Project Paper Doll (19 page)

But another girl stood in front of them with her back to us, her blond hair perfectly curled and bobbing with her enthusiastic hand movements as she talked.

I recognized those details immediately even though I couldn’t see her face.

Jenna.
I sucked in a breath.

Her shoulders held a new level of tension, and she was keeping her distance from Rachel, as if not quite sure how close she wanted to get. But still she was there. On sacred ground, among Rachel’s circle of friends.

Exactly where Rachel wanted her this morning.

It wasn’t hard to see where Rachel was going with this. Aware of Jenna’s (obvious) crush, she wanted her to see me with Zane. But Jenna wasn’t the target this time. I was. Rachel had to know this would destroy my friendship with Jenna. Or whatever was left of it, anyway. I’d realized that was a possibility, but in setting us up like this, Rachel had all but guaranteed it.

“Damn it.” My hands curled into fists against the fury rising up in my chest. Zane had said Rachel would punish us for the shaving cream. I just never thought she’d go this far. She wasn’t just cruel; she was conniving. Which only went to show that it was a mistake to overestimate her capacity to act like a normal, feeling human instead of a sociopath.

“I take it you didn’t have a chance to tell Jenna,” Zane said, weariness in his voice.

I shook my head stiffly. “I tried. She’s not speaking to me. After the other day, she thinks being seen with me will blow her chances for being friends with Rachel. And ‘Oh, hey, btw, I’m fake-dating your longtime crush’ isn’t exactly text message material.” I wondered what Rachel had said to Jenna to convince her it was safe to approach again, after yesterday’s incident in the cafeteria. It probably wouldn’t have taken much; Jenna wanted to believe. Maybe Rachel had sold her on the idea that it was a joke that had gotten out of hand, hazing gone awry. Or maybe she’d simply apologized—hard to imagine, but I was willing to bet Rachel wouldn’t let one fake “I’m sorry” stand in the way of a bigger and better opportunity to hurt.

“What do you want to do?” Zane asked, surprising me. Did that mean he’d call the whole thing off right now if I said so? We were three car-lengths away, enough time to drive down a different lane and, well, run.

But no, it was too late for that. Even if Jenna didn’t see us together for herself, she would soon find out that we were at the activities fair last night. We were well past the point of no return.

“We have to go through with it,” I said grimly. I was not going to let Rachel win this round.

“Are you sure?”

My gaze locked with Rachel’s through the windshield, and she gave me a smug smile.

Yeah, let’s see how you like this. Nobody plays me, get it?

As usual, Rachel’s thoughts filtered through the rest of the white noise and past my resistance at a decibel that would make ears bleed.

I flinched.

She thinks I’m stupid, trying to turn this around on me. I’ll show her. I can’t believe Zane doesn’t see she’s scheming to get back at me. Unless he does and he doesn’t care. Unless he really likes her.
Rachel’s smile faltered, insecurity rolling off of her.

Oh my God.
Now I understood. The rumors were true. Rachel was in possession of tender feelings when it came to one Zane Bradshaw.

But I couldn’t dwell on that, or even take time to think it through.

“Ariane?” Zane prompted, sounding tense.

“Rachel’s not just trying to cause chaos this time. She’s calling our bluff, and she’s using Jenna to do it,” I said. “If we back down now, we’re done.” Hate for her boiled inside me. I couldn’t walk away now. Not when letting Rachel win would do nothing but make life more miserable for everyone involved. Not when I was so close to regaining control.

Zane shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “You do know that I never meant to…I mean, I tried not to do anything that would make Jenna…”

“Not your fault that you’re apparently irresistible,” I said, hearing the ice in my words.

“Doesn’t sound like a compliment when you say it like that,” he muttered.

He parked on the opposite side of the lane, away from Jenna, Rachel, and the others, giving us some space. At the far end of our row a black van with the bright red GTX logo rose above the other cars. The sight of it made my breath catch in my throat. It was probably another tech finishing up the camera installation, but the van served as a solid reminder of what was at stake. We had to keep the game going.

“Ready?” Zane asked, grabbing his backpack.

“No,” I admitted, but I pushed the door open anyway.

He met me at the rear of the SUV and extended his hand. After a second, I took it, feeling surprisingly comforted by the contact. His grip was warm, firm, and familiar. I felt more grounded, touching him. Was that why people did this? To feel less alone?

His thumb brushed over the back of my hand, a single reassuring stroke, and something tight in me eased. This was horrible, yeah, but I wasn’t here by myself.

Without my telling him to, Zane led the way, which was a small relief. It was hard enough to do this, let alone take the lead.

“Hey guys,” he said. “Rach.” He nodded at Rachel, who didn’t even bother to hide her triumphant grin. Exactly how stupid did she think I was?

“Zane!” Jenna turned, curls bouncing, her face lighting up immediately. With her tunnel vision focused squarely on him, she missed me at first. I watched as her gaze traveled down his arm to where our hands were joined and then shot over to my face.

“Ariane?” she asked, sounding confused.

I watched her deflate, the excitement and eagerness leaking out of her, replaced by disbelief and hurt.

Oh, Jenna.
I bit my lip.

“What is this?” She looked from me to Zane and back again. “I don’t understand.”

“Uh-oh.” Rachel oozed closer—as much as anyone can ooze in stilettos on a gravel surface. “Do we have a love triangle?” she asked, her voice thick with mean-spirited amusement.

“I think you’re forgetting a side,” I snapped, staring her down. Maybe not my best comeback, but I wanted her to know that I knew.

Trey frowned. “What does that mean?”

I could see Zane’s equally confused expression from the corner of my eye.

But Rachel got it. Her mouth turned white around the edges of her perfectly applied lipstick. She flounced toward her car with Trey following. “Rach, I don’t understand. What was she talking about?” he asked.

“So…” Jenna edged closer, as if we were something that might explode if approached too suddenly. “This is what you were talking about in your message? This is what you wanted me to ignore?” Her voice cracked, and I could see her throat working as she struggled to hold back tears.

Guilt squeezed my chest, but before I could answer, Jenna shook her head. “You don’t even know each other. And Ariane, you hate these guys.”

An offended gasp rose up from somewhere nearby, probably from one of the twins.

I pulled my hand free of Zane’s—dimly aware that I missed the contact immediately—and edged closer to Jenna. She looked ready to bolt. “Look, we just need to talk about it.…” I hesitated. Which we couldn’t do here, and then there would be the issue of how much I could explain. As much as I wanted to trust Jenna, she had a huge blind spot when it came to Rachel.

None of that mattered, though; Jenna was already retreating, her face flushed and shiny with tears. “No.”

“Jenna.” I started to follow her.

She held her hands up. “You stay away from me. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to see you. You’re such a freak!” The last words were shouted as she ran for the building.

I winced, feeling her words dig into me, followed by the confirming titter of laughter from Rachel and her friends.

“Run, Jenna, run,” Rachel said with a cackle, stepping up with her cell phone to snap a picture.

This time I didn’t have to think, didn’t have to force the focus. An unexpected tingle of power told me the barrier was down, and then Rachel’s phone spun out of her hand, colliding hard with the side of her car.

“Oh my God!” She was on her knees immediately, scrambling for it. “Trey, you idiot, what is your problem?”

“I was nowhere near you!”

“You were the only one near me!”

They continued bickering, but I ignored them.

I’d done it. Taken another big step toward regaining control. I wasn’t entirely back to rights—I still needed Rachel to trigger whatever it was that pushed the barrier down—but I was closer, much closer. However, the triumph of the moment felt flat and artificial—tinny music on bad computer speakers.

What was the point, I had to wonder, of fighting so hard to learn to protect my life if I was destroying it in the process?

And how was I distinguishing myself from Rachel and her evil pillar-of-the-community grandfather if I was doing exactly what they did? Lying to get what I wanted and not caring who got hurt in the process.

I suppose there were good intentions and all of that, but I wasn’t about to kid myself that Dr. Jacobs didn’t write himself the same blank check of an excuse.

“Hey,” Zane said, startling me.

I turned to see him approaching cautiously with a concerned expression.

“She’ll be okay, you know,” he said. “She was just surprised.”

I made a face. “Yeah, people usually are in an ambush.”

He sighed. “You’re being too hard on yourself. You didn’t set this up.”

“No,” I said, “but I made it possible.”

And that, to my mind, was more than enough.

A
RIANE WAS QUIET
the rest of the day. I found myself deflecting the attention on our behalf, glaring at people who approached, and tugging Ariane down side corridors to avoid the worst of the staring.

Oddly enough, that seemed to do more to convince people that we were real than presenting ourselves for inspection and answering questions with cutesy but vague responses. By the end of the day, most of the spectators had retreated to watch and whisper at a safe distance. And that was only the most devoted of the big mouths. Most everyone else had already shrugged it off and gone on about their lives. Even Rachel had stayed away except for amused stares from across the hall and communiqués via text. My phone had been vibrating nonstop with long gloating messages and various instructions on how to “keep Ariane on the hook.”

Now, after the last bell, with most everyone gone, Ariane leaned against the locker next to mine while she waited for me to switch out books and grab my homework for the night (not much, thankfully). Her expression was much as it had been all day, perfectly smooth and impassive. She might have been happy and hiding it, or miserable and keeping it quiet—it was impossible to tell. But I knew that something—lots of something, most likely—was churning beneath that impenetrable surface.

I paused in shoving my chemistry book into my locker and looked over at her. Her face showed nothing new, but her hands, folded around the strap of her bag, were fidgeting, her fingers playing with a loose thread. Winding it around her index finger until it was tight, and then unwinding it. Over and over again.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I hated hearing the words come out of my mouth. I’d only asked her that about ten times, but I wasn’t sure what else to do.

“Fine.” Which was the same thing she’d said the last ten, now eleven times. In the same flat, unemotional, I’m-notreally-here voice.

I made a disgusted sound.

That seemed to startle out of her semicatatonic state. “What?” she asked, blinking and looking at me for the first time in hours.

“You’re not. You’re obviously not.”

Her brow wrinkled. “What?” she asked again.

“Fine,” I said with exasperation. “You’re not fine. That’s just what you’re saying so you don’t have to tell me what’s going on.”

“Zane—” she began, with a shake of her head.

“I’m serious. I may not be an expert on Ariane Tucker.” Not yet, but I was trying. “But even I know you’re usually a little more than a good imitation of a statue.”

She looked startled.

“I’ve even known you to smile. Every once in a while.” Usually in the presence of fried potatoes. Today, at lunch, the only thing she’d eaten with any kind of enthusiasm had been french fries. “We’re in this together. Talk to me.”

“It’s nothing.”

I leaned closer to her, though the hallway was deserted. “Is this about Jenna?”

She stiffened, and I saw the first cracks in her composure. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Too bad,” I said cheerfully. “I didn’t want to talk about Rachel this morning, but you didn’t give me the option.” I slammed my locker shut.

She narrowed her eyes. “You weren’t exactly bubbling over with information.”

I slung my backpack onto my shoulder and dug my car keys from my pocket. “Not my favorite topic. Come on, let’s go.”

She straightened up, looking more alert and interested than she had all day, and followed me down the hall. “You never said what she did that made you so angry.”

“No way.” I shook my head. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.” I shoved through the door to the parking lot and stepped back, holding it open for her.

She crossed the threshold and turned to face me. “Technically, we weren’t,” she corrected. “We were talking about you, and you were attempting to deflect the attention to me, when I am far more interested in—”

“You feel guilty. About Jenna,” I said, leading the way to my car.

She clamped her mouth shut.

I sighed. “I’m not stupid, Ariane. I saw you this morning. If Rachel was a grenade and you could have thrown yourself at her to save Jenna, you’d have done it.”

“Now, that’s an interesting mental image. Rachel as a grenade,” she murmured.

“But you don’t have anything to feel guilty about.” I hated seeing her like this, all closed in and shut off. Back to being the mysterious girl I didn’t and couldn’t ever know instead of someone who laughed at my dumb stories and quoted Star Wars.

“Because we’re not real, I know,” she said.

“No,” I said firmly. “You don’t have anything to feel guilty about because you didn’t take anything from her. I do not have feelings for Jenna. Never have. Don’t I get a say in the matter?” I asked, attempting to tease her into lightening up.

“No,” she said with a mirthless smile.

I sighed and unlocked the SUV. Ariane got to her door before I did and opened it for herself, sending me a challenging look.

I raised my hands in surrender and headed to my side.

Inside the stifling hot interior, which still smelled vaguely of breakfast, I chucked my backpack into the backseat and started up the engine, turning the AC on high. Ariane seemed undisturbed by the heat, sitting there calmly with her seat belt on already and her bag at her feet.

“Unlike some people,” she said, so quietly I could barely hear, “I don’t have as many options to choose from when it comes to abandoning one friend for another.”

I reached out to turn the fan down so her words didn’t get lost in the noise, half afraid that the quiet would scare her off.

“And before you say anything, I’m not feeling sorry for myself.…” She sighed. “It’s just, Jenna understands, or she did anyway. She never asked questions or tried to pry into my personal life—”

I laughed in disbelief. “So, in other words, you were friends as long as the attention was focused exclusively on her.”

“It’s not like that. She’s not like that,” Ariane insisted.

“Really? Because people who are your friends are
supposed
to want to know about you. And do I need to remind you that she’s the one who stopped talking to you because she thought it would make Rachel like her better?” I asked, disgusted. “Look, I don’t know Jenna as well as you do, but I’ve seen her in action. She’d run you over with a truck if she thought that would get Rachel to pay attention to her. And you deserve a better friend than that.” The words slipped out before I could stop them, and I wished them back, wincing in anticipation of her reaction. I barely knew her; who was I to say what she deserved?

But she didn’t gasp in fury or shoot back with some kind of cutting remark. She gave a strangled kind of laugh. “I thought the same thing about you this morning, when you were talking about Rachel.”

Her gaze met mine, and a thick electric silence fell between us.

She bit her lip—I’d noticed she did that when she was nervous or uncertain—and I was suddenly possessed with the desire to touch her mouth, to stop her from hurting herself even with that small pain, and to kiss her.

But before I could move, she broke eye contact and shifted to stare out the window.

A lost opportunity, one accompanied with more regret that I ever would have imagined. I frowned. What was going on here? I’d started this whole thing to get Rachel off my back and maybe to satisfy some of my curiosity about the strange girl in math class. How had it gotten this far?

Putting the SUV in gear, I pulled out of the nearly empty lot and started toward the intersection where I knew Ariane would insist on being dropped off.

Silence, of the awkward variety this time, held for several blocks.

“Speaking of feelings for you…Jenna’s, I mean,” she said suddenly, her face flushing red. “I’ve been wondering why Rachel was going to all this trouble.”

“A natural love of mayhem and messing with people isn’t enough?”

“No, not really…”

It took me a second to connect the dots between the first part of her sentence and the last.
Feelings for you…Rachel.
“Rachel?” I laughed. “No.”

“Oh, come on, haven’t you wondered why she’s so determined to involve you in all of this?” She turned toward me in her seat, warming to the topic, something she’d evidently been thinking about for a while. I was beginning to wonder if there was ever anything Ariane didn’t consider for hours or days before saying something. “If she wanted to punish me, there are easier ways.”

I nodded, tapping an uncomfortable rhythm on the steering wheel. “Which is why what you’re suggesting doesn’t make sense. If she…liked me”—God, I could barely force the phrase out—“she wouldn’t push me to pretend to pursue someone else for one of her games.”

“You’re not thinking about it the way she does,” Ariane said. “If she can get you to do what she wants, it means you’re hers.”

“She already has Trey for that,” I pointed out.

“Exactly, he’s no challenge, so it means nothing to her. But with you”—she tilted her head to one side, eyeing me speculatively—“she knows you aren’t as eager to jump, and it drives her crazy. She wants you to want her.”

I flashed back to Rachel kissing me the other night, right in front of Trey. “That is messed up.” But not entirely out of character, the part of her I knew that maybe the others weren’t as aware of. “How do you know? That that’s what Rachel’s thinking, I mean.”

Ariane hesitated. “I understand how she thinks. Maybe I’m more like her than I’d prefer.”

I knew she was blaming herself for Jenna again. “No. You’re not.” I stopped, trying to decide whether I wanted to go where this was headed—I didn’t talk about this, with anyone—but then the words were out, sounding loud and awkward. “I’m sure you know about my mom.”

“I know what people say,” Ariane responded carefully.

“My favorite ones are the Witness Protection Program and running off with some rich guy she met on the Internet,” I said.

Ariane stiffened, and I knew she’d heard both of those.

I focused my attention on the road and made myself keep talking. “I think it’s a lot simpler than that. My dad’s a dick, and she couldn’t take it anymore. And, unlike Quinn, I wasn’t enough of a reason to stick around.”

Ariane made some small noise—sympathy, surprise, a combination of both—but she didn’t interrupt.

Which was good, because that had been harder to say than I thought, even though so much time had passed. I cleared my throat. “So anyway, one night last year, I’m at a party at Rachel’s, and I was drinking. Okay, I was drunk,” I admitted ruefully. “And the party is a total rager, so I’m just trying to find a quiet corner that’s not already full of broken stuff or covered in puke, you know?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her nodding, though I was pretty sure she’d never been to one.

“And I find Rachel in her dad’s study, and she’s crying.” I pulled around the corner at Pine and Rushmore and parked.

“If this ends with you having sex with Rachel, you can stop now,” Ariane said with distaste, her hand on the door. “There are those rumors, too.” She raised her eyebrows at me in challenge.

“Never happened,” I said.

She nodded slowly, as if relieved.

“Anyway, she starts talking to me about stuff she’s never even hinted at before, and we had been friends forever. Her mom is in some kind of semipermanent spa/rehab joint in California, and it’s a mental thing, not just alcohol or pills. Her dad is always gone, traveling for GTX, shaking hands and schmoozing. Her grandpa is the only one who cares about her, and he’s always busy at work.”

Next to me, Ariane went rigid.

“I’m not telling you this stuff as an excuse for her,” I said quickly. “Just trying to show you how the conversation was going.”

Ariane seemed to relax.

I leaned back in my seat, tracing the lines of the emblem in the center of the steering wheel with my finger. “Anyway, so…she’s upset, and I’ve been drinking, and it suddenly seems like a good idea to talk about my mom. How she left and didn’t tell us where she was going. I mean, forget telling my dad, but what about me? And sticking around for Quinn’s graduation party one night but not for my birthday the next day?” I let out a slow breath and forced a smile. “It’s enough to give you a complex, you know?”

I dared a quick glance at Ariane, to find her watching me intently.

“In any case, we, uh, ended up, um, comforting each other.” It had not been sex or even close, but I didn’t feel it was in my best interests to go into detail about what it had or had not been. “Then someone set off a two-liter bomb in the backyard and everyone scattered, and we never talked about it again, except to agree that it didn’t happen. Until yesterday morning when Trey shows up at my house, trying to talk me into going along with Rachel’s plan even though he knows I’ve been all messed up and different since my mom left, blaming myself, and it isn’t my fault…blah, blah, blah.” I took a deep breath. “He never would have come up with all of that on his own. Trey and I have never talked about that kind of stuff. And I don’t
want
to talk about it or hear people talking about it ever again. Most of that had finally died down. But I knew if I kept telling Rachel no, all of a sudden it would be about poor, messed-up Zane again.…”