The Rules

by Stacey Kade

  I looked at her sharply. “You think this is still about getting back at Rachel?” I asked, stunned.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Forget it.” I turned away in disgust, my face hot. Obviously, she didn’t feel the same way I did. And now I felt like an asshole. I’d thought after this afternoon that we’d both recognized it was something more, but apparently, that was just my overactive imagination. God, was I that desperate? Making up connections where none existed?

  Ariane’s hand tightened on my arm. “Are you saying it’s not?” she asked quietly.

  “I talked to you about my mom,” I said stiffly. Which was all the answer I could manage, but probably wasn’t enough. How could she possibly understand what that meant to me without seeing the inside of my head—

  She stood up, half bent over, and scrambled around the armrest between us, dodging the steering wheel. Suddenly, with her knees on either side of me, I had a lapful of girl, which I hadn’t been expecting. Not that I was complaining. She was warm and weirdly light even for her size; but when she leaned forward into me, heat spread from every contact point between us, and I stopped thinking about anything else.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her mouth moving over mine. “I wish it could be different.”

  Before I could say anything in response, she was kissing me like I was her last, best chance at breathing.

  I clutched at her waist and felt the warm, smooth skin in the gap between her sweatshirt and jeans. I couldn’t stop myself from sliding my hands up her sides, beneath her shirt, my thumbs over her ribs.…

  She sucked in a surprised breath and pulled away slightly.

  “It’s not about this. You know that, right?” I asked, panting and struggling to focus on finding words. I didn’t want to scare her away. But there were so many competing voices in my head, most of them telling me to stop talking and roll with it. “We can slow down—”

  “I know,” she murmured.

  But she didn’t. Slow down, that is. Instead, she leaned in and kissed me again. And slid her hand between us to tug at the top buttons of my shirt.

  Oh God. How far was this going to go?

  I barely had time to wonder about the impracticality of anything more—front seat of a truck on a public and fairly well-lit street—before she stopped, wrapping her arms tight around my neck and burying her face against my shoulder. And a second later, warm tears dripped against my skin.

  What the—

  Confused by the sudden shift in her mood, I pulled my hands out from under her shirt and touched her hair hesitantly. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to—”

  “You didn’t,” she said, her voice muffled against me.

  Okaaay.

  After a moment, she sat up and wiped her eyes. “I have to go.” She reached over and popped open my door.

  I stared at her in disbelief. “Ariane. Wait.”

  “Don’t text me again. I won’t respond.” Her tone was crisp, businesslike, and the coolness of it tore through me. “Don’t come back here. Not tomorrow, not ever. When you see me in the halls…” She hesitated. “Don’t see me. It’s easier that way.” She slipped off my lap and out of the truck.

  “Have a good life, okay?” She smiled uncertainly, the corners of her mouth wobbling. It made my heart ache. “You deserve it.” She slammed the door and hurried away.

  I sat back, stunned, and watched her disappear around the corner in my rearview mirror.

  Ariane Tucker was as much a mystery to me now as she’d been in the beginning. And I’d let her go.

  What other choice did I have? She was obviously determined not to speak to me again, to retreat into the closed-off cocoon of a life she’d had before. Which frustrated the hell out of me.

  What kind of life is it when you’re running scared?

  About the same kind of life as when you let other people make your decisions for you? I heard Ariane’s wry voice in my head.

  Yeah, except I was trying to change that. Ariane wanted to go—she thought she had to, for some reason—but I wasn’t going to give up so easily. Not this time. I hadn’t fought to find my mom because she’d made it clear she wanted nothing more to do with me. But that wasn’t the case here.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit Rachel’s number.

  PEOPLE WERE STARING AT ME when I walked into the gym on Friday morning before school, but that was no surprise.

  It had been almost twelve hours since I’d ended things with Zane, and clearly he’d done what I’d asked and told Rachel about it. The rumor mill was actively churning; I could hear the whispers and feel the looks. And, of course, my red and swollen eyes were clear confirmation that something was going on. Nothing short of huge (and way too obvious) sunglasses would hide them well enough.

  I’d had trouble sleeping last night. I’d tried to lose myself in Dream-Life, which had never before failed to distract me from the suckiness of real life. But not even another of Clark’s disappearing acts—he’d returned with mysteriously fresh French baguettes—could charm me. It had just seemed ridiculously fake and empty, so I’d shut it down without even saving the latest session.

  Then I’d woken up this morning after only a few hours of fitful rest to find my pillowcase wet and my eyes puffy. I’d been crying in my sleep. How could a few days make such a difference? I’d been alone for ten years—more if you counted my time in the lab. But this morning, walking to school by myself, studiously ignoring the section of the parking lot where I knew Zane would be, I felt bereft. Lonely.

  I got a sudden flash, the sense memory of his hand on the back of my head, soothing, while I cried all over him.

  God. Get it together, Ariane. I hadn’t even seen him this morning. How much worse would it be then? I blinked rapidly and wished for those sunglasses. I made myself keep moving, across the gym floor and to a reasonably empty section of bleachers.

  A barrage of whispers and giggles followed as I made my way, but none of them touched me. Aside from thoughts about Zane, which struck with the sizzle of an exposed nerve, a vague numbness had settled over me. As if I were experiencing the world through a layer of cotton. What did I care what these people thought or said about me?

  I climbed up to a relatively populated row—no sense in isolating myself near the top, making it easy for everyone to watch and speculate—and sat on the end. Conversation in my immediate vicinity died for a long moment, and then it started up again in “hushed” voices that I would have had to be deaf not to hear.

  It would get better in a few days, I told myself. By Monday, something else would have happened to occupy their time and attention. They’d forget all about me and my ill-fated, extremely temporary relationship with Zane Bradshaw. Full-blooded humans have notoriously short attention spans.

  If only I could say the same for myself.

  I’d found something I could never have, and now the only solution was to pretend it had never happened, to go back to being the version of Ariane Tucker I’d been before.

  Except I didn’t know how to get back there. I didn’t know how to turn off the want.

  I’d have to ignore it now, even as it dug into me, pleading for attention. A just punishment, I supposed.

  It will fade. It will get easier. That was my new mantra. I kept repeating it over and over again in my head, praying it would eventually turn out to be true.

  This morning I’d dragged myself out of bed, through the shower, and into some clothes, keeping to the schedule I’d held for years before this week. It had never felt like so much work. As if there wasn’t enough air in my lungs for the required tasks.

  I was doing the right thing. I was keeping Zane safe. That was the only saving grace, the only thing that kept me moving.

  Still, I’d dreaded facing my father over the breakfast table and seeing the censure mixed with pity on his face. Thankfully he was gone by the time I got there.

  That should have alarmed me, but I couldn’t seem to make myself care. I’d see
n a mysterious black van on our block (which turned out to be a florist, according to the name on the side; though whoever heard of a florist’s van being black?) and hadn’t even flinched. If there was immediate danger, my father would have warned me. And if it was another vaguely ominous yet distant threat that would make my life even more miserable for a few days or week, well, no thanks. I was full up on the misery meter at the moment. Try again later, GTX.

  A burning rush of hatred and fury rose up inside me. GTX was the root of all of this. Without them, none of this would be happening. But without them, I wouldn’t exist. The fact that I should theoretically be, in some way, grateful to them made me want to scream. My lungs burned with the need to shout, to empty myself out. To declare GTX’s inhumanity, to let the world know what they were capable of, even as the cool and impassive flashing red lights of the security cameras recorded it all.

  “Um, are you okay?” A tentative voice at my elbow asked.

  I looked over, my neck so tight with tension it hurt to move. The girl sitting next to me, a freshman, most likely, was watching as if I were one match-flick away from exploding.

  “Fine,” I said, forcing out the word through clenched teeth, which pretty much shouted I was anything but.

  It, however, also had the advantage of scaring the girl into silence. Blinking rapidly, she scooted a few inches away from me.

  Some distant part of me knew I should I apologize, even wanted to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the space inside myself for another emotion. Everything was jammed in there too tight, and pulling on one thing might send all of it spilling out.

  I concentrated on keeping my composure, inhaling and exhaling. I would not lose it front of all these people. I would not—

  The crowd around me rustled and stirred suddenly, a giant creature woken from a nap, and a chaotic surge of thoughts rose up from the background of static in my head.

  I tried to ignore it. I didn’t need one more thing to juggle right now.

  But the noise in my head only grew louder.

  Resisting the urge to put my hands over my ears, I glanced around to try to find the source of the disturbance.

  It wasn’t hard to find what—or, in this case, who—was sending shock waves through the minds of the student body.

  Rachel Jacobs, who had never deigned to mingle with the peasants in the gym before school, was mincing her way carefully across the polished floor. Cami and Cassi trailed behind her, their identical heads tipped down over their phones as they texted, probably each other.

  The sight of Rachel immediately inflamed the battle I was fighting inside myself. If there was ever a representation of GTX’s indulgences, excesses, and thoughtlessness, it was Dr. Jacobs’s granddaughter herself.

  I gripped my seat on the bleachers, willing myself to stay still and silent.

  Rachel moved as if the floor were made of ice instead of wood. Which is what happens when you wear stupidly inappropriate footwear—today, five-inch heels with ribbons wrapping up her legs—on a regular basis. Clearly, she had never had to worry about the possibility of running for her life or scaling fences to escape a retrieval team.

  Her nose was wrinkled in distaste, as if the giant cavernous room smelled, and it kind of did—sweaty socks, too much Axe, and nerves. The rest of us simply dealt with it.

  If hate was detectable by an infrared camera, I’d have been the white-hot center of the room. Everyone else watched with awe, fear, or surprise. I just wanted her gone.

  She moved closer to the bleachers, her hand raised to block the overhead light while she searched for someone, and I tensed. If Rachel was here, it was for a purpose. Probably a nefarious one. Unfortunately, at this distance and with all the background noise of other minds in proximity, I couldn’t hear what she was thinking or who she was looking for.

  But I had a good guess.

  I spun around in my seat to find Jenna. It took me a few minutes to locate her in the upper-left quadrant of bleachers by herself, her gaze fixed on Rachel. She was pale, watching the inevitable approach of another round of destruction march ever closer.

  It had been bad enough, what Rachel had done to Jenna’s locker and to Jenna herself in front of a cafeteria full of people, but in here, in front of the whole school except the privileged twenty or so in the parking lot, that was a whole new level of warfare.

  I found myself standing up without realizing I’d come to the decision to do so. I couldn’t have Zane, but I sure as hell did not have to sit here and let Rachel torture Jenna again.

  Jenna may not have been the friend that Zane thought she should have been, but then again, neither had I.

  I charged out of my row to the stairs, my only goal to put myself between them before Rachel zeroed in on her.

  “There you are,” Rachel said loudly.

  I froze, then turned to watch as she charged straight at me. Well, wobbled, more accurately. Regardless, she was coming my way.

  A direct confrontation, though? That wasn’t her style.

  My heart pounded harder, and I longed for the barrier in my head to drop. I would give her a show she wouldn’t forget.

  Too many people. Too many witnesses, the worried voice whispered in my head.

  I didn’t care.

  Rachel climbed up the first three stairs, and I stepped down to meet her halfway, blood boiling so hard I thought there might be steam emerging from my ears. Like in those old cartoons I’d once taken so literally.

  “What do you want?” I demanded, the muscles in my arms shaking with the tension of holding myself back.

  “I’m having a party tonight, and you should come.” She smiled, but her gaze held a hardness that reflected her true feelings.

  I nearly toppled down the remaining steps between us. What? I couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d offered to braid my hair.

  “I don’t—”

  “Zane seems to think I might have given you the wrong impression the other night. That I might have scared you off.”

  He what? I stared at her in confusion. He was supposed to have told her that it was over. I didn’t understand what was going on.

  “We can’t have that, can we? Zane’s friends should be my friends. So, party, my house, tonight. It’ll be fun.” Her dark eyes gleamed with anticipation.

  Come on, come on…you know you want to go. Rachel’s thoughts momentarily broke through the mental noise of the crowd. I’ve seen how you look at him. So wrong. I haven’t worked this hard for nothing.… People will be talking about this for years.

  Okay, now I was getting it. Rachel was still hoping for the opportunity to humiliate me in the most public and agonizing fashion possible. But what was Zane playing at? He was behind this, I was sure. I just didn’t know why.

  Maybe he wanted to see me again. He’d been so surprised last night; I’d completely blindsided him with walking away.

  No. I couldn’t afford to think that way. I shook my head, resisting the urge to rub at the ache in my chest. “I can’t—”

  “Unless I’ve scared you off for good,” Rachel said with a thin, haughty smile, triumph glittering in her gaze. I win either way.

  My logical side fired off a warning. Ignore her, Ariane. You know better. She’s just pushing your buttons.

  But it was too late. I set my jaw. “I’ll be there.” My father would be at work. I could get to Rachel’s party, be completely not destroyed by whatever she intended, and get home long before his shift ended. Which meant I would win. Score one for me in the battle of Ariane versus GTX. It wasn’t a big victory, but one more than I’d ever had before.

  And Zane would be there.

  “Good,” Rachel said. Then she turned and click-clacked her way down the stairs and across the floor.

  With her departure, the adrenaline flooding through me faded. I sat down on the steps, right where I stood. How had this gotten so complicated in such a short period of time?

  A party at Rachel’s house. A place where Dr. Jacobs had
surely visited countless times. He wouldn’t be there, but something about passing so close to his shadow… I shivered.

  Sudden movement to my left, followed by a wave of disgruntled thoughts, caught my attention. I stood up to see Jenna, her face red, which meant she was crying, clambering down the bleachers instead of the steps, forcing people to move out of her way.

  I sighed. Obviously she had witnessed what had happened with Rachel, and even if she hadn’t been able to hear our conversation, she’d made the leap that it was a friendly encounter. How did full-blooded humans keep making that mistake? Couldn’t they see beneath the pretty face to the malice below? Yes, I had the advantage of sometimes being able to hear Rachel’s thoughts, but still. Didn’t they see the sharp edges to her smile? The truth in her behavior, if not her words?

  Guess not.

  Jenna stumbled on the last bleacher and landed on her knees with a thud that echoed through the huge space. And even from this distance I could see her face grow redder.

  A jeering round of applause went up from those close by, and I winced.

  Oh, Jenna. More humiliation on top of humiliation. I couldn’t leave her like that. I owed her more than that. We’d been friends once, and maybe we could be again, if she’d allow it.

  So when she staggered to her feet and ran out of the room, I headed down the steps to follow.

  Unless you were Rachel, there were only two places you could flee to before the start of classes: the school office or the bathroom. After our less-than-successful visit with the principal the other day, I was betting that Jenna had chosen the latter.

  The girls’ bathroom immediately off the gym was quite possibly one of my least favorite places in all of my experience. And lest you have forgotten, I spent a goodly amount of time trapped in a secret room underground.

  This bathroom was rarely used except during this pre-start to the school day and by those professing “emergencies” during P.E. It was small, dimly lit, and reminded me of a dank prison cell with its fractured gray tile floors and graffitied walls.