IF I’D THOUGHT I WAS INTRIGUED by Ariane before, it was nothing compared to how I felt after the activities fair.
Outside, in the much cooler air, she was glowing in the harsh white parking lot lights. Not literally. That would have been weird. But it was as if an energy suffused her, so much so that she could have been visible in the dark. And her hand gripped mine like she needed the tether to keep from floating away.
“That was amazing.” She wasn’t shrieky or girly—not her style, I’d come to notice—but her voice was shaking with…excitement, nervousness, a mixture of both? I couldn’t tell.
I dug my car keys out of my pocket and steered us toward the truck. “You know this is only going to make things worse for us,” I said, but I couldn’t help but smile in response to her euphoria. It was not an emotion I’d ever seen from her before.
“Tonight? I don’t care.” Ariane tipped her face up toward the sky and laughed, a freeing sound. The light bleached all the color from her, emphasizing the pale color of her hair and the unusual lines of her face. She was beautiful but not in any kind of conventional way. She looked…foreign. In the way that people from Iceland or Estonia, or wherever, looked different—slightly higher cheekbones or pointy chins or something. Just enough to trigger the realization that they weren’t from around here.
I wondered if her mother had been from outside the U.S. Her obituary hadn’t made mention of it.
It wasn’t something I could ask without sounding like a major creeper, and it didn’t matter, except it was one more piece of Ariane that didn’t quite fit. I was beginning to wonder if maybe nothing about her made sense, and that, in and of itself, was the pattern.
I pushed that thought away and made an effort to rejoin the conversation. “I can’t figure out what the hell Matty was thinking,” I said. “He knows better than to go up against Rachel.”
Ariane slowed, frowning. “It was an accident. He wasn’t aiming at her. They were goofing around in the booth and things got out of hand,” she said decisively, almost as if she were trying to convince herself.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s not what it looked like.” But then again, I’d missed the start of what happened, distracted by the increasing tension between Rachel and Ariane. And the lights…
“Hey, did you see the lights? Flashing all crazy like they did yesterday in the hall before they blew up.” It was strange. I was pretty sure I’d seen the same kind of thing in the cafeteria today when Rachel was taking out some of her aggression on Jenna. The stupid thing was, I kept thinking about what my dad had said about someone using the GTX research to experiment on a kid. Now, granted, the entire idea was whacked-out beyond all measure, a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream. And yet I couldn’t help but notice that the weird stuff with the lights only seemed to happen when Rachel was around…and pissed. Maybe I’d watched too many reruns of The Incredible Hulk, but the idea of scientific experimentation and “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” kind of went together. And Rachel certainly would have been an easy target, given who she was. But why go to all the trouble of making it seem like the research project had been stolen?
Unless that’s what they wanted people to believe.
Whatever. I would definitely not be bringing up any of that, now or ever. My dad had the crazy angle covered when it came to GTX.
I realized suddenly that Ariane had gone quiet, and, looking over at her, I noticed some of her happy glow seemed to have faded. “Hey.” I swung her hand to get her attention, as we approached my car. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, no,” she said finally. “I didn’t notice the lights.”
I stared at her. “How did you not see—”
“I was too busy watching Rachel dig holes into your arm,” she said, her mouth pressed into an unhappy line.
At the reminder, I grimaced, looking down at my arm. I couldn’t see much in the dim light—just slightly darker marks on my skin—but I could feel the cuts, small stinging souvenirs of Rachel’s disapproval. “It’s fine. Not a big—”
Before I could say more, Ariane dropped my hand and grabbed my other arm, pulling it across my body and bringing it closer to her so she could see it in the dim light. The balloon I’d tied around her wrist at the beginning of the night bobbed in my face until I pushed it behind my shoulder.
She ran her fingertips lightly over my injuries, sucking in a sympathetic breath so quietly I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to have heard it.
She tucked my arm beneath hers, as a captive, and bent her head for a better look, revealing the pale and vulnerable back of her neck and a glimpse of the whiter-than-white edge of that mysterious bandage.
But I found I didn’t care so much about that mystery right now. I could feel the warmth of her skin through her shirt and the rise and fall of her ribs as she breathed, and maybe even the underside of her breast against the inside of my elbow. It…she felt good. To be that close to someone and have her want to be that close to me, because I was me, not because of Quinn or my dad or because I was friends with the right people. We were alone out here; there was no one to pretend for.
I cleared my throat. “You defended me,” I said, unable to keep the amazement out of my voice, the words escaping before I could stop them. “Against Rachel.”
Ariane looked up at me sharply. “I didn’t mean to offend your manly sensibilities.”
“You didn’t. It was…nice.” No one had stood up for me like that in a long time.
Our gazes locked, and with the noise and the lights of the activity fair in the gym behind us, I could feel the connection thrumming between us. Her hands fell away from my arm, and I reached up to touch her chin, to tilt her face toward mine.
She stepped away, ducking around my hand. “You should make sure to disinfect those cuts when you get home,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “There are millions of germs beneath human fingernails.”
Human fingernails? What other kind of fingernails were there? I stared after her as she made her way to the passenger side of the SUV. Then I shrugged. At this point, I shouldn’t have been surprised by anything from Ariane, I guess.
I unlocked and opened her door, and she didn’t even glance at the hand I offered to help her up. But I wasn’t dumb. I knew what I’d felt, and I knew I wasn’t the only one. I shut her door and went around to climb in behind the wheel. But maybe she had the right idea. This was already complicated enough, and who knew how much of that connection was due to these forced circumstances? Better to leave it alone.
I stuck the keys in the ignition and started the car. Oh, screw it. “Speaking of home, how about something to eat first? Everyone in town is here. We could get chili cheese fries at Culver’s and eat in peace, probably have the place to ourselves.” I was surprised at how much I wanted her to say yes.
Ariane glanced over at me, startled, and for a second I thought I saw a flash of emotion cross her face—longing or loneliness, or both.
“I’d better not.” She turned to look out the window.
I backed out of the parking spot and tried to ignore the rush of disappointment.
“Besides,” she said, digging into her plastic bag to produce the Puppy Chow and French kiss cookies, “I think Reginald and I are set in terms of food for the night.”
“Reginald?” I asked, confused. I put the car into drive and headed out toward the street.
Ariane dropped the cookies and snack mix into the bag and held up the stuffed animal from the ringtoss game. “Yes, Reginald. The dog-bear.” She frowned. “Or bear-dog. Whatever you prefer.”
“Reginald, the dog-bear,” I repeated.
“Or bear-dog,” she reminded me.
“That’s terrible,” I said in mock solemnity. “He’s already not sure what he is—a dog, a bear…a bog…”
She giggled.
“And then you tag him with the name Reginald?” I shook my head.
“What’s wrong with Reginald?” she demanded, a smile pulling at her mouth.
“Where do I begin? Is he an English lord of some kind? No. He’s a bog. And all the other bogs will make fun of him.”
“I have heard that the bog community is known for being close-minded,” she said thoughtfully. “But maybe he can be a dear instead of a bog. You know, a d-e-a-r.”
I pretended to gasp in horror. “You can’t switch allegiances like that! Don’t you know anything about the fierce infighting within the bog-dear communities? They hate each other. Especially after the stuffing incident.”
This got the reaction I was hoping for—another reluctant laugh from Ariane. “I’ll probably regret this, but I’m going to ask anyway. What was the stuffing incident?”
“Shhh! You can’t talk about it so openly. They’re both very sensitive about it.” I leaned closer to her, careful to keep my eyes on the road. “It involved a spy with a tail transplant and ear elongation surgery. And a bog-dear forbidden love.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “You are ridiculous.”
“No, I’m serious. They’re crazy for that romantic shit. And you only say that because you have no idea what the bogs and dears have lost in this conflict.”
“‘Many Bothans died to bring us this information,’” she intoned.
It took me a second to place the familiar words. “You’re a Star Wars person?”
“You have no idea,” she said, with a rueful smirk that I didn’t completely understand. “I mean, not dressing up and waiting for days in line, but yeah.”
She paused for a moment, her gaze focused out the windshield but not on anything particular. “Have you ever noticed, though, how all the aliens are either scary or ugly?”
I frowned. “You’ve thought a lot about this.”
“You haven’t?” She gave me a knowing look. “You recognized a minor quote from a movie that’s almost older than both of us put together.”
“Okay, so I might have watched it a few times.” In truth, it was something I’d never discuss or even bring up with anyone besides Ariane, but I’d been obsessed with those movies as a kid. Not a huge mystery there. Come on, it’s a story about a guy with an overbearing father who is always trying to force him into stuff he doesn’t want to do.
“The slave girl that Jabba fed to the Rancor before Luke,” I said finally. “She was pretty hot.”
Ariane gave me a skeptical look. “She wasn’t an alien.”
“How do you know that?” I countered.
“She looked totally human!”
“Uh, she was green and had tentacle things coming out of her head. What would you call that?” Some part of me couldn’t believe we were arguing over Star Wars; it was so far from my normal life, but it was also the best night I’d had in a long time.
“Good makeup and a slinky costume?” she shot back.
“You’re just mad because she doesn’t fit your aliens are ugly/scary theory,” I said with a laugh.
She glared at me. “Her look was created to be attractive to humans. That’s just as bad as making her ugly or scary. It’s faux alien, not realistic. I mean, I didn’t even notice she wasn’t…” She took a deep breath. “You know what? Never mind. Forget it.” Ariane shifted in her seat and returned her attention to the window.
Somehow, I seemed to have offended her. She was taking this conversation seriously; I kind of loved that. “Realistically, I don’t think any of them are particularly human,” I offered. “Not the way we think of it. Tatooine isn’t exactly in our—”
Ariane suddenly sat up straight, staring out the window. “Wait. Stop.”
“What’s wrong?” I tapped the brakes automatically at the urgency in her voice.
She looked at me like I was crazy. “We’re here.” She pointed at the darkened street.
“We’re in the middle of the road,” I said, in disbelief.
“Here is good,” she said crisply. “It’s only a couple of blocks to my house.”
I recognized the intersection as the same one where I’d picked her up.
“No way. I’m not going to drop you off in the dark to walk home.” Okay, yes, this was Wingate, so the odds of something happening to her were small, but still. It felt rude, disrespectful to her in some way—like I was pretending not to know her or something. Plus, if her dad was going to be pissed that she’d gone out, how angry would he be if he found out I’d dropped her off in the middle of the street? I let my foot off the brake. “Which house is yours? I won’t pull into the driveway if you don’t want.”
“Let me out,” she said, the steel returning to her voice. She put her hand on the door handle, and for a second I thought she might jump out while the car was moving.
“Ariane, I’m just—”
“Are you going to keep me in here against my will?” she asked in a stiff voice. The last thing I wanted was to scare her.
“No!” I said, frustrated. “I just want to make sure you get home okay.”
“I’ll be fine. Now, stop. Please.”
It was the “please” that got me. It was softer, more of a plea than a demand. How could anyone resist that?
I sighed and slowed down to pull over. “Just…can you tell me why? Is it your dad? Because, you know, I can introduce myself and—”
“It’s not that,” she said sharply, leading me to believe it was exactly that.
“Then what is it?” I asked, playing along.
Ariane hesitated. “It’s complicated.”
“I seem to remember someone telling me earlier today that wasn’t a good enough answer.” I reached the curb and put the truck in park.
Ariane bit her lip, then said, “It’s the only one I’ve got.” She pushed the door open and hopped down, pulling her balloon out after her.
“Wait,” I said. “What about tomorrow?”
Her hand on the door, Ariane glanced up at me, blinking hard against the brightness of the dome light. “What about it?”
“A repeat performance of tonight,” I prompted. “The daytime version.”
“I can’t meet you there?” she asked, her shoulders sagging.
I frowned. It hadn’t been that bad tonight, had it? Aside from the encounters with Mrs. Vanderhoff and Rachel, I thought we’d had a good time.
Before I could say anything, Ariane nodded with a sigh. “Fine. See you tomorrow morning.” She started to shut the door and then stopped. “Here, though,” she said pointedly. “Not at my house.”
“Got it,” I said, drumming my hands on the wheel, a nervous fidget. I hated leaving her to walk in the dark. It seemed wrong. Like tempting fate or something.
“I mean it.”
“I said okay.”
She gave me one last stern look, as if reinforcing her point, and then slammed the door. The glow from the dome light faded, but I waited—I never promised I wouldn’t do that—watching her cross the street and then walk up the sidewalk until she vanished—presumably into one of the houses on that side of the block.
The tightness in my stomach eased with the assumption that she’d made it home okay. And it was right then that I realized I might be in way over my head with this game of pretend.
WHEN I SLIPPED through the front door, the house was dark and still except for the murmuring and flickering of the TV I’d left on in the family room. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Of course my father wouldn’t be home yet. It was barely nine; he wouldn’t be home for hours. And yet the guilt of sneaking out and obliterating nearly every one of the Rules made me feel certain he’d be waiting for me, grave disappointment and censure carved into his face.
But he wasn’t.
I went into the family room, clicked off the TV, and hurried down the hall to my room. I needed to get everything put to rights and be asleep (or look as if I were) before he arrived home. I had plenty of time, but I could feel my crimes written all over me—in what I was wearing, in the sagging balloon tied to my arm, in the plastic shopping bag containing fair snacks and the stuffed bog/dear Reginald. And judging by my reflection in the mirror, I was nowhere near sleepy or even a reasonable facsimile of it. My cheeks were flushed, my hair was all over the place, and my eyes…
I stepped closer to the mirror. My eyes looked brighter even behind the dulling plastic of the blue lenses.
I’d enjoyed tonight. I mean, any evening that ended with Rachel coated in shaving cream and shrieking had to be on my top ten of all time. But it was more than that. Zane was not who I’d thought he was. Or, if he was that arrogant, privileged jerk, there were other sides to him, other facets: the little kid who, if the memories/images in Zane’s head were to be believed, had once had Star Wars sheets on his bed, so great was his obsession. The guy who knew what it was to be different and not good enough.
Not that learning those things about Zane changed anything. My opinion of him was irrelevant. This would be over in a day or two, at the most, and then things would return to normal. Or maybe slightly better than normal, as Rachel would finally have a taste of what it felt like to lose, and I’d learn more about regaining control over my “lost” ability.
That last part made me queasy. In all honesty, I didn’t really want my ability back. At least not any more than was strictly necessary to keep those weird power flare-ups at bay. But limiting myself wasn’t an option. I needed to be able to protect myself and my father if GTX came after us.
But my brain had put up this barrier for self-protection, and for good reason. I didn’t want to be the person who could do what I’d done in the lab, near the end of my stay there. And some part of me believed that if I brought the barrier down permanently and regained control over my ability, I’d finally be the success Dr. Jacobs had been longing for, and he’d, I don’t know, somehow sense that and find me. I knew, logically, that wasn’t true, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, especially after seeing Rachel in action tonight, hurting Zane for not cooperating. It brought back lots of bad memories.
“I’ve got big plans for you, my dear,” Dr. Jacobs used to say from the observation room window, the one that made up the entire fourth wall of my little room. “You will save lives.”
What he’d failed to mention, though, was that I’d have to take other lives in the process. Not that it had started out that way.
The new tests began when I was six. (Only a month or so before my father would rescue me, actually; though I didn’t know that then, of course.) And this time, Dr. Jacobs and the techs didn’t want blood or bone marrow or brain tissue—much to my relief. Instead, these tests were more like tasks. Just games, tricks for treats—all of them with the promise of a potential trip Outside if I performed “up to standards.”
The first series of tests: move the big rubber red ball to specific locations in my room (far right corner, five feet in the air) without touching it. No problem. I’d been doing much the same on my own for as long as I could remember. I could lie on my cot and float a book from the shelf across my room over to my waiting hands just by focusing on the spine of the one I wanted. Levitation. Easy.
Second series: my favorite lab tech, Mara—she talked to me like I was a person and smiled at me instead of avoiding my gaze—would stand with an open bag of my favorite candy in her hand and a plastic cup on the floor in front of her. My task? Stop the peanut M&M’s Mara dropped before they fell into the cup (or onto the ground, her aim wasn’t so good sometimes). And I got to eat the candy I “saved.” Yummy.
Then, once I’d mastered that, I had to redirect the falling candy to different target cups set out across the room, on command. And at faster and faster speeds. Bullet speed, in fact. For the last test, Mara used rubber pellets, and one of them actually tore a hole through the far side of a disposable cup, sending plastic splinters into the air. I got to keep the whole bag of candy that time. (It wasn’t until years later that I understood what they were training me to do. Redirecting bullets is a handy skill if you have the need for that sort of a thing.)
The third series of tests, though, that’s when everything changed. Mara wheeled in a glass cage on a metal cart. In it, a tiny brown-and-white mouse scurried through a bed of cedar chips, running between a shiny metal wheel in the corner and a water bottle hanging down the side of the cage. I was entranced. I’d never seen a live animal, of any variety, before. And, foolishly, I thought I was getting some company in my lonely little room, even if it was only for a few days.
My first tasks with the mouse were simple, innocuous. Use my mind to keep the wheel from moving when the mouse tried to push it forward. Then I was supposed to hold the mouse still, again without actually touching him.
“From across the room, darling,” Dr. Jacobs said over the intercom.
High on previous successes and with the carrot of Outside dangling in front of me, I didn’t even hesitate. Of course I could stop the mouse from moving. There were complexities to this task, involving energy, molecules, the vibration of atoms, and various other aspects of the science that I didn’t care about. It was simply enough that I could do it.
But I took special care not to hurt Jerry. We were, in my six-year-old head, friends. (I’d named him after the clever cartoon mouse; though, my Jerry, sadly, showed nowhere near the initiative or intelligence of his namesake. But I was hopeful.)
At night, when the tests were done and everyone had gone home, I had the comforting noise of Jerry shuffling through his cedar chips or running on his wheel to keep me company. I talked to him, too, whispering so no one could hear. He didn’t respond or acknowledge my existence in any way, but I knew that would change eventually.
I was training Jerry to trust me. I picked out the sunflower seeds in his food before he could eat them and used them to lure him closer so I could pet him. (There’s a bit of irony for you—the experiment training another experiment, using the same methods that had worked on her. Or maybe it’s just evidence for the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate.)
In any case, my week or so with Jerry was probably the happiest I ever was in the lab.
I really should have known better. My studies should have clued me in on what was coming next. The daily curriculum now included videos with diagrams of mouse anatomy. Find the heart. Understand how it works.
But I was oblivious. Until Dr. Jacobs spelled out exactly what he wanted.
“Kill the mouse,” he said to me late one afternoon over the intercom, barely looking up from the sheaf of papers on his clipboard.
“What?” I stared at him, not understanding. I looked to Mara, standing next to Dr. Jacobs in the observation room, for guidance. But her eyes were wide with surprise.
“Sir—” she began.
“Just stop the heart. You can do it,” Jacobs said to me impatiently, with a glare at Mara.
Mara, in turn, gave me a forced smile and a stiff encouraging nod. But I could feel her fear.
I didn’t move. I knew I could do what he asked—find Jerry’s rapidly beating little heart by picturing it as I’d seen it on the diagram and telling it to STOP. But I wouldn’t; Jerry was my friend.
Something in the quality of my stillness must have registered with Dr. Jacobs. He put his clipboard down with an exasperated huff. “Darling, you’ve been doing so well, so far. You want to go Outside, don’t you?” His smile was tight, threatening somehow.
My mind flashed back to Leo and his bloodstained grin. Freak. They’re never going to let you out of here.
I frowned. He’d been telling the truth, I’d felt that for sure. But I didn’t get any sense of deception from Dr. Jacobs, either. Someone had to be lying.
Dr. Jacobs never specified when you’d be let outside or in what condition, my logical side pointed out suddenly. I recognized it as a negotiation strategy commonly employed among humans. It was called leaving a loophole.
A rush of heat filled me, driving me to clench my hands into fists. I hated Dr. Jacobs in that moment, not just for asking me to kill Jerry, which I wouldn’t do, but for making me hope for something that he had no intention of delivering.
Dr. Jacobs took my continued silence as assent. “Very good.” He scooped up his clipboard and resumed flipping through pages.
“No.” My voice came out small and soft. I could feel sweat breaking out on the backs of my knees and in the crooks of my elbows. Refusing always had consequences. But unlike the other times—where techs like Leo were sent in to force cooperation—this was one thing Dr. Jacobs couldn’t make me do.
Or so I thought.
At the sound of my refusal, all activity in the observation room stopped, the techs’ gazes moving to focus on Dr. Jacobs. Things had been tense lately. Men in military uniforms—so many buttons and medals on their shoulders—had taken to appearing in the observation room on occasion, where they were seemingly unexpected and not particularly welcome.
Dr. Jacobs put his clipboard down with a loud snap. “Now, Wannoseven, I don’t think you’re—”
“No,” I said again quickly, before I could lose my nerve. I was shaking from head to toe.
Mara tried again. “Sir, I think she’s become attached to the—”
But Dr. Jacobs was beyond listening to either one of us.
He had my cot removed that night, leaving me to sleep on the cold, hard floor. When that didn’t work, he stripped the cell of everything but Jerry’s cage.
By that time, though, I was starting to enjoy his frustration. And he knew it.
So he took away food. Not just mine, but Jerry’s too.
I started to see the effects on Jerry after a day or two. He no longer left his nest of cedar chips to run on the wheel or drink from his water bottle, which I refilled at the sink. I checked on him constantly, making sure his sides were still puffing in and out with breath.
On the fifth day of my rebellion, Dr. Jacobs, Grandpa-freaking-Art, had turned out the lights, leaving me alone in the dark.
Remembering those days in the pitch-black, I shuddered and left my bed to turn on my desk lamp and closet light, making my room as bright as possible.
I would never forget that kind of dark. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before or since. My eyes had created hazy, crazy designs out of nothing in a panicked attempt to see something, anything. And the thick quality of the blackness was such that I felt like I might choke on it.
But the silence had been the worst.
I couldn’t hear anything. No noise except for Jerry and me. No thoughts, no feelings. Just empty, abandoned silence.
Would they just leave me here? Forever? Jacobs had already told me—multiple times—I had no value to him if I was uncooperative.
So…my only excuse is that I was six and hungry and scared. And trapped in a small room in the dark. Maybe forever.
Still, that’s not enough. Not for what I did.
When Jacobs returned to check on me—three days later, I found out—Jerry was dead and I was curled up in a ball in the corner. As far from Jerry’s cage as I could get within my own cage.
I don’t remember much of those three days, other than the paralyzing darkness and the occasional shuffle of Jerry in his cedar chips…and then the ear-ringing silence of being completely alone and knowing what I’d done. It was horrible.
When the lights came back on in my room, they were blinding. And Dr. Jacobs’s voice boomed congratulations in what was probably his normal speaking voice, but it felt like screaming to my ears. He ordered all my privileges returned in double portions.
But none of that mattered, not when I squinted up to see Mara coming in to wheel Jerry’s cage away and she wouldn’t even look at me, her fear a distinct pulse in my head. Only this time, she wasn’t afraid of Dr. Jacobs. She was afraid of me.
Sick shame filled me. Dr. Jacobs had made me like him; I’d hurt something smaller and weaker than I was.
Too weak to stand, I rolled onto my stomach and dry heaved until I passed out.
I’d woken up, hours later, hooked to an IV for nutrition, with a tech (not Mara; I never saw her again) fussing over me. And it hadn’t taken long for Dr. Jacobs to start up the testing again. Or, to try to, anyway.
Something had happened in the dark. A switch inside me had flipped. Whether it was the trauma of the dark, or killing Jerry, or both, it didn’t matter. I could not access my ability anymore. Nothing Jacobs did after that made a difference, carrot or stick. And he’d tried both. More candy, more promises of Outside, followed by days without food or light.
But it didn’t matter; I couldn’t have done what he asked even if I’d wanted to. I was empty, hollowed out. Whatever had been there before was now gone. After that, if I wanted something from across the room, the only way for me to get it was the human way—walking over to retrieve it.
Jacobs had been enraged and threatened to “dispose” of me in the days leading up to the explosion that would allow my father to free me. But I…I’d been relieved. He could no longer control me; I couldn’t even control me, so to speak. The ability to obey his demands had been taken away from me, and with it, the fear.
But now I was supposed to be working to get all of that back. And even though having my telekinetic ability restored would actually make me more powerful, it felt more like I was daring Dr. Jacobs to come and find me.
I shook that thought away. With effort, I refocused my attention on hiding the evidence of my illicit evening.
I tucked the Puppy Chow and French kiss cookies into my schoolbag. I couldn’t leave them in my room without risking my father’s attention. And I’d learned during my hoarding stage that food stored in unusual places attracts bugs, which…gross.
But at school, I could keep them in my locker or share them with Jenna.
I flinched and snapped my bag closed. No, I would not be sharing them with Jenna. She hadn’t returned any of my texts or calls. She’d been serious about putting some distance between us.
Except tomorrow she’d hear someone, somewhere talking about Zane and me, and then she’d hate me forever.
I sighed and crossed over to my desk. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe my father was right: I was too attached to Jenna when she didn’t even know the real me. At least if she was avoiding me, I wouldn’t have to see the hurt on her face when I couldn’t explain what was really going on. How it was all fake. How I didn’t really like Zane and he didn’t like me.
That last thought surprised me with the pang of hurt that accompanied it.
Don’t. Don’t be that stupid girl. Nothing had changed. My goal was the same and that had to be my focus.
I opened my desk drawers to look for scissors. I needed to cut the balloon off my arm, pop it, and hide the evidence at the bottom of a garbage can, preferably under the nastiest, smelliest trash I could find. Subterfuge. It was my specialty. Well, one of them.
So Zane was attractive and less of an ass than I’d originally thought. That was no reason to lose sight of the point of this exercise. Even if his smile did funny things to my insides and his hands were big. Which was nice.
I remembered the feeling of his hand, gentle but certain on my back, steering me out of the gym. And I shivered. Which was ridiculous. I’d been holding his hand all night—why this would have made a difference, I wasn’t sure. It just felt more personal.
And then in the parking lot, when I’d responded without thinking about it, taking his arm to look at what Rachel had done. The heat of him had radiated against me, and I’d been all too aware of that small distance between us, as if an electric connection existed, leaping across the space. He’d looked at me with warmth in his gaze, and I’d felt small but not in a bad way, not in the way I was accustomed—where the world felt dangerous and enormous, and I was on my own. Instead it was more like being protected, shielded from all those searching for me, wanting to hurt me.
He’d thought about kissing me then. I hadn’t heard it in his mind—hadn’t needed to. It was written on his face. Not that that would have been a good idea. And yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Another shiver ran through me.
I found the scissors under a half-empty package of printer paper and used them to snip the balloon free from my wrist, the cool metal moving smoothly against my skin. Another surgical cut at the base of the balloon and it deflated quickly and quietly.
I knew I should cut it into little tiny pieces so it would be completely unrecognizable in the unlikely event that my father would catch of a glimpse of it.
But I hesitated, scissors hovering above the remains. Something in me protested the destruction. It wasn’t as if I’d have many nights out like this in the future, fake or not.
My father often talked about my life, post-Wingate. The kind of freedom I’d have, all the things I’d get to experience. But the wistful tone in his voice set off alarms in my head; his description of my future life seemed to have a fairy-tale quality to it rather than something he expected me to actually experience.
And he was right. Because even in the best-case scenario, where I managed to escape Wingate without bringing GTX down on us, I’d have to set up a careful anonymous life somewhere. Always watchful that I didn’t get too involved, didn’t allow others to become attached. There was too much at stake.
Aside from the difficulty of constantly staying on my guard, never being seen without my contact lenses in, and avoiding situations where the strange tattoo on my shoulder might be revealed (pool parties, summer days, and, um, more intimate moments), there were other complications.
Caring about someone, or having them care about me, was too dangerous. It left vulnerabilities that GTX could manipulate; it opened up the possibility of being hurt or hurting others, even unintentionally. That final experiment in the lab—beyond its value in blocking off an ability I no longer wanted—had taught me that.
The Rules, as much as I hated and railed against them, kept me—and everyone else—safe. So my father’s Rules were not just rules for living in Wingate. They were Rules for the rest of my life. Which included never falling in love or letting anyone fall in love with me.
Not that that was what was happening here with Zane, but it was a reasonable facsimile. And with the safety of a built-in end date, it was the closest thing I could allow myself to have. I couldn’t destroy evidence of it.
Right then, I knew where the balloon—and Reginald—should go.
I put the scissors down and I went to my closet. I dragged out the stool and raised myself to my tiptoes and dug behind my stacked jeans until I felt the sharp edge of cardboard.
I wrestled it free, doing my best to avoid a denim avalanche, and hopped down from the stool.
It was an oversized shoe box labeled “Old School Papers,” and was possibly the world’s most obvious hiding spot. Fortunately, most of its contents didn’t look all that unusual and wouldn’t raise an alarm with anyone but GTX.
With a cautious glance toward the dark and quiet hallway, I pulled the lid off. Memories immediately leapt to mind with the sight of everything inside.
This box was what remained of my hoarding tendencies, only instead of little bits of everything I touched, it contained physical reminders of the things that had been important to me.
A ticket stub from the first time my father had taken me to a movie.
A carefully cleaned-out wrapper from my first taste of french fries (gloriously fried potatoes! GTX had been way more into giving me green vegetables and tofu, figuring “my people” were healthy vegetarians or advanced enough to pop pills for nutrition instead of eating anything).
A photo of the original Ariane Tucker—a pale dark-haired girl with a huge smile and purplish shadows under her eyes—swiped from an old frame I’d found buried in a box in our basement.
A magic coin trick from the first cereal box I’d finished in my father’s house.
Scrunched up in the corner, the tiniest fragment of ripped white fabric, maybe only an inch by inch, with my GTX designation. GTX-F-107. The same mark that I bore on my back. They’d labeled all my clothes, and when I’d escaped, my father had destroyed the shapeless shirt and pants made of scratchy cotton. But I’d torn the designation out of the neck of the shirt before giving them to him. I didn’t want to forget where I came from.
An important thing to remember, especially on a night like tonight.
I set the box on my desk, tucked the deflated balloon and string inside, and retrieved Reginald from the grocery bag.
I put him on top, remembering Zane spinning that story about bogs and dears, and how he’d grinned, so pleased with himself when I laughed.
Stupidly, my eyes welled with tears.
Enough, I told myself. I put the lid on the box, shutting away Reginald’s malformed ears and cheap black button eyes.
I returned the box to its hiding spot behind my jeans, shoved the stool back into place, closed my closet, and headed to the bathroom.
Snapping the light on made me blink, temporarily rejecting the additional brightness as well as the glimpse of myself in the mirror with reddened eyes.
I busied myself with my contact case and solution.
Remove my lenses, wash my face, brush my teeth, put on pajamas, and get into bed. That was all I had to do. Then everything would be as if I’d never gone out at all tonight—except for the guilt of lying to my father and the empty space I could feel growing in my chest.
I should never have agreed to any of this with Zane, no matter what the benefits. Pretending made things too real.
I carefully took my contacts out and closed the case. Then, steeling myself, I looked in the mirror.
I usually avoided my reflection unless I had my lenses in. My eyes were so dark—so wrong, no distinguishable pupil—seeing them in their natural state always sent a shock through me. With normalish-looking eyes, my unusual features were softened. But with my distinctly nonhuman eyes uncovered, the point of my chin seemed so obvious, and the too-severe slant of my cheekbones, the faint grayish hue to my skin…it all screamed ALIEN.
I flinched and glanced away. I’d gotten used to not seeing myself this way.
I finished in the bathroom and returned to my room to put my necklace away and change into my pajamas—yoga pants and a T-shirt made of the softest cotton I’d ever felt.
I was climbing into bed when my phone, in the pocket of my jeans which were now slung over my desk chair, chirped with a text message.
“Jenna.” I breathed with relief and scrambled out from under the covers.
But it wasn’t Jenna. It was Zane.
7:30 ok? See you tomorrow am.
I couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t give me a chance to decline, only the opportunity to change the time. He was right. We’d committed to this path and now we were stuck.
I fought a smile. I should not have felt quite so pleased about that fact. Definitely not.
I went to put my phone in my bag so I wouldn’t be scrambling to find it in the morning, and realized it was flashing one unread message.
I frowned. It must have come in while we were at the activities fair, where it had been too noisy for me to hear the chime.
Still hoping to see Jenna’s name—I didn’t text anyone else, ever—it took a second for the “DAD” designation to sink in.
Dad. My father never texted.
My heart rate skyrocketed, and my hands shook as I pressed the button to read the message.
Pulling a double. Will be home tomorrow after you leave for school. Don’t forget to feed the fish.
I relaxed. Nothing about the activities fair. But a double shift? Normally he knew about those weeks in advance. I frowned.
I bit my lip, thinking it through. The reference to feeding the fish was our signal that everything was okay. So I had to assume that it was either a normal work scheduling hiccup—which had never happened in my memory—or he’d chosen to stay after for some reason. He’d done that occasionally in the past when he needed to talk to someone who worked a different shift. But it was usually only a few hours, staying in late or going in early, never a whole second shift.
It clicked in my head. The cameras. The ones GTX had installed today. I’d bet anything he was checking into it further. Trying to find out what had happened, how he’d not known anything about it.
I felt a little sick. He was really worried.
I forced myself to take a breath, and let it out slowly. He’d told me to feed the fish (which, by the way, we didn’t actually own). He wouldn’t have done that if he was concerned about my safety.
But something was keeping him at GTX, away from home and out of routine. And even without specific details about what that something was, I knew it wasn’t good.
I texted back. Fish fed. See you tomorrow afternoon?
And though he normally didn’t respond to messages or phone calls at work unless I indicated it was urgent, the silence following the chirp of my text felt ominous.
It was going to be a long night.
I WHISTLED ON MY WAY DOWN THE HALL from my room to the kitchen. I’d slept better than I had in a while. Yeah, it was a messed-up situation, so maybe it was a little wrong to be having so much fun. But to be honest, I wasn’t interested in inspecting it. When good things happening were in such short supply, I was going to take them any way I could.
Ariane hadn’t texted back last night to tell me a different time or not to pick her up, and I knew her well enough now to be sure she’d speak up if she had a problem with either. I was counting that as a win and looking forward to seeing her again with an anticipation that might have scared me if I looked at it closely.
But as I said, I was firmly anti-inspecting today.
I pushed open the door to the kitchen and nodded a greeting at my dad, who was once again at the island with his coffee and his paper. He scowled at me, and the last tuneless note—I wasn’t whistling a song so much as making a cheerful-sounding noise—died on my lips.
“Sorry.” I wasn’t about to tangle with him this morning. Last night we’d almost been getting along—by our standards, anyway. I didn’t want to push my luck.
I moved past him, giving him plenty of room, and grabbed the bread bag, only to remember that I’d choked down the last of it yesterday.
Oh, well. I crumpled up the bag and tossed it into the garbage. The Blazer needed gas; I could grab something at the store on my way to pick up Ariane.
I started across the kitchen, heading toward my backpack and keys on the counter near the back door.
“You’re certainly looking pleased with yourself this morning,” my dad said in that all-too-casual tone that signaled danger.
My heart sank. Clearly the temporary near-peace we’d enjoyed last night was over. I calculated my odds of grabbing my stuff and getting the hell out before he blew up. They weren’t good. And even if I made it out now, I needed the car for tonight and tomorrow. He’d have no problem taking it away from me if he decided I was being disrespectful. And since I had to live here…
I let out a slow breath that I hoped he wouldn’t hear and braced myself for what was coming. “Yeah,” I said, forcing an easy tone. “Guess I had a good time at the fair last night.”
“I heard I missed some excitement,” he said, still sounding fake mellow as he studied the newspaper.
Oh. Okay. I let out a silent breath of relief. This I could handle. He was cranky because he thought he’d missed out on an opportunity to herd people to safety.
“It wasn’t much,” I said. “Just the lights flickering. Too much stuff running at once, I guess.” And maybe the presence of the mystery kid who my dad was convinced had been injected with GTX’s missing research. Who might possibly be Rachel Jacobs herself.
I thought about bringing it up, in the hope of distracting/placating him, but I wasn’t sure I could manage it without letting skepticism leak into my tone.
“Yes, Mrs. Vanderhoff mentioned in her voice mail that it was interesting there for a few minutes.” He looked up, his mouth pinched.
Oh, fuuuuu—
“Mrs. Vanderhoff’s very long message on my cell phone at six this morning also included how pleased she was to have seen you last night, and so disappointed that my son would speak disrespectfully to her.”
I winced. There it was. The key word: disrespectfully. I wouldn’t be getting out of this so easily. That was my dad’s major hot button. Respect, or lack thereof.
Even though, technically, I hadn’t said much of anything at all, and Mrs. Vanderhoff deserved the shock she’d gotten from Ariane.
I waited for him to demand the identity of my “date”—that would be the only thing that could make this worse, learning I’d been out with the daughter of his mortal enemy—but apparently, Mrs. Vanderhoff’s “concerned” diatribe had focused on me as the perpetrator.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to do what I do? No, of course not,” he answered for me, snapping the paper closed and standing up to jab a finger at me. “The last thing I need is you making it more difficult by smarting off to important people in this community.”
Delores Vanderhoff was the organist at our church and the biggest gossip in town. She was important mostly because of her ability to disguise malicious conjecture as truth and rev the rumor mill into high gear.
My mom would have known how to defuse the situation, to point out that Delores was “talking to hear herself make noise” without making my dad even angrier. Unfortunately, she had not passed that skill on to me. “Dad, Mrs. Vanderhoff is freaking out over nothing, as usual,” I argued. “You know what she’s like. It was just—”
“Zane, I don’t care if she was shouting that the sky was falling because it’s raining. You nod politely and duck when she tells you to.”
I wanted to scream. I’d been hearing a version of this lecture for as long as I could remember. It’s called “Everyone else is always right even when they’re wrong.” Everyone’s opinion of us mattered more than the actual truth. Quinn had mastered this lesson by lying and listening to lies with a polite smile. That was my brother—the politician.
But the injustice of it rubbed me raw.
“My ability to serve this town depends on people trusting me, respecting my ability to control difficult situations. What do you think it says to them if I don’t have control over my own kid?” He was in my face now, his coffee breath sour. “What you say and do reflects on me, and I won’t have you representing my name poorly.”
Again. Even more. He meant those things even if he wasn’t saying them.
My dad made a disgusted noise. “You know, I’m the one who stuck around. Your mom left you high and dry. I’m the good guy here.”
I was pretty sure if you have to argue that you’re the good guy, you’re defeating your own argument. But I kept my mouth firmly shut against those words, though my jaw ached from holding everything in.
“The least you could do is show some gratitude,” he said.
Resentment burned deep in my gut. Gratitude for his sticking around and being a parent so grudgingly? Gratitude for hating me and everything I reminded him of ?
He thrust his hand toward me. “Keys.”
I gaped at him and his open hand. “What?”
He snapped his fingers. “Keys. You don’t think you’ve got car privileges after all that, do you?”
A haze of fury clouded my vision. He could have taken the keys before I got down here, but no, he had to rub my face in it like I was a puppy making a mess.
I clenched my fists, and Dad shifted his weight, eyeing me closely as if expecting—or challenging—me to rush at him.
A single clear thought penetrated. Stop. A warning whisper that sounded like my mother’s voice: Think about this. Be careful. Play the game and play it right.
If I let things get physical, I might win, but I’d still lose. My car privileges would be gone forever, and my life in this house would be about ten degrees warmer than hell.
So…the question was, what did my dad hate more than his family being imperfect in front of others?
It took me a second, but then it clicked. Like one of those little-kid jokes. What was worse than one instance? Several instances of his family being proven imperfect. Which gave me an idea.
“Fine,” I said, barely managing to force the word out. I stepped to the side, snagged the keys from the counter, and held them out to him. “I need you to call some parents, then.”
He grabbed the keys and then paused, his hand out. “What?” he demanded with a frown.
“Well, the girl I’m driving to school, for one. I told her parents I’d be picking her up and dropping her off this week. She doesn’t have a ride, otherwise.”
My dad opened his mouth—whether to protest or to ask her name, I wasn’t sure—but I didn’t wait.
“And Rachel Jacobs’s dad,” I said quickly.
His mouth snapped shut.
Of course that would work. I forced myself to keep a neutral expression. “I promised Rachel I’d be a DD for her party tomorrow night. I guess some people drink at the bonfire before they come over.” As he well knew, just as he knew there would be drinking at Rachel’s party afterward; though I wasn’t dumb enough to wave that flag in his face. “Her dad insisted that there be sober people with cars on call, in case.” In reality, he’d requested no such thing (though he should have). I doubted he even knew about the party.
My dad narrowed his eyes. “I should make you call them and explain why you’re inconveniencing so many people because of your disrespect.”
I felt the first flicker of possible triumph. He’d said “should.” In his mind, the only thing worse than his having to call to explain would be my doing it when he couldn’t control what I would say. “Okay,” I said, trying to sound neutral.
He gave a loud huff of frustration and chucked the keys at me.
I managed to catch them before they hit my face.
“Saturday morning. The Blazer’s back in the garage and you are grounded.” He pointed a censorious finger at me.
I nodded.
“And don’t you dare make the mistake of thinking you won this round, Zane.” He stalked out of the kitchen, presumably to get ready for work.
I didn’t think I’d won anything. It was more a temporary stay of execution. And yet it was more than I’d ever attempted before. I hadn’t out and out defied him, but it was way closer than anything I’d previously done.
Oddly enough, remembering my conversation with Ariane last night about Mrs. Vanderhoff’s bullying, I couldn’t help but think that Ariane might have been pleased at what I’d done this morning.
Not right now, though. Now she’d be angry because I was running late. I wondered how long it would take her to assume that I wasn’t going to show up. Probably not long. She still didn’t trust me. The weird part was how much I wanted her to.
Again: not looking at anything too closely this morning. With a hint of my good mood returning, I grabbed my backpack and hurried out.