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He doesn't know it, but every hour he breathes is one less hour until his own personal doomsday. I promise you. I promise you
.

She could feel him watching her. It didn't matter. It didn't matter. It didn't matter.

"I'LL GO WITH YOU."


Not quite succeeding

Gaia's eyes narrowed as she looked at Ed. She leaned back enough to shut her locker door, then dropped her messenger bag to the floor so she could put on her ski jacket. A few limp, grayish feathers leaked out through the hole and fluttered to the ground. Ed watched them fall.

"No thanks," she said, trying not to sound regretful and not quite succeeding. "I think I'll just go do it. I need to get this paper done." Picking up her messenger bag, she slung it over her shoulder and jerked her hair out from beneath the strap.

Ed's wheelchair blocked her way. "What is
with
you?"

Forcing her face to remain calm, Gaia shrugged. She could see the frustration and uncertainty on his face, and
for a moment she wished it weren't there.


"What do you mean?"

"The way you're acting." Ed's arms made choppy movements in the air as he struggled to express himself, obviously wary of how far to push her. "I mean, I'm trying to comfort you here, trying to be a good friend. This is a hard time for you--for me too. But you just keep acting like I should go screw myself."

"This isn't a hard time for me," Gaia said evenly. "And I'm not acting like you should go screw yourself. But I have this paper due. I'm tired of all the teachers giving me a hard time. I just want to do some stuff, get them off my back. I'm sorry if that's inconveniencing you."

Ed's eyes bored into hers. "Gaia . . ."

"Gotta go," Gaia said briskly. "Bye." She made a quick pivot around his wheelchair and strode toward the east side entrance of the school.
The one with stairs.
The one Ed couldn't follow her out of. She could feel him watching her. It didn't matter. It didn't matter. It didn't matter.

NOW, WHY DOESN'T STARBUCKS
have a concession stand right here?
Sam Moon wondered. He stretched and yawned, his heavyweight sweater riding up to expose some smooth skin and a thin strip of stomach hair. What day was it? He looked at his watch. It gave him only a number. Ah! An abandoned newspaper lay crumpled in the deep armchair

The non-excited state

next to his. It was Thursday. Assuming that this was today's newspaper.

The life of the pre-med student.
All work and no play.
Actually, Sam's life often consisted of too much play and not enough work. His grades had demonstrated just that at the end of last semester. Which had prompted a heartfelt man-to-man with Dad, which had prompted Sam's working his butt off for the last six weeks. He looked around the study room he was in. The NYU library was ten stories tall, with a huge open vertical space in the middle, and floor after floor of books encircling it like a vise. It made him feel nauseated just looking at it.

But down here in one of the first-floor study rooms, he could block out the rest of the cavernous building and experience only the hushed quiet of the room, the sound-deadening camel-colored carpet, the deeply ugly tweed-covered easy chairs that dotted the room
like chicken pox on a first-grader.


Sam shifted again in his seat, feeling his muscles' achy protest. How long had he been sitting here, wading through the text and class notes for his human sexuality class? At least three hours, with only one bathroom break. He needed coffee. He needed a Danish or something. At the beginning of the year, someone had turned him on to onion bagels with scallion cream cheese. He'd thought they

were incredible, until the night he'd thrown one up through his nose after a bout of tequila shots in Josh Seidman's dorm room.

Once you throw something up through your nose, you never want to eat it again.
Fact of life.


Human sexuality. What a laugh. The course was required for pre-meds, and he and his pals thought it would be a hoot. Instead, it somehow managed to suck every last bit of titillating humor from the subject, and turn it into something so dry that sometimes Sam wondered if the team who wrote the textbook had ever, ever gotten it on
once
in their whole dreary academic lives.

Not that Sam was an expert. In fact, he was a royal screw-up when it came to sex, pardon the pun. He had a gorgeous, willing girlfriend, who, even though she was only a high school senior, was still so hot that his friends envied him. But she'd cheated on him. And he didn't have the guts to confront her about it. He wasn't even sure it was worth it, especially after what happened the other night. He'd gotten himself shitfaced and, pissed at Gaia, pissed at Heather, so freaking sick of school and studying and ice and snow--he'd done the dirty with a woman he'd met in a bar. They'd been chatting, friendly-like, and then she put her hand on his thigh and suddenly they were leaving the bar together.

Then there had been the soul-destroying event of

finding out that the woman was none other than Gaia's guardian, Ella Niven. Despite himself, Sam groaned out loud. When he'd found out,
he'd almost thrown his guts up
, all over Gaia's front door. Man, he was lower than low. Lower than a snake's belly. Lower than a--

This was so messed up. First off, he had to break it off with Heather soon. He was treating her like shit, even though he didn't mean to. She was treating him like shit, too.

If he didn't get the balls to break up with her, it would never happen. He wasn't blind. He knew it was a big prestige thing for her to have a college boyfriend. And she probably cared for him. If he didn't break up with her, they would just drift along in
this lame-ass way
, neither of them happy, until finally,
boom.
They'd be standing at the altar pledging to go through with this sham of a life forever. He couldn't let that happen. He was a man. A man had balls. He would find the balls to break up with Heather.

Mindlessly, Sam's gaze drifted down to the text page before him. It was almost a full-page, head-on view of A Male's Reproductive Organs. The Non-Excited State. Sam stared at it blankly.
Oh, right,
he thought bleakly.
Balls.


HEATHER LOOKED AT THE SEE
-through clear plastic princess phone on her bedside table. It was not ringing. It had not rung in much too long.
Maybe Sam has forgotten how to dial,
Heather thought sarcastically.
Maybe Sam has forgotten that
phones exist. That bastard, maybe he's forgotten
I
exist.

A Sisterly Thing

The phone sat there silently.
Okay, I'm a modern woman,
thought Heather.
I can express my needs. Right now I need a boyfriend who adores me. Right now I need to go to bed with Sam and have him hold me. Because when we're in bed, I can forget about everything else for a while. Forget about Gaia, forget about Ed, forget about my family.

Heather picked up the receiver and punched in memory dial &ash;1. On the other end, the phone in Sam's dorm suite rang and rang. "Pick it up," Heather said softly. "Pick it up, you jerk. Be there."

"Hello?"

Heather instantly assessed it as a non-Sam voice.

"This is Heather," she said.

"Heather, babe, it's Will."

"Hi, Will. Listen, is Sam there?"

"No dice," said Will. "Sam is wearing out the study chairs over at the library. His dad had his hide over Christmas because of his grades."

"Yeah, I know," said Heather. "So he's at the library?"

"Yep. I'll tell him you called, okay?"

"Okay." Heather hung up the phone. Being at the library, studying alone, was perhaps almost
a partial excuse
for not calling. And Heather did know that Sam's dad, the earnest Dr. Moon, had really gotten on Sam's case about his grades. So Sam was studying at the library. He wasn't somewhere with someone else. Like Gaia. As soon as the thought intruded, Heather quickly shut it out. God, if only Gaia would just get hit by a truck or something, Heather's life would be almost bearable again. For Heather, Gaia's existence was like getting
clubbed in the head
all the time and still trying to live a normal life.

Flopping over on her pillow, Heather tried to decide if she should go by the NYU library. Just pretend to be popping in. After all, her school had library privileges. She could say she needed to look something up. Then maybe she could convince Sam that he had studied enough, and they could go get coffee, and then they could swing by his dorm room . . . and then she would get home at two o'clock in the morning on a school night and Heather's parents would plotz.

Also, how likely was it that she would find him? How humiliating was it to plan a trip to the library on

a Thursday night, hoping to run into a boyfriend who was treating you like shit? It was ridiculously humiliating, that's what.
To hell with him.
She would go out by herself, or with her sister Phoebe. Then when Sam called,
she
would be out. The ball would be in her court. And she wouldn't call him back for two frigging days, that jerk.

Heather scrambled off her bed. Maybe Phoebe would be into catching an early movie at the Angelika or something. A sisterly thing.

A bathroom connected Heather and Phoebe's bedrooms. When Heather heard the shower water shut off, she gave the door a brief tap and opened it.

"Hey, Feeb, I have a great idea," Heather began.

Phoebe had just stepped out of the shower and was reaching for a fluffy gold towel. It took only moments for Heather's gaze to sweep her sister's body. She blinked as Phoebe quickly wrapped herself in the towel, brushing long wet strands of hair out of the way.

"Whoa," Heather said without thinking. "You're . . . really skinny."

Really skinny
didn't begin to describe what Heather had caught a glimpse of. She knew Phoebe had been dieting a lot--an attempt to get rid of the freshman fifteen she'd put on last year. But until now she'd simply thought Phoebe looked fabulous, model-slim in her bulky winter clothes. Naked, Phoebe
looked like something else. Her elbows were whitened points. Her knees had sags around them, like an old lady's. Extra skin. Heather had been able to see Phoebe's rib bones through her skin, and her two hip bones jutted out like clothes hangers. She was much too thin.

Phoebe briskly started toweling her hair. "Thanks," she said casually.

"Like maybe you don't need to diet anymore," Heather said carefully. Now that she looked closely, she saw her sister's skin stretched taut over her facial bones. Her eyes looked deep-set, her cheekbones
carved and prominent.
Without makeup, her sister looked pale, anemic, underfed. With makeup, Heather knew, Phoebe looked stunning.

Bending over, Phoebe combed her hair out with her fingers, then expertly wrapped a towel around her head. She stood up and tucked in the towel ends. She smiled at Heather, and it suddenly seemed garish, skeletal. Heather began to feel as if she was about to freak out. "Heather," Phoebe said in
an older-sister singsong.
"I'm not dieting anymore. I'm just watching my weight. Trying not to go overboard. You won't believe how awful it was when I was practically a size nine! It was like, I couldn't button anything. I'm never going there again, let me tell you."

Phoebe brushed past Heather and went into her own room, but didn't start getting dressed.
She's waiting for me to leave,
Heather thought numbly.

"No kidding, Feeb," Heather said. "I mean, of course you don't want to be a size nine. But you don't want to be a size zero, either. I think you could lighten up, maybe even put on a few pounds."

"Oh, no way," said Phoebe, sounding irritated. "My body is finally the way I want it. No way am I going to sabotage it now." Her eyebrows came together and she looked at Heather with narrowed eyes. "You know, maybe you're just jealous."

Heather didn't know what to say. Her? Heather Gannis? Jealous? Not in a million years. She opened her mouth to say as much to Phoebe, but on second thought, closed it again without a word. Phoebe turned her back on Heather and opened her closet door. "Okay, clear out. I have to get dressed."

It was a dismissal, and Heather cleared out. There was no way she would go to a movie with Phoebe now. Instead, she went to find their mother.

"Mom?" Heather tapped on the door of her mother's bedroom. Mrs. Gannis was stretched out on her bed, reading a magazine.

"Yes?"

Heather took a deep breath. Her mother had never been easy to talk to. It was as if she had done her job by producing three children, and after that, they were

kind of
on their own.
Maybe that wasn't fair. Heather knew it wasn't easy, living with Dad's reversal of fortune. Her mom had signed on for one kind of lifestyle, and now all of a sudden she was practically clipping coupons. But then, it was tough on all of them.

"Mom, have you noticed how Phoebe looks lately?" Feeling like a rat, Heather came in and perched on the end of her mother's bed. If Phoebe knew she was doing this,
all hell would break loose.


Mrs. Gannis looked up, smiled. "Yes, she looks marvelous, doesn't she? I'm so proud of her. She looked simply awful when she got back from that college."