Fearless: No. 2 - Sam (Fearless) (2 page)

"YOU SOUND WEIRD."

"How do you mean?" Gaia asked.

"I don't know. You just do. You're talking fast or something," Ed said as he clenched the portable phone between his shoulder and his ear and eased himself from his desk chair to his wheelchair.

Ed Fargo was honest with Gaia, and Gaia was honest with Ed. He appreciated that about their relationship. With most girls he knew, girls like Heather, there were many
mystifying levels of bullshit
. With Gaia he could just tell her exactly what he was thinking.

Ed's mind briefly flashed on the hip-hugging green corduroys Gaia was wearing in Mr. McAuliff's class today.

Well, actually, not
everything
he was thinking. There was a certain category of thing he couldn't tell her about. That's why it was often easier talking with her on the phone, because then he couldn't see her, which meant he had fewer of those thoughts he couldn't tell her about.

"I had a bad night. That's probably why," Gaia said.

Ed wheeled himself down the shabbily carpeted hallway of his family's small apartment. Family photographs lined the walls on both sides, but Ed didn't seem to see them anymore. "A bad night how?" he asked.

"I almost got shot in the head."

Ed made a sound somewhere between laughter and choking on a chicken bone. "You w-what?"

That was another thing about Gaia. She was always surprising. Though too often in an upsetting way.

Gaia let out her breath. "Oh, God. Where to start. You know that guy CJ?"

Ed slowed his chair to a stop and clenched the armrests with his hands. "The one who slashed Heather? Isn't he in jail?" he asked with a sick feeling in his stomach.

"I guess he got out on bail or something," Gaia said matter-of-factly. "Anyway, CJ's friend Marco is dead, and he thinks I killed him."

Ed groaned out loud. How had his life taken such a turn? Before he'd first laid love-struck eyes on Gaia in the hallway outside physics class, he wouldn't have believed he would ever have a conversation like this.

"Marco is dead? Are you sure?"

"Only from what CJ told me."

Ed sighed. The really crazy thing was, in the brief time he'd known Gaia, so many violent and alarming things had happened, this wasn't so staggeringly out of the ordinary.

"Hey, Gaia? If trouble is a hungry great white shark, then you're a liquid cloud of chum."

Gaia's laugh was easy and comforting. "That's a beautiful image. I love it when you get poetic."

Ed resumed his roll down the hallway and into the galley kitchen. His late evening phone reports from Gaia, distressing as they sometimes were, had become as precious a ritual as his eleven o'clock milk shake.

"So tell me," Ed prodded, hoisting himself up a few inches with one arm to reach the ice cream in the freezer. "Tell me how it happened."

"Okay. I was sitting in the park, minding my own business --"

"Eating doughnuts," Ed supplied.

"Yes, Ed, eating doughnuts, when that loser came up from behind and shoved a gun into my neck."

"Jesus."

"I didn't take it seriously at first. But it turns out this guy is half crazed and deadly serious."

"So what happened?" Ed asked, milk shake momentarily forgotten.

Gaia sighed. "He actually pulled the trigger. I thought I was dead -- a wild experience, by the way. It turned out he must have loaded the gun in a hurry because there was no bullet in at least one of the chambers. I took that opportunity to throw him."

Ed's mind was spinning. "Throw him?"

"You know, like flip him."

"Oh, right," he said.

"You're making fun of me again," Gaia said patiently.

Ed shook his head in disbelief. "I'm not, Gaia. It's just . . . you blow my mind."

"Well, speaking of, I think this guy CJ is dead set on killing me. I'm scared he's really going to do it," Gaia said.

"You're scared?" Ed asked a little nervously. Having seen Gaia in action, he would have imagined it would take more than a pimply white supremacist with a borrowed gun to hurt Gaia. It would take something more on the order of a hydrogen bomb. But if Gaia was scared, well, he had to take that seriously.

"Figure of speech. I'm scared
abstractly,"
Gaia explained.

Ed rocked a tall glass on the counter. "Gaia, you worry me here."

"Don't worry," Gaia reassured him. "I mean, think about it. CJ is kind of a moron, and I happen to be okay at self-defense."

Ed felt reassured. That last part was an understatement to rival "Marilyn Manson is an unusual guy." He could hear Gaia thumping her heel against her metal desk. He realized the ice cream was melting and spreading along the countertop. He absently scooped some of it into the blender.

Prrrrrrrr
rrrrr.

"Ed! I hate when you run the blender when we're talking," Gaia complained loudly.

"Sorry," he said. By the time she finished complaining, the milk shake was frothy and smooth. That was part of the ritual.

"I don't want to die," she said resolutely. "You know why?"

"Why?" he asked absently, sucking down a huge mouthful of vanilla shake.

"I haven't had sex yet."

Ed spluttered the mouthful all over his dark blue T-shirt. Cough, cough, cough. "What?"

"I don't want to die before I've had sex."

Cough, cough.

"Right," he said.

"So I need to have sex in the next couple of days, just in case," Gaia added.

Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough --

"Ed? Are you okay? Ed? Is somebody around to give you the Heimlich?"

"N-No," Ed choked out. "I'm (cough, cough) fine." In fact, he had about four ounces of milk shake puddled in his lung. Could you die of that? Could you drown by breathing in a milk shake? And shit, he'd like to have sex in the next couple of days, too. (Cough, cough, cough.)

"Ed, are you sure you're okay?"

"Yesss," he answered in a weak and gravelly voice.

"So anyway, I was thinking I better do it soon."

"It?"

"Yeah, it. You know,
it."

"Right. It." Ed felt faint. Milk shake, as it turned out, was much less handy in your veins than, say, oxygen."So, who ... uh ... are you going to do
it
with? Or are you just going to walk the streets, soliciting people randomly?"

"Ed!" Gaia sounded genuinely insulted.

"Kidding," he said feebly, wishing his palms weren't suddenly sweating.

"You don't think anybody's going to want to have sex with me, do you?" Gaia sounded hurt and petulant at the same time.

"Mmrnpha." The noise Ed made didn't resemble an English word. It sounded like it had come from the mouth of a nine-month-old baby.

"Huh?"

"I ... um ..." Ed couldn't answer. The truth was, although she made every effort to hide it, Gaia was possibly the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life -- and that was including the women in the Victoria's Secret catalog, the
SI
swimsuit issue, and that show about witches on the WB. Any straight guy with a live pulse and a thimble full of testosterone would want to have sex with Gaia. But what was Ed going to say? This was
exactly
the category of conversation he couldn't have honestly with her.

"Anyway, I do know who I'm going to do it with," Gaia said confidently.

"Who?" Ed felt his vision blurring.

"I can't say."

Ed definitely wasn't taking in enough oxygen. Good thing he was in a chair because otherwise he'd be lying on the linoleum.

"Why can't you say?" he asked, trying to sound calm.

"Because it's way too awkward," Gaia said.

Awkward? Awkward. What did that imply? Could it mean . . .? Ed's thoughts were racing. Would it be too crude to point out at this juncture that although his legs were paralyzed, his nether regions were in excellent working condition?

He felt a tiny tendril of hope winding its way into his heart. He beat it back. "Gaia, don't you think you'll need to get past
awkwardness
if you really plan to be doing
it
with this person in the next forty-eight hours?"

"Yeah, I guess." He heard her slam her heel against the desk. "But I still can't tell you."

"Oh, come on, Gaia. You have to."

"I gotta go."

"Gaia!"

"I really do. Cru-Ella needs to use the phone."

"Gaia! Please? Come on! Tell."

"See ya tomorrow."

"Gaia, who? Who, who, who?" Ed demanded.

"You," he heard her say in a soft voice before she hung up the phone.

But as he laid the phone on the counter he knew who'd said the word, and it wasn't Gaia. It was that misguiding, leechlike parasite called hope.