire already rising. “Then why did they contact you?”

“I don't know,” Gaia repeated.

Heather scoffed and looked up at the ceiling, concentrating on trying to keep the blood from rising to her face. “Is that all you're going to say?” she
spat. “You asked for my help, then you tripped me on the stairs, and I spent two hours stuck with the idiot police at NYU trying to convince them I wasn't some crazed stalker, and all you can say is, ‘I don't know?'” She was sounding hysterical.
She had to stop
.

Gaia shrugged. It was all Heather could do to keep from clocking the girl in the head with her physics book. She took a long, deep breath through her nose, and let it out slowly—audibly. Then she picked up her books, hugging them to her chest, and walked right up to Gaia, the toe of her suede boot just touching the battered rubber of Gaia's sneaker. The girl didn't move.

“Stay away from Sam,”
Heather said, trying to muster a threatening tone. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world. Gaia had threatened her. Gaia had hurt her.
Gaia had almost gotten her killed
.

The girl was like a statue.

Heather stepped around Gaia and headed for the door. She stopped to look behind her and Gaia was frozen in place, as if someone were still standing before her speaking.

“Freak,” Heather muttered. And with that, she was out the door.

Before Gaia could snap out of it and come after her.

THE PENCIL SNAPPED. IN THE
silent lecture hall the noise seemed as loud as a gunshot.

Thirty pairs of eyes turned toward Sam Moon, and from the back of the hall came a muffled snicker. Sam closed his eyes for a moment, then slowly raised his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Moon,” the physics professor said with a tone of tired amusement. “You can get another.”

Sam closed his blue test folder and searched quickly through his book bag for a replacement pencil. All around him he could hear the quiet scratching of lead on paper as the rest of the class hurried to complete the exam. Sam's progress on the test couldn't exactly be called hurrying. There were one hundred and twenty questions on the test and exactly fifty-seven minutes to answer them all. With forty-five of those minutes gone, Sam was on
number twelve
.

He finally located another pencil and put the bag back on the floor. He looked down at the next question, touched the pencil to the paper. The pencil snapped into four pieces.

This time
there was nothing muffled about the laughter
.

The physics professor, an older man with a comb-over so complex, it was a science in itself, let loose a heavy sigh.

“Mr. Moon, if this test is causing you so much stress, might I suggest you try a pen?” he said with a sneer. “I would not want to be responsible for chopping down whole forests of precious trees just to keep you supplied with pencils.”

Sam would have liked to smack the guy. He would have liked to ask him if he'd ever taken a physics midterm
two days after being released by a group of as yet unidentified kidnapping psychos
. He would have liked to get up and leave the room.

He didn't. Sam Moon did not shirk responsibility. It wasn't in his blood.

Ignoring the remnants of the last wave of laughter, Sam dug through his book bag a second time, extracted a ballpoint, and went back to work. Even the pen gave out a little squeak in his hand, as if the plastic was
that
close to breaking.

It wasn't just his recent trauma that was causing his tension, although it had
less than nothing
to do with the exam—less than nothing to do with frequencies and waveforms and photon behavior.

The real tension came from the tug-of-war that was going on in his brain. On one end of the rope was Heather Gannis. The lovely, the popular, the much-sought-after Heather. The Heather that Sam was dating. Assisting on her end of the rope was a whole army of good reasons for Sam to stay in his current relationship. There was beauty—which Heather certainly
had. And there was sex, which Heather was willing to provide. And there was a certain reliability. Sam knew Heather. He could count on Heather. He might not always like everything about Heather, but he knew her. There were no surprises on that side.

And of course,
she had saved his life.

Dragging the rope in the other direction was Gaia Moore. There was no army on Gaia's side. The girl brought nothing but frustration, confusion, mystery, and imminent danger. Technically she was a mess. And from the moment Sam met her, Gaia had seemed to stumble from one disaster to the next. But at least Gaia wasn't boring. She was anything but.

If Sam's head had staged a fair fight, Team Heather would have dragged Gaia right off the field so fast,
she would have had grass burns on her face
. But something inside Sam wouldn't let that happen. Something in him kept holding on to Gaia's end of the rope, keeping her in the game.

He closed his eyes for a moment and put his hands against his temples. He had to stop thinking about Gaia. Thinking about Gaia when he was already committed to Heather was wrong. More than that, the way he thought about Gaia all the time was getting to be more than a little like an obsession.

“Ten minutes, people,” said the professor. “You should be getting near the end.”

Sam shook his head, flinging away the rope and all
its hangers-on. He studied the next question on the test and scribbled out an answer. Then he tackled the next. And the next. When he managed to concentrate, Sam found that the answers came easily.
Sometimes it was nice to have the powers of a good geek brain
. He sped through a series of equations without faltering, flew past some short answers, and was within five questions of the end when the professor called, “Time”.

Sam gathered up his things and carried his paper to the front of the room, relieved. At least he had cleared the Gaia fog from his brain long enough to get some work done. He hadn't embarrassed himself. Not this time, anyway.

But he wasn't sure how long that would last.
The battle in his head was still picking up Steam
. Soon it was going to be a full-blown war.

GAIA STARED DOWN AT THE TOES OF
her battered sneakers and wondered how long it would be before she threw up. Or ran out of the room. Or exploded.

Accepting a date with a guy she had known all of ten seconds seemed like such a desperate thing. A total loser move.
Like something a girl who was seventeen and had never been kissed might do
.

The whole thing was starting to make her nauseated.

At least it had already served its purpose. She wasn't thinking about . . . all those things she didn't want to think about.

Who knew what this David guy expected out of her? Gaia the undated. Gaia the untouched. Gaia the ultimate virgin.

Maybe knocking David down had spun his brain around backward. Left him with a concussion that led to his asking out the first girl he saw.

Or maybe it was a setup. Maybe Heather and some of the certified Popular Crowd (also known as
The Association of People Who Really Hate Gaia Moore)
had put this guy in her way just so they could pop up at her so-called date and pull a
Carrie.

Gaia closed her eyes and moaned. “Stupid. Definitely stupid.”

“Uh, you're Gaia Moore, right?”

Gaia looked up from her desk and found a tall blond girl standing in front of her. From the way people were up and moving around the room, class had to be over. Gaia had successfully managed to obsess away the entire period.

“Are you Gaia?”

“Uh, yeah.” Gaia was surprised on two counts. The first was that the girl knew her name at all; the second was that she
actually pronounced it right
on the first try. “Yeah, that's right.”

“I'm Cassie,” said the girl. “Cassie Greenman.”

How wonderful for you, thought Gaia. She had noticed the girl in class before. Although she hadn't seen her running with the core popular-people crowd, Gaia assumed that Cassie was in on the anti-Gaia coalition.

“Aren't you worried?” Cassie asked.

“What am I supposed to be worried about?” Gaia wondered if she had missed the announcement of a history exam or some similar
nonevent.
Or maybe this girl was talking about Gaia's upcoming date. Maybe Heather and pals really were planning some horrible heap of humiliation. Maybe they were all standing outside the door right now, ready to mock Gaia for thinking someone would actually ask her out.

Not that Gaia cared.

The girl rolled her eyes. “About being next.”

“The next what?” Gaia asked.

“You know.” Cassie raised a hand to her throat and drew one silver-blue-painted fingernail across the pale skin of her throat.
“Being the next one killed.”

Killed.
That was a word that definitely drew Gaia's attention. She sat up straighter at her desk. “What do you mean, killed?”

“Killed. Like in dead.”

“Killed by who?”

The blond girl shook her head. “By the Gentleman.”

Gaia began to wonder if everyone had just gone nuts while she wasn't paying attention. “Why would a gentleman want to kill me?”

“Not
a
gentleman”, said Cassie,
“the
Gentleman. You know—the serial killer.” She didn't add
“duh,”
but it was clear enough in her voice.

Now Gaia was definitely interested. “Tell me about it.”

“Haven't you heard?” Cassie pulled her books a little closer to her chest. “Everyone's been talking about it all morning.”

“They haven't been talking to me.”

Cassie shrugged. “There's this guy killing girls. He killed two over in New Jersey and three more somewhere in . . . I don't know, maybe Connecticut.”

“So?” said Gaia. “Why should I be worried about what happens in Connecticut?”

That drew another roll of the eyes from the blond girl. “Don't you ever listen to the news? Last night he killed a girl from NYU right over on the MacDougal side of the park.”

Now Gaia wasn't just interested, she was
offended
. The park in question was Washington Square Park, and that was Gaia's territory. Her home court.

From the chessboards to the playground, all of
it was hers. She used it as a place to relax and as a place to hunt city vermin. Gaia had been in the park herself the night before, just hoping for muggers and dealers to give her trouble. The idea that
someone had been killed just a block away. . . .

“How do they know it was the same guy?” she asked.

“Because of what he . . . does to them,” her informant replied with an overdone shiver. “I don't know about you, but I'm dying my hair jet black till this guy is caught.”

“Why?”

Cassie was starting to look a little exasperated. She pulled out a lock of her wavy hair and held it in front of her face. “Hello? Because all the victims had the same color hair, that's why. You need to be careful, too.”

“I'm not that blond,”
said Gaia.

“Are you nuts? Your hair's even lighter than mine.” The girl gave a little smile. “It's not too different, though. In fact, ever since you started here, people have been telling me how much we look alike. Like you could be my sister or something.”

Gaia stared at the girl. Whoever had said she looked like Gaia needed to get their eyes checked. Cassie Greenman was
patently pretty
. Very pretty. There was no way Gaia looked anything like her.

“You're nothing like me.”

Cassie frowned. “You don't think . . .”

“No.”

“I think we would look a lot alike,” insisted Cassie, “if you would . . . you know . . . like, clean up . . . and dress better. . . .” She shrugged. “You know.”

All Gaia knew was that all the cleaning up and good clothes in the world wouldn't stop her from looking like an overmuscled freak. She wished she was beautiful like her mother had been, but she would settle for being pretty like Cassie.
She would settle for being normal
. “Thanks for giving me the heads up on this killer.”

Cassie wrinkled her nose. “Isn't it creepy? Do you think he's still around here?”

“I wouldn't worry too much.” Gaia stood up and grabbed for her books. “If he's still here, he won't be for long.”

Not in my park, she thought. If the killer was still there, Gaia intended to find him and stop him.

Suddenly she felt pinpricks of excitement moving over her skin. For the first time all day she felt fully awake. Fully engaged. Fully there. She needed to make a plan. She needed to make sure that if this guy attacked anyone else in the park,
it was Gaia
.

As terrible as it was, in a weird sort of way the news about the serial killer actually made Gaia feel better. At least she had stopped thinking about her date.

“A SERIAL KILLER,” ED SAID SLOWLY.
Words he never expected to say unless he was talking about some movie staring Morgan Freeman or Tommy Lee Jones.

Gaia nodded. “That's right.”

“And you're excited about this?” Why was he not surprised?

“Not excited. It's more . . .” She tipped back her head and looked up at the bright blue sky, her breath visible for one split second each time she exhaled. “Yeah, well.
Kind of
.”

Ed stopped talking as they moved around a line of people waiting for a hot dog vendor, then took up the conversation again once he was sure no one was close enough to hear. “Don't you think that's a little—”