Projection (14 page)

But Jessica seemed unfazed. “You really need to stop apologizing, Ariel. I told you: it’s all in the past. And today wasn’t weird for me at all. I swear, it’s all good.”

“Okay. I just felt like maybe something was wrong, and I thought maybe you were still mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at
you
,” Jessica answered.

“Is it Gretchen?” Ariel asked in a flood of relief. “What went on between the two of you, anyway?”

Jessica’s face tightened. “Ariel, you can ask me pretty much anything you want, but what happened with me and Gretchen stays between me and Gretchen. Okay?”

Ariel slumped back into the passenger seat. Jessica’s face
relaxed again. “Hey, what’s the deal with Connor?” she asked, changing the subject.

Ariel raised her eyebrows. She hadn’t thought that Jessica had even noticed Connor. “I think he’s into you. I even said so to Nick at lunch.”

“Really?” Jessica seemed surprised to hear it. “I think he’s hot. Do you think Nick would, like, set us up?”

Ariel tried not to cringe. She supposed that, objectively, Connor was good looking. But he was such a jerk, Ariel couldn’t see how anyone could find him remotely attractive. But she didn’t feel the need to point this out to Jessica. “Definitely,” Ariel answered. “I’ll make sure of it.”

The next few weeks
passed in a blur. There were her classes, and homework, and Nick. But mostly, she focused on Jessica. The two of them had become nearly inseparable. Jessica sought her out at every opportunity. In the same way Jessica and Gretchen had always been attached at the hip in middle school, Ariel and Jessica were now. She imagined that Jessica probably had a best friend like this at boarding school, too. Sometimes if she thought about it long enough, it made her feel disposable, like a drummer who gets replaced in a band and nobody even notices.

But mostly, Ariel liked it. She’d never really had a close friendship with a girl before. Yes, she was sort of friendly with some of the less popular girls, like Brinley. But the relationships were always tinged with sadness and depression and anger, and doomed to fail. Even last year, when her popularity suddenly sprouted like a weed, she mostly hung out with the guys. The reigning girls welcomed her, but they’d been a tight clique for years. Ariel always felt like an outsider around them.

Now Jessica was an outsider, too, and she and
Ariel—impossibly, unimaginably—had quickly become best friends. Jessica complained about her aunt Michelle, gushed about her uncle Rob, and confided every last detail about her budding relationship with Connor Matthews. Ariel told Jessica things she’d never told anyone before: about how she missed her mom, about how she never even really knew her father, about what she had—and hadn’t—done with Nick Ford.

There was only one thing the two of them never spoke about, and that was the video that Ariel had taken of Jessica and Gretchen kissing.

The last week of
September was warmer than usual. After school let out that Friday, Ariel, Nick, Jessica, and Connor piled into Nick’s car.

“It’s so hot,” Ariel complained. “It sucks so much to live in California and not be close to a beach.”

“Dude,” Connor said, addressing Nick. “Let’s go swimming at your house.”

Nick shook his head. “We can’t. My parents are having a party tonight, and my mom’s been setting up the backyard all day. Why can’t we swim at your house?”

Connor frowned. “Dude, my mom.” The four of them sat in silence. “Okay,” Nick finally said. “Somebody tell me where to go, because I’m driving around in circles.”

Silence again. Then Jessica made a suggestion from the backseat. “Let’s go to the Club.”

Ariel stiffened in her seat. She immediately thought of the last time she and Jessica had encountered each other at the club. Jessica had practically accused her of murdering Gretchen’s mother, just hours before Ariel posted the video of her and Gretchen. Did she not remember that? Or did she
really just not care anymore?

Nick swerved the car and made a quick U-turn. “Excellent idea,” he said. He glanced at Ariel. “Have you ever been there?”

A flash of anger surged up inside of her. Was he serious? Did he really not remember that she’d spent the entire summer before ninth grade picking up
his
dirty towels and the towels of his stupid, spoiled friends? Did he really not remember how they’d all ignored her and acted like she was totally invisible? She gripped the door handle. And then it occurred to her that actually, he probably didn’t remember. It occurred to her that maybe they weren’t just acting like she was invisible. Maybe she really
was
invisible to Nick Ford. Not because he was mean, not because he was a bad person, but because he was oblivious.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “I’ve been there once or twice.”

The club hadn’t changed
at all. The chairs were all in the same spots on the concrete patio, the cabanas were still covered in the same striped fabric, the towels were still the same, faded shade of yellow. Ariel followed Nick and the others through the glass doors, anxious that someone on the staff might recognize her. She spotted a few familiar faces right off the bat, but as she walked through the lobby and into the women’s locker room with Jessica, none of the front desk people or locker room attendants even looked at her.

I’m just another spoiled Delphi kid
, she thought. The realization made her smile in spite of herself. If this wasn’t proof that she fit in, then nothing was.

“I have some extra stuff that you can use,” Jessica said, leading Ariel to a row of wooden lockers, each one printed with a member’s name. Ariel’s eyes scanned the room noticing
that C. Wilson had left her locker slightly ajar. A pair of gold-framed, aviator sunglasses stuck out of a bag inside, and when Jessica turned her back, Ariel deftly swiped the glasses and placed them into her own bag in one smooth motion.

“Here,” Jessica said, tossing Ariel a lime green bikini. “You can wear this.” She eyed Ariel’s lithe body, starting at her long legs, working her way up to her flat abdomen. “It’ll probably look better on you than it does on me.”

It did. Ariel could feel everyone at the Club staring at her as she and Jessica exited the locker room and headed down the steps to the pool. Nick and Connor were already out there, and Nick let out a low whistle when she approached him.

“Damn, girl,” he said admiringly.

Jessica dove into the pool and immediately climbed up onto Connor’s shoulders. “Let’s play chicken!” she called.

Nick grinned at them. “Oh, you are so getting your asses kicked.” He grabbed Ariel’s hand. “Come on!” he said. “Jump!”

Chicken ended with both girls upside down underwater and a stern warning from the head lifeguard that rough play was not permitted in the pool. Ariel laughed and shook the water from her body. Four towels appeared on the counter of the cabana almost as soon as she and the others approached, and Ariel almost didn’t even notice the girl with the dark brown ponytail who silently put them there.
Invisible
, she thought to herself. She thought of Gretchen, eating alone at lunch every day. A pang of guilt ricocheted around her stomach like a pinball.

She glanced at Jessica, and something about her dripping wet hair brought Ariel right back to the last time they’d stood together at this cabana. She’d replayed their exchange so many times in her head, it was seared into her memory,
word for word.

I know you were involved in Gretchen’s mom’s murder. So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut
.

I liked it better when you ignored me
, Ariel had responded.

And it was then, at that very moment, that she’d made up her mind to post the video.

Despite the oppressive heat and the warm towel wrapped around her body, Ariel shuddered. “Are you okay?” Nick asked her. “You’re shivering.”

Ariel swallowed, tried to steady her shaking body. “I’m not feeling that well. I think I need to go home.”

“What?” Jessica frowned. “You can’t go home! We just got here!”

“I really think I should go. I’ll call you later.” Ariel could feel the dizziness setting in, her heartbeat quickening. She’d had panic attacks before, but not in a while. Mrs. Lackman had warned her, though, that they could be triggered by stress. Or by a particularly intense, bad memory. She bolted for the door.

Inhale through your nose. Exhale through your mouth
. As she walked the familiar route home, Ariel felt herself slowly calm down. The dizziness subsided, her heartbeat slowed, the shaking stopped. But she knew she had to deal with what she’d done. She couldn’t pretend any longer.

It was Rob who
answered the door a few hours later. Tan from lying out at the pool all summer—his dark hair slicked back and two days’ worth of grey-tinged scruff on his face—he was still strikingly good looking for a guy in his late-thirties. Ariel, of course, knew who he was from the Club. In fact, Rob was legendary there. The women her mom’s age all gossiped about him, how he’d lucked into a marriage with a woman who didn’t mind being the breadwinner, how they all felt sorry for him because his music career hadn’t panned out. And the high school kids all talked about him, too: how he bought beer for parties, how he’d helped some seniors get a fake ID, how he’d scored backstage passes to some concert down in LA. Even Nick thought he was cool. Ariel had no doubt that at least part of Jessica’s easy transition back to popularity had had something to do with the fact that Rob was her uncle.

“Hi, I’m Ariel. I’m a friend of Jessica’s. Is she around?” Ariel doubted he would recognize her from the Club, or have any idea who she was.

“Ariel,” Rob mused, taking her in in one long, sweeping glance. “You’re dating Nick, right?” He studied her for a moment longer. “Didn’t you used to work at the Club a few summers ago?”

She blinked. “Um, yeah, Nick and I are going out,” she answered, dodging the second part of his question. “Is Jessica here?” she asked again.

He laughed. “Yeah, she’s here. Her room’s down the hall to the left. Just knock.” He stood aside to let her dash past.

She knocked on Jessica’s door, and it swung open.

“Oh, hey,” Jessica said, puzzled. She was lying on the bed, reading a magazine, headphones stuck in her ears. She pulled them out and sat up, cross-legged. “Are you okay? What happened to you today?”

Ariel felt herself turning red. She took a deep breath.
You have to go through with this
, she reminded herself.
It’s the only way
. “I need to tell you something,” she admitted. “It’s about me. Well, about us.”

Jessica nodded. She didn’t even blink. “Okay. Tell me.”

“Okay.” She swallowed and clenched her fists at her side. “When we were in middle school, all I ever wanted was to be popular, and for you and your friends to like me. And I guess, you know, I had a lot of anger about the way you all treated me. So when I caught you and Gretchen on that video, I posted it without really thinking about the consequences, you know? I just wanted to get back at you.”

“I know that,” Jessica said. Her voice hardened. “I thought we discussed this. You don’t need to keep apologizing.”

“I know, and I appreciate that, but the thing is, I haven’t really forgiven myself.” Ariel had never said this before—not to herself, not to Mrs. Lackman, not to anyone—and something about saying the words out loud, about releasing them,
brought tears to her eyes. “It’s not like I just forgot about you and Gretchen after you left. I mean, I’ve felt really, really bad for a long time. I’m not the together person that people think I am. Not at all. I’ve been seeing the school psychologist in secret for two years. I starved myself for most of ninth grade, because apparently, not eating was a way for me to feel in control of myself. And I steal things. I steal food from the 7-Eleven. I steal jewelry and clothes from the mall. I even stole something out of somebody’s locker at the Club today. It’s, like, I don’t know. Mrs. Lackman says that subconsciously I want to get caught, because then I’ll be forced to tell the truth.”

Jessica opened her mouth to respond, but Ariel cut her off with a sniff. She wiped her moist cheeks with a trembling arm.

“No, wait. Just let me finish before you say anything. When you came back, I was terrified. I was sure you were going to out me to everyone. But at the same time, seeing you here, back in Delphi, was a huge relief for me, because I saw that your life wasn’t ruined, you know? I mean, you’re still this really cool, beautiful, popular girl, and it might sound selfish, but I’m really glad about that because it means I didn’t take all of that away from you. But then Gretchen came back, and she’s nothing like who she used to be. I know what happened between you two is none of my business, but I really can’t stand seeing her this way, Jessica. She eats alone in the cafeteria, she doesn’t have any friends, nobody wants to talk to her. The girl was institutionalized, for God’s sake, and I feel like it’s all my fault. I feel like I took away everything she was. And, well, I don’t how you’ll feel about this, but I want to help her. I want to reach out to her and include her again. We have power. If we start talking to her, then everybody will.”

Finally, Ariel stopped talking and took a breath. She looked at Jessica through blurry, teary eyes and braced herself for her response. Whatever Jessica might have to say about her and Gretchen, Ariel had decided that she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Somehow, some way, she was going to make things up to Gretchen and make things right for herself.

But Jessica didn’t say anything. A tear fell from her eye.

“Are you crying?” Ariel gasped.

Jessica didn’t answer. A strange, self-satisfied smile crossed her face as she got up from the bed and walked across the room. When she reached Ariel, she opened her arms and wrapped them around her in a tight hug. Ariel was so confused that she almost didn’t hear Jessica whisper in her ear.

“You passed the test.”

Ariel pulled back from Jessica’s embrace. “What did you just say?”