Jade Read online

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Legal matter

  By Olivia Rigal

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  About the Author

  Review

  Jade

  by

  Olivia Rigal

  ©2013 Lady O Publishing LLC

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Even if some locations depicted do exist

  and some collective events did occur,

  this story is totally fictitious

  The names, the characters, and the events described

  have been imagined by the author.

  Any resemblance to reality would be a coincidence.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

  contact / Lady O Publishing

  www.ladyopublishing.com

  Special thanks to

  Yoly @ Cormar Covers

  Editing by Mikaela Pederson

  @ A Step Up Editing

  Proofreading by Margaret

  @ Editing By maragaret

  Books by Olivia Rigal

  Learning Curves 1

  French Cooking 101

  Learning Curves 2

  Advanced French Kissing,

  Coming soon

  Learning Curves 3

  Detention.

  The Crescent Moon Club

  CHAPTER ONE

  I WAKE UP WITH A pain in my left thigh: it’s the armrest of the seat. I’m frozen in place. I move my legs a little, and try to shift position. I hate flying.

  I hate sitting in a tin box in seats so tiny that I have to lift the armrest to put my butt down. I hate that I can hardly stretch my legs. Seriously, I’m only 5 foot; how do tall people manage? I wrap the tiny airline cover around my neck and close my eyes again. I don’t even want to look at the time. When I last checked, it felt as if time had slowed to a crawl. The air temperature is too low; I’m freezing. By the time I reach Bangkok, I’ll be an icicle. I close my eyes, and will myself to sleep.

  I wake up again to the voice of the captain announcing that we’re starting our descent. He says it’s going to be forty-one degrees Celsius and one hundred percent humidity when we land. No surprise there; April’s the hot and rainy season in South East Asia. The guy sitting on the other side of the aisle complains that they should do the announcements in “civilized measures.” I felt like telling him about the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, but I know it’s useless; his brain is programmed in Fahrenheit, and that’s all he’ll ever know. Maybe the next generation will adopt metrics. Instead of saying anything, I just ignore him. I’ve been getting better at that lately: not blurting out what comes to my mind and pissing off people I don’t even know for no good reason at all. Maybe, it will help me stay out of trouble.

  I rub my arms. I want to get up to stretch my legs, but I can’t, as there’s a little girl’s head on my lap. She’s fast asleep. She’s about ten years old, and she’s tiny, shy and traveling alone with a “U.M.” bag around her neck.

  When we first settled in, I had lifted the armrest to spread over to her seat, so I can’t blame her for reclaiming her territory by leaning on me. I teased her a little before dinner, and asked her if she knew what the two letters in “U.M.” stand for.

  “It means ‘Unaccompanied Minor’. They give these to kids who travel alone. My passport and all my traveling papers are in the bag,” she had answered very seriously.

  “But do you know what the flight attendants think it means?”

  She had looked at me as if I were an idiot, shaking her head at the stupidity of the question.

  “They call the likes of you the ‘Ugly Monkeys’,” I told her with a wink.

  She had furrowed her brows. For a moment, I had thought my humor must suck so much that I couldn’t even amuse a ten year old. Then her face relaxed; she understood that it was a joke, and she’d laughed. I could see in her eyes that she was imagining unruly children jumping from seat to seat as crazy monkeys.

  “Cute,” she had said, before putting on her headphones to watch the children’s program on the miniature television embedded in the back of the seat in front of us.

  I suppose she’s withdrawn because her parents have told her not to speak with strangers, unless she’s like me: an old soul in a young body, just trying to fit in, and play with the hand that life has dealt her.

  There I go with the projection, again. When I tried therapy, the doctor said that I project myself into others way too often, the projection of myself into others thing. Yeah, right. But I’ve only been me all my life so how am I supposed to project something else?

  Intellectually, I understand that I’m not like everybody. But then everybody must think that, right? I guess I got lucky, since my being special came with an amazing gift: a super bright brain. The problem is that it’s very lonely to be a fucking genius.

  It’s lonely on the playground, because you don’t think it’s funny to make another kid eat a worm, nor is it funny to throw sand in his eyes.

  It’s lonely in grammar school, because by the time you get there, you’ve already learned to read, and you get bored out of your skull. I guess I was lucky that my hand eye coordination did not develop as quickly as the rest, as it gave me something to do during the first year; work on my writing skills.

  By June, I had acquired an amazing penmanship, and the grown-ups had realized that I was not sullen and unfriendly to my peers by choice; I simply did not fit in. Hence came the IQ test to figure out how challenged I was. Obviously they phrased it more gently, but I understood that they were trying to ascertain how retarded I was.

  I had surprised everyone; I scored so high that they thought it was a mistake, and they had me retake the test.

  To this day, my entire family is still puzzled by the strange package they’ve received in me at the gene lottery. They’re average at everything, except being happy; that’s one thing they’re really great at.

  My dad’s a baker, my mum sells stuff in a department store, and my older brother is a mechanic. They’re all content with what they do. In fact, they are more than content; they are basically happy.

  And, guess what, the family poodle is called Happy!

  They’re what every one calls “good people.” The expression makes me cringe, but it actually describes them well. Yep, good people who can’t figure out how they ended up with the likes of me. Even my red hair is a mystery; no one’s ever had red hair on either side of our family.

  When the result of the second test came back, they accepted that what made me different was not all bad. I was not stupid, I was precocious.

  They’d accepted it and were h
appy about it, especially since I had been granted a full scholarship by an association of successful geniuses. I was swiftly transferred to a pricy school for “very gifted children” where the staff tried to make all of us weirdoes realize that having an IQ over 150 was not a curse.

  I’m grateful for the years that I spent at that school, mostly because I met my best friend there when I was eleven.

  I can’t believe I’ve known her for half of my life. To this day, she’s my only true friend. The funny thing is that she's not extraordinarily gifted, not that there’s anything wrong with her. She scored 120 on the IQ test when she was twelve; it’s a lot higher than the average population, but in our school, she was like the plain, regular one who had only gotten a crack at working with us because she was the daughter of the headmistress.

  We had first started talking when we realized that we had both been named after stones: Agatha and Jade. It was kind of cool that we had something in common.

  Then Agatha and I went to college together. I shared my fully scholarship-funded room and books with her and it was an interesting experiment for both of us. We had gotten along nicely except when we got close to finals.

  During those weeks, she hated me because I never needed to study. To get an A+, I only had to attend the classes, take a few notes, and then look at them the day before the finals.

  If I skipped the class, I just read the book. That’s because my magical brain comes complete with a photographic memory. Agatha did get good results, too, but at a higher price. She resented me during those weeks, because it took hard work from her, and nothing from me.

  But then, during the rest of the year, I was the one envying Agatha. First it was because she could eat as much as she wanted and stay as thin as a rail. To this day, I still hate her for that. The second reason I envied her was because she had a perfect set of social skills.

  She always says the right thing at the right moment; she’s comfortable and relates to others while I come across as borderline autistic.

  I always wonder how many people are like me who understand how ironic it is to comprehend the concept of empathy when you can hardly feel the damn thing!

  Agatha’s good with guys too; maybe a little to good. Some days I ask myself what it would be like to be her, and fall in love every other month.

  I’ve done research on the subject. Yes, yes, I know it’s not the usual way people go about it, but it’s the best I could do.

  To try to figure it out, I read every type of romance I could lay my hands on. I went from Contemporary BDSM to Steampunk love stories and it never failed, every single time I got to the part where the girl feels her heart jumping around her ribcage and melts with lust I was stumped. I had no idea what they’re talking about.

  It doesn’t mean that when I look at men I don’t have an opinion. I do find some of them cute or handsome, and, at times, charming. I appreciate the beauty of a smile with wide lips opening on perfectly aligned white teeth. I see the grace of the movements of athletes, such as dancers when they move in harmony with the music. But I only get all breathy and think about my heart after I’ve had to run to catch the bus!

  Some days I think I’m missing out on life, but every so often when Agatha’s heart gets broken, I think I’m lucky that I’ve been spared from such misery. Are the upsides really worth the pain?

  Since it’s the traditional thing to do when Agatha’s heart gets shattered to pieces, I feed her chocolate. It works miracles, probably the endorphins. When I say that to Agatha, she mocks me, and says that I should stop worshiping science.

  Nevertheless, science is reassuring. It’s easy for me to understand, and it can explain almost everything. For instance, the pleasure one gets from comfort food is nothing more than a chemical reaction; it does not take a genius to figure this one out. It’s one chemical reaction that most every one experiences on a regular basis.

  God, do I love food! And food loves me too. Yes it does; it sticks to me, hence the need to raise the armrest of the plane seat and invade the little girl’s seat.

  Music and food are actually two topics about which I can have a conversation with complete strangers. It’s nice to know that some parts of me are normal: my ears and my taste buds.

  So when Agatha’s reaction to her first bite of Godiva chocolate cake is “Oh, it’s almost as good as sex,” I realize I must really be missing out on something.

  That thought must have made me frown, because the little girl who was sleeping on my lap looks at me, and asks, “Is everything okay?”

  “Sure, honey, we’re about to land. You just need to tighten your belt a little. Everything is fine.”

  ❦

  CHAPTER TWO

  I WAS NOT HAPPY WITH my first plane ride to Bangkok, and I’m miserable with the second to Luang Prabang. It’s a much smaller plane; there are about a dozen seats, and the door to the cockpit is missing. We’re thousands of miles away from the security rules of the Western world. Strangely, I find it reassuring. Somewhere in the world, some people manage to live without taking the extreme protective measures that we do.

  It’s not a jet; it’s one of those planes that have two engines with propellers on each wing. I know from the countless war movies my dad has watched that they are very safe. Even if the four engines were to die simultaneously - which is very unlikely since no German fighters are trying to shoot us down - the pilot could glide and bring us down safely on the ground… Well, except that it’s a jungle down there and there are no clearings.

  Anyway, I’m fine with the plane. I don’t really care that it shakes, rattles, and rolls. What annoys me is that the seats are beyond uncomfortable, and the noise level is unbearable. When we takeoff, it’s like an avalanche of pebbles on a washboard. It makes me cringe. I fish my headphones out of my bag, and try to tune the noise out with music. I play the main theme from Game of Thrones loud, very loudly and start to relax as I look around.

  Most of the seats are filled with packages and suitcases. There are only two other passengers in the plane: an older Asian man up front, and a young European guy one row before me. He’s probably not that much older than me, but he looks very mature and … worldly.

  I study him, trying to figure out why that word popped in my mind. It’s probably the way he stands, perfectly at ease. Like flying a tiny plane to go to some Godforsaken place does not faze him one bit.

  He has lovely blond curls, like a Botticelli cherub. His skin is nicely tanned, his nose is straight, his jaw square and the blue of his eyes is lovely. Blond with blue eyes, he must look very exotic in this country. Agatha would eat him up. As he stands and pushes his backpack into the overhead compartment, I can see perfectly good abs under his white T-shirt. He also has nicely shaped arm muscles.

  He notices me, staring at him, and frowns. Oh crap, I’ve done it again. Agatha keeps repeating to me that I can’t stare at people the way I do; that they’re not specimens under my microscope.

  After the frown, he winks, laughs, and says something before he disappears to his seat again. I’m unable to hear the sound but I read his lips, and my brain deciphers the sentence: “Winter is coming!”

  I laugh; fancy hearing that sentence while flying over a green lush jungle. I lower the sound level of my music. It’s way too loud if he was able to identify the melody.

  I guess he was not upset that I was staring but was frowning while trying to identify the music despite the ambient noise.

  Cupid’s face appears between the two seats in front of me and he looks at me as if he wants to say something. I remove my headphones and wait for him to speak.

  “Are you Jade Cooper?”

  After my nod, he slides his right hand between the seats and introduces himself. “I’m James Davis; we’re going to the same place. I recognized you, because Agatha has a picture of you in her room.”

  I shake his hand, and think to myself that now I understand the real reason that Agatha decided to extend her stay in Asia. He is indeed just her typ
e: so perfect that it’s unreal.

  “Nice to meet you, James,” I scream to make myself heard over the chaotic noise.

  “Agatha’s picking us up at the airport. We’ll be at the camp in time to enjoy a swim before night falls. That always helps after being shaken around in this flying death trap.”

  “Swimming sounds fabulous,” I answer. See, when I put my mind to it, I can make small talk.

  “Speak to you later, when we don’t have to scream,” he replies putting his own headphones on, and turning around.

  I lean back in my seat, and realize that I’ve just had a normal conversation with a normal person. I guess Agatha hasn’t told him much about me.

  It’s interesting to get a fresh start; to talk to someone who does not take me as a freak. Most of the time I’m self-sufficient, but some days I do grow tired of being so isolated, especially since Agatha left at the end of the Fall term.

  She’s doing research in the field of tropical diseases and parasites. She has travelled to Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, and now she’s in Laos.

  Agatha has extended the domain of her research, and talked her sponsor into paying for my plane ticket. She’s probably doctored my resume to fit the task that needs doing to get me as her assistant for the coming months.

  I’m grateful, as she’s giving me a reprieve to think about what I want to do with my life, now that I’m done with my PhD in Biology.

  I can stay in the cocoon of the university. I’ve been accepted into Medical School and Veterinary School, but I’m not sure that I want to do that.

  I can also start working full time. The laboratory I worked for while I was studying has offered me a job, and it would require a lot of traveling, because it would involve collecting DNA of many animal species over the world. I’m not sure I want to travel that much.

  Last there is the Med Bits Institute, a new international research facility that just opened in South Florida sent me a job proposal that’s right my alley. They thought of me because the research would be a follow up on my PhD work. That’s the most tempting offer I’ve gotten so far even if it’s only a short contract.