Project Paper Doll: The Trials

“Now, asshole!” Quinn said with an extra thump on the door for emphasis. “Let’s go, or you can find your own way.”

 

 

The funny thing was, even with the irritation in his voice, I could tell he wasn’t really angry.

 

Since Quinn had come back to live in Wingate after the incident with GTX and Dr. Jacobs, he’d mellowed considerably. We’d talked a little about what had happened, but mostly he seemed to be trying to forget it and move on. He was taking classes at New Century Community College and working at Dick’s Sporting Goods in his spare time. His arm had healed, but his scholarship to Madison was long gone. And he actually seemed much happier. It had occurred to me that as hard as my dad had ridden me as a “failure,” Quinn probably hadn’t had it much easier as “the success.” No room for mistakes. No room to breathe. No wonder he’d flunked out. The pressure alone must have sucked.

 

So we were getting along a lot better. That, however, did not mean I wanted to push him too far. It was a long walk to school, and Trey was on Rachel duty this week. She needed someone to drive her since the bank had repossessed her car.

 

“Okay, okay,” I shouted.

 

I hit SEND on the last e-mail, grabbed my backpack where it hung behind me on the desk chair, and then headed for the door before doubling back for my coat.

 

It was supposed to snow today. Again. And one of the lasting side effects of Emerson’s viral experiment was that I still had trouble regulating my temperature. When it was cold, I was freezing.

 

Quinn was waiting at the table in the kitchen when I got there, his foot jiggling with impatience.

 

After opening the pantry cabinet I grabbed the last foil-wrapped package of Pop-Tarts from where I’d hidden it behind the oatmeal my mom had purchased and sent home with me. I stuffed them, wrapper and all, into my mouth, while I shrugged into my coat.

 

My dad watched from his perch at the island, coffee mug in hand. “Did your mother buy that for you?” my dad asked, his mouth tight with disgust. “You look like you’re about to go shovel manure.”

 

I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders. “Well, it’s called a barn coat, I think,” I said, after taking the Pop-Tart package out of my mouth. And yes, it had been a gift from my mom, who was doing her best to make up for lost time and the fact that her place, an apartment on the other side of Wingate, was too small for me or Quinn to join her right now. But as soon as her role as a witness in Dr. Jacobs’s trial was over and she could find another job (maybe), that would change, she hoped. I thought that was a little overly optimistic, but she was trying, so whatever. I wasn’t going to crap all over her dream.

 

“Because you wear it in one or because you smell like one?” Quinn asked, pretending to consider the question seriously.

 

“One more crack about my coat, and I’ll leave it in your car so that girl in your Poli Sci class thinks it’s yours,” I said around a mouthful of strawberry Pop-Tart.

 

Quinn immediately held his hands up in surrender, his key ring looped around his finger. “Not cool.” Then he got up and led the way out the door.

 

“Bye, Dad,” I said, more out of habit than anything else.

 

He grunted in response but made no further attempt at communication, critical or otherwise.

 

Ever since GTX had faltered in the public eye, he’d seemed smaller somehow and almost bewildered, a man in a changed world without any idea how to adjust. He’d lost his guiding star. And he blamed me for it, unquestionably. But he had at least tried to help me, cooperating with the news report about my “abduction.”

 

That being said, it didn’t make up for the fact that he’d pretty much left me for dead in a parking lot, and we both knew it. So there really wasn’t much he could do or say in retaliation.

 

And frankly, it was better that way.

 

But if home had gotten a little better since I’d come back, school was worse.

 

How had I accumulated so many memories of Ariane in such a short amount of time? I saw her everywhere, my heart picking up an extra beat every time I caught a flash of pale hair or heard a laugh that sort of sounded like hers.

 

It was never her.

 

On my first day back at school, I’d used the last of my waning abilities to pop open her locker. Ariane’s official story was, I guess, that she and her father had moved away unexpectedly. The school hadn’t needed her locker and there was no one to claim her stuff, so the office just left everything there.

 

Her locker was, as far as I could tell, exactly how she’d left it. No personal items at all, unsurprisingly. Just textbooks in a neat line, with matching folders and notebooks, and maybe a hint of dust and lemons.

 

I’d stolen one of her notebooks, which was filled with a careful precise script that I recognized from sitting behind her in class, and the one note she’d written me all those months ago.

 

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