Twins Read Online Free PDF Page A

face further in the awkward silence. She couldthink of no tactful way to ask the question, so she just came out with it. “Were you crying?”
    â€œNo,” Ed replied quickly. He twisted his head back toward the window.
    Heather knew why there was so much pain in his eyes. She was just avoiding the obvious.
Gaia Moore.
Only Gaia could elicit that kind of raw emotion from Ed at this point, and that fact left Heather with a muddle of conflicting thoughts too complicated to dissect.
    She knew that Gaia was knee-deep in some kind of crisis, although she didn’t totally understand the situation. Something to do with Gaia’s father and Sam. That was about as much as she knew. But nonetheless, just the day before, Heather had decided to help Gaia with her crisis—to reach out to her in spite of all the prior hatred.
    Someone was apparently stalking Gaia, and as insane as it might have been, Heather had agreed to help her carry out a little antistalker plan. Heather, along with all of her friends, had actually found the courage to dress up like Gaia Moore and scurry out into the street just to confuse whoever was watching her, baiting him into a full-blown wild-goose chase. They’d all pretty much done it just as a lark, but deep down Heather knew better than that. Nothing involving Gaia was ever just a lark. Some part of Heather had known that it was probably the bravest, most heroic thing she had ever done. And for a girl who was supposedly her sworn enemy, no less.
    Heather still wasn’t totally sure why she’d done it. Maybe it was just for Ed’s sake, because he’d asked her to help, because she felt so guilty for being such a selfish bitch to him all these months. But she liked to believe that it was something nobler. She’d sworn to herself and to Ed that she was turning over a new leaf, becoming a far less selfish person from now on. And she’d been reveling in the fact that her new leaf was more than just another one of her empty self-help resolutions. This time she’d actually backed it up with some legitimate action. Helping Gaia was the first thing Heather had done in months that had made her feel truly unselfish. Truth be told, she’d been glowing with pride about it for the rest of last night.
    But there was no point in celebrating her new-found altruism if her little maneuver hadn’t in fact helped Gaia. And judging from the look on Ed’s face, it seemed that might be the case. Much to Heather’s amazement, she was genuinely worried as well.
    â€œWhat happened?” she asked.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Ed muttered.
    â€œLast night”
she pressed. “What happened last night?”
    Ed turned back to Heather, offering her some fleeting eye contact, and then he began to unpack for class. “I have no idea,” he said, void of any emotion.
    â€œWhat do you mean …?” She darted her eyes back toward the door and lowered her voice. “What do you
mean,
you have no idea? What happened with Gaia?”
    â€œI have no idea,” Ed repeated.
    Silence again. Ed’s sudden hostility felt like a sucker punch right to the face, and Heather wasn’t sure how to react. She watched him fiddle with his bag, taking out a different pen and flipping blindly through his copy of
Heart of Darkness,
the book they were currently reading in MacGregor’s class. Small tears streamed from his eyes again, even though his face revealed no feeling.
    â€œYou
are
crying,” she confirmed. “Jesus, what’s going on? You have to tell me.”
    â€œThere’s nothing going on,” he insisted, wiping the tears from his cheeks again as if they weren’t there. But clearly something was either very wrong or else Ed was just sickeningly in love with Gaia Moore. Most likely it was both.
    Heather’s usual resentment was still too dampened to really erupt. “Look,” she said, checking the doorway of the