Project Paper Doll

by Stacey Kade

  I grimaced. Locked up again at GTX, no doubt. They had teams searching for any sign of me, and a video of what happened yesterday—small, pale girl in the midst of a mysterious explosion—would be more than enough to catch their attention.

  “And we’ve been over this before.” He pointed an accusing finger at me. “You’re supposed to stay away from the Jacobs girl. You know better than that. She causes problems for you.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. He was right. Avoid Rachel Jacobs had been an unofficial Rule since third grade.

  Rachel had been mocking Kyla Portnoy for her four-color box of generic crayons, and, infuriated, I’d accidentally turned Rachel’s box of 120 Glitter Crayolas into a colorful mound of wax confetti. It was another instance in which the barrier in my head had temporarily vanished and my out-of-control ability had resurfaced.

  Fortunately, the crayons had been in Rachel’s desk at the time, so other than a muffled thump, no one had noticed a thing until she went to take them out. And discovered that poor Kyla Portnoy now had more crayons than she did. She threw a huge fit, kicking and screaming and threatening retribution. It had been, simply put, awesome, even if I hadn’t done it intentionally. I’d told my father about the incident, though, and received the first and only addendum to the Rules.

  And I did try to steer clear of Rachel, but yesterday had been an unavoidable exception. “She was hurting Jenna,” I protested. “Being deliberately cruel.” Which, as my father well knew, was a kind of hot-button issue for me. The powerful lording it over the powerless. I couldn’t stand to see it, knowing how it felt to be so helpless at someone else’s hands.

  He sighed heavily, some of the anger draining out of him. “Jenna is a prop. Part of your cover,” he said slowly and with great emphasis, as if he could drill the words into my brain. “She doesn’t know the real you, and if she did, I can assure you, she wouldn’t be nearly so quick to defend you in the same, or worse, situation.”

  I winced. The emotional side of me wanted to argue that he was wrong, but I knew that he wasn’t.

  “You’re not normal, not one of them. You can’t forget that.”

  Fury swelled in me. Like I could forget. Like I wanted to. To be clear, I don’t wish to be more human. After all the thoughts I’ve heard rattling around in your skulls? No thanks. But to have a taste of the ease with which most of you coast through life? Never having to worry about anything other than being yourself ? Must be nice.

  My father got up to scoop more eggs onto my plate. Some of what I was thinking must have shown on my face. “What I mean is,” he said in a gentler tone, “you can’t get caught up in petty games and manipulations. You have to be above it all.”

  Don’t get involved. Keep your head down. “So in other words, Rachel Jacobs and her clot of humanity do whatever they want, and I have to be the better so-called ‘person,’ ” I muttered.

  “They have the privilege of being the primary species on the planet.” He returned the skillet to the stove top with a clatter. “Hey, look at me.”

  I turned in my chair.

  His face was lined with tension. “We can’t afford any more mistakes.”

  “I know.”

  “So do what you got to do, kid.”

  I nodded reluctantly. I had to be above it all. If I let Rachel get to me, if I slipped too often, it wouldn’t be about letting her win anymore. That would be the least of my problems, especially if my father was right about the increased efforts to find me.

  He patted me gingerly on the shoulder. “I’ll check with my sources and see what they can find out about the new search. You keep working on your control.”

  Or lack thereof, but he was too kind to say it. The fact was, at this point, after so many years and so many different attempts at bringing down the wall in my head, I was fairly certain it was hopeless. Unless we could convince Rachel Jacobs to move in. Ha-ha.

  “Finish your eggs,” he added. “You need the protein. Don’t make me nag you.” He gave me a fond but sad smile.

  My father, ever watchful, waited until I picked up my fork, though my stomach roiled at the thought of food, especially cold eggs tainted by the fear and momentary panic of this morning. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever eat again, never mind enjoying what had once been my favorite meal.

  Guess I’d have to fake it. Just like everything else.

  SO IT TURNS OUT that late-night flashes of brilliance often look a little less brilliant in the bright light of morning.

  Ariane Tucker. I was supposed to ask Ariane Tucker to Bonfire Week today.

  I squinted at the sunlight pouring into my bedroom and pulled the covers over my head.

  Seriously not one of my better ideas. First, it involved Bonfire Week, which was always a pain. It was supposed to be about school spirit in general, but usually turned into a weeklong celebration of the only “worthy” sport: football. And frankly, I got enough of that crap at home. Second, Rachel no doubt had a larger game plan of humiliation in mind, even if I didn’t know what it was yet. And third, I barely knew this girl. Based on the hate-filled glares she’d sent at me yesterday during the whole Jenna debacle, I wasn’t entirely convinced of my ability to talk her into anything.

  Maybe I should have just let Jonas do his best. Ariane probably wouldn’t have fallen for it anyway. And even if she had, why did it matter to me?

  I had no idea. But I was stuck now.

  I groaned and forced myself out of bed and into the shower, my head throbbing. It seems that drinking five beers shortly before bed also sucks first thing in the morning.

  Fifteen minutes later I stumbled into our kitchen, my hair wet and my clothes sticking to my skin. I’d been doing pretty well to make it through the shower at all. The effort of drying off might have pushed me too close to the line, transforming the possibility of puking to reality.

  “Late on your second day. That’s a good start,” my dad said from his position behind the island, where, coffee cup in hand, he was flipping through the newspaper. Probably looking for mentions of himself or his “team.” My dad was one of those people where nothing existed or counted as important unless someone else was talking about it.

  I ignored him, making my way over to the bread box. But when I lifted up the lid, I found only the empty blueand-white plastic bag. I’d have to get to the store this week sometime.

  Stomach churning, I dug to the bottom of the bag and found the dried-out heel. Gross. But I chucked it into the toaster anyway. I needed something in my gut, and after last night’s events, I was betting I wouldn’t be able to talk Trey into stopping for a greasy breakfast. In fact, I probably should have been worried about whether he’d show up to give me a ride at all, but that felt like too much work. If he didn’t show, I’d have to ask my dad for a ride, and that was not happening.

  I braced my hands against the cabinet by my head and closed my eyes, resisting the urge to lay my face against the cool, smooth wood. The room spun if I moved too quickly.

  My dad snorted. “If you’re going to run with the big dogs, Zane, you’ve got to be able to keep up.”

  Like Quinn. He didn’t say it, but I knew that’s what he was thinking. My older brother’s high-ranking position among the Ashe High elite had been a foregone conclusion; that they’d accepted me as well (albeit with far less fanfare) had come as a genuine surprise to my dad. Consequently, he seemed to view it as a privilege that might be revoked at any time, if I proved myself less than worthy. And that would be a darker stain on the family name than if I’d never been “in” in the first place.

  Quinn had never had to worry about any of this, of course. He was perfect at everything, just like my dad. He’d have partied last night, woken up for a five-mile jog at dawn, finished a report on his summer reading, and gulped down some kind of disgusting and healthy smoothie consisting of raw eggs and wheatgrass, with no ill effects. Unlike me, where the mere thought of raw anything… My stomach turned over on itself, and I shuddered, trying to think of somethin
g else.

  I silently begged the toaster to hurry up so I could take my mangled breakfast to the porch and wait for Trey, who would, please God, show up. I could tell it was going to be one of those mornings with my dad, where he wouldn’t leave off.

  “Did you get dressed in the dark?” he asked a second later.

  See? Though, in this instance, his assumption was partially correct; I’d had my eyes half closed against the too-bright sun.

  “…at the Salvation Army?”

  Son of a bitch. He was in a mood this morning. I was wearing…something. I was fairly certain it even matched. I had a vague recollection of a blue T-shirt and then something with a collar—maybe one of Quinn’s stretched-out button-downs that had made its way to my drawer when it wasn’t tight enough for him anymore. I don’t know how he could stand to have something pressed against him like that, pulling at his neck. And I was pretty sure I’d grabbed my favorite jeans from the floor, the ones with the ragged hems that made my dad crazy. That would probably explain the Salvation Army comment.

  But what the hell, dude. My clothes were my clothes—well, except for Quinn’s hand-me-downs—and how I looked was my business.

  I knew better than to engage, but my head hurt, the toaster was giving off a disgusting smell of burned crumbs and hot metal without relinquishing my toast, and my dad was pissing me off.

  I turned my head carefully in his direction and cracked my eyelids open. “What about you, Dad? Is there a parade stand somewhere missing you?” He was wearing his formal dress uniform—white Oxford shirt and dark blue tie under a jacket with gold braid on the sleeves, patches on the shoulders, and all manner of shiny (oh, too shiny today) buttons, collar brass, lapel pins, and badge. His hat, with more gold braid and another shiny badge, lay on the island next to his paper.

  Wait, was it a Wednesday? I had to think about it for a second. Yeah. It was. That explained both his mood and his uniform choice. On the third Wednesday of every month he had meetings over at GTX. In theory, these meetings were with the GTX Community Outreach department, giving updates on the anti-drug program GTX sponsored for the elementary school, or presenting the need for more bulletproof vests or new computers in the squad cars. But I think my dad probably saw it as a foot in the door. Except he’d been attending these meetings for a few years now, and, as far as I knew, he’d never managed to wedge additional body parts through.

  My dad glared at me. “You think you’re so smart.” He set his coffee mug down with a sharp crack that reverberated through my head. “But people are judging you based on how you look, whether you like it or not. And if you want to be taken seriously, you have to dress the part.”

  I rolled my eyes, though it kind of hurt. My dad was forever trying to get in good with GTX—they were the only game in town when it came to power, money, and influence—and it irritated him to no end that they had their own expensive and well-trained security force, experts who avoided interacting with him and his guys except when absolutely necessary.

  It was a snub of the first order, to my dad’s way of thinking, as good as declaring to the world that GTX thought the Wingate police were local yokels, barely able to handle cow tipping, mailboxes on fire, and old Mrs. McCarty shoplifting candy bars again. But my dad was Jay Bradshaw, hometown favorite, football hero of legend, man who’d pulled himself up from a trailer park existence to be the bright shining star of this craphole town.

  Wingate threw him a parade when he left for college, and then again when he came back to work for the police. Not a joke.

  Everyone worshipped him, except the folks over at GTX.

  I’d spent years listening to my dad bitch about their head security guy, Mark Tucker, cockblocking him. Whenever GTX had a problem, whether it was the stolen research project from ten years ago that my dad still complained about, or protestors setting up in front of the gates, Mr. Tucker always told my dad they preferred to “handle it internally.” And my dad was stuck—he couldn’t do anything unless GTX called him in or there was reasonable proof of a threat to Wingate.

  Sometimes I thought his only goal in life was to beat Tucker and get in those doors on a call to serve and protect.

  Huh. Tucker. My alcohol-addled brain was slow in making the connection. I wondered if Mark Tucker was any relation to Ariane. That seemed like something I should know, a fact that someone had probably mentioned at one point or another, but I couldn’t remember for sure. At least not without concentrating on it more, which wasn’t a good idea at the moment, with my dad about to vent steam from his ears.

  He crumpled up the newspaper and swept it to the floor before stalking over to get into my face. “You think you can do anything you want and it doesn’t reflect on me, on this family?”

  His coffee breath wafted over me, and I struggled not to wince.

  “This is it, Zane. You’re a junior now. Time to stop screwing around and get serious.”

  Like I hadn’t heard that a thousand times already in the last three months. But a thousand and one, that was the key, clearly. “Thanks, Dad,” I muttered.

  “You’re an arrogant little shit,” he spat.

  “Because of what I’m wearing?” I asked incredulously. There was only so much damage wearing faded and worn-out clothes could do to a reputation, right?

  “You have a piss-poor attitude, and it’s going to catch up with you.” He jabbed a thick finger in my chest. “I swear to God, your brother was nothing like this. Why can’t you be more like him?”

  And there it is. The million dollar question of genetics, environment, and disappointed parental expectations: Zane, why aren’t you Quinn, just younger? Then we could have enjoyed Quinn-ness for that much longer.

  “Quinn gets it,” my dad said with great satisfaction, as if that should wound me. “He knows what it means to play ball.”

  “Yeah, well, Quinn’s also kind of a douche bag,” I muttered. Which was true. He was just like my dad, king of a small hill, and determined to have everyone know about it.

  I didn’t blame Quinn for basking in my dad’s approval and making the most of it; hell, I’d have done the same. The man was not easy to please. I’d spent years trying to get even the faintest bit of that light to shine in my direction. It would have been nice if Quinn had at least acknowledged, even just between the two of us, that we weren’t exactly on a level playing field; but that wasn’t him.

  To be fair, though, my big brother could have used his advantage and spent his time torturing me pretty much without consequence. Instead, he’d basically ignored me, as if being inadequate might be contagious. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if that wasn’t worse.

  My dad’s eyes bulged in a way that I hadn’t seen since he was my PeeWee football coach and crazed by my complete lack of talent for the game. “What did you say about Quinn?”

  “Nothing.” This conversation—if you could call it that—was definitely reaching an end. I reached over and yanked up the lever on the toaster just as Trey leaned on the horn outside, loud and long. Thank God.

  I snagged my half-scorched, half-stale bread from the toaster and spun away from my dad. “Gotta go,” I said as I headed for the back door. It’s been fun, I wanted to add, but I knew there was only so far I could push him before he snapped and decided to “teach” me something. My dad was of the “tough lessons need a tough teacher” school of thought. We had a few dents in the living room drywall in the shape of my head to prove it. I was taller than him now—another thing I suspected he hated—but he was broader than me and in good shape. (He’d kept up with the workout schedule he and Quinn had created together, with the weights in the garage.) Not a man to push without expecting to get pushed back. Hard.

  Not a man for letting someone else have the last word, either.

  As I shoved open the screen door, he fired off his final volley. I was expecting it; most of our fights ended in the same way with the same words, or similar ones. But that didn’t mean they hurt any less when they came. “You’re just like
your mother,” he said, his voice thick with such barely repressed disgust I wondered why he bothered.

  I was too much McDonough and not enough Bradshaw. I’d been hearing that since I was old enough to understand the words. I resembled my mom’s side of the family—the height, dark hair color, blue eyes, and the genetic lack of a stick up my ass.

  According to my dad, the McDonoughs were trailer-park trash—all of them criminals or lazy, lacking in ambition and good sense. Of course, that hadn’t stopped my dad, hometown hero returned, from hooking up with my mom, even as he was “officially” dating the mayor’s daughter.

  When my mom got pregnant, they had to get married. No choice in that. Not in Wingate. The town might turn a blind eye to slumming, but leaving Mom behind in a “family way”? Bad idea, particularly for someone with my dad’s reputation and ambitions.

  That, at least, explained Quinn. I had to presume, then, based on the sheer level of frustration he seemed to have at my mere existence, that I had been another even less-welcome accident. That he wished I’d never been born.

  I’d said as much to my mom one day when I was eleven and I’d come into the house bleeding and humiliated (and even worse, fighting off tears) after a particularly rough game of “touch” football with my dad and Quinn.

  She was quiet, focused on spraying Bactine on my scraped-up elbows. “Your dad grew up in a trailer the next row over from mine. Did you know that?”

  I stared at her. Grandma and Grandpa Bradshaw lived a few blocks away in a small, neat house, where the furniture was still in late-nineties mint condition beneath the plastic protective covers. At least they did now. But that explained why some of the things they did—like letting their lawn grow too long because they didn’t want to pay someone to mow it, or fishing pop cans out of the neighbors’ recycling bins to turn them in for money—drove Dad vein-popping insane.