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Gaia Fatigue Syndrome

  A SMATTERING OF RAINDROPS SMEARED the ink on the battered computer printout in Jake’s hand. Great, he thought. Just what I need.

  He’d already wasted two vital hours walking Broadway and Amsterdam, checking each of the Columbia University dorms for one Skyler Rodke—rich pretty boy and possible kidnapper. Too bad he hadn’t hit the 114th Street student housing first. Just his luck to find the guy in the last-possible place.

  He headed down the block, checking the addresses against the list in his hand. Eventually he stopped and stared at a somber redbrick building. This is the last one, he thought, crumpling up the paper and tossing it into a nearby wrought iron trash can. Skyler has to be here.

  Skyler Rodke. Even his name sounded like a soap opera scandal waiting to happen. Jake’s fingers opened and closed into fists, eager for the chance to collide with Skyler’s salon-product-enhanced skin and reshape his Prince William nose.

  “Easy,” Jake whispered to himself, digging the blunt points of his right knuckles against his left palm. He had to be cool about this. He was there as an operative, not a boyfriend. Going Jet Li on the guy would only screw up the mission.

  He could only hope Rodke picked a fight first.

  He had this friend once, a karate buddy. The guy dropped out of classes at the dojo because he came down with some sort of chronic fatigue virus. He said it was a disease he would never get rid of. It just dawdled around in his system, waiting for his body to get the slightest bit weak. Then it would spring into action, making his joints ache and his muscles floppy, until the guy just had to go to bed for a couple of days or weeks, waiting for it to pass.

  At the time Jake didn’t buy it. It sounded like some cockamamie cover story. The guy was probably too lazy or chicken to put in the required effort for black belt status and just didn’t want to face the truth.

  Now Jake believed him. He too felt like he was also carrying around a pernicious little germ that liked to kick him when he was down. He was infected with Gaia Moore. And it wasn’t a onetime thing either. He was a Gaia carrier, a victim of Gaia fatigue syndrome.

  Once Gaia had come into his life, nothing had been the same. It was as if some small scrap of her was inhabiting his body, had set up shop, and rewritten his chemical code. His priorities did a complete Chinese fire drill, recataloging themselves into a basic, fixed list: Gaia, Gaia, eat, sleep, Gaia.

  It wasn’t just that he was in love with her. That was way too crude a term. This was more sweeping and uncompromising, more . . . diseaselike. At times he felt giddy and feverish with devotion to her. Other times he felt pulled down by her, wearied by all the turmoil in her life that was now seeping into his own. Lately she’d even started acting clingy and needy—not at all like the headstrong, independent girl he fell in love with.

  But even that wouldn’t push him away. There was no escaping it, no purging Gaia from his system. She was part of him now. To cut her out, he’d have to destroy himself. Besides, he didn’t want to be free of her. He loved the messy, aching, maddening ride that was Gaia. He’d never felt more alive in his entire life. Gaia had given him a purpose, a calling, a brand-new realm to exist in. He couldn’t help feeling that everything that had ever happened to him had led him to this—to her.

  If only something would lead him to her now.

  A group of students came scurrying up the sidewalk, holding bags and jackets over their heads to protect against the rain. Jake fell into step behind them, matching their hurried pace. By now he knew the drill. He followed them up the concrete steps underneath the arched stone entrance. One of the girls at the head of the group pulled out her key card and swiped it through a black box on the exterior wall. With an irritable buzz, the front door opened and the group filed into the yellow-lighted lobby.

  Jake grinned. No one gave him a passing glance as they shook water off their jackets and headed toward the elevators. He was proud he’d developed this little infiltration system on his own. It was so much easier than shouting through the outside intercom, as he’d had to do at the first couple of dorms. Plus it made him feel like a real agent—using his wits, blending in with the crowd.

  At the other side of the foyer, a man in a security guard’s uniform was sitting behind a gray laminate counter. He barely glanced up as Jake approached.

  “Can I help you?” the guard asked.

  “Yes,” Jake said, leaning against the counter. “I’m looking for a girl.”

  The man frowned.

  Great, Jake. Brilliant opening. Now he thinks you’re the world’s lamest playboy. “I mean . . . I’m looking for a particular girl—a friend of mine,” he tried again. He took a breath and launched into his rehearsed explanation. “You see, there’s been an emergency in her family and I need to find her, but she isn’t answering her cell phone. All I know is that she’s out with a Columbia student named Skyler Rodke. Would he happened to be listed at this dorm?”

  The guard nodded slightly for a few seconds, as if he needed extra time to process the information. Then he sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Hang on. Let me check the registry.”

  Jake drummed his fingertips against the gray laminate as the guard sluggishly typed commands into the computer. Come on, come on. All sorts of things could be happening to Gaia. He resisted the urge to leap over the counter, shove the guard out of the way, and search the log himself.

  Eventually the man pushed back his chair and turned toward Jake. “Sorry. There’s no one by that name listed.”

  “What?” Jake leaned forward and gaped at the monitor. “No way!”

  Jake realized he must have been screaming, because a group of students paused in their conversation to stare at him. The guard held up a warning hand. “Back away from the computer, sir,” he said with sudden authority.

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said, lowering his voice. “It’s just . . . I’ve got to find her, and I’ve already tried all the other dorms. Are you sure you got the name right? Rodke? R-o-d-k-e?”

  “I’m positive,” the man replied. “There’s no Rodke and no Skyler anything listed. Now if you’ll excuse me,” he added with a nod toward the exit, “I have some work to do.”

  Jake took a few aimless steps away from the desk, shaking his head in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. He’d tried everywhere. All that work, all that effort, and he was no closer to finding Gaia than he had been three hours ago.

  What now? What the hell was he going to tell Oliver?

  “Excuse me?”

  Jake looked up. A pretty redhead with stick-straight Avril Lavigne hair was leaning toward him somewhat cautiously.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing,” she said, meeting his bewildered gaze. “Are you looking for Skyler Rodke?”

  “Yes!” Jake rounded on her. “Do you know him? Do you know where he is?”

  The girl swayed backward slightly, her eyes widening in alarm. “I . . . I know who he is, but I don’t know him. He goes to Columbia, but he lives off campus.”

  Off campus? The thought washed through Jake’s mind, scrubbing it clear. Of course! Why didn’t I realize that before? A guy like Skyler would have his own place. He’d never stoop as low as dorm life.

  “Where? Where does he live?” His restlessness was back, tightening his fists and amplifying his voice.

  The girl kept her gaze on him but turned her body away, clearly sorry she’d ever approached him. “I don’t know. I’ve just heard he has a fancy apartment somewhere. It’s just talk. You know? People talk about him.”

  “Right,” Jake said, nodding distractedly. Then he placed his palms together in a prayerlike gesture. “Thank you! You saved me!”

  “No problem,” the girl muttered before hurrying back to her friends by the elevator.

  Jake bounded back to the front counter. “Excuse me?” he asked the guard. “Could I borrow your white pages?”

  The man gave a frustrated huff and slid the giant book toward Jake, who immediately began leafing through it.

 
“Roddenberry . . . Roddick . . . Roditi . . . ,” he mumbled as his finger slid slowly down the page. “Yes! Rodke.” There was a John out in Queens, a Sarah with a Chelsea exchange, and then a bunch of “Rodkey” spellings. No Skyler. Not even a half-anonymous S. Rodke with a Manhattan listing. Nothing.

  Jake slammed the book shut and returned it to the guard with a mumbled “thanks.” Then he walked back out the front door into the rain.

  Gaia was someplace close, he could feel it. But he had no idea how to get to her. He was like a rat in a maze of dead ends, and a fragrant block of cheese was sitting just beyond the walls.

  Gaia, please, he urged silently, straining to seek out her mind through the walls of the nearby buildings. Please just answer my messages. Call me. Before it’s too late.

  JAKE

  This probably never happens to real undercover operatives. Or at least it shouldn’t–not to the good ones, anyway.

  I know how it’s supposed to unfold. I grew up watching the spy serials. All those stories of daring rescue and intrigue, where the hero saves the world in a thousand-dollar suit. I just knew that could be me someday, disarming the bad guys and knocking them senseless. Then carrying the hot blond to safety only seconds before a bomb exploded in a supernova of fire and smoke. Obviously I’m not cut out for this after all, since I seem to have all the spy instincts of a garden slug.

  Oliver is counting on me to find Gaia. Gaia needs me. And I’m letting them down.

  I never realized just how freaking hard this spy stuff is. Where are the scared informants whispering vital information to me from out of the shadows? Where are the clues? A book bag or scuffed tennis shoe or some other Gaia-like debris pointing the way to her hideaway? I could use a cryptic SOS message on my answering machine or a taunting riddle from the baddies—anything to use as a starting place in this whole screwed-up cat-and-mouse game.

  James Bond never made mistakes. He never burst into someone’s lair only to find a group of women playing mah-jongg–“Very sorry. Pardon me. Please carry on”–or nabbed an innocent bystander or aimlessly wandered the city streets for hours.

  And Oliver would never be stuck in neutral like this. He’d have located Gaia in under ten minutes. I know he wants me to do it because Gaia’s still freaked into thinking he’s Loki again, but obviously I don’t deserve his faith in me.

  So I’ll make a deal with the cosmos. Forget my earlier dreams. I don’t need to be a big hero. I’ll just settle for this: to find Gaia in one piece before anything awful happens. The rest you can take from there.

  crazed stare

  John continued to pelt her with bricks, laughing as if he were playing a two-dollar carnival game.

  Anchor

  GAIA WOKE UP TO THE EARTHY, smoky smell of fresh coffee being brewed. The rectangle of glass between the curtains revealed putty-colored clouds hanging over the nearby buildings, the view oddly distorted by the film of grimy rainwater on the window.

  She took a deep breath and stretched her arms up as high as they could go without rapping against the mahogany headboard. Then she rolled over.

  The bed was still warm where Skyler had lain next to her. Even her waist still felt warm and weighty, the ghost of his arm anchoring her down to the bed all night. Gaia smiled. She could hear him in the kitchen, singing something. A Coldplay song. God give me style and give me grace. . . . She closed her eyes and followed the melody, the clattering sounds of cups, and the whoosh of cars passing on the slick streets below.

  After a minute she felt the bed shimmy. Skyler crept over the mattress and lay down beside her, his arm returning to its spot across her belly.

  “Good morning,” he sang into her ear. “How did you sleep?”

  She opened her eyes. “Good,” she said with a grin.

  “I’m glad.” He smiled his toothy, glow-in-the-dark smile. “See? I knew it. All you needed was to take a break from it all and relax. Do you feel better?”

  “Yeah. Just . . . tired.”

  “You should go back to sleep,” he said, patting the curve of her waist before pulling his arm away.

  Gaia reflexively put her own arm in the spot he vacated. She didn’t want to tell him that she wasn’t sleepy. Instead she was tired in that post-trauma kind of way–the collapsing sense of relief you feel after a great pressure had been lifted. But he’d been right about one thing. Staying over had helped. She felt two hundred percent better than she had the night before. It was just so nice and simple being here—just her and Skyler hiding out from the rest of the world.

  A new thought occurred to her. “Is your roommate here?” she asked, peeking through the crack in the doorway to the living room beyond.

  “Relax. It’s just us.” He placed his hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back against the mattress. “Carl left a note. He’s gone upstate to visit his parents this weekend.”

  “Oh,” she said, settling back into the bedcovers. She was glad it was just the two of them. Things were perfect—better than they had been in a while. Adding someone else to the mix would only upset the beautiful whatever she had going here.

  “I made coffee.” Skyler slid out of bed and ran his fingers through his unkempt blond hair. “But you don’t have to get up. It rained all last night and it’s still drizzling. Good morning to sleep in.”

  She turned back toward the window. “There’ll be rainbows in the puddles,” she said distractedly.

  “What’s that? Rainbows?”

  “In the puddles,” she finished. She glanced at Skyler and gave a bashful shrug. “It’s nothing. Just this thing I used to do when I was a weird little kid.”

  “What? Tell me.” He sat on the edge of the bed, watching her with a bemused expression.

  “It’s stupid.”

  He put his hand on her calf, shaking it gently. “Come on. I really want to know.”

  Gaia raised herself up on her elbows and tilted back her head as if sunning on a virtual beach. She shut her eyes and remembered herself as a knobby-jointed five-year-old. “After it rained at our old house,” she began, “I used to love to go out to the nearby road and look at the puddles in the potholes.”

  “And splash in them?”

  “Well, yeah. But I loved the way there would be this ring of color in the center of the puddle, like each one had its own rainbow. I thought it was beautiful. It wasn’t until I was a little older that my dad explained how toxic chemicals from the car engines made that design—not rainbows.”

  Gaia could see her father’s face swimming before her, gently reprimanding her for playing in the noxious water. Then her mother, shaking her head and making that disapproving clicking sound, barely hiding her amusement. Before she could descend into grief, Gaia opened her eyes. Skyler was smiling at her.

  It was the kindest smile she’d seen in a long time. An adoring smile.

  “That’s beautiful,” he said. “I’m glad you told me that. I want to hear more. I want to know everything about you.”

  Lukewarm tears—happy or sad, she couldn’t tell—collected in the corners of her eyes. It was too late to bully them back into her ducts. Instead she gave an enormous fake yawn and rubbed the renegade drops with the back of her hands.

  “You should go back to sleep.” Skyler gave her leg another friendly pat and got to his feet. “Maybe later you can tell me more. Right now I’m going to take a quick shower.”

  “Okay,” she said, settling back against the pillows.

  “You going to be all right?” he asked, unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Yeah.”

  Gaia hugged a pillow and watched as he slid off his shirt and tossed it into a nearby wicker hamper. His trademark Rodke-smooth skin glimmered in the feeble light. His chest was muscular—but in a rough-cut, choppy way, different from the sloping curves of Jake’s strapping build. It was as if Jake had been carefully molded from clay while Skyler had been chiseled out of cool marble.

  He met her gaze and grinned. “Get some rest. I’ll be in here if you
need anything.” He stepped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Soon she could hear the water come on and Skyler began humming the Coldplay song again.

  An intense feeling of gratitude came over her. If it wasn’t for Skyler, she’d be waking up in her bare, depressing little room back at Collingwood, spiraling down the big despair drain again. She was glad he’d made her stay. It was like he knew just what she needed. He gave her space, yet he held her all night—as if he somehow understood she needed an anchor.

  Not just anyone would take in a wretched, depressing blob of a girl. She wished she could do something to show her thanks, maybe even get him some sort of gift. But what? Like all the Rodkes, Skyler had everything. All he truly needed was water, oxygen, and the regular intake of nutrients.

  Wait. That’s it. Gaia sat up straight. The guy needed food, right? So why not get him breakfast? She couldn’t cook—at least, she shouldn’t if she wanted to reward the guy—but she could surprise him with a bagel tray.

  She hopped out of bed and headed into the living room to find her shoes. Yes. That’s exactly what she’d do. She’d go down the street, pick up some bagels, and hopefully be back before he came out of the shower.

  Gaia grabbed her jacket and practically skipped out the door. She couldn’t wait. Skyler was going to be so surprised.

  Bad–Girl Facade

  JAKE TRUDGED UP THE PORCH STEPS of the Collingwood boarding-house and caught a dim reflection of himself in the front window. He could have been cast as a mysterious drifter in a movie. His dark wavy hair looked like a mess of blown wires after being drenched with rain and dried in the breeze. His eyes were slightly sunken, and a crop of whiskers had overtaken the lower half of his face. All he needed was the moth-eaten knit cap and he could have been featured on those home security system flyers that came in the mail: PROTECT YOUR HOME FROM THIS MAN.

  He made a halfhearted attempt to tame his hair and then rang the buzzer. He could hear it echo inside the house, followed by the iambic rhythm of someone bounding down the stairs. Please, please, please let it be Gaia, he prayed silently.