Chapter 15

"What do you mean?" Gaia asked.

Joan hesitated. She had been longing to tell someone about her interactions with God for so long, but Gaia really didn't need Joan's troubles. Actually it was barely trouble compared to what Gaia had been through. Yet who better to share that with than a girl who has hard to believe secrets too?

"Well," Joan began, taking a deep breath. "It kinda began about a year ago, I woke up and-"

A nock interrupted Joan and Kevin opened the door. "Hey, I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"No," Joan said hastily, grateful for not having told Gaia, because she really wasn't ready for it. "What do you need?"

"Actually I kinda wanted to talk to Gaia for a bit, if that's ok."

"What? Oh, yeah, okay," Joan said, sounding flustered. Joan got up and left the room and shut the door.

"What was that all about?" Kevin asked.

"How should I know? I don't live here."

Kevin sat there awkwardly, waiting for Gaia to say something else. When she didn't, he said, "so, I was wondering, you said you had a friend in a wheelchair. I was wondering if you could share what you know, I mean my family's clueless and the doctors just give you statistics."

Gaia took a slow breath in and took it out. She missed Ed, but knowing that he probably hated her, that he's probably glad to be rid of her, didn't make Gaia in the mood to talk about him. But Gaia knew what Kevin was getting at: he needed to talk about it. And who better to talk to than the girl who's ex-best friend and ex-boyfriend who was paralyzed from the waist down, but now is walking?

"Yeah."

"Did they say that he didn't have a chance of his walking when he first was in the wheelchair?"

"I don't know; I didn't know him then."

"But you didn't… judge him, because he was in the wheelchair?"

"Look, it wouldn't have made a difference, when I moved to New York, I wasn't going to have friends." Gaia was lost deep in thought, then said, "I guess my plans don't always turn out."

"What are your plans now?"

"I don't know," she said. "I really don't know what I can do."