Gone by Francine Pascal Page A

Skyler agreed. “What a freak. You’d think he’d never gotten dissed before.”
    â€œYeah. I can’t believe I ever spent any time with that guy. It was all just a big mistake. I must have been out of my mind. What kind of girl spends all her time with a guy whose ego is that humongous?” She stared straight at Skyler.
    Careful This is no time to get clever.
    But Skyler didn’t seem to catch the subtle barb. After all, egomaniacs of Skyler’s proportions were never aware that they were egomaniacs.
    â€œYou know what?” she said. “I want to write Jake an e-mail. I do. I want to give him a piece of my mind. I mean, high school’s over anyway, right? What high school relationship has ever made it past the first two weeks of college? I should just give him one big fat official kiss-off. A last goodbye. You know?”
    Skyler perked right up at the notion—even more than Gaia had expected. “A last goodbye… ,” he mused. “Yes. I think that’s a brilliant idea. He deserves it. A nice little well-written ‘Dear Jake’ e-mail. Oh, you’ve got to do it.”
    You’d just love that, wouldn’t you, Skyler? You’d love to see me clear the decks of anyone who stands between you and sole ownership of Gaia Moore. You make me sick.
    â€œCan I use your laptop?” she asked.
    â€œAbsolutely.” He grinned. “Hell, ’d0Éhelp you write it.”
    Of course you will Aren’t you just oozing with generosity?
    Skyler grabbed Gaia’s hands and lifted her off the couch, pulling her across the room to his laptop and placing her in his desk chair, hovering behind her as he massaged her shoulders.
    With her back to him, Gaia took this rare opportunity to actually wince at his touch. She’d been holding in all the winces for so long, she had to at least let one of them go. Then she pulled his laptop closer.
    Here it was, sitting right in her hands. The only other potential source of evidence in this apartment. Skyler had surely deleted anything incriminating from his hard drive. But that still left his e-mail. There was still a chance that she could nab something legit from an e-mail folder. There was just one little problem…. She would need his password.
    Gaia went online to get web access to her e-mail. She quickly typed in her user name, and then she entered her password.
    The absolutely wrong password.
    The expected message popped up in red.
Invalid entry. Please reenter your password.
    â€œWhoops,” Gaia muttered. She typed in the very wrong password again and waited for the messageagain. “What the hell?” she groaned. She typed in the wrong password again and again until she finally got a message suggesting that she contact her e-mail server to correct the problem.
Perfect.
She smacked her hand down on the desk with gusto. “Goddammit! Stupid computers. I
hate
these things.”
    Then she leaned back slowly, rubbing her head up and down against Skyler’s flat stomach, staring up at him with that doe-eyed girlie-girl expression she’d been practicing all day. “My e-mail sucks” she pouted. “Can we use yours?” she asked helplessly.
    Skyler laughed and gave her a condescending pat on the head. “Sure,” he said.
    Such a gentleman.
Such a stupid gentleman.
    Gaia stood up from the chair and let Skyler sit down to sign in to his e-mail. She could tell he was hesitating to enter his password with her standing so close, so she immediately stepped away and turned for the kitchen. “I’m going to need a drink for this,” she joked.
    She took a few more steps toward the kitchen until Skyler felt secure in typing his password, and then she whipped her head back over her shoulder and focused in on the keyboard. Here was yet another thing Skyler didn’t know about her. Her vision was far beyond average. She could pinpoint the smallest of moving targets from