Exposed by Francine Pascal

Author:Francine Pascal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

Random Acts of Disappearance

THE RED SOLID BALL INCHED Smoothly toward the corner pocket, rolling along with quiet momentum, suffusing Ed with a false sense of confidence. There. That’s it, he encouraged the ball mentally. This game’s all mine.

Without warning, though, the ball veered wildly off to the right No, no, it’s okay, I can still take this, Ed thought, gripping the wooden edges of the pool table and leaning his entire body in the opposite direction of the ball’s trajectory. It’s not over till it’s—

With a loud clanking sound the ball in question banged directly into the eight ball, sending the eight ball shooting straight into the left side pocket. The eight ball landed in the pocket’s netting with a dull thudding sound.

Right.

“Whoo-hoo!” Kai hooted, pumping her arms in the air in an impromptu victory dance. “Winner and still champion!” She laid her pool cue up on the rack against the wall and hugged Ed to show that she was teasing. Sort of.

“Just remember who helped you perfect your game,” Ed grumbled.

“The student hath surpassed the teacher,” Kai said formally, sounding like a cross between a Zen master and an Elizabethan page. “Ha ha,” she added tauntingly, as a mischievous afterthought. She stuck out her tongue.

“Hey,” Ed protested. “Can’t you go easy on me? I’m still in recuperation mode. Cut a guy some slack.”

“Uh-uh,” Kai insisted. “You were the one who swore you were back in the blush of full health. You were the one who challenged me. And I might also point out that you seemed rather overconfident about the whole darn thing.” She winked at him. “So there.”

“This failure is very, very bad for my ego,” Ed joked. His ego wasn’t in especially bad shape these days.

“Ah, but your loss is my brilliant success, so in that sense, everyone’s a winner. ‘Everyone,’ of course, being me,” Kai pointed out. She giggled and hugged him again. “I’m just kidding, Ed. But you know, no one likes a sore loser.”

“I am not a sore loser,” Ed countered. Kai raised a quizzical eyebrow at him.

“Okay, maybe slightly sore. Bruised. I’m a bruised loser,” he conceded. “I gotta tell you, though—being out of the hospital? Yeah, it pretty much rocks.”

‘I’ll bet,” Kai agreed.

“If I can go for, let’s say, two consecutive months without, you know, needing some life-altering surgery or being attacked in a park, that’d be a huge plus,” Ed said. He wasn’t especially trying to be funny, though. His life had gotten complicated over the course of the last year, and while he wasn’t interested in assigning blame, there was one person who seemed, time and time again, to somehow be involved.

Gaia.

It didn’t matter that Gaia was not only not interested in Ed but that lately she didn’t even seem particularly keen on maintaining the most minimal level of friendship with him. He was used to Gaia’s random acts of disappearance. But she always surfaced eventually. Lately, though . . . well, she hadn’t been herself. In fact, the last few times he had seen her, she’d even been crying.

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