Fearless- #1 by Francine Pascal

butterfly

I really like this book...actually, it's #1 of a series called "Fearless" lol, the first book is called Fearless..so yeah. I read a lot of books by Francine Pascal. [em12] I hope u like it...it's not really in chapter form tho..so yeah...oh, and her name is pronounced Guy-uh..ok..:-)

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    Don't go into the park after sunset. The warning rolled around Gaia Moore's head as she crossed the street that bordered Washington Square park to the east. She savored the words as she would a forkful of chocolate cheesecake.
    There was a stand of trees directly in front of her and a park entrance a couple hundred feet to the left. She hooked trhough the trees, feeling the lfamiliar fizz in her limbs. It wasn't fear, of course. It was energy, maybe even excitement-the things that came when fer should have. She passed slowly through a grassy stretch, staying off the lighted paths that snaked inefficiently through the park.
    As the crow flies. That's how she liked to walk. So what if she had nowhere to go? So waht if no one on earth knew or probably cared where she was or when she'd get home? That wasn't the point. It didn't mean she had to take the long way. She was starting a new school in the morning, and she meant to put as much disance between herself and tomorrow as she could. Walking fast didn't stop the earth's slow roll, but sometimes it felt like it could.
    She'd passed the midway point, marked by the miniature Arc de Triomph, before she caught the flutter of a shadow out of the corner of her eye. She didn't turn her head. She hunched her shoulders so her tall freame looked smaller. The shadow froze. She could feel eyes on her back. Bingo.
    The mayor liked to brag how far the New York City crime rate had fallen, bu Washington Square at night didn't disappoint. In her short time here she'd learned it was full of junkies who couldn't resist a blond girl with  full wallet, especially under the cover of night.
    Gaia didn't alter the rhythm of her steps. An attacker proceeded differently when he senses your awareness. Any deception was her advantage.
    The enery was building in her veins. Come on, she urged silently. Her mine was beautifully blank. Her concentration was perect. her ears were pricked to ecipher the subtlest motion.
    Yet she could have snesed the clumsy attacker thundering from the brush if she'd been deaf and blind. A hevy arm was thrown over her shoulder and tightened around her neck.
    "Oh, please," she muttered, burying an elbow in his solar plexus.
     "as he staggered backward and sucked for air, she turned on him indingnantly. Yes, it was a big, clumsy, stupid him-a little taller than average and young, probably not even twenty years old. She felt a tiny spark of hope as she let her eyes wander through the bushes. maybe there were more...? The really incompentent dopes usually traveled in packs. But she head nothing more than his noisy, X-rated complaints.
     She let him come at her again. Might as well get a shred of a workout. She even let him earn a little speed as he barreled toward her. She loved turning a man's own strength against him. That was the essence of it. She reversed his momentum with a fast knee strike and finished him off a with a front kick.
    He lay sprawled in a half-conscious pile, and she was tempted to demand his waller or his watch or something. A smile flickered over her face. it would be amusing, but that wasn't the point, was it?
    Just s she was turning away, she detected a faint glitter on the ground near his left arm. She came closer and leanded down. It ws a razor blade, shiny but not perfectly clean. In the dark she couldn't tell if the crud on the blade was rust or blood. She glanced quickly at her hands. No, he'd done her no harm. But it lodged in her mind as a strange choice of weapon.
    She walked away without bothing to look further. She knew he'd be fine. Her speciality was subduing without cusing any real damage. He'd lie there for a few minutes he'd be sore, maybe bruised tomorrow. he'd brush the cobwebs off his imagination to invent a story for his buddies about how three seven-foot, tree-hundred-pound male karate black belts attacked him in the park.
     But she would bet her lifeon the fact that he would never sneak up on another fragile-looking woman without remembering this night. And that was the point. That was what Gaia lived for. [em25]


    "Who can come to the board and write out the quadratic formula?" Silence. [em08]
     "A volunteer, please? I need a volunteer."
     [I]No[/I]. Gaia sent the teacher telephatic missles. [I]Do not call on me.[/I]
    "Come on, kids." This is basic stuff. You are supposed to be advanced class. Am I in the wrong room?"
    The teacher's voice- what was the woman's name again?-was reedy and awful sounding. Gaia really should remember her name considering this was not the first day. [I]
    No. No. No.[/I] The teacher's eyes swept over the second-to-back-row twice before they rested on Gaia. [I]Shit.[/I]
    "You, in the...brown, is it? What's our name?"
    "Gaia."
    "Gay what?"
    Every member of the class snickered.
    The beautiful thing about Gaia was that she didn't hate them for laughing. In fact, she loved them for being so predictable. It made them so manageable. There was nothing those butheads could give that Gaia couldn't take.
    "Guy. (pause) Uh."
    The teacher cocked her head as if the name were some kind of insult. "Right, then. Come on up to the board. Guy (pause) Uh."
    The class snickered again.
    GOd, she hated school. Gaia dragged herself out of her chair. Why was she here anyway? She didn't want to be a doctor or a lawyer? She didn't want to be a CIA agent or Green Beret or superoperative X-Files type, like her dad had obviously hoped.
    What did she want to be when she grew up? (She loved that question.) A waitress. She wanted to serve food at some piece-of-crap greasy spoon and wait for a customer to bitch her out, or stiff her on the tipe, or pinch her butt. She'd travel across the country from one bad resaurant to the next and scare people who thought it was okay to be mean to waitresses. And there were a lot of people like that. Nobody got more shit than a waitress did. (Well, mabe telemarketers, but they sort of deserved it.)
    "Gaia? Any day now."
    Snicker. Snicker. This was an easy crowd. Ms. What's her face mut have been thrilled with her sucess.
    Gaia hesitated at the board for a moment.
    "You don't know it, do you?" The teacher's tone was possibly the most patronizing thing she had ever heard.
    Gaia didn't answer. She just wrote the formular out very slowly, appreciating the horrible grinding screech of the chalk and she drew the equals sign. It sounded a lot like the teacher's voice, actually.

[Note from Butterfly: Quadtrict forumula is negative b plus or minus the square root of b2 subtract 4ac over 2a.]

    At the last second she changed the final plus to a minus sign. Of course she knew the formula. What was she, stupid? Her dad had raced her through basic algebra by thirs grade. She'd (begrudgingly) mastered multivariable calculus and linear algebra before she started high school. She might hate math, but she was good at it.
    "I'm sorry, Gaia. That's incorrect. You may sit down.
    Gaia tried to look disappointed as she shuffled to her chair.
    "Talk to me after class about placement, please." The teacher said that in a slightly lower voice, as if the rest of the students wouldn't hear she found Gaia unfit for the class. "Yes, ma'am," Gaia said brightly. It was her first ray of light all day. She'd demote herself to memorizing times tables if it meant getting a different teacher.
    Times tables actually came pretty handy for a waitress. What with figuring out tips and all.


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What'd ya guyz think? Hehe.

Gotta fly.
Peace n Love [em05]
Butterfly [em26]

coolcat

I love all the Fearless series, I got up to #19