Project Paper Doll

by Stacey Kade

  The activities fair turned out to be four aisles of booths, from plain tables to sophisticated constructions that must have been brought in in pieces and assembled here. Every club and organization I’d ever heard of (and some I hadn’t) had a presence. A heavy canvas tarp had been put down to protect the polished gym floor from all the “street” shoes and the rough/sharp edges of booths, tables, and chairs. When I’d asked Zane why they didn’t hold this outside, he’d rolled his eyes. “They’re worried about damage to the football field.”

  There were games, fake fortune-tellers, and food. So much food—cotton candy, popcorn, brownies, cookies, cakes—it was ridiculous.

  And now Zane was trying to talk me into yet another example of activities fair ridiculousness.

  “No, I do not want French kisses from the French Club,” I said firmly, laughter in my throat threatening to bubble free. French kisses from the French Club. Who approved that as a fund-raising idea? And worse yet, who would pay?

  In the last thirty minutes, we’d wandered through two of the four aisles. Zane had insisted on buying me the suspiciously named Puppy Chow, which turned out to be peanut butter, chocolate, and some kind of cereal mixed together in a powdered-sugar-dusted bag; and I’d won some kind of small stuffed animal of indeterminate species—it might have been a dog or possibly a bear—at the ringtoss. Technically, Zane had gotten it for me after I’d protested, maybe a little too loudly, that the ringtoss was a scam. The rings were way too small to fit over the bottles. Zane had given the bored kid in the booth five dollars, and the kid had dropped a ring over the top of a bottle for Zane. Which was, in my opinion, completely against the spirit of the game. But then again, they were handing out dog-bears as prizes, so whatever.…

  “Oh, come on, it’s fun.” Zane tugged at my hand in an effort to pull me along to a pink-tulle-draped table at the end of the aisle, where, surprisingly, a sizable crowd had gathered. “What do you have against French kisses? I think maybe it’s a phobia.” He shook his head in mock dismay. “Maybe we should visit the Psychology Club.”

  “We don’t have a Psychology Club,” I pointed out, my feet sliding on spilled shaving cream, which had come from an enthusiastic throw at the football booth. (For a dollar, you could throw shaving cream pies at various players, but apparently everyone with a decent sense of aim was already on the team.)

  “You’re changing the subject,” Zane said with a grin.

  Yes, yes, I was. I didn’t have a phobia. It was just plain old fear. I’d never done it before—kissed anyone, in any way—and it struck me that while there were lots of easy things to fake and/or disguise, a first kiss probably wasn’t one of them. What if I did it wrong? Or what if something about my mouth screamed not human, something I wasn’t aware of ? No thanks. And even without all of that, why would I want to kiss some random stranger?

  I eyed the pink and fluffy French Club table with suspicion. “No, thank you.”

  “Even if I promise you’ll like them? French kisses are good,” he teased, with amused warmth in his expression that made him seem less burdened, happier. Not that I’d ever thought of him as particularly unhappy. And yet tonight he was brighter, more alive somehow, than I ever remembered seeing before.

  I shook my head with a smile. “Even if.”

  But then he let go of my hand and grinned at me. “Wait here.” He headed off toward the line.

  Was he going to bring someone over here for that purpose? Surely not. Zane didn’t strike me as the kind of person who took pleasure in other people’s discomfort, what little I knew of him.

  Exactly. That’s the problem. I didn’t know him, not really, not at all. And the real Zane might very well find forcing me into a publicly humiliating situation “funny.” He’d seemed to be against what had happened to Jenna, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything in this situation. Everyone defines humor differently.

  My hands went cold with panic as I watched Zane step up to the French Club table and say something to the guy behind it. The cozy cocoon of pretend we’d wrapped around ourselves had vanished.

  The danger with pretending is that if you do it well enough, it starts to feel real. Sometimes, just for a few minutes, when Jenna and I were busy talking about school or boys or whatever, I forgot myself. Forgot that I wasn’t the Ariane Tucker everyone thought I was, a regular human girl. And in those moments it felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me, the ever-present boulder of dread I hauled around. Of course, when I remembered myself, the burden felt ten times as heavy. But it was worth it for those few seconds of escape.

  I had no business forgetting who I was or what I was about with Zane. If anything, forgetting should have been impossible. The entire situation was contrived, fake, forced.

  But I never before realized the lure of make-believe when both people are in on it. None of this actually meant anything; I knew it and so did Zane. So I could do whatever I wanted. I could pretend I was a real girl. Pretend I had nothing to hide. Pretend to like this guy holding my hand so carefully. Pretend he liked me back. Pretend there were no Rules.

  At least until that boulder caught up with me and knocked me down.

  Like right now. Zane laughed at something the French Club guy said, and that first pinch of worry I’d felt bloomed into a full-blown wave of anxiety. I would not be made to do something I didn’t want to do. Not again. Period. I’d spent too many years in the lab under Dr. Jacobs’s control.

  I turned and walked back the way we’d come, my heart beating triple time as the crowd closed around me.

  It was so loud, both in my ears and my head. I wasn’t sure how I’d managed to ignore it for so long, the distant buzzing static of so many thoughts battering against my guard all at once. No, I did know. I’d been pretending to be someone else, someone who couldn’t hear the flotsam and jetsam floating through people’s minds, and for a while that illusion had worked well enough to distract me.

  But now there were too many people in here, and they were all too close to me, and it felt like they were staring. I wanted to put my hands over my ears—not that that would help anything—and bolt for the door.

  I made myself keep walking, one foot in front of the other at a normal pace, suddenly highly aware of the GTX cameras watching overhead.

  “Ariane?” I heard Zane calling behind me. I didn’t stop.

  “Hey, Ariane, wait! Where are you going?” He caught up with me and touched my shoulder cautiously.

  I flinched, much to my chagrin, and he jerked his hand away immediately.

  “What’s wrong?” He sounded baffled and maybe a little hurt.

  I turned to snap at him, wary of whomever he’d dragged with him from the French Club booth, but I found only Zane with a concerned expression on his face and a small plastic bag of cookies in his hand. Cookies that appeared have to have a Hershey’s Kiss in the center and strips of paper wrapped around them, fortune-cookie style, printed with what appeared to be French phrases.

  Oh.

  My face burned. “Those are the French kisses?” I said, knowing it before I asked, and feeling both stupid and angry.

  “Yeah, they sell them every year. Peanut butter cookies with Kisses in the middle. It’s a—Wait.” He frowned at me. “Did you think I was going to bring someone over here and make you…” His eyes widened. “I would never do that.”

  “How was I supposed to know?” I demanded.

  Zane lifted his hands in exasperation, the plastic bag of cookies swinging from one fist. “Because who would do something like that?”

  “I don’t know, someone who finds hemorrhoid cream on lockers entertaining?” I shot back.

  His mouth tightened. “I keep telling you I’m not like them.”

  “So you say.”

  He stepped closer to me. “You know, at some point you might have to trust me. Just a little.” Frustration came off him in waves, as if what I thought of him somehow mattered. Then he turned away, raking his hand through his hair. “This was
a mistake,” he muttered.

  I shifted uncomfortably, surprised by the guilty ache in my chest. The truth was, I already trusted him way more than was comfortable, simply by being here; but he’d have no way of knowing that. And I’d been the one to push him into this after his initial prompt. I was using him far more than he was using me.

  And…we’d been having fun. Now the illusion of two people having a good time and enjoying each other’s company was shattered, and we were left with the prickly reality of two relative strangers.

  I approached him cautiously and touched his sleeve. It felt weird but also right in some way to be the one to reach out.

  Zane looked down at me, surprised.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, searching for the right words, ones that would explain without giving too much away, which was an impossible task. “This”—I gestured to the activities fair around us—“is not really my…thing. So I’m doing my best to adjust.”

  He opened his mouth, but I rushed to finish before he could speak.

  “And you’re right. You, personally, have never given me any cause to doubt you, other than guilt by association, which I suppose isn’t always the most accurate judge of character.” I let out a slow breath. “There.”

  He gave a short laugh. “That is possibly the most begrudging apology I have ever heard.”

  I stiffened and let my hand drop.

  “But,” he said quickly, “I appreciate the sentiment.” He grabbed for my hand, and I allowed it.

  “Okay?” he asked, and I wasn’t sure if he meant the hand holding or the situation in general.

  But I nodded. Both were as okay as they were going to get, I supposed.

  Zane tugged me closer as we headed down the crowded aisle. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “I would never do anything to deliberately embarrass you. I know what it’s like.”

  I looked up at him, startled by the grim set of his mouth and flush of color in his cheeks. And I caught the flash of an image in his mind, a red-faced man standing over him, the man’s mouth open and screaming while people in the background—mostly little kids in football uniforms—stared.

  His father? Probably. I’d never seen the Chief close enough to be sure of that assumption—nor did I want to. Then I remembered what Mrs. Vanderhoff said, the nasty busybody. How it was such a shame Zane wasn’t up to the standards set by his father and his brother. So maybe he did know something about being humiliated and considered not good enough. But that didn’t explain why he was friends with Rachel.

  Unless it did.

  If you’ve been on the outside, been ground beneath the heel of others, probably the safest place to be is on the side of those doing the grinding. Even if you don’t enjoy it.

  It wasn’t an excuse, but it was an explanation.

  I relaxed a little and took the bag of French kisses. I would be able to eat the cookies and maybe even some of the much-hyped Puppy Chow. Both had peanut butter, a staple in my diet.

  “So what next?” Zane said with a bit of forced cheerfulness in his voice, as we slipped and slid our way past the football team again. “You want to maybe challenge the Mathletes to a fraction-off or bob for apples against the cheerleaders?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I know, I know, not very creative,” he said with mock disapproval. “I think they’re kind of counting on the fact that wet T-shirts help donations. The cheerleaders, not the Mathletes,” he clarified. “Though, the other way around might be an interesting choice.”

  My mouth quirked into a reluctant smile. He was funny, also an unexpected discovery.

  “Zane!” someone shouted.

  I didn’t even react at first. People had been shouting his name all evening. Most of the time they’d been satisfied with nodding at him and staring at me, or, in the case of guys, bumping fists with him and ignoring me.

  No reason to suspect this would be any different, except, this time, when Zane stopped and turned toward the voice, tension passed from his hand through mine, like he was touching a live wire.

  His back blocked my view, so I couldn’t see who’d called to him. But then slim arms bearing a series of gold bangle bracelets appeared around Zane’s neck.

  Rachel.

  I jolted with surprise. Normally I’d have heard her thoughts well in advance of her approach, but the mental noise from the crowd had evidently drowned her out.

  It was only at that moment that I realized Zane had angled himself to hide me from view. Was he protecting me? Or ashamed? Well, the latter would be sort of dumb considering our plan; but then again, in that case, the former didn’t make much sense either. He still had hold of my hand though, his fingers now laced through mine and squeezing a little tighter than was comfortable.

  “What are you doing here? I didn’t think you were coming,” she purred, loud enough for me to hear. She slid her fingers through his hair.

  A flash of jealousy and possession tore through me, taking me by surprise. He wasn’t mine, not really. But he wasn’t hers either. If she’d been the slightest bit attuned to body language, she would have picked up on the stiffness of his posture. Not that something as minor as his discomfort would matter to her.

  “I was stuck at home forever,” she continued, her voice shifting to more of a pout. “My grandfather came over for dinner, and he wouldn’t shut up about the lights blowing up yesterday. He had all these questions. God. It’s just electricity.”

  I froze, and if I could have felt my fingers, I might have been squeezing Zane’s hand as hard as he was squeezing mine.

  “And he kept asking about who was there, who I was hanging out with.” She gave a halfhearted huff of annoyance, but her tone suggested she was secretly pleased at being the focal point of such attention.

  “I think he’s going to try to surprise me with that trip to Europe for all of us that I’ve been asking about for, like, ever. Anyway, by the time I got over here, Cami and Cassi were already… What are you doing?” Her voice sharpened and her arms disappeared from around his neck. She must have (finally) picked up on the awkward way he was standing with one arm—the one holding my hand—almost behind his back.

  He stepped aside slowly, perhaps even reluctantly, revealing Rachel in another of her endless series of expensive red dresses (this one with thin straps and a floaty skirt), ridiculously tall heels, and her hair styled in loose waves more appropriate for a photo shoot than bobbing for apples or throwing shaving-cream pies. “Rachel, you know Ariane.”

  Rachel’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped. It might have been funny except I sensed the shock ripple through her and I knew an explosion was in the offing. Evidently, no one had texted her to let her know of our appearance here together. I couldn’t blame them. Rachel wasn’t known for being kind to messengers.

  “Zane,” she said through clenched teeth, “can I talk to you? Now.” Her thoughts were an incoherent jumble of confusion and fury, and her nostrils were flaring, perhaps in an effort to get oxygen. With her mouth that tight, certainly nothing was passing through there.

  I loosened my grip in preparation for letting go, but he surprised me by tightening his grasp. “We were about to go bob for apples,” he said.

  We were?

  “But we’ll catch up with you later,” he said, his tone a decent imitation of easy and relaxed, if, again, you couldn’t feel the grip of his hand. Which I could. I could also feel his fury bubbling beneath the surface, but not at Rachel’s current presumption. It felt older than that.

  I stared at him. What are you doing? Are you trying to piss her off? Not that I minded, exactly. An angry Rachel was better for my plans. But Zane didn’t know that. And as someone who proclaimed to be a fan of “letting things go,” he certainly wasn’t acting accordingly. What was going on here?

  “It’ll just take a second,” Rachel said with a forced smile. She reached out and snagged his wrist. “It’s about what we talked about yesterday. Remember?”

  She had the nerve�
��or idiocy, I wasn’t sure which—to tip her head less than subtly toward me.

  Really? Even without the added help of my nonhuman heritage I wouldn’t have been slow enough to miss that. I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

  Zane lifted his chin in determination. “I remember. We’ll talk later.”

  Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “Now would be better.”

  I sensed a sudden burst of surprise and pain from Zane, and looked down to see Rachel digging her nails into the vulnerable flesh of his wrist.

  What. The. Hell.

  It wasn’t a serious injury obviously, but still. It was the idea—that Rachel felt she could hurt people who defied her. Apparently, it was a Jacobs family trait.

  A burning hatred zipped through my veins, warming my whole body, and I couldn’t stop myself. I stepped up, putting myself slightly closer to Rachel and partially in front of Zane. “He said later.”

  Her gaze snapped to me, and the shock—the horrible thrill of being at the center of her attention—was energizing. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  I forced myself to shrug, though it felt as if all my joints were stuck in place with the thickness of the tension. “I don’t care.” The buzz of power slipped along my skin, and I had to work to keep myself from smiling.

  Overhead, the lights began to flicker, which, in theory, was great. Exactly what I’d wanted to test my hypothesis. Except this time, people around us—huge groups of them—seemed to notice. Some of them even stopped and pointed upward.

  I tried to concentrate on shutting my power down. To find the quiet spot that let me hear Rachel’s thoughts, as I had in the cafeteria. Once I’d gotten distracted, the barrier had snapped right back into place.

  But this time the tingly waves dancing down my arms and legs grew stronger, the crowd was too loud in my head, and Rachel wouldn’t shut up to let me concentrate. “I mean, who do you think you are?” she demanded. “Zane is my friend. It’s not up to you to tell him what to do.”