by Kailin Gow
Jack smiles grimly when I mention that to him. “It is.”
I guess so, but even so, all this feels very strange. Some of it seems to have nothing to do with what I would have thought of as changing identity. I get a lesson in applying makeup, for example, learning which tones to use and which not to, learning what suits my face and what just doesn’t work. It’s interesting, even fun, but seriously, how does that prepare me for a shift in identity? It’s almost like they want to make me look glamorous, or something.
I find that suspicion confirmed when the technicians around me finally declare themselves done with the physical side of things. I don’t know whether to sigh with relief or worry about what other sides there might be, but I’m certainly eager to see the results when they bring out a couple of full length mirrors.
For a moment, I find myself wondering who that girl in them is, and who does her hair. Then I realize that it’s meant to be me. It’s so hard to believe that I actually stand right up close to one of the mirrors, searching for some trace of the old me in there. I can find it when I look hard, but I have to look hard. All those small changes they’ve spent so long on have added up to create someone who looks so different from me it’s hard to imagine.
She’s gorgeous, too. I’m gorgeous, I correct myself, and then feel a little embarrassed about it. Not to mention confused. I would have thought that the idea with something like this was to blend in, but there’s no way the version of me I see endlessly repeated in the mirrors can do anything other than draw attention. I shudder slightly at that, thinking of what it was like even before this, when that hair of mine used to get so many glances and comments. Do I really want this? Given that the alternative seems to be being shot at, I guess I’m just going to have to get used to it.
“Don’t worry,” Jack says, “you’ll adjust pretty quickly.”
Marlene taps her watch pointedly. “Come on, you two. We still have the final stages of the fade to get through, and we don’t have all day to do it.”
“Yes.” Jack doesn’t let much emotion go with that word, but I can tell that he’s not entirely happy about something. I wonder what it says that, after less than a day around him, I can read him that well?
“What’s wrong, Jack?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “The last part of this process… there’s something you should know, Celes.”
“There’s no time,” Marlene says. “Now, will you two hurry up?”
She practically frog-marches me to another room, with another chair.
“There’s more to do?” I ask. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” the technician says, “now, sit down please.” She starts sticking electrode patches to my head, like she’s planning on some kind of medical scan.
“What are these for?” I ask.
“They’re for your own good,” Marlene says, and before she’s even finished saying it, she’s managed to fasten my arms to the chair with a couple of leather straps.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Please try to relax,” the technician says. “The straps are just to stop you hurting yourself while the machine works.”
“And what does the machine do?” I demand.
Jack answers. When he does, he doesn’t sound happy at all. “It’s designed to help you adopt your new identity completely, Celes. It makes you forget your old life.”
“But I don’t want to forget my old life.”
“What you want,” Marlene says, “isn’t the same thing as what you need.” She flicks a switch.
Instantly, I find myself remembering things. Moments with Grayson. My mom shouting me downstairs for dinner. My brother laughing because I’ve slipped over in the yard. Hundreds of things, flashing past so quickly that I can barely keep up with them. Flashing past, and slipping away too.
“No.”
I hear myself say it, even as I reach out for the memories. I won’t let them do this. I won’t let them take this from me. This is my past. This is who I am. I fight for every one of those memories, and I feel pressure building up inside me. For a moment, it feels like my head is going to explode, and then…
“Damn it! Somehow, she’s overloaded the system.” Marlene the technician is running around her machine, trying to get it working again.
I look up at Jack. “Please,” I beg, “don’t let her.”
Jack looks from me to Marlene and back again.
“Please, Jack.”
He nods. “Marlene, leave it.”
“Leave it? How are we meant to get anything done like that? Maybe if I reroute power through the back up coils, we can generate enough to-”
“Marlene.”
The warning note is clear enough, and I see the woman step away from her machine. “Jack?”
Jack’s features are set. “Leave it. We aren’t doing a memory wipe on this one.”
“But it’s standard procedure.”
Jack shakes his head. “Not in this case. Unbuckle Celes please.”
“Are you sure?” the technician asks. “I mean, Mr. Cook won’t like this. We’re meant to-”
“I know what we’re meant to do,” Jack says. “I’ll deal with any fallout from this.”
That seems to be good enough for Marlene, who unbuckles me. Jack helps me up.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he says softly. “Sebastian Cook might still turn around and order you back here. If he does, I don’t know what I’m going to be able to do about it.”
I smile. “You’ll think of something,” I say, and I’m surprised to find that I actually believe it.
In the end though, Jack doesn’t need to do anything more than talk to the man in charge up in his office, with me along for the ride. Although Sebastian Cook doesn’t seem entirely happy about it, it only takes Jack a couple of minutes to persuade him that he has no way of knowing what I’ll do to more of his machines if they try to use them, and that I’ll be fine as I am. He even suggests that using the machines when they don’t know what they’ll do could end up harming me.
“And we don’t want that, do we Sir?”
“No, I guess not,” the head of the underground concedes. “Just make sure that she learns her cover identity well.”
I look over at him. “I wanted to ask you about that. I mean, I’m not exactly going to fit in most places like this, am I?”
“You will with the identity we’ve constructed,” Sebastian Cook assures me. He reaches into a drawer of his desk, pulling out a sheaf of documents. “We have all the usual things. Birth certificate, school reports, passport and so on. We’ve upped your age by a year, because an eighteen year old has to answer fewer questions. At Jack’s suggestion, we’ve gone with the name Celeste Channing.”
“I have to change my name?” I ask, and then realize how stupid I must sound. Of course I have to change my name. There wouldn’t be much point in changing the way I look if I still answered to Celestra Caine, would there?
“It’s a small enough change that I can still call you Celes and no one will notice,” Jack explained. “But Celestra stands out too much. Even among models.”
“Models?” I feel my brow crease.
“That’s the cover identity we’ve picked out,” Sebastian Cook explains. “You’ll be the wealthy daughter of a fiercely private tycoon, trying to make it out on her own through the usual rounds of a bit of modeling, making the right connections, and so on. The details are in the paperwork. It’s high profile, but it’s also the last place anyone would think to look.”
“So where does Jack fit into this new identity,” I ask.
Sebastian Cook shrugs. “There’s only one role that guarantees he’ll be close to you at all times. Jack is now officially your live-in boyfriend, Ms. Caine. Or should I say, Ms. Channing?”
SEVEN
The next couple of weeks are hectic. Jack and I head up to New York, where there’s an apartment waiting for us, and try to settle in. We spend some
time picking out furniture, and more time wandering around, getting to know the area, walking through some of the main tourist spots arm in arm, like any couple would so soon after arriving in a new city. Jack takes me around some of the main galleries and theaters, monuments and other spots, playing his role as my boyfriend well, with only the occasional look around for potential threats suggesting that he might be anything more.
He also helps me to play my role. Sebastian Cook lands me a couple of small modeling jobs through contacts of his, exactly the way that a rich tycoon uncle might for a niece interested in that kind of career. It’s Jack, though, who helps me to make the most of it. He seems to have an instinct for getting me into the right place at the right time to meet the people who matter in the fashion world, so that we seem to run into them almost by accident.
I ask Jack about that, back at the apartment, and he shrugs. “It’s essential to the cover we’ve created. A would be model who doesn’t meet the right people is probably going to attract more attention than one who plays the game well. Besides, I want you to be happy with this new life, Celes, and for that, you need to live it.”
I’m not certain I understand his reasoning, because to me, it still seems that it would have been safer to hide me away somewhere rather than putting me out in front of people, but I don’t complain about it. This is, after all a life I could never have dreamed of.
And it has its fun moments. Like the game Jack and I play online one night where the goal is to see who can start the best Celeste Channing rumor. We take turns working with anonymous accounts Jack has set up, coming up with ever more outlandish things about the young heiress I’m playing, while watching the rest of the city’s online world to see how far each rumor runs. Jack even creates a couple of news stories and buries them deep in the architecture of existing news sites, so that it seems that I’ve been attracting attention for a while if anyone looks. By the end of the night, we’re not only falling over one another laughing, we’ve also managed to create the definite impression that Celeste Channing is someone New York ought to be paying attention to.
Not a huge amount of attention, admittedly. You don’t become internationally famous overnight, and I’m not sure that’s even the aim with the identity we’ve created. But we do get invited to a party, held in someone’s multi-million dollar penthouse. Whose, I’m never exactly sure, because it’s the kind of party where everyone’s a friend of a friend, but it goes pretty well. Everyone agrees that Jack and I make a great couple, that I’m lovely and that one or two of the more mischievous rumors Jack started can’t be true. Though I get the feeling one or two people hope that they are.
That party leads to more, and to phone calls, lunch meetings, invitations to events. Even to the odd modeling job, though those turn out to be less fun than they seem. There’s a lot of standing around involved, a lot of rushing around, and a lot of trying to make everything perfect for the one or two seconds needed for a photograph.
Jack is by my side for all of it, and he turns out to be a lot more fun to be around than his demeanor might have suggested back at the Underground’s base. I quickly find out from all the socializing that he can dance, and that he’s great to talk to. Half the time, I get the feeling that people who come up to talk to us do so just in the hope of hearing one of the anecdotes he occasionally comes out with. Like the one about spear fishing off Java. He won’t even tell me if they’re made up.
It’s easy to forget sometimes what Jack’s real role is. It’s easy to forget that protecting me, even being around me, is a job to him. Then, just occasionally, he’ll do something to remind me. Usually by protecting me from some of the more dangerous excesses of the party scene. Everybody seems to assume that I’ll be into all the things a spoiled heiress turned model would be, whether it’s casual sex, or drugs, or simply alcohol. At moments like that, Jack’s on hand to explain why I’m saying no, and to ensure that people understand that I mean it. I just think it’s sad that he has to.
I guess that means I’m not always everyone’s idea of what a girl like me should be. In fact, a few people say it outright. After talking to me, they say that they didn’t expect me to be quite so smart, or reserved, or grounded. It’s obviously meant as a compliment, and I try to take it that way, but sometimes, I can’t help feeling that it just says a lot about what they expect.
It also says something about how I’m fitting into my role, and that worries me slightly, because there are other little signs to go along with it. Signs that say I haven’t Faded as completely as Jack and Sebastian might have hoped. Signs like always thinking of “Celeste Channing” as someone else, and having to remind myself that I’m meant to be her every time someone calls my name. Signs like never quite letting my guard down, so that I acquire acquaintances rather than making friends. If my memories had been altered, I’m sure I wouldn’t have that problem. I’d just be the bubbly socialite I’m meant to be. It wouldn’t be a role I put on and take off like I’m changing clothes.
And I wouldn’t have the questions I have every time Jack and I kiss. Yes, we kiss. We’re meant to be together, after all, and couples kiss. So we do, almost constantly. And they’re not just chaste kisses, but tender lingering kisses, kisses that leave both of us breathless. When we’re not kissing, we’ll be holding hands, or Jack will have his arm around me, or any one of a dozen other things that are designed to show what a close couple we are. They’re necessary for the cover we’re putting out, and they reinforce the idea that it’s natural for Jack to be around at all times, as he needs to be. But they are complicated.
It’s not that Jack isn’t a great kisser. He is. He kisses with an amazing mix of intensity and delicacy, so that for the moments when his lips are on mine it’s like there’s nothing else in the world. That’s kind of the problem, because as much as there’s part of me that wants to do a backflip with joy every time we kiss, at the same time, I’m all too aware that we wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for the situation I’m in. I shouldn’t be feeling that kind of thing about a guy who is only pretending to be my boyfriend, and yet it’s impossible not to.
I don’t know what Jack feels in those moments. I haven’t asked him. I haven’t dared. At the time, it always feels like he means every moment of the kiss, yet for all I know, that’s just more amazing acting on his part. When we’re in public, he gets into the role of the long term boyfriend so perfectly that it’s occasionally hard even for me to believe that we haven’t been together for months.
Back home, back at the apartment, he’s harder to read. Jack stays in character, and he insists that I do, but it’s like he’s far less connected to me. There aren’t the constant displays of affection, but at the same time, there are just enough to keep me wondering what he really feels. Was that long slow kiss Jack gave me when he caught my hand as I walked past him on my way to the kitchen for the benefit of anyone who might be watching the apartment through a long lens? Or was it just because he wanted to?
And if he wants to, should I be going along with it? I mean, I have a boyfriend. Had a boyfriend, at least. I don’t think about Grayson too much in the first few days, because it’s all too new, and complicated, and I just don’t have the head space left over for anything else, but as time goes on, thoughts of him become more frequent. They’re like an itch at the back of my mind, or like a favorite piece of music playing in the background while I’m trying to concentrate on something else.
I know I shouldn’t think about Grayson, but it’s impossible not to, sometimes. It’s not just that I loved him a lot. It’s not just that I didn’t get a choice in giving him up, or that I can remember every little detail of him. It’s almost like he’s become a symbol of my old life, and by thinking about him, I’ve still got some tiny portion of it I can cling onto. As long as I have Grayson, Celestra Caine hasn’t been completely replaced by Celeste Channing.
Then, at a party for a movie I’ve never heard of, it happens. Jack has gone to get us drinks, while I talk to th
e star of the thing, who turns out to be a lot sweeter than the character she plays onscreen, and who seems to have latched onto me as a way of steering clear of a clutch of airheads who appear to be determined that she should join their ranks for the evening.
“Your boyfriend seems wonderful,” she says.
And just for a moment, in spite of all the time I’ve spent playing this role, in spite of all the times I’ve kissed Jack, I don’t get it. I find myself thinking of Grayson, and how he is wonderful, and how I’ll never get to tell him that again.
“My… boyfriend?”
“Jack. Celeste, are you okay? You seem to be crying.”
I realize that I am crying, and I quickly make some stupid excuse about allergies before running to Jack and demanding that he get me out of there. He does, not even asking why once we’re safely clear of the place. I don’t know what the people there must have thought. That I was the usual crazy model type, I guess.
Right then, I don’t care. Instead, I just know that I have to do something about this collection of unresolved feelings before it destroys me. I can’t go on like this, not knowing who I am. I need some kind of closure. And for that, I know, with absolute certainty, that I need one thing.
I need to see Grayson again.
EIGHT
I get my chance a couple of days later. That probably makes it sound like an escape attempt from some kind of prison, but at the time, that’s what it feels like. Getting to see Grayson means dodging Jack, after all, and he watches me almost constantly. It’s not like I can just tell him that I’m going to the mall and then sneak off.
