4. Reevaluation
A quarter of an hour later all three were ensconced at the rest stop's one and only real-food restaurant, the alternatives being MacDonald's and a particularly scabby-looking KFC.
The forger and the point man regarded their charge across the table, Gia sat with her foot on the chair, her leg folded against her chest.
"Here" said Arthur, offering her a menu. He was starting to feel highly uncomfortable under her insistent gaze, underdressed now he was out of his habitual business suit. He glanced at Eames who, noticing his discomfort gave him an I told you so expression.
"So darlin', tell us about yourself" began Eames, always one to make conversation.
"What's to say?" she replied, seemingly genuinely curious at the question.
"How 'bout you start with your full name?"
"You wouldn't." she said. Eames furrowed his brow before shifting slightly in his seat, Arthur saw him open up his posture to make himself look more approachable and honest, a forging trick he'd seen Eames pull a thousand times before.
"Maybe not, but… whats to hide?" one hand palm up on the table, trustworthy without overdoing it.
Gia looked at him for a moment, like he was stupid or something then, putting both feet on the floor she leaned in towards Eames as though she was about to whisper a secret, both men leaned towards her to catch it.
"Everything to hide, Thomas" Eames's eye's widened and his mouth dropped open slightly in shock.
"How did you know my name?" He asked her, evenly, the shock gone from his face as soon as it had arrived. There was that slight darkness to his tone which had earlier made Arthur repress a shudder.
Gia said nothing for almost a full minute then, "Everything to hide." and she spoke no more.
Lunch passed slowly, Arthur ordering for Gia when everyone realised she hadn't looked at the menu. Eames was abstracted, fiddling with the cutlery, fingers drumming on the table top, tapping his foot until Arthur could have kicked him. They both watched Gia eat, the girl was thin to the point where it was actually vaguely disgusting, Arthur had felt every rib and the raw edge of her pelvis as he'd helped her down the stairs and her wrists poking out of the jumper managed to be both tiny and sinewy but also look massive with barely-covered bone. She ate excruciatingly slowly, hands shaking slightly, she made up every spoonful with precisely the same small amount of soup. Neither the forger nor the point man could tell weather she relished or loathed it.
As soon as the men had finished eating, she set down her spoon as well even though she was only just half way done with the soup. Her hands were still shaking slightly although she clasped them together to suppress it.
"Its ok you know," said Arthur "We'll wait"
Gia shook her head but smiled a little.
The waitress for their section bustled over. She was a big lady, middle aged and schoolmarmish with mid brown hair piled on top of her head and a spare tire concealed under her clean, white apron.
"So dearies, would you like any pudding? I'm afraid we're all out of ice-cream except for the strawberry." She looked expectantly at Gia for an answer, "what do you think dearie?"
"Sorry, I'm allergic." Gia mumbled, flushing slightly. The waitress turned to Eames.
"Sorry, I'm the same" said Eames smiling placatingly as the woman visibly bristled.
Arthur was now under the full force of the waitress's expectation, he scratched the bak of his neck, wishing he'd worn a suit and didn't look so bloody young, "Ermm… not for me thanks" The woman stalked off without another word, as though the rejection was a personal insult.
Arthur turned to Gia, who was still clenching her hands together, "You're allergic to strawberries huh? Anything else?" She seemed to consider him before answering, sizing him up.
"penicillin, maybe."
"maybe?"
"Its genetic, me mum was."
"Ah." Something in Gia's sort voice told Arthur not to ask about dad.
While the unlikely trio had been eating, the sky darkened outside, the storm clouds dumping more snow onto the hapless cars stuck in traffic on the road below. The cars all started blurring into one another under the weight of the whiteness, like a herd of shuffling snowmen. The lights were starting to come on along the motorway, bathing the scene in their orange glow, bleaching the remaining colours from the landscape. Gia wondered what the two men were planning to do about tonight, sleep in the car? It would certainly be an improvement on her last resting place, Wheeler had salvaged a large baby's crib from a rubbish dump, ripped out the rotting mattress and fitted a metal grill for a lid. She wouldn't have minded so much if he didn't also use the flat for cooking meth, too many nights she'd lain awake praying that she didn't smell smoke or hear the sounds of exploding chemicals. She tried not to think about what would happen if there was a fire, Wheeler would never remember to unlock the cage. The smell of burning flesh and the oily smell of the chemicals haunted her dreams, every night she woke up with the scabs on her knuckles broken open from beating at the metal grille above her. It was on some of those nights that her screams would wake Wheeler from his drunken slumber and he would throw his shadow through the doorway of her room and shake the sides of the crib until her teeth rattled in her skull and her ears were ringing from the impact.
"Hey" a voice was calling from far off it seemed to Gia, so entrenched she was in memories "Hey!" Her head snapped up and she saw Eames, the forger, allergic to strawberries, waving at her.
"What?"
"Are you ok" he asked.
Gia nodded, mutely. Her hands were hurting.
"No you're not. Whats going on?"
"What do you care?" Gia's guard came up like the hackles on a startled dog.
"Regardless of what I think, your hands are bleeding." Gia looked down and saw that he was right, her scabs had broken again, when would they ever stop? She'd even got blood on the starched white table cloth and her napkin.
"Oh." Sometimes Gia wondered if she wanted it hard enough she could just become invisible, so far it hadn't worked. Not with mum, not with the nuns at the orphanage, not with the prying social workers, not with the men who came at night, not with Wheeler and certainly not with Eames. In fact the man was looking at her as she hadn't been looked at in years. Really trying to see something, like he was searching for something in her eyes or written on her face, it was like being under a microscope. But not in the way that it had been with the social workers or nuns, they'd already known what they were looking for and had only seen her as a confirmation of their theory, that she was a freak, a demon, the devil's child, something broken far beyond repair.
Eames didn't know what he was looking at yet, neither man did, Gia almost felt sorry for them, as soon as they did know everything would be different. No more searching looks, once people knew Gia's secrets, she really did become invisible. She considered it her life's great irony.
"I've got some…" Eames started rummaging in the first aid kit "Bandaids, there you go, just what you need." He passed them over smiling, Gia did a little bit of her own staring, looking into his eyes in the exact way which she knew he hated. Everyone hated it. He looked away.
"Thanks."
Arthur put down his coffee, and reached over the table towards Gia, instinctively she shrank back putting her hands under table.
"Hey, its ok… just let me see it."
"What?"
"Your hands, is that alright?"
Gia extended one hand, still un-Bandaided, across the table towards Arthur. He took it gently, his own hands very warm holding the coffee mug. His fingerers ghosted across her bleeding fingers and knuckles, he took a napkin and wiped the worst of the blood off.
"When did you first get these cuts?"
"When I first got in that flat, maybe a month ago… lost track of time."
"Right, thats a long time to have open cuts like this… well, before you get those band-aids on you might wants some antiseptic, that flat didn't look the cleanest."
Eames dug some out from the depths of the first aid kit and handed it over. He looked like he was working up to asking something a little awkward.
Finally he got it out.
"Gia," she looked at him, away from the nasty gel that Arthur was putting on her hand. "Yes?"
"How old are you?"
"Is this because of the Dora the Explorer jumper?"
"Umm, not really, I was just wondering…" The forger ran his hands through his hair, a strangely unguarded movement for someone who had every aspect of their body language under control.
"That depends… whats the date?"
"The date?"
She nodded.
"The fifteenth of December."
"Then I'm twenty, just"
"Right… a bit too old for Dora then…you really are the smallest twenty-year-old I've ever met, usually I'm quite good at guessing age."
"Don't feel bad. I wasn't fed much as a kid"
Eames laughed for a moment. Then he raised an eyebrow, "That wasn't a joke was it."
"Nope." Gia hissed in pain as Arthur applied antiseptic to a particularly large cut.
"You ok?" Eames asked.
"Yeah."
"You're doing really well, very brave."
"Thanks… or something"
"Or something." he chuckled. He turned to Arthur who was now fixing the last Band-aid "So, while we're on the subject of bravery, are you join to tell us where we're sleeping tonight?"
"Oh… right" A dull flush coloured Arthur's cheeks momentarily, thats not like Arthur thought Eames, usually the point man was utterly unflappable in the face of difficult business, maybe it was the lack of a suit which had got him out of sorts.
Arthur who had braved another altercation with the hotel receptionist only to be told there was still only one room to be had, was not looking forward to telling Eames that he was going to be sleeping in the same room as "killer psyco" and also telling Gia that she had to spend the night in a room with two men, he had a feeling this wasn't her idea of fun. He felt a bit hard done by, why had Eames got the easy job, shopping at TKMAXX, honestly, any fool could pick out a few clothes, not many could have held out for so long against the receptionist from hell. If there was one thing that made Arthur uncomfortable, the was failure, and this time he had certainly come a cropper.
"There's only one room, so Eames and I will have to sleep on the floor."
"Like I say," smiled Eames as an aside to Gia "useless, our Arthur."
A/N Thanks every one who's stuck with this story, I know the updating is really really slow, Im at school most of the time and fanficiton is blocked there (!) I should have a new chapter or two ready in a few days xoxox