Twisted by Francine Pascal Read Free Book Online

tried to smile again, but it was more difficult this time. “Oookay,” she said. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here.”
    Lacing her fingers with Sam’s, Heather started to lead him out of the park. He was coming out of thebizarre stupor—walking like a normal person instead of shuffling like he had moments before. In fact, within seconds he was practically pulling her arm out of its socket .
    What was with him? He was acting like something had him spooked. Heather glanced back in the direction Sam had been looking when he’d stopped in place. For a fraction of a second, a moment so short it might have been imagination , Heather thought she saw someone stepping behind a group of trees—someone with pale blond hair.
    Heather’s blood went cold and hot at the same time. It had only been the barest glimpse, but she knew who that blond hair belonged to. Gaia Moore. And Sam didn’t want Heather to see her.
    â€œSam? What’s the rush?” Heather said, just to see if he would tell her the truth .
    â€œNothing,” he said, still pulling.
    Heather felt a familiar feeling of humiliation, mixed with anger and tinged with fear, slip through her veins. God, she hated Gaia. Heather hated Gaia more than she had ever hated anyone in her whole life. More than everyone she had ever hated in her life put together. Times ten .
    Sam stopped pulling when they reached the far corner, but Heather kept her hand locked together with his as they strolled down the sidewalk. Sam was saying something to her, making suggestions about wherethey might go, what they might do. Heather gave vague, one-word answers to his questions without really hearing them. It was her turn to be distracted.
    Since her first encounter with Gaia, Heather had been burned, humiliated, stabbed, hospitalized, ego bruised, deprived of her boyfriend on various occasions, and detained by the NYU security force.
    None of that came close to the reason Heather hated Gaia. It was the way Sam acted around Gaia. Like he couldn’t think or breathe. Like he’d never seen anything like her.
    And then there was the fact that Gaia was beautiful. She was beautiful without even trying. And that brought Heather to the real heart of it. Not the beauty. Heather hated Gaia because she didn’t seem to try, didn’t seem to care what others thought of her. Gaia dressed like a refugee. She said whatever she wanted. She never even seemed to notice how guys turned around to watch her when she went by. Gaia acted like she didn’t think she was pretty, but Heather knew better than that. Gaia had to know . She just didn’t care.
    It was driving Heather mad—in every sense of the word.
    Sam suddenly stopped walking. His grip on Heather’s hand tightened to painful intensity.
    Heather came out of her daze and struggled against his tight grip. “Sam? Sam, what’s wrong?”
    â€œNothing,” he replied in a harsh whisper. Hestopped again and shook his head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
    Heather stared at him. For a moment she had a terrible premonition that everything between them was over. Ice went down her spine, trickling slowly over every lump in her backbone. He’s going to tell me he’s dumping me. Dumping me for Gaia Moore.
    But Sam wasn’t even looking at Heather. She followed the direction of his gaze and saw a newspaper stand. Right away Heather spotted the thing that had captured Sam’s attention.
    Splashed across the front page of the
Post
was a color photo of a young blond girl. Under the picture was the caption K ILLER T AKES 6 TH V ICTIM .
    Heather untangled her fingers from Sam’s and went in for a closer look. From a distance, the girl in the picture looked a lot like Gaia. A tabloid twin. This had to be the girl that the serial killer had murdered the night before, the one that everyone had been talking about at school.
    It wasn’t Gaia. Still, Heather