Exposed (5 page)

Gaia hesitated. Assuming that Skyler hadn't lied about having a roommate, she was engaging in a serious invasion of privacy right now. Even if Skyler was plotting against her, who was to say that his roommate was in on the game anyway? She really didn't, have much justification for peeping into the desk drawers … yet.

She was going to anyway.

She heard the front door catch with a clicking sound that meant someone was working the lock.
Skyler
. She didn't jump or start—the benefits of being herself again—but rather retraced her steps slowly out of the bedroom, pulling the door shut behind her but keeping the image of the desk sharp in her mind's eye. Somehow she'd come back to it later. Either to rummage through it or to commit the contents of the drawers to memory. One way or another, she'd figure out what Skyler was up to. She quickly crossed to the kitchenette, digging out a bag of fresh coffee beans and pouring the specified amount into the coffee grinder.
I'm just helping out with brunch, Skyler
, Gaia thought.
Not snooping, not doing anything of note. It's all perfectly innocent around here
.

For now
.

“HONEY, I'M HOME!” SKYLER CALLED in his best Ricky Ricardo voice as he crossed through the front doorway. Seeing Gaia manhandling his coffee machine, he broke into a wide grin. “Coffee! Perfect!”

Feeling Claustrophobic
“Yeah, except this machine is jammed. Seriously, don't you guys ever clean it? I mean,
you
may be down with a loose interpretation of cleanliness, but sooner or later your roommate is bound to complain, no?” Gaia asked, raising an eyebrow at Skyler.

Skyler placed the brown paper bag of bagels on the counter and came up behind Gaia. “Do you think I would live with a neat freak?” he asked her pointedly.

“Touché,” she replied. Suddenly Skyler's body was very close to hers. He had lined himself up directly behind her and was now reaching his arms around her in order to fiddle with the coffee filter. Feeling claustrophobic, she ducked out from underneath him. “Great. You can deal with the toxic coffee grounds and I'll set up.” She dove into the bag and dug out the deep tubs of cream cheese and lox spread, removing the lids and placing the containers on the table. “I don't suppose you got the guy to slice up a tomato for us?” she asked.

“‘The guy' didn't give me a chance to ask,” Skyler explained, grabbing a sharp knife and following Gaia over to the coffee table with a few butter knives and two plates. “The coffee should be ready in a moment,” he said, settling down next to her on the couch.

“Excellent,” Gaia answered, taking the sesame bagel Skyler offered her and buttering it thickly. She took a huge bite and chewed blissfully. This undercover work wasn'tall bad news. “Mmmm,” she said, savoring the chewy texture. “Perfect.”

“It was worth it, wasn't it?” Skyler said. “Being separated from me for a brief hour?”

“Well, of course the emotional scars will need time to heal, but I'll forbear,” Gaia deadpanned, flashing a quick grin to show that she was kidding. Sort of. “It's okay. It was good practice for later.” She glanced up from her plate to see how he would react to that statement.

Skyler looked confused. “Why? What's happening later?”

“Well, I really do need to go shopping for a prom dress, Skyler,” Gaia reminded him. “Especially now that I've got a new date.”

Skyler smiled uneasily but recovered quickly enough. “I have it on good authority that your date thinks you look beautiful in whatever you wear,” he said, winking.

“That's sweet, but come on, Skyler, It's the prom. It's supposed to be the biggest night of my high school
career—sadly enough. Everyone is going to be wearing something new. I mean, even if I wanted to wear something I already had, I'm not the kind of girl who just
has
dresses lying around in my closet. You must know that.” Wasn't it obvious?

The patience Skyler had exhibited the evening before had clearly dissipated. He looked decidedly unthrilled with her decision to separate from him. “Gaia, I'm sorry, but I was really hoping to spend the day together.”

“Well, okay—if it's so important to you that we spend the day together, then why don't you come with me?” Gaia asked testily.
Careful
, she thought.
The sick thing is that a few days ago, you wouldn't have challenged him in any way. Skyler's wishes were your command
.

“Gaia, shopping isn't really what I had in mind for us today. Come on—I've got my masculinity to uphold.”

“Right, okay, fine. The point is, I want to get a prom dress, and I don't see why you're making such a big deal about it,” Gaia said flatly.

“Gaia, I think you're being a bit unreasonable. For the past week or so I've been here for you, practically at your beck and call, taking care of you, giving you whatever you need. I don't understand why suddenly you can't trust me to know what's best.”

Gaia had run out of plausible protests, so she resorted to pouting. Unfortunately, he made a very logical argument. Seeing as how she'd basically lost her mind for the past few
days, it was hard to justify suddenly coming to her senses without arousing suspicion.

“Look, I have to go out for a bit.”

So that was why he didn't want to go shopping. He had other plans. Which was pretty unusual. Suspect, even. Until now, whenever Gaia was around, the only plans Skyler had revolved around her.

“What for?” Gaia asked.

“I have an errand to run. I'm sorry, but it can't wait. You should stay here. I don't want you getting into any more random scrapes or anything, okay? I'll be back, and then we can go see a movie or something. Even go shopping for prom dresses if you're absolutely set on it.” A week ago she wouldn't have thought twice about obeying Skyler's directive. The idea made her shudder.

Well, if Skyler was going out on a so-called errand, the proverbial lamb was sure to follow.

Has
anyone seen my friend formerly known as Gala? Or, I guess, if you want to go for accuracy, my Gaia formerly known as my friend? Yeah, I know the drill—you want hang with Gaia, you've gotta be willing to penetrate her steely exterior (or at least withstand it, you know?) and just let her various overwhelming intimacy issues roll off your back. And—oh!—you can't assume you'll see her in school because, you know, she doesn't really attend with any great regularity. And you can't think that she'll return your calls in a timely fashion. Sometimes there's a good reason for this. Sometimes there's a great reason for this. Sometimes there's a reason that one never becomes privy to. Go figure.

ED
So, okay, any friendship with Gaia Moore comes with a lengthy warning label. But I've read the fine print, and I thought we'd made some sort of progress. I
mean, maybe we weren't going to be huddling around any campfires singing “Kumbaya” anytime soon, but you know—we cared about each other in our own ways. Gaia's way was complicated and enigmatic. My own? Not so much. I basically worshiped the ground she walked on (still do, to be perfectly honest). But it was an understanding, and it was mutual.

Maybe I blew our one shot at true romance all on my own. Maybe my jealousy was a large part of what caused us to self-destruct. True, I couldn't stand to see her with Sam Moon. For some reason I just couldn't trust that the two of them were
just friends
. Possibly because any boy in his right mind who has the exquisite pain-wrapped-in-pleasure of encountering Gaia Moore is sure to fall in love with her. It's like some weird male death wish or something. But I digress.

The girl has been completely gone as of late. She came to see me in the hospital the other day,
babbling something about how it was all her fault that I was in there in the first place; then she freaked about boyfriend troubles (always fun to hear about), and then … well, then she disappeared.

And though I haven't seen her since, I've been
hearing
all sorts of weirdness to do with Miss Gaia. Like that she's been spending the majority of her time with Skyler Rodke, for example. Which is, okay, not exactly “alert-the-authorities,” code-red-style behavior, but random nonetheless.

It's possible I'm overreacting. Maybe Skyler's A-OK, and he and Gaia are, in fact, huddled around the aforementioned campfire singing “Kumbaya.” Maybe she's happy as a clam up in his apartment, watching movies, eating pizza, drinking beer (I'm just going on my basic assumption of college-type activities). Maybe he's really a friend to her., and once again my
own Gaia meter prevents me from being objective. Maybe.

But I don't think so.

So if you do see her? Yeah, can you let her know I'm looking for her? That'd be groovy.

If there was a “way” to go about this, which he
was
starting to doubt.

alternate universe
JAKE SCANNED WASHINGTON SQUARE Park tensely, trying to determine where to begin his quest to find God. Any of the various losers draped across the park benches surrounding the fountain could have the information Jake was looking for. Conversely, they might not even know their own names right now. It was a crapshoot. If only Zan had given him more to go on. Of course, getting anything useful out of that girl was a miracle in itself. Which was cool. Jake was down with the smaller miracles, the day-to-day kind. Some hope was always better than no hope, no matter how you sliced it.

God Is Dead, Man
Jake decided to start small. He inched his way toward a slim, wiry young girl with a mop of dirty-blond dreadlocks tied loosely at the nape of her neck. She wore a T-shirt over a long-sleeved thermal, even though it was at least seventy-five degrees outside, and appeared to be squinting from behind darkly tinted sunglasses. Her olive green cargoes were fraying at the hem. She sat cross-legged on the bench closest to Jake, clutching a jumbled mass of keys held together on a giant plastic ring.

“Hey,” Jake said softly. She looked like she could possibly be asleep sitting up, and he didn't think waking her abruptly was the way to go about this. If
there
was
a “way” to go about this, which he was starting to doubt. “Um, nice keys. You must be able to get in, like, anywhere,” he ad-libbed.

The girl tilted her head up toward him, derision etched across her features. Jake thought it was pretty interesting that a key-obsessed freak who appeared to spend the better part of the day on a park bench should be treating him with condescension. But then again, he needed her way more than she needed him. “Whatever,” she whispered, further driving the point home.

“Do you hang out here a lot?” Jake asked. As he said it, he realized that he sounded like he was hitting on her in some weird, druggy, alternate universe.
Whoops
. “What I mean is,” he went on hastily, “what I mean is that I'm looking for someone who hangs out here a lot, and I thought you might know him.”

“Who?” she asked, her curiosity obviously getting the better of her persistent suspicion.

“God,” Jake said, suddenly feeling immensely foolish.

She snorted and went back to her key ring. “God is dead, man,” she said. “Everybody knows that.”

Jake contemplated her words momentarily. “Fair enough,” he said, shuffling off. No reason to waste further time with her. But who next? He had skipped out of third period for this once he'd realized that Gaia
was blowing off school yet again. At least this way he didn't have to explain his undercover action to her. The thought was of small comfort. He was doing this
for
her, after all, and he hated to think that she couldn't be in on it or appreciate it. “Later,” Oliver had promised him, “you can be Gaia's knight in shining armor later, when we've gotten to the bottom of this.” But later seemed very far away.

Jake's gaze fixed on a large African American man squatting next to a small tree, swathed in layer upon layer of ratty blanket. A supermarket shopping cart was perched next to him. Unlike the dreadlock girl, this guy was definitely more likely a long-term resident of the park. Jake decided to try his luck.

“Hey there,” he said easily. “I'm looking for a friend of mine. He hangs out here sometimes. Do you hang out here a lot? Maybe you've seen him.”

“It only rains in purple on Tuesdays,” the man said, smiling a soft, dazed smile. “Banana.”

O-kay
. “Banana?” Jake repeated questioningly, feeling ridiculous.

“The caterpillars eat banana,” the man clarified proudly.

Jake had a feeling that this bit of random science trivia was completely false, but he wasn't about to argue the point. “Sure,” he agreed affably, moving off.

Strike two
.

A bluish arm flopping down from a bench suggested life beneath the paper bags strewn above it. Feeling impatient by now, Jake marched over and prodded the arm with his foot. “Excuse me, can I ask you a question?” he began loudly.

He was met with a distinct lack of movement from beneath the paper bag covering.

Visions of police chalk outlines running through his head, Jake backed off quickly.
Strike three
, he decided, dejected.
Now what?

“Day after tomorrow, six a.m.,” a voice whispered in his ear suddenly. “That's when God comes,” the voice hissed.

Jake whirled around. He was greeted with the visual equivalent of the hissing voice, a lithe, slinky, shirtless man covered in tattoos.

“How do you know?” Jake asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

“I know you're looking for him 'cause I heard you ask that cute little coed over there,” the man said, jerking his thumb toward the bench, where Dread was now waving her fingertips in front of her face, a glazed look in her eyes. “I know he's coming 'cause
I'm
waiting for him, too.”