Payback (10 page)

GAIA BOUNDED DOWN THE STAIRS on Wednesday morning, hair wet, clothes half buttoned, late for school as always. She cursed as she slammed her toe into a doorjamb on her way down the hall. It was then that she realized she'd forgotten to put on her shoes.

She came around the corner into the kitchen and stopped, skidding slightly on the freshly waxed linoleum floor. Ed was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a steaming cup of coffee.

"Morning," Gaia said, walking by him on her way to the pantry. She was only moderately surprised to see him there. There were two amazing things about Ed Fargo. One was the fact that he was a morning person, and the other was that he seemed to think she was one, too.

"Morning," he replied. "George let me in on his way out." She could feel his eyes following her as she crossed the room. He was waiting for her to say something. As always, Gaia was clueless as to what he expected.

"I brought you a bagel," he said. "Tons of butter."

"Thanks," Gaia replied. "It'll save me the huge prep time for cold cereal." He didn't laugh. Odd. Gaia turned on her heel and trudged back to the table.

"You didn't call me last night," he said.

"Was I supposed to?" she asked, taking a bite of her bagel. The melted butter coated her tongue, and Gaia almost sighed. Heaven.

"I left you about fifty messages," Ed said with a sullen shrug. Gaia raised her eyebrows, and Ed immediately caved.

"Okay,
five
messages," he said, fiddling with the protective plastic top on his coffee.

Gaia glanced at the cordless phone on the wall next to the refrigerator. "The light wasn't blinking when I got home." Not that she'd actually looked.

"I talked to Ella," Ed said, almost apologetically.

Gaia snorted and picked at her front teeth with her thumbnail. "So this is my fault how?" she said.

"Okay, forget it," Ed said, shifting in his chair. Gaia really studied him for the first time -- he was pale, and his eyes were rimmed with gray. He also hadn't cracked a joke or offhandedly complimented her once since she'd entered the room.

How insensitive could she be?

"Ed, what's wrong?" Gaia asked, forgetting about her breakfast.

He pushed his chair back slightly and maneuvered it so that he was facing the table straight on. Then he pulled himself up to the edge and leaned his elbows on the clean white surface. Gaia watched his preparations with growing concern. It never took this long for Ed to talk.

"There's a rapist at school," he said finally, his eyes almost wary as he waited for her reaction. Gaia felt all the muscles in her body recoil, tightening themselves as if she were getting ready to spring on someone.

"Who?" she asked.

Ed took a deep breath and held her gaze. "Charlie Salita."

Gaia blinked as her stomach contracted. "No way."

"I know it's hard to believe, but --"

"No," Gaia said, shifting in her seat. "I mean it. There's no way he's a rapist."

Ed's eyes widened slightly in surprise, and he studied her for a moment, obviously unsure of how to proceed. In that moment Gaia just wished he wouldn't proceed at all. She could actually see herself hanging out with Charlie, especially after last night, when a couple of hot dogs at Gray's had turned into a couple of hours at Gray's. There weren't many people who could keep her interest for that long. Besides Sam, of course. But most of the interesting stuff that happened between them happened in her imagination.

Gaia's mind flashed back to the night before, when Charlie had bought a few hot dogs and given them to a couple of homeless men outside. He was a good guy. She couldn't be wrong about this.

Not again.

"Gaia --," Ed began again.

"I'm telling you, Ed," she interrupted, her voice somewhere between pleading and demanding. "It's not possible."

ED FELT HIS FACE FLUSH PURPLE,
and he pressed his lips together hard. He couldn't believe it. In every scenario he'd imagined for this conversation, he'd never thought Gaia wouldn't even let him talk.

"What do you mean, it's not possible?" Ed asked. "You spend five minutes at a party with the guy and you know him well enough to decide that?"

Gaia took a deep breath and leaned her forearms on the table. "I hung out with him last night, too," she said, causing a pain to sear through Ed, the likes of which he'd never felt before. "He's no rapist," Gaia added. "He's way too normal to have a secret like that." She paused and took a slow bite of her bagel. "He's also . . . nice."

Ed couldn't believe what he was hearing. Had she been brainwashed or something? Gaia wasn't supposed to trust anyone, least of all a good-looking, spoiled, privileged jock like Charlie Salita.

"The person who told me wouldn't lie about something like this," Ed said, trying to remain on the logic tip.

Gaia ran a hand behind her slim neck and massaged the muscles there, shaking her head. "Okay," she said finally. "When did this girl say this happened?"

Now they were getting somewhere. "At the party," Ed answered firmly.

"He was with me at the party," Gaia reminded him. "For more than five minutes."

Ed's lips tightened. "What about after we left?"

"No way," Gaia said, tearing off a piece of her bagel and popping it into her mouth. Suddenly Ed couldn't help thinking she was protesting a bit too much. Like maybe she was trying to convince herself. "He was happy-go-lucky boy that night," Gaia continued. "He wasn't even drunk." She paused and looked out the window, the sunlight slanting across her face and contorting her features. "If he was going to try it, he would have tried it on me."

Ed pushed his hands into the armrests on his chair and adjusted his position, mostly to give himself something to do as he tried to process Gaia's reaction. He'd always thought Gaia was the guilty-until-proven-innocent type. Charlie must have had a serious effect on her. The pain in Ed's chest cut even deeper.

"Why don't you want to hear this?" Ed asked finally.

Gaia's eyes flashed defiantly, as if she'd just received a huge challenge. "Fine," she said. "Tell me what this person said about Charlie. Exactly."

A sliver of doubt passed through Ed's heart. He knew what Heather had told him wasn't going to be very convincing coming from him. Gaia would have to see the pain and vulnerability firsthand. As if that was ever going to happen. Ed heaved a sigh.

"She said she was pretty sure Charlie raped her." Gaia sucked in air and was about to protest, but Ed cut her off. "But there was someone else raped that night. One of this girl's friends. There's more than one. I'm telling you --"

"This other girl said Charlie raped her, too?" Gaia asked.

Ed paused. "Well, no. Just that she was raped, so --"

"So maybe it wasn't Charlie at all," Gaia said, her brow knitted. "If this other girl was raped, she should press charges or something, but until there's something solid against Charlie, I --"

"I don't believe you," Ed said disdainfully.

"Well, what did you expect me to do?" Gaia said, sounding tired.

"Great, so you'll risk your own life to save random people from a car wreck, but you won't even bother to look into something that I'm telling you is real," Ed practically shouted, the veins standing out on his neck and forehead. "Something that happened to someone I actually care about."

Ed's mouth snapped shut, and his face turned red so fast, his eyes started to water. He couldn't believe he'd just said that about Heather. It had been a long time since he'd allowed himself to acknowledge the fact that he cared for the girl.

There was a slight softening of Gaia's features when she saw his face. "Ed --"

"Forget it," Ed said, pushing himself away from the table. He angled his chair at the door. "I
thought
you would trust me," he said. "I thought we were friends."

As Ed made his way down the hall, a thought occurred to him that almost made him vomit on the spot. Heather
should
have gone to Sam. Gaia would have listened to Sam. She would do anything he asked.

Ed had never felt so useless in his life.

At the front door he realized she hadn't even bothered to follow him. From the sound of the silence in the kitchen, she hadn't even moved from her chair. She was probably sitting in there right now, munching happily on her bagel, totally unaffected.

While Heather was over at her apartment, unable to even think of food.

Ed pushed his way outside into the frost-filled air and took a good, long breath. It looked like he was just going to have to deal with this himself. He looked down at the wheels of his chair and sighed.

Somehow.

ED WAITED UNTIL AFTER STUDY HALL,
when everyone else was getting out of gym, to make his move. He figured Charlie would be all winded and tired from working out for an hour, and Ed would at least hold the advantage of having his wits about him. Of course, there was also the possibility that working out would have Charlie pumped, adrenaline ready to explode.

Why didn't this occur to him until he was sitting outside the locker-room door?

The class started to empty out, and every time the door was flung open, Ed's heart caught in his throat as he waited for Charlie to appear. Finally the flow lessened to a trickle and no Charlie. Just as Ed was about to give up, Tim Racenello walked out of the locker room, buttoning the top button of his shirt.

"Shred!" he said with a grin. "What's up, man?"

Ed swallowed and pushed himself back so his butt was hitting the back of his chair. "I'm looking for Charlie," he said.

"He's in that health section," Tim said, gesturing at the nearly empty hall. Ed rolled his eyes shut. What an idiot. Every quarter a section of the gym class had to take a class in teen health issues. That meant Charlie was somewhere across the school right now. So much for careful planning.

"Want me to give him a message?" Tim asked, his eyes flicking over Ed.

Suddenly Ed had an idea. Tim was Charlie's best friend, and they were nothing if not loudmouths. It was quite possible that Tim knew about everything that had happened between Charlie and Heather. It had happened, after all, in Tim's apartment.

"Yeah," Ed said flatly, glancing over his shoulders to make sure no one was around. Empty. "You can tell him to stop raping people."

ED KNEW HE WAS BEING BLUNT.
He knew he was going for shock value. But he never could have been prepared for the change that came over Tim's face when his words sank in. It looked like there was a string attached to his chin and someone was pulling down on it, drawing all of Tim's features closer together. His lips folded into a V, his eyebrows almost touched, his eyes were like slits, and his pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks. His chin even seemed longer.

It was pretty damn scary.

"YOU KNOW CHARLIE," THE NEW
Tim-thing said in a voice that sounded oddly normal. "He wouldn't hurt a fly."

Ed pushed his chair back a few inches to alleviate the disconcerting feeling that Tim was hovering over him. "Look, Tim," he said. "All I know is that someone said --"

"Whoever this someone is," Tim said, crossing his arms over his chest and standing up straight, "she must have wanted it." His features seemed to return to normal as he said the last few words, as if the cliché was comforting to him.

"Tim, this girl is telling the truth," Ed said, feeling more comfortable now that Tim no longer looked like an angry bat. "She's not a liar."

"Heather Gannis not a liar? That's a laugh," Tim said, cracking himself up.

Ed felt suddenly dizzy. "I didn't tell you who I was talking about," he said.

This didn't even faze Tim. He gradually stopped laughing and smirked at Ed. "You didn't have to," he said. "Charlie told me all about it."

"So you knew," Ed said slowly. The ice in his heart was slowly moving to his extremities, freezing his fingers. He was sure it would have frozen his toes, too, if he could feel them.

"I knew they had sex," Tim said, adjusting his backpack and looking off down the hall as if he had better places to be. "And I knew she was all over him. He didn't rape her, Ed. Come to grips with the fact that your ex is a slut."

Ed had to hold on to the chair to keep from launching himself at Tim. He knew he'd just fall in a limp pile at the guy's feet, which definitely wouldn't get him anywhere. But letting him talk about Heather that way practically killed him. "You come to grips with the fact that there's some evil shit going on at those parties of yours," Ed blurted out, glaring up at Tim with a rage that could have flattened the entire school. "You have to put a stop to it, Tim. He might have done it to a lot of other girls. You never know --"

"And you never know when to shut up, do you?" Tim asked, leaning into Ed's chair. He gripped the armrests, placing his hands just behind Ed's, and brought his face within millimeters of Ed's. "Mind your own business, Shred," he said through his teeth. "Or this chair is going to seem like a blessing compared to where you'll end up."

The bell rang, but Ed barely even heard it over the blood rushing through his ears. Tim straightened up, popped a piece of gum into his mouth, winked, and walked away.

Ed didn't even know what period it was anymore. He had no clue where he was supposed to be. All he knew was that he had to get to a bathroom. Fast.