MY WHOLE BODY ACHED by the time last bell rang. The hallway around my locker had emptied out already—everyone dashing for the door as soon as they could—but I was moving slowly. The ibuprofen I’d snagged from Cami had worn off hours ago.
But it wasn’t just the remnants of the hangover dragging me down. All afternoon I’d had to watch Trey mooning over Rachel; Rachel gloating at having coasted through the lunch trouble with nothing more than a stern warning from Mr. Kohler; and Cami, Cassi, Jonas, and Matty talking about the same things, the same people, as last year. I was so tired of all of this claustrophobic inner-circle crap.
And yet I stuck around. What did that say about me? But what was I supposed to do, cut them off ? Join the goth crowd smoking behind the gym? Where else was I going to go?
“I’m in.”
Startled, I turned to see Ariane behind me.
I slammed my locker shut and pulled my backpack up over my shoulders. “You’re in what?”
“Your plan. The one you described this morning.” She looked fierce, ready to spit nails. I couldn’t blame her. But I couldn’t help her either. Not anymore.
“It’s too late for that,” I said. “You saw what happened at lunch.”
Her mouth tightened. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Zane, you coming, man?” Trey shouted from the other end of the hall, where he was waiting impatiently near the glass doors to the parking lot, car keys in hand.
“I’ll meet you at the car,” I shouted back. I turned to Ariane. “She’ll never believe it. She already knows you said no. Forget it.” There was no point in trying to fight. Just ride it out. Only another seven-hundred-odd days, right?
I started to walk away, but Ariane followed. “She’ll believe it because she wants to believe it. She wants the opportunity to crush me more than she wants to think it through.” I could hear the bitterness and disdain curling the edges of her words.
I stopped and looked at her. She wasn’t pleading; she was too angry for that. Her eyes, that strange muddled blue, held barely restrained fury. I’d never seen or heard Ariane this emotional about anything, except in telling me off this morning. She was half my size but looked ready to break someone’s arm off.
A flicker of interest in my original plan—and in this strange girl who made no sense—flared up again. “All right,” I said. “What did you have in mind?”
She didn’t sigh in relief or smile or say thank you, but the tension in her shoulders eased. “The same thing you proposed this morning. Bonfire Week.”
I frowned. “The activities fair starts in three hours.” Even from here I could hear distant echoing voices from the gym and the loud whine of what might have been a power saw as the various clubs set up their booths.
“I can be ready.” She raised her eyebrows, her gaze taking me in from head to toe. A small but mocking smile played on her lips. “Can you?”
I grimaced. I must have looked pretty rough. No more drinking on weeknights. “Fine. Yes. Then what?”
Her brows drew together, crinkling her forehead. “What do you mean?”
I felt the tiniest bit vindicated at having figured out something before her. “I mean, we can’t just show up at this stuff, the fair, the game, the bonfire, and that’s it. If it’s supposed to look legit, like we’re into each other for real—and trust me, Rachel would expect that of any scheme of hers—then we’ve got to take it an extra step.”
Ariane eyed me warily. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Do you walk to school?” I asked, ignoring the doubt in her voice. I waited for her to nod, though I already knew the answer. Trey and I had passed her often enough last year when we were coming in early for one thing or another.
“If I can get the truck for school, I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning.” My dad usually drove his work car, an SUV emblazoned with WINGATE CHIEF OF POLICE. If he could have had it personalized with his name, he probably would have. That meant the battered Blazer that Quinn drove was sitting unused in the garage. I could have argued for the right to take it to school, but since Trey had a car, it wasn’t worth the fight unless I had a date.
“What? Why do you need to pick me up?” Ariane looked alarmed.
“The extra step,” I reminded her patiently. “School pickup, drop-off, lunch probably…”
Ariane made a face, whether in memory of today’s incident or the idea in general.
“But not at my house,” she insisted. “You can’t pick me up at my house.”
In spite of myself, I felt the first tendrils of intrigue uncurling. She didn’t want me at her house. Was it only me? Or everyone? “Okay,” I said slowly. “Then how do you expect me to pick you up for the fair tonight?”
“We could meet in the parking lot and—” she began.
“Because no one would notice that and call us on it?” I asked. “Try again.”
She scowled at me. “Fine. Two blocks from my house. Pine and Rushmore. But don’t wait on Pine, go around the corner.”
Uh-oh. I cocked my head to one side, staring at her curiously. “Are you sneaking out?” Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her at anything outside of school, even regular extracurriculars like the fair tonight.
“No,” she said, too quickly.
Great. “Look, I don’t know what your life is like right now, but mine kind of sucks and I don’t need more heat from my dad if your dad decides to get pissed about—”
“It’s fine,” she said. “He won’t even be home. I just…I just don’t want to answer a bunch of questions about what I’m doing if someone sees the truck in the driveway and mentions it to him.” She shifted uncomfortably, avoiding my gaze.
Oh, she was so lying. Maybe not about her dad being gone, but about the sneaking out? Most definitely. But Wingate was a small town; no way we would stay a secret for long, which meant all of this would come raining down on my head at some point.
I hesitated, then shrugged. Oh, what the hell. My dad already hated me, what was one more reason for it? Hey, if her dad was Mark Tucker and this ended up making him cranky, maybe my dad would be pleased at having struck a blow at his mortal enemy.
“Fair starts at seven,” I said. “What time do you want me to—”
“Quarter to. And don’t be late,” she added.
I resisted the urge to salute, figuring she might not take it well. I pulled my phone from my pocket. “What’s your number?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why?”
She was going to fight me every step of the way, even though this was her idea. This time, anyway. “How else do you want me contact you?” I asked slowly, as if to a child.
She frowned and made no move for her cell.
“Second thoughts already?” I asked, fighting disappointment. This was maybe the most interesting thing that had happened in months. I’d proposed my plan to her this morning out of anger and spite. I thought she’d go for it, and when she didn’t, I thought better of her for it. And now…now she was coming back to me. I hadn’t counted on that, and found I liked her even more for surprising me yet again.
She stuck her chin out. “No.” She dug into her pocket and handed me her phone. I typed in my number.
“Here.” I handed it back. “Call me.”
She nodded and started to turn away.
“No.” I snagged the edge of her bag to stop her, careful not to touch her directly. She’d been ready to bolt this morning whenever she thought I might make direct contact. “Now. So I have your number.” You’d have thought she’d never exchanged numbers with someone before.
Her cheeks turned a pale pink. “Fine,” she muttered.
She hit SEND on her phone, and as soon as mine rang, she hung up.
I typed her name in and saved it. “You know this could all blow up in our faces if Rachel catches on,” I said, tucking my phone into my pocket. I found there was a part of me, bent on self-destruction, that was more than a little eager at the prospect, but I felt I had to warn Ariane. “If you think she’s bad now…”
“She won’t like it, but she’ll believe.” Ariane sounded absurdly confident.
I sighed. “Your funeral.”
“Yes, it will be,” she said solemnly.
Okaaaay. Before I could respond to that—I wasn’t even sure what I would say—she turned and walked away. Her backpack—a plain green canvas rather than the pink sparkly or shiny black bags I was used to seeing from Rachel and her lot—pulled at her shoulders, and on the right side, where the neck of her shirt was bunched under the strap, I caught a glimpse of a square white edge. The bandage I’d seen last year.
My curiosity sparked to life again. Maybe tonight I’d start getting some of the answers I wanted. The missing pieces that would make her make sense.
When Trey dropped me off at home, I didn’t retreat to my room as usual. Instead I cleared a space on the kitchen table and set the stage with my laptop open and books around it. I loaded and ran the dishwasher, but I didn’t empty it. That would have been pushing it.
The trick to managing my dad was doing so without letting him catch on. There was an art to it. I’d watched my mom do it on my behalf for years. It meant choosing your words carefully, picking the right time, and positioning the situation and the desired action in a way that would make sense to him, right or wrong.
But after everything that happened last year, I’d been too pissed and confused to bother putting what I knew into practice. But now I wanted the truck, wanted to be able to pick up Ariane, enough to play his ridiculous game.
I was out of practice, though. I just hoped it would be enough.
If he kept to pattern, he’d show up between five thirty and six, and one of us would dig into the freezer for a casserole that some woman—either grandmotherly or looking to date my dad, it varied—had dropped off for us. Since my mom had left, my dad made a point of being home for dinner. Couldn’t have people whispering about the poor neglected son left at home alone all the time, even if he was the “other Bradshaw boy.” Appearances were everything to my dad.
I played at working on my homework—there was never very much in the first week anyway—while I waited and watched the clock. I’d be cutting it close for picking up Ariane, but it was a calculated gamble. If my dad had had a bad day, calling and interrupting him at work would trash my chances.
Killing time, I Googled Ariane. Yeah, it was a little stalker-y, but mostly I was just trying to find out what everyone else knew about her that I’d ignored or completely missed in the haze of last year.
Except it turned out Ariane Tucker was a ghost. Well, not really. But maybe as close to it as you can get and still be alive. In more ways than one.
There were lots of Ariane Tuckers in the United States, but they were the wrong age and/or living in the wrong place. This Ariane, the sixteen- or seventeen-year-old one in Wingate, Wisconsin, didn’t show up at all. She didn’t have a Facebook page or a Tumblr. No Twitter or Formspring either, as far as I could tell.
Then I tried searching her name in combination with the man I was guessing to be her dad, the infamous Mark Tucker.
Two listings came up. The first was an obituary from the archives of a newspaper in a small town in central Ohio. Dated from about ten years ago, it was for an Abigail Tucker, thirty-eight. She’d died in a single-car accident, a collision with a concrete bridge abutment on an icy night.
So Cami had been right. Ariane had come here after her mother’s death. And Ariane was definitely related to the hated Mark Tucker. Interesting.
Then the second-to-last paragraph, right above the details for Abigail Tucker’s funeral, caught my attention.
Mrs. Tucker is survived by her former husband, Mark Tucker. Ariane, the couple’s six-year-old daughter, struggled valiantly in experimental treatment for a rare form of cancer, until several weeks ago when…
I clicked for the next page, but got a 404 error, PAGE NOT FOUND. I tried again and got the same result.
I sat back in my chair. Cami said Ariane had been sick, but no one had ever mentioned that it was this bad. It sounded like she’d almost died. And then after surviving all of that, she’d had to deal with the fact that her mom was never coming back.
My mind immediately summoned up an image of the note on the kitchen table—a lone square of white paper on the polished wood—that Sunday morning. I’d stumbled in to find the kitchen empty and pristine. All the mess from Quinn’s graduation party the night before had been cleaned up and put away. Not so much as a streamer remained on the wall. My mom must have been up for hours to get everything restored to normal in time for the next day, my birthday.
I’d been stupidly pleased. It was hard enough to have your birthday in the shadow of another big event, especially something for Quinn, but it would have been even worse if we’d been eating birthday cake on graduation plates, beneath balloons and banners that had been put up to celebrate him. Talk about proof that you’re second best…
My mom, though, of all people, knew how it worked in our house. We were on the same side (or so I’d thought). She’d always done what she could to soften the blow of my father’s disapproval.
I’d heard her moving around the house in the middle of the night—her footsteps much lighter than those of my dad or my brother—and thought nothing of it until I walked into the cleaned-up kitchen.
Smiling, I picked up the note. That was the last normal-ish moment I’d have for years. Maybe forever.
At first I thought it was a standard Mom note. Running errands. DON’T eat Dad’s leftovers from last night. Or, Picking up your cake at the bakery. Call and let me know if you’ve decided what you want for your birthday dinner tonight.
But instead it was something entirely different, completely unexpected.
I just can’t anymore.
—M
I’d failed so badly that even my mom, my one ally, couldn’t stand to stay any longer. My dad had made her life miserable for years, and she’d probably thought about bailing a thousand times, but she’d hung in there long enough to get Quinn out the door and on his way to college. But I…I wasn’t worth sticking around for. And she was right; I wasn’t. Or at least I hadn’t been back then. I was trying to be different now.
I forced my attention back to the screen in front of me and the information about Ariane. Despite the ominous tone of the article, she’d survived and was tougher than she looked. Maybe that was why she was so unrelenting and seemed a bit removed from all the high school idiocy going on around her. She knew there was more to life than what everyone else concerned themselves with.
That only increased my respect for her.
Her former illness might explain why she was excused from gym, as Cassi had pointed out last night. And considering it now, I wondered if the bandage on her shoulder was somehow related. Her treatment had been experimental, whatever that meant. It was possible she bore scars from her ordeal. Maybe that was what she was hiding beneath that bandage, not a tattoo at all.
The second listing for Ariane was from that same newspaper, published several weeks after the first article. I clicked on it, expecting an update on her condition, maybe an announcement about her triumphant return home. Instead it was a retraction, two terse and seemingly hurried lines.
In the February 28 issue, Ariane Tucker, daughter of Mark and Abigail Tucker, was reported to have died.
We regret the error.
I read it twice to make sure I wasn’t missing something, but the meaning didn’t change. How bizarre was that? How can you get somebody’s death wrong? I mean, it happened all the time with celebrities—some famous person was forever announcing that he or she was still alive—but with a random little girl in Ohio? That seemed odd.
The back door banged open, startling me. My dad walked in, carrying a pizza box in one hand and a stack of mail in the other. He dropped them both on the island with a heavy sigh and then paused to rub the back of his neck, like the muscles were kinking up. His jacket was hanging open in the front, and he looked tired.
I froze. Uh-oh. This could go either way.
“Dinner,” he shouted toward the back of the house, before noticing my presence at the table with a double take.
“Sausage?” I ventured, shutting down my browser and pretending I hadn’t seen the surprise on his face.
He grunted an affirmative, shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it on the back of a chair. Judging by the size of the box, the pizza was a medium, barely enough to feed both of us for one meal. When I ordered I always got the extra large, enough for multiple meals.
But I kept my mouth firmly clamped shut. He’d taken the initiative to bring food home; that was unusual and a good sign. He’d done that occasionally when my mom was still around, surprising us with takeout or telling us to load up into the car for a meal at Morelli’s. It was sort of his way of apologizing without actually saying the words “I’m” or “sorry.”
I was cautiously optimistic.
Watching him as he flipped through the mail, I pushed away from the table to get a plate from the dishwasher.
A moment later, my dad followed suit, saying nothing about the fact that there were clean dishes finally. Then again, the absence of screaming was usually the best I could hope for. So far, so good.
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 through 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.
If I told Jenna about what Zane and I were up to, would she tell Rachel? As much as I wanted to believe she wouldn’t, the truth was, I wasn’t sure. It might be just the “in” Jenna was probably racking her brain for right now.
I realized belatedly that the beep had sounded several seconds ago, signaling readiness for me to leave a message.
“Uh, hey, Jenna, it’s Ariane. Again.” I hesitated, not sure what to say but unable to hang up without saying something. “Listen, I know you’re still upset with me. And I wish…” I swallowed hard. “I wish you weren’t. I wish that we saw things the same way, that we saw Rachel the same way.” I heard the hatred bubbling up in my voice when I said Rachel’s name, and clamped down on it. That would not help.
“Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you may hear some stuff tomorrow.” Lame. “But don’t worry about it. Just ignore it. It’s nothing. I mean, it’s really nothing,” I emphasized, trying to communicate everything I couldn’t actually tell her.
“So, just call me back when you can, okay? Whenever you want,” I added hastily. “I…I’ll see you later, I guess. Bye.”
I hung up, feeling both better and worse, and slowly returned to my closet.
After rummaging all the way to the back, I found a dark-green Henley with three-quarter sleeves. I’d ordered it online but never wore it because it was a little too tight, and the neckline, even with all the buttons buttoned, veered a touch too low in front. Then I dragged out my little plastic step stool—hate being this short—and dug around on a shelf until I found the right pair of jeans.
The only advantage I had in the fashion department was I was something of connoisseur when it came to denim. After so many years of wearing the cheap, easily found stuff, the discovery of premium fabric had come as a delight. Much like the luxury of having bedding with an actual thread count instead of the bleached hospital-grade sheet and thin cotton blanket I’d had in the lab, expensive jeans—softer, cut better, and longer-lasting—were a treat I would not give up. I’d stumbled across my first pair on a rare trip with Jenna to T.J. Maxx freshman year.
After that, I was hooked, and I discovered the joys of eBay for finding brands the mall in Brookfield didn’t carry and at a price that my allowance would accept. The best part was, as long as I kept the style pretty generic and wore a shirt long enough to cover up the emblems or designs on the back pockets, people couldn’t tell. I mixed my Seven7s, Rock & Republics, and Sinclairs in with my Target purchases, and no one was the wiser. And I enjoyed the hell out of pulling that secret over on everyone. Strange, socially awkward Ariane Tucker had a jeans collection that would make Cami and Cassi Andrews, if not Rachel, Queen of Fashion herself, weep.
Hey, I had to have a hobby. There were a lot of hours not filled by school and Dream-Life.
I recognized a familiar velvety softness beneath my fingertips. These. I freed the pair from the bottom of a precarious stack.
These were the first of my collection. Lucky Brand. They’d come with a fortune cookie slip in the front pocket. Happiness is in your future.
Of all the horrible things full-blooded humans could create—bioweapons, global warming, “reality” television—jeans like these were not one of them. Though, my father might not agree if he saw what they normally sold for.
I hopped down off the step stool with the jeans in hand and set about changing my clothes.
Once dressed, I approached the dresser mirror for a quick look. A huge static-filled nimbus of pale hair surrounded my head, to my complete unsurprise.
I sighed. Taming the disaster that was my hair would be another battle, to be taken on momentarily, so I ignored it for now to focus on my apparel choices.
The jeans, faded and soft, helped create the illusion of curves where I was mostly sharp angles. The dark green color of the shirt made my skin look absurdly pale, but that, frankly, was a better option than the freaky grayish tone I sometimes had. Like the underbelly of a frog. A dead frog. (I longed to have the faintest hint of a tan. Or even a burn. But the sun that I’d yearned to see for so many years didn’t affect me the same way it did full-blooded humans. I turned pink for an hour or two and then right back to white.)
The neckline of the Henley did scoop a little lower than I was used to, but it was nothing worse than what other girls wore to school on a daily basis. And besides, my chest was one area where the androgynous alien DNA had almost completely won out over the human, so it wasn’t as if there was much to see anyway. Jenna’s mom had once said I had an Audrey Hepburn–type figure, which I looked up, and as far as I could tell was a polite way of saying “flat-chested.”
In any case, the back of the shirt rose high enough to cover the bandage on my shoulder blade, my one major requirement for clothing. Most shirts weren’t thin enough that the identification mark would show through, but that was not a chance I could take. Hence, the bandage. If someone saw the GTX tattoo, that would be a tough one to explain.
The helpful countdown in the back of my mind piped up suddenly. Seventeen minutes to go. And I needed to be walking out the door in about ten.
So, good enough? I gave my outfit one last critical look and wished I felt a little more confident, but there was no time—and honestly, probably no hope—for much more.
I turned away from the mirror to head for the bathroom—where all manner of hair-taming products with varying degrees of ineffectiveness awaited me—and then stopped.
I stepped back to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Buried beneath a layer of bland shapeless shirts was a shiny white box. I pulled it out and opened it. An old and battered metal key—strange-looking in that it had prongs on the end instead of the typical ridge and valley pattern of a normal key—lay on a bed of cotton. The key had been polished enough that it gleamed dully around the dents and nicks in its surface. A pale green glass bead was wrapped around the center, and a thin chain with delicate gold links was looped through the opening at the top, where a key ring would have gone if it was a normal key.
When I’d first opened the box I’d had no idea what the object inside was, and my father had had to explain.
“It’s a skeleton key. In old houses, one key would open all the doors,” he’d said, keeping his gaze focused on the pancakes on his plate. “A woman at work finds them and turns them into jewelry. It…it made me think of you.”
A symbol. So I would never be trapped anywhere again. If I’d been close to tears at any point since leaving GTX, it was then.
Normally I couldn’t wear it. Way too attention-getting on the outside of my shirt and too bulky to hide beneath it. But tonight? Not a problem.
I slipped the chain over my head, and the key, cool and heavier than I expected, settled against my chest, above my virtually nonexistent cleavage. It felt right and more “me” than almost anything else I owned. I loved it, both for what it was and what it represented.
If nothing else, tonight’s exercise in insanity would give me the chance to wear it proudly and without fear.
Too bad I couldn’t say the same for my hair.
At precisely 6:37, my hair tamed into a ponytail and damp with fruity- and flowery-smelling styling products, I walked out of my house, pausing only to lock the door, my nerves-slick palms slipping on the metal doorknob.
I stuck my house key into my pocket and headed down the porch steps to the sidewalk, my stomach tight with anxiety. The sun was low, casting everything in a bright gold-and-pink haze. Up and down the street, people were enjoying their evening—taking a walk, bringing groceries into the house, playing with their kids in the yard—but I couldn’t seem to focus on any of it.
Maybe Zane won’t be there. I found myself oddly relieved and disappointed at the possibility. It would mean I could turn around and go home, as though this night were no different from any other, which would be good. But it would also probably mean that Zane had chickened out and returned to Rachel’s side—if he’d ever left it—likely telling her everything that had transpired with him this afternoon. Not good.
As I walked, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, I tried to decide which would be worse—for him to be there or not. What would be my plan in either case?
But as it turned out, it wasn’t up to me and my calculations. As soon as I reached the midpoint of the block I could see the back half of a battered dark gray SUV waiting around the corner.
Crap. He was here. My heart gave an extra-hard thump, and I was torn between hurrying toward him to get the inevitable awkwardness out of the way and fleeing without looking back.
Suddenly I felt ridiculous and exposed in the clothes I’d picked. I should have just worn what I wore to school. That was normal, predictable, no risk. I hadn’t wanted to give anyone a reason to question Zane and me, but the truth was, they were going to question and gawk and whisper anyway. In my regular clothes I’d have been sure they were talking about the two of us together rather than my wardrobe choices.
I slowed, biting my lip. Maybe I should go home and change; it would only take a few minutes. But then I’d be late to meet Zane. And the neighbors would see me running back and forth, raising the odds that someone would mention it to my father.
No, better to proceed. I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders, and moved forward at an even pace—a passable imitation of my normal stride. But I could feel home behind me, pulling at me like a magnet that wasn’t quite strong enough.
When I turned down Rushmore, I found Zane leaning against the passenger side of the SUV, his head tipped down as he thumbed through something on his phone. He didn’t notice me right away, so I took a second to let myself adjust. Seeing him there made something in me squirm—like one of those dreams where you run into someone where they have no business being, doing things they have no business doing. Except, well, in this case, I supposed, it wasn’t him who was somewhere he shouldn’t be, but me.
I was relieved to note that he’d changed his clothes as well. He now wore a plaid shirt, the sleeves rolled up well past his wrists, and darker jeans that looked slightly less like they might fall apart at any second. His dark hair looked a shade or two deeper than normal, damp from a shower maybe, but styled in the usual tousled spiky mess I remembered from class last year instead of hanging, defeated, in his face, as it had been this morning.
He was attractive, I realized with a bolt that went beyond the theoretical acknowledgment I’d always had of this fact. His face was symmetrical, without any of the uneven features that might have cast him into a less-attractive category—a nose too big or ears too wide. His hands made the phone look small, his thumbs typing adeptly on the screen.
No wonder Jenna fluttered around him, I thought, shifting uncomfortably, feeling more than ever that I shouldn’t be here.
But those weren’t the only physical changes I noticed. Something in him had eased. The tension in his shoulders seemed less. I was tempted to drop my guard and listen to his thoughts for a second—if he was relaxed because he’d lured me into some trap, I wasn’t going to be happy.
But he chose that moment to look up from his phone. “Hey,” he said with obvious relief. He straightened up, letting his hand with the phone fall to his side. “I wasn’t sure if you’d show.” He smiled as if he was pleased to see me.
“I said I’d be here, so I’m here,” I said stiffly. Somehow it was easier to rebuff that unexpected smile with sharp words. “And you shouldn’t park so close to the fire hydrant.” I tipped my head toward the object in question, which might have been six inches too close to the front of his SUV. In other words, nine and a half feet away instead of ten.
He nodded slowly, eyeing me as if I might be a little off. “Okaaay. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Damn it. Even as the words escaped, I’d known it was the wrong thing to say, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
“You ready?” He tucked his phone into his pocket and pulled open the passenger door.
Cool air rushed out. I could hear a faint dinging from inside, indicating the keys were in the ignition.
My heartbeat sped up, and I hesitated. This was wrong, against everything I’d been taught.
Don’t get into a car with a stranger.
Never trust anyone.
The first was from a child-safety coloring book the police department had given out in grade school, and the second was my father’s most important rule. But it was too late for worrying about that; I’d set the wheels in motion. Now it was my job to stay in front of them instead of getting crushed beneath them.
“Ariane?” Zane prompted, with a frown. I knew better than to draw this level of attention to myself; I should have been correcting my behavior—attempting to laugh it off or explain it away—just as I did whenever I got that reaction from Jenna. I’d strayed too far from “normal” again.
But right now it felt like too much, too overwhelming.
“Yeah, all right.” I left the sidewalk, feeling as if I was leaving reality or sanity behind, and climbed up into the SUV.
Zane pushed the door shut after me, and the sounds of the outside world—lawn mowers and birds—died away.
My breath caught in my throat, and I wanted to claw at the door to let myself out. I have a hard time with confined spaces under the best of circumstances, and this was definitely not that.
But if I abandoned this opportunity, I probably wouldn’t get another.
So I inched away from the door and squeezed my hands together in my lap to keep from reaching for the handle.
Zane opened his door and slid behind the wheel. “Are you all right?” he asked, and I could hear the concern in his voice. I didn’t want to think about what might have been showing on my face.
He cranked the engine, and a blast of cold air roared through the vents and against my skin. I felt like I could breathe again.
I inhaled deeply and breathed out as slowly as I could without being obvious. “I’m fine,” I said, my voice fainter than I would have preferred.
At least I would be. And soon, I hoped.