Read Online Normal by Francine Pascal - Free Book Online

uttered.
    She finally applied enough pressure to his windpipe that he passed out. His body went completely limp on top of hers, and she hurled him off of her, leaping back onto her feet in one smooth motion. She snatched up his knife and ran for the last psycho still standing.
    She waved the knife right in his face. “It’s over!” she warned him. “Unless you want to end up in pieces, I suggest you get the hell out of here!”
    But he only laughed harder, like he’d just shared the most hysterical joke with himself. “Go ahead,” he chortled. “Cut me! Try to cut me!” He jumped up and down in place like a hyperactive child. “I want you to. I dare you to. It’s not going to hurt. It’s not.” And then his laughs began to give way to a terrible coughing fit. “Oh Jesus,” he spat out between coughs. “Oh God, I love it. Thank you, God . . . I love it.” And then he dropped down to his knees and clasped his hands overhis eyes. “Oh God.” He coughed again. “My head. My freaking head.”
    Slowly Gaia let the knife drop to the ground as she watched this pathetic sight. The boy gripped his head tighter and tighter, and then finally he collapsed, falling back into the grass with a light thud.
    Gaia stared down at his body with utter puzzlement. She knelt down next to him and checked for a pulse. He was still breathing. He was just gone for the night.
    She felt a hand come down on her shoulder. But she instantly knew that it was Jake’s. This particular nightmare was finally over.
    â€œAre you okay?” he asked.
    â€œI’m fine,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “It’s them I want to know about. What the hell happened to them?” She scanned the unconscious bodies strewn about her and tried to make sense of the strangest attack she’d ever experienced.
    â€œCan you stand up?”
    â€œOf course,” Gaia said. She made a move to stand up, and then all of Washington Square Park began to spin in huge swooping circles. “Or actually, Jake, will you help get me back uptown?”
    â€œOf course,” Jake said, kneeling down next to her and checking the bruises on her face.
    â€œGood. Because I think I’m going to . . . ”
    The last thing she felt was Jake’s arms catching her before she hit the ground.
    Kaia
    GOD, WHAT IS THIS, “LOVERS’ NIGHT” or something?
    Ed’s annoyance level was spiking as he scanned the line of bowling lanes at Bowlmor. Couple after couple after couple. All of them slapping fives and swigging from their beers and then, of course, kissing. A kiss for every strike, every spare, every gutter ball; it didn’t seem to matter. Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” was blaring through the speakers, and somehow Bowlmor had been transformed into some sort of fifties-style make-out palace. And it just kept inducing the same damn flashback over and over again in Ed’s head.
    Jake and Gaia. Jake and Gaia smiling. Jake and Gaia gleaming with the light of teenage love in the afternoon.
    Jake and Gaia kissing. Over and over.
    It was only in the last few minutes that Ed had begun to understand why this nagging image refused to leave his head—why it was making him so excessively annoyed. The reason wasn’t jealousy. The reason was this:
    If there was such a thing as an alternate universe—some reality that existed somewhere else in time and space—and if Ed and Gaia just happened to be existing in that alternate universe somewhere . . . then it should have been them kissing across that table in Starbucks. Not that Ed wanted that now, but back then  . . . back when they’d been together, back in that alternate universe, a simple moment like that was all he had wanted.
    A moment of normalcy. That’s what he’d wanted so badly for them. A series of moments, actually. Just the