Project Paper Doll

by Stacey Kade

  I opened the pizza box and grabbed a half dozen squares and returned to my seat at the table, fighting the urge to scoop my laptop up with one hand and my pizza with the other and take off for my room. That was usually how “we” ate dinner: I retreated to my room and he stayed in the kitchen or disappeared to the basement family room.

  I waited until he’d served himself and settled at the table, trying to get the timing right. But before I could speak, he beat me to it.

  “How was school?” he asked, sprinkling pepper flakes over his pizza.

  No sneer. No follow-up caustic comment. It was like he was genuinely asking. I almost fell out of my chair in surprise. “Fine,” I managed. Either his meeting with GTX this morning had gone really well, or the exact opposite. It had happened in the past, on occasion, that after an apparently crappy day, he seemed to be relieved to be at home, where no one would judge him and find him lacking. Ah, the perils and pressures of social climbing.

  I couldn’t let his rare good—or not so bad—mood stop me, though; not when he’d given me the perfect opening.

  “Except, what’s the deal with GTX and the new security system at school?” I said, taking a bite of pizza and attempting to look casual. God, I was completely out of practice at this, and not nearly as good as my mom had been.

  Unlike in probably every other house in town, I couldn’t simply ask to borrow the truck. I had to distract, evade, and offer up a tidbit of interesting information to capture his attention, so that my request would seem incidental. Not a big deal.

  “The new security system?” he repeated, tearing off a paper towel from the roll we kept in the center of the table.

  He hadn’t known about it. Good. Then this would have value if I played it right.

  “Yeah, some guys from GTX were at school today putting in cameras and stuff.” I pretended to focus on my laptop, which held nothing but the wallpaper image of a photo from the summer before last—a group of us all crowded together on the back deck at Rachel’s house.

  “Did Kohler say anything about it?”

  I shrugged. “I think they made an announcement this morning, but just about it being installed. Not why.”

  “Son of a bitch.” My dad pounded his fist on the table, making everything on it jump and rattle. “It’s Mark Tucker. I’d bet my life on it.”

  This wasn’t a huge surprise. My dad blamed Mr. Tucker for everything GTX-related that didn’t go the way he wanted. And my guess was the money for the cameras and such was something my dad had been trying to sway toward one of his pet projects. I wouldn’t have thought a security guy, even the head of the department, would have that kind of power, but what did I know.

  Thinking of Mr. Tucker, always a shadowy and nebulous figure in my mind, as Ariane’s dad raised more questions. “Why would Mr. Tucker want to put in a security system at school?” I just figured it was GTX greasing the wheels in some way, sucking up to the community again so no one would protest when they wanted to buy some piece of land or bulldoze a historical building for a new parking lot.

  My dad shook his head in disbelief. “You don’t listen to anything I say, do you?”

  Maybe if you tried actually talking instead of yelling. I resisted the urge to say the words aloud. Instead I shrugged again, knowing he hated that, but it was the less inflammatory response.

  He sighed heavily at my apparent ignorance. “They’re still looking for that research project.”

  Oh, that. I knew about that. There’d been an explosion over at GTX a long time ago, right after my dad got the promotion to Chief. Then there had been whispers that an important research project had gone missing or been stolen. A laptop or all the files or maybe even the actual experiment, something big. But GTX would never openly acknowledge any truth to the rumors, and unless they officially filed a report, the police couldn’t do anything about it. Most people probably would have been relieved to have less work, but my dad took it as a personal affront. He was convinced it was because they didn’t trust anyone but their own people.

  I frowned. “Why would GTX care about seeing what’s going on in our school? It’s not like anyone’s using the chem lab to grow organs or something.”

  He impatiently waved off my words and unclipped his phone from his belt. “They’re not looking for someone experimenting. They’re watching for results.” He stood up and turned his back on me as he dialed. “Someone giving their kid the growth hormones they stole.”

  “Growth hormones? Really?”

  “My source said GTX has been looking to land a government contract for years. Bigger, stronger, better soldiers. Maybe even some experimentation with brain chemistry,” he said, his voice distant, distracted.

  I stared at him. He sounded paranoid and kind of ridiculous, like one of those alien conspiracy nuts he made fun of when he caught the UFO documentaries on the History channel while flipping past. As far as I knew, no one was sure what, if anything, had been taken from GTX the night of the explosion. And who was this source he was talking about? I couldn’t imagine anyone in their right mind telling him anything like that. My mom would have been more likely to know someone on the inside willing to talk, if such a person even existed. She’d worked at GTX as an office assistant or something for a few years when I was little, back when my dad was working his way up to Chief. In fact, as I understood it, she’d quit only a few weeks before the explosion.

  But, whatever. The tidbit about GTX and the security system had served its purpose, diverting my dad’s attention and making everything else seem less important by comparison. “Hey, Dad, I need to take the truck for the rest of the week, okay?”

  He frowned, evidently waiting for someone to pick up on the other end of the phone. “Why?”

  I hesitated. I could lie and say Trey’s car had broken down, but knowing my dad, he’d see Trey tooling around town, and I’d be screwed. “A girl,” I admitted. It was the simplest explanation and close enough to the truth that he wouldn’t be able to catch me in a lie later. “It’s Bonfire Week. The activities fair is tonight.”

  He raised his eyebrows. Like maybe he thought there was hope for me yet, but he wasn’t holding his breath. “Yeah? Rachel Jacobs?”

  “No,” I said, working to keep my tone even. “Someone you don’t know.”

  My dad gave a disappointed huff.

  And there it was. I winced inside. Back to business as usual. It shouldn’t have hurt, not after all these years and so many similar moments, but somehow I just kept getting sucked into hoping. And I hated myself for it.

  He jerked his head toward the cabinet where the keys hung on a hook. “Just don’t bring it home with an empty tank.” Then he turned his back on me again. “Hey, Chuck, it’s me. Can you check to see if GTX filed permits for something over at the high school?”

  I gathered up my laptop and books, balancing my plate of pizza on top, and escaped to my room. I had only forty-five minutes to eat and get cleaned up before I was due to pick up Ariane—an event that suddenly, in spite of everything leading up to it and the chaos it would inevitably cause, I was oddly looking forward to.

  THE TEXT CAME as I was finishing up another session of Dream-Life and eating dinner hunched over the desk in my room.

  Good 2 go. Got truck. See you in 45.

  I’d been hoping to hear from Jenna; I’d texted her after school, with no reply. When I saw Zane’s name on the screen, the last corner of crust caught in my throat, which suddenly felt a lot tighter. I coughed and sputtered, fumbling for my bottle of water.

  I drank until the choking sensation eased. It wasn’t that the text had taken me by surprise. Zane wouldn’t have asked for my number in this situation if he didn’t intend to use it. But seeing it right there, in black and white on my screen, was screamingly loud proof of how far I’d strayed from the Rules. What had seemed like a good idea at the time now felt like excessive craziness, tempting fate.

  In my hours home alone, the fury and defiance that had been pumping thro
ugh my veins had slowed to a dull trickle, and I could feel the cold sense of impending exposure sweeping over my skin, as if I’d been hiding beneath a pile of blankets and someone had gripped the edges to rip them away.

  Only, I guess I was the one preparing to push those layers of protection away.

  I texted back “Ok,” before common sense could get the better of me. Even still, pressing SEND sent a spike of fear through me.

  “What are you doing?” I muttered to myself, relieved that my father was not at home. Participating in this mess was bad enough; trying to hide it from him when I was this jittery would be excruciating.

  On my laptop, my virtual boyfriend, Clark, disappeared from our virtual backyard in a flutter of red fabric.

  Crap. I’d missed him again. I hurried to save the session.

  Dream-Life (DL) was my other deep dark secret. The one Jenna liked to tease me about.

  DL was an online game/community. You set up an account, created an avatar, purchased Dream-Life Dollars, and sent the virtual “you” on adventures and into lifestyles that the real you couldn’t afford and, in some cases, most likely wouldn’t survive. All from the safety of your laptop or mobile device.

  It wasn’t a big deal, except that I was uncomfortably aware how very different my DL was from the norm on that site. It was boring by anyone else’s standards, including Jenna’s—the one time I’d talked her into trying it last year. Most of the people who signed up did so to explore lives they could never have—hence, the name of the game. They wanted to be supermodels, or rock stars with groupies, or millionaires who go cliff diving.

  I’d spent my credits on creating a two-story house in a relatively normal-looking suburban setting. With a pool.

  It had driven Jenna crazy. But I didn’t care. DL gave me the kind of worry-free interactions I could never have in the real world. In a virtual world, where people were constantly doing things that defied logic, I didn’t have to concentrate so hard on doing or saying the right thing.

  In Dream-Life I could have the easy, normal, stable existence I craved. I decorated my house, went to barbeques with “friends,” swam in my pool, and talked with my online “neighbors” (who, admittedly, had occupations like “playboy philanthropist” or “rocket scientist/reality TV star”), all without looking over my shoulder for someone who might be watching. It was an amazing place to escape after a full day of being on guard.

  And if it felt a little unsatisfying and artificial sometimes, then that was just the price I paid for peace of mind. It was more than worth it.

  Plus, when in real life would I get to date Clark Kent? That had been the one fantasy element I had incorporated into my account. Other players created relationships or hookups with fellow DL gamers, to add that extra element of realism, I guess. (Because reality was what we were after here. Right.) But I’d elected to go another route, with a computer-generated option. I’d paired my avatar off with Superman’s mild-mannered reporter alter ego. As the character was written in the program, he would occasionally disappear without explanation and reappear hours later while the “news” talked about a near tragedy being averted in some distant part of the world. He’d also sometimes demonstrate unusual strength or X-ray vision, but if my avatar questioned him on any of it, he’d deny it all. If I continued pressing, he’d go to another room and stop talking to me for the rest of my session.

  But if I caught him in mid-transformation—hadn’t happened yet—supposedly he would confess all and we’d live happily ever after or whatever.

  I loved it.

  Looking at my now-empty virtual backyard—and the missed opportunity—I grimaced. I never should have agreed to this scheme with Zane. I’d let my human side get the best of me.

  But it was too late to back out now. I got up and took my plate into the kitchen to load it into the dishwasher.

  Reaching for the dishwasher tablets in the cabinet, I noticed that my father’s lunch dishes were still sitting in the sink—a plate with scraps of a half-finished sandwich and a glass with a quarter-inch of milk left in the bottom.

  I frowned. He never left anything untidy. Part of his military training. Something had upset his routine, quite possibly the phone call I’d made about the new security system at school.

  I grabbed his plate to dump the leftovers in the garbage, but when I opened the cabinet under the sink where we kept the trash can, I found the bag was almost full, a heavy glass bottle at the top. Scotch. And empty.

  I guess he’d been more alarmed than he’d let on when I’d talked to him. Maybe he’d reached the same conclusion about GTX getting too close. All the more reason to carry on with my plan.

  I took the bottle out, moving it to the recycling bin. Then I scraped his plate, rinsed the glass, and loaded them into the dishwasher, the sight of them unnerving me further. I might not be able to control much, but at least I could hide the obvious signs of disarray.

  Thirty-seven minutes to go, the unhelpful voice in the back of my head spoke up, once I started the dishwasher.

  I had to allow five or six minutes to cover the two blocks to meet Zane without rushing or looking like I was rushing. Which meant if I was going to change my clothes and attempt to re-tame my hair, I needed to hurry.

  But I found myself dragging my feet in the hall to my room. A part of me was tempted to wear what I had on and forget about my hair—what was the point when all my wrangling efforts would be for naught the second I encountered a breeze, humidity, or a strong look?

  And people would definitely be looking. Zane was Zane Bradshaw, which must always be said with the appropriate degree of female awe and giggling. And I was just…me. Most of my concern about my appearance was usually around blending in with the full-blooded humans, but I hadn’t missed the fact that on a human scale of general attractiveness, I was likely considered to be somewhere on the low end. At best, midrange.

  I mean, it would be one thing to be a female alien/ human hybrid if that meant what it did in video games and comic books—I’d be six feet tall with golden skin, exotically colored eyes, like violet or something, and huge boobs. Unfortunately, reality had been far less generous. I was short, thin, and pale, and slightly “off ” in some way no one could ever quite put their finger on.

  My face burned at the idea of what people would say when they saw me with Zane. The discrepancy between us would be cause enough for chatter, let alone if I made an attempt to change my usual look in honor of said occasion. It would only make me seem more pathetic.

  But I didn’t want to give anyone a reason to question our ruse. I was supposed to believe this was for real. And a date with Zane Bradshaw—even if it was a “date”—was more than cause to make a larger effort with my appearance.

  So I had to play the part of the duped—foolishly optimistic wardrobe and all.

  I shut my door, hoping the comfort of my room and my possessions would soothe me. It had taken me years to adjust to the idea of having a space that was mine and things that belonged to me. I’d gone through a phase where I’d requested bedding and decorations in the loudest, most obnoxious colors I could find. I didn’t want there to be a square inch of white in the entire room. I’d also held on to everything as “mine.” Empty food containers and wrappers, broken hangers, clothing that I’d outgrown.

  I’d been well on my way to becoming the world’s (and possibly the universe’s) youngest hoarder.

  To his credit, my father hadn’t pushed me, except to get rid of the empty food wrappers. And after a few more years I’d found a better balance.

  My dresser and desk were mostly clear of clutter—I liked being able to tell at a glance if something had been moved in my absence, which so far had never been the case. The walls were a pale blue on top and light brown on the bottom—Sky Morning Blue and Antique Sand, according to the paint manufacturer. The bed, tucked in the corner with a view of the windows and the door—I would not be caught by surprise—was covered by a half dozen pillows and a fluffy comforter two
sizes larger than necessary.

  After so many years of a white room and a cot with scratchy cotton sheets, this was a luxurious escape, a place where I did not have to pretend for anyone. And it never failed to make me feel better, safer.

  Except tonight.

  Anxiety flapped around like a bird trapped inside of my chest as I opened up my closet. The problem with dressing up for my “date,” among other things, was that my wardrobe was a continuous stream of nondescript clothing, featureless T-shirts (long-sleeved and short) in a variety of muted hues, and bland sweaters for layering in winter. Nothing that would cause anyone to point in admiration or envy, but not anything that would cause ridicule either.

  There were other clothes I’d wanted—soft fabrics in bright colors on faceless mannequins in store windows, on television, and on the Internet. But I didn’t buy any of them. It would have been more of a tragedy to see them hanging in my closet and not be able to wear them. It doesn’t sound like much of a risk, I know, to wear pink, for example, or, hell, a skirt; and maybe if I’d started out as more fashion-conscious, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But once I’d started the habit of being bland, breaking it might have caused a stir.

  I bit my lip, studying all the very unappealing options hanging in front of me. This would have been the perfect situation for Jenna’s expertise—she always knew what we should be wearing, even if neither of us actually owned those particular items of clothing.

  I left the closet, grabbed my phone off the desk, and dialed her one more time.

  It occurred to me as the phone rang that if I went through with this plan with Zane, Jenna would hear about it. About Zane and me, out together. And she’d have no way of knowing—other than by recognizing the sheer absurdity of the concept—that it wasn’t real. It would crush her.

  I winced. I owed her more than a request for fashion advice.

  But when her voice mail picked up—again—I couldn’t help but recall the determination on her face earlier today when she’d left Principal Kohler’s office. She’d made her choice, and it was Rachel.