Blind Read Free Page A

worth making such a stink.”
    The first few sheets where hopeless. The paper flaked away into dust as soon as she touched it. At the back of the pack a single page had survived. The paper was charred black at the top, and there were a few holes on the page, but the rest was only a toasty brown. In these lighter areas Gaia could make out… something. She held the scorched page close to herface and frowned. The first part was a mess. Some kind of code. The rest didn’t even look like writing. There were no letters that she recognized. Instead, what was left of the page was completely covered in three repeating symbols. A green delta. A red cross. A blue circle. A brown square. The symbols sprawled right up to the right edge of the paper. In the burned areas she could make out glossy spots where more symbols had been.
    Gaia stared intently. Some new kind of code? She was good with codes, always had been, but this was unusual. Four symbols, over and over, and what looked like random combinations. How could she translate this?
    She lowered the page and gave the metal trash can a sharp kick. The can turned over, spilling gray ash onto the floor. Smoke started to rise from the bland, tan carpeting, but Gaia stomped it out before it could become a real fire. She stirred the black mess with the toe of her shoe and saw something else that had escaped total consumption by the flames. She reached in and pulled out a Polaroid photo. Like the paper, most of the photograph was blackened. The plastic covering over the picture had bubbled and turned brown. In the shadows that remained, Gaia could barely make out the silhouettes of three people, but she couldn’t see any of their faces clearly enough to say who they were. Gaia and her parents? Tom andsome friends? There was nothing but dark, somewhat eerie shadows.
    â€œWonderful.” Gaia sighed and looked around the room. A half-burned page full of nonsense and a half-burned photo of three ghosts. Not exactly the kind of answers she had been hoping for.
    Gaia, this is your old friend Disappointment.
    Disappointment, you certainly remember Gaia. You’ve met her so many times.
    It took half an hour for Gaia to sift through the mess on the floor and check around the room for something the messy visitors might have missed. If there were secrets hiding in this place, they were evidently staying secret. Finally Gaia found a plastic bag that was half full of crushed soda cans.
    My father,
she thought.
Sure, he’s a spy, a liar, and probably a killer, but he recycles.
She dumped the cans on the floor, put the burned photo and page of symbols into the bag, and stuffed the little package into her coat.
    She gave a moment’s thought to climbing back down the way she had come up, then shook her head. There was plain stupid and
really
stupid, then there was gargantuan stupid. Gaia gave a last look at the wrecked apartment, flipped off the lights, and went out into the hall to ring for an elevator. She stopped at the door on the way out, turned, and gave the doorman a quick, fierce hug.
    â€œThe party was great,” she said. “Thanks for the invite.”
    Gaia didn’t bother to look back and see the expression on the old man’s face. She just hunched her shoulders against the rain and kept walking.

Idiot in Russian
    THUNDERSTORMS AND CRUTCHES DID not mix. The rubber tips on the ends of the steel-and-wood contraptions weren’t exactly nonslip under the best of conditions. In the rain they were about as useful as racing slicks on a snail.
    â€œAre you sure you want to walk around in this weather? he asked.
    Tatiana looked at him and flashed a bright smile. “You said we could look around the park today. I’ve walked around Moscow in worse weather.
    â€œBesides,” she began, but Ed could see her struggle as she tried to translate her thoughts into English. In only a few weeks her speech had already become more fluid, more casual, but she