I WAITED FOR ARIANE to get back in control, listening to her breathing slow down while I pretended to concentrate on driving. Sometimes there’s nothing worse than people calling attention to your panic, asking you over and over if you’re all right, watching you as if steam might suddenly pour out of your ears, causing you to deflate into some misshapen heap on the ground.
I knew because I’d felt that same panic every single time my dad told me with grim determination to go out to the yard “so we can throw the ball around” or made me try out for football.
I did not ask again if she was okay. It was obvious she wasn’t. And why would she be? A lot of it might have been being in a vehicle after what had happened to her mom, even after all these years, but I was sure the fact that we were heading into one incredibly messed-up situation probably didn’t help.
“You know, if anything, she’ll be angrier with me than with you,” I offered after a few minutes, trying to think of something reassuring to say. “I’m supposed to be her friend.”
Ariane looked over at me, her hair a pale fire where it reflected the sunset behind her, and frowned as if she wasn’t sure what I was talking about. Then her expression cleared. “Rachel. Yeah. But that’s also why she’ll end up taking it out on me instead.”
She didn’t seem particularly disturbed by the idea, which was weird. Especially because I would have thought that was part of what was driving her freak-out.
I would have asked if she still wanted to go through with it—probably should have—but she was here, and I didn’t want to insult her. And some part of me resisted the idea. This was my chance to solve the puzzle of Ariane Tucker, and I didn’t want to give it up.
“So…how do you want to do this?” I tapped a nervous rhythm on my leg, half afraid she’d ask me to turn around and take her home when forced to confront details of the tangled web we were weaving. But it had to be asked. We had to be on the same page—no, hell, on the same line on the same page—to make this work. I had to make Rachel think I was following through on her “suggestion,” all the while pretending to be interested in Ariane. But Ariane had the far tougher job—she had to act like she believed me.
Funny how this was going to come down to acting skills, but neither of us was in drama. Not so funny, actually. If Ariane couldn’t keep it together in front of Rachel, we were toast. I didn’t want to deal with full-blown histrionics from Rachel tonight. After all, it was one thing to turn the game around on her successfully; another to get caught in the act, midfail.
Ariane lifted a shoulder, seeming to have regained her equilibrium. “How do you normally do it?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
“I mean, I can’t be the first person Rachel has ever wanted to punish this way,” she said patiently. “If we know how you usually behave when you’re pretending to like someone, we can go from there.”
I took my eyes off the road to stare at her, all distant and cool as ice sitting there in the passenger seat. “You think I do this on a regular basis?” I demanded. “For what, fun?”
“It wouldn’t be out of character for your group of friends,” she pointed out.
“Well, I don’t, okay? I’m not even doing that this time, am I?” I straightened up behind the wheel, both hands on it in a white-knuckled grip.
“You don’t have much room to be offended,” she said, sounding annoyed. “You stood there and let her torture Jenna. For all I know, you helped.”
“First of all,” I snapped, “I didn’t know about the dog collar thing, but I tried to warn you that Rachel would do something. Second, there’s a big difference between actively setting someone up for a prank and not leaping in to save the world every time someone’s feelings are about to get hurt.”
“Hurt feelings?” she scoffed. “You think that’s what this was about?”
I sighed. “What difference does it make? None of this matters anyway, right? It’s high school. We’re out of here in a couple of years.”
“Only someone living inside the privileged circle would feel quite so comfortable saying that. You have the option to be bored, to not care, instead of dreading every day. It’s the powerful versus the powerless, and guess which side you’re on.”
Yeah, that’s my life, dripping with power and options. “You don’t know me,” I snapped. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Ariane opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “And who are you to give me crap about speaking up, anyway? Always hiding in the back of the room, never talking to anyone, never making an effort. Easy for you to sit in judgment of the rest of us.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see the color rising in her pale face, her hands clenching together in her lap as if she was struggling for control again; this time, though, over her temper. “I don’t always get to do what I think is right,” she said tightly.
“Yeah, well, neither do I.” I smacked down on the turn signal, and the loud clicking filled the ensuing silence.
Cars pouring into the lot from the opposite direction held us captive in the intersection as we waited to make our turn.
One of us probably should have apologized, given that we were five minutes away, maybe less, from being each other’s only ally in a crowded room. But I wasn’t sorry for what I’d said, and I suspected she wasn’t either.
Ariane cleared her throat and sat up straighter. “So…I’m thinking if we’re going to do this, our best bet is to make it relatively quick,” she said, sounding very practical and logical, as if we were discussing some kind of biology project or something. “If we hang around for too long, people will start asking questions, and I don’t think we’re ready for that level of scrutiny yet.” She looked over as if expecting me to object.
“Definitely not,” I agreed.
“We should just make an appearance,” she said. “Be sure people see us wandering the booths.” She frowned. “There are booths, right?”
I looked over at her, startled. “You’ve never been?” I’d been going to the activities fair for…I don’t know, forever. The whole town was invited. Some of the local businesses even kicked in with prizes and giveaways to help the clubs raise money. The irony was that participating in a booth seemed cool until you were old enough to do it, and then not so much. But it was something to do and there was ample opportunity to buy junky fair-type food.
Ariane shook her head. “I’m not… It’s not my kind of thing.”
Call me crazy, but I’d have sworn she was going to say “I’m not allowed.” I had a vision of the shadowy figure of her father waiting for me with a gun when I dropped her off.
Great.
An opening in the traffic presented itself, and I took it.
We joined the slow parade of cars looking for a spot. “Okay, wandering the booths. Check. Not a problem.” I hesitated. “Uh, what about the other stuff ?”
“What other stuff ?” she asked with a frown, toying with what appeared to be a key on her necklace.
She wasn’t going to make me spell it out, was she? No matter how I phrased this, it was going to be sound bad, but it had to be covered. “It’s supposed to be a date,” I said, hoping she would take it from there.
“Yeah, and?”
I let out a huff of exasperation. “And, I don’t know, maybe we need to set some ground rules for, um, touching and stuff.” I wasn’t an idiot; I didn’t want to cross boundaries, make her more uncomfortable than she already was.
“Oh.” She bit her lip. “More rules,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t have anything in mind,” I said quickly. God, the last thing I wanted was for her to think I’d cooked up this scheme to get ahead in that regard. There would have been far easier ways to go about that, but she seemed to think the worst of me already.
She gave a surprised laugh, a high-pitched delighted sound that she immediately cut short. “Not what I meant,” she said.
I relaxed.
“What are you proposing?” she said, her manner businesslike.
“I don’t know. It’s more up to you, isn’t it?” I asked shifting uncomfortably in my seat.
“There.” She pointed to a parking space in the lengthening shade of the bleachers.
I took it, turning the wheel quickly before the guy behind me got any ideas.
“Not really,” she said, returning to our topic of conversation. “Not any more than it would be in a normal situation, if we’re aiming to keep up the illusion that this is supposed to look genuine in some way. No one starts out a date by saying you can only touch me in these places and this many times, right?” She sounded uncertain.
Had she never been on a date? That wouldn’t be impossible. But I guess I always figured that just because I didn’t see her talking to people didn’t mean she didn’t. Therefore, the same thing with guys and dates.
“Right.” I put the car in park.
“But,” she said, frowning, “in a date situation, you’d want close contact, so the situation isn’t quite the same. And it would look odd if we avoided touching each other.”
I wasn’t opposed to touching if she was okay with it. Part of me wanted to know what her hair felt like, if her pale skin was as smooth as it appeared.
Fake date or not, Ariane Tucker was intriguing to me, I realized, and not entirely in a mystery-to-be-solved kind of way.
“Even if we allowed standard personal space, it would probably be noticed,” she continued, seemingly more to herself to me. “People who are attempting intimacy usually…” She cut herself off, catching my stare.
“You have really spent some time thinking about this,” I said in wonder. She sounded like a professor.
“Nothing wrong with being observant,” she snapped, the angry blush returning to her face.
There was observant and then there was clinical, obsessive, detail-collecting. But I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.
“When it’s only the two of us, where no one can hear us, we can be ourselves, no pretending,” she said decisively. “In obvious view of others, we’ll attempt to project a…cozy infatuation.”
I raised my eyebrows and tried not to laugh. “What does that mean?”
“Close proximity, some whispering and longing looks. Probably holding hands.” She sounded less than thrilled. “But no kissing,” she added sharply.
I lifted my hands off the wheel as if to show I was unarmed. “Okay, no kissing. Got it.”
She took a deep breath as if to steel herself. “Are you ready?”
No. “Sure.” I turned off the car and grabbed the keys from the ignition.
“Let’s say, one hour, maximum, and then we’re right back here. Agreed?” She looked over at me expectantly, and I felt like she was about to suggest we synchronize our watches. Or, since neither of us was wearing one, compare cell phone times at least.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
Someone, somewhere, should put her in charge of an army.
THE SCHOOL LOOKED DIFFERENT at night. Softer, the edges of the buildings less severe in the setting sun. It might have been all the brightly colored balloons tied near the entrances to the gym, or maybe the presence of so many seemingly happy families—most of them with excited children in tow.
I pushed open the door to Zane’s SUV, taking care not to hit the truck parked next us, and slid down, right as Zane rounded the back corner in a hurry.
When he saw me, he let out a sigh and stopped. “I would have…” He gestured at the door.
Oh. He’d meant to open it for me. Traditional custom, slightly old-fashioned, but still accepted practice on date-type outings.
I grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t think about it.” Obviously I was not accustomed to going out. Way to advertise your inexperience there, Ariane.
“It’s all right.” Zane looked around, his gaze following the groups of people heading toward the gym. Then he turned to face me and offered his hand, palm down, with a hint of challenge in his expression.
Ah. He’d picked up on my reluctance to be touched. My fault for reacting so badly when he’d come up to me yesterday. It’s just…he’d taken me by surprise.
That was why he’d made such a point about setting boundaries for our “date,” I realized, my face heating up. It was kind of considerate of him. And surprising. If he’d been more like what I’d expected, he wouldn’t have bothered.
And he was right: I wasn’t comfortable with people touching me, especially unexpectedly and without permission. But I wasn’t sure if that would hold true for the reverse—me making contact with someone. Honestly, I’d never tried it, spending most of my time and energy avoiding even casual grazes.
Zane raised his eyebrows, and hell no, I wasn’t going to let him win. I’d agreed to this, so I’d go through with it.
Sticking my chin out defiantly, I lifted my hand to his, and he closed his fingers around mine securely. His palm was warm and dry, and I could feel rough spots—calluses from lacrosse, probably—rubbing against my skin in a not-unpleasant friction.
He grinned and gently tugged me forward to follow him through the gap between his SUV and the truck, and into the parking lot. Knowing what I did about our arrangement, I expected to feel reluctance or distance in his grasp, but he held my hand as if he meant it.
Once, early in my learn-to-be-more-human stage, I read an article that said you could tell a lot about people by the way they held hands. Palm-to-palm with fingers interlaced indicates an intimate relationship, usually of a romantic variety. When only the hands are involved, the person whose palm is up is seeking guidance and reassurance. Children always have their palms up when being led by their parents. The person whose palm is down feels protective, responsible for the one they are leading.
I couldn’t help but notice that Zane’s hand was palm down over mine. He felt responsible for me, if only in some small way. I didn’t know what to think about that. I was, in the end, responsible for myself, thank you very much. But it was nice.
I shook my head. It was dumb to think that way. I couldn’t let myself get distracted.
I refocused my attention on the crowds around us, everyone heading to the gym, where I could hear music and the louder sounds of laughter and conversation pouring from the open doors. “There are so many people here,” I murmured.
“It’s Wingate,” Zane said.
I looked at him questioningly.
He shrugged. “Nothing else going on.”
I’d never thought about it. The extent or frequency of social events in town was not a top concern for me on a normal day, or, you know, ever. This would, however, make encountering Rachel interesting, which was to say dangerous. It was one thing to nearly lose control in front of a third of the school in the cafeteria, but something else entirely with what appeared to be a good portion of town in attendance. Some of whom worked for GTX, guaranteed.
My stomach knotted with anxiety.
“Will the game tomorrow night be the same or—” I began.
“Zane!” A loud female voice called from somewhere to my left. “Over here!”
I stiffened, and Zane stopped dead, his hand tightening on mine.
We both turned to look at the same time. It was not Rachel, thank God. It was…
I frowned. I didn’t know who it was.
An older woman, probably in her late forties or early fifties, dressed in a brightly flowered shirt and khaki pants that were a size too small, waved frantically at Zane, her smile decorated in a particularly obnoxious shade of pink lipstick. She hurried toward us as fast as she could, given the two sticky and sort of dirty-looking children she dragged in her wake.
Zane groaned quietly. “Just…hang in there. I’ll try to get us out of this as soon as I can, but if we run, she’ll tell my dad, and I’ll never hear the end of it,” he said under his breath. Then in a louder voice, he called, “Hi, Mrs. Vanderhoff.”
I watched her approach, the heat making her pant. She didn’t look particularly dangerous, but I could feel a low level of dread coming off Zane without even trying to sense it. Huh.
“Where is your father this evening?” she asked when she was close enough, waving her hands in front of her reddened and sweaty face as if that would serve as some kind of air-conditioning. “Did he get the casserole I left for him? We haven’t seen you at church lately.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what Zane was supposed to respond to first.
He smiled stiffly. “He’s working tonight. You know, protect and serve. And yes, we did. It was delicious. Thank you.” He shifted his weight, his hand tight around mine, and I could tell he wanted to bolt.
The children collapsed at their mother’s—grandmother’s?—feet and promptly began punching each other. Mrs. Vanderhoff didn’t seem to notice. “And how is your brother? Doing well in Madison, I hope. Such an honor for him to win that football scholarship.”
Poor thing, this one’s never going to be what his father was. Such a disappointment. Black sheep. Just like his mother.
She was so loud. Some humans were just natural broadcasters, thinking in screams instead of whispers. Rachel was one, this woman was evidently another. I tried to focus on the music in the distance to block her thoughts out.
“I think my dad talked to Quinn last week. He’s busy, but I think he’s enjoying it,” Zane said with strained politeness.
“Such a good boy, Quinn.” With a fond but pitying smile, Mrs. Vanderhoff reached up and patted Zane’s shoulder. “It’s just too bad you didn’t inherit your father’s skills as well,” she said with a tsk and a sad shake of her head. “But God blesses us all in different ways.”
And yet she managed to make it sound as if God had not blessed Zane at all. What a bitch. I didn’t even like Zane, and I thought that was cruel.
What was worse, I could now feel shame rising up in Zane, taking the place of dread. He believed her.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” he said with a tight smile. “But we should be going and—”
“Oh, you should have seen your father play, back in the day.” Mrs. Vanderhoff clasped her hands to her substantial chest. “The way he could throw a ball, and how fast he could run, so strong…”
I’D HAVE RIDDEN HIM LIKE A PRIZE STALLION UNTIL HE WAS BEGGING FOR MERCY.
Gross. I made a sound of disgust. Normally I was better at hiding my response to what I heard, but that had been so unexpected. And boomingly loud. Like screaming into a megaphone.
“Who’s your friend here?” Mrs. Vanderhoff asked, turning her attention to me with a forced smile and heavy suspicion.
Zane hesitated, then said, “This is Ariane—”
“Just Ariane,” I said quickly. I didn’t want her tracking me to my father.
“And where do you go to church?” She looked me up and down carefully.
Strange little thing. Not at all a match for one of Jay’s boys, even if it is this one instead of the older one. Must be the sex. Boys will lie down with anything these days.
“I don’t.” I saw no point in lying about it when she’d already judged me and found me wanting, in more than one sense of the word.
She narrowed her eyes. “I see.” Definitely the sex. Just like his daddy. If Jay Bradshaw had kept it in his pants a while longer, he could have married my Mindi, and…
“Mrs. Vanderhoff, we should get inside.” Zane sounded a little desperate. “We don’t want to miss out on the good booths.”
“Of course, dear, I understand,” she said. But her hand, with bright pink fingernails to match her lipstick, reached out. “A few more minutes, though, won’t—”
“And the sex,” I said brightly to Zane. “Don’t forget. We have to leave lots of time for sex.”
Mrs. Vanderhoff froze, her claws extended.
Zane let out a strangled sound and turned away quickly, pulling me with him. “Bye, Mrs. Vanderhoff!” he called.
“Sorry,” I said as he rushed us toward the gym. “But she was a hypocrite.” I hated people like that. They were akin to Dr. Jacobs and Rachel and all the others, only not as direct about it. “And so mean to you—” I clamped down on my words. When had it become my job to defend Zane Bradshaw? This little pretend game of ours was already going to my head.
“I can take care of myself,” he said, his tone sharp.
“Then why didn’t you?” I asked, exasperated.
He slowed, then stopped just outside the door, where a clown was handing out balloons to everyone waiting to go in. “Because sometimes it’s easier to let it go,” he said with a frustrated sigh.
“Not for me.”
“I’ve noticed,” he said dryly. “But you don’t have to deal with my dad.”
I frowned. “What’s wrong with your dad?”
He waved the words away. “Nothing. Never mind.”
He let go of my hand long enough to step forward and snag a balloon from the clown. A blue one. He returned and lifted my arm to tie the string around my wrist, taking care to leave the loop loose enough to be comfortable. The warmth of his breath on my skin and the feel of his attention made something shift inside my chest, like some delicate item—one of those expensive, paper-thin china teacups I’d once seen on Antiques Roadshow—on a precariously tilting shelf.
“There. Now you’re official. Your first activities fair.” He let go of my wrist.
“Thank you,” I said. The balloon bobbed near the top of my head, generating static I could hear and making loose strands of my hair stick to it. Of course.
I plucked at the string, trying to get used to the sensation of it around my wrist. “Will you get into trouble for what I said?” A thought that had not occurred to me until much too late.
His mouth tightened in a wry smile. “Probably.” He glanced over at me. “But it was kind of worth it.” He pushed the balloon away to free my hair and tucked the strands behind my ear.
The teacup in my chest gave another dangerous lurch. And it was only afterward that I realized: we were in public, in plain view of everyone. He was just acting. I needed to remember that.
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.”
If I hadn’t been in the middle of trying to shut down a crisis, I would have pointed out that being his friend didn’t give her that right either, no matter who I was.
But I could feel the power building and slipping away from me. The lightbulbs were rattling and so were the stacked metal bleachers against the far wall. Coach Kiler stormed out of the football booth, shouting for someone to shut down the music and fans. I wasn’t sure whether he thought there was an overloaded breaker or he wanted to hear better to determine where the problem was originating. Either way, not good.
I stared at Rachel, trying to focus, but her mouth kept moving without sound, the overwhelming static of building power in my head blocking out her actual words. Shit. If I lost control here, people would be hurt. It was unavoidable. Even if just the lights blew, someone would get trampled in the panic, or catch glass in the eye.
Hurting innocent people had never been my intent. I could feel sweat breaking out on the back of my neck. I had to stop this. I’d been so foolish to take the risk.
Zane’s face appeared in front of mine, his forehead crinkled in concern. Ariane, are you okay? I couldn’t hear him, but his mouth moved slowly enough that I could read his lips.
Then, over Rachel’s shoulder, movement caught my attention at the football team’s booth. The players were filling their tinfoil pie plates with mountains of shaving cream and using each other as targets. Making a huge mess of themselves and the booth.
My attention zoomed in, hyperfocused. I could smell the soapy, aloey scent of the shaving cream, almost feel the weight of the plates. I had a second to recognize that this sensation—a weird, intense attention to detail—felt familiar in a very distant way. And then pie plates and shaving cream exploded in a hundred different directions.
I jumped, startled. People ducked and shouted in surprise as the plates flew by and shaving cream landed on them. But better that than shattered lights and broken glass, I thought.
The wall in my brain snapped back into place, and the energy abruptly cut off. But that didn’t stop what had already been set in motion.
Several globs of shaving cream flew past Rachel and spattered onto Zane’s shirt and my face. Ew. The overheated gym had turned it more liquid than solid, and it trickled down my cheek on impact.
I let go of Zane’s hand to wipe it away and noticed that Rachel seemed to have seized up in front of us. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her hands by her face in fists, and her shoulders hunched up by her ears. Well, at least she’d removed her claws from Zane’s wrist.
Zane and I looked at each other in confusion, and I lifted my shoulder in an “I have no idea” gesture.
“Rachel?” Zane called hesitantly.
Her eyes snapped open, and if her nostrils had been flaring before, she now resembled an angry horse.
“Are you…” Before Zane could finish the question, Rachel turned away, her dress clinging wetly to her legs.
And once she had her back to us, it was clear why. She was covered in shaving cream, from tiny dots near her ankles to huge sprays of it across her shoulder blades.
“Matty!” she shrieked, and one of the football players, a heavyset kid with a stunned expression and his hair sticking up in sweaty spikes, cringed.
She charged toward him, leaving us behind, forgotten.
I laughed, giddiness sweeping over me in the absence of the soul-crushing fear that had dominated only seconds before. I had done that—made a mess of Rachel by blowing up the shaving-cream pies. I hadn’t been able to bring the barrier up, but I’d redirected the power. I’d been in control, if only for a few seconds. It was a step in the right direction.
Zane looked at Rachel, the shaving cream splattered across her back and hair as if she’d been caught in the crossfire of a violent crime against the giant marshmallow man from Ghostbusters; then he looked at me, giggling, perhaps a little manically, with relief.
“Uh, I think maybe we’d better go,” he said.
“Are you sure?” I asked, trying rather unsuccessfully to choke back my laughter. “Maybe if we stick around, someone will attack her with aftershave.”
Zane shook his head, but the corners of his mouth turned up in a reluctant smile. “I think you have a death wish,” he whispered, putting a hand on my shoulder to steer me between the booths, where, presumably, we could make it to the door without attracting Rachel’s attention.
No. Not a death wish. Just very little left to lose.