THREE MINUTES LATE. I paced the sidewalk, a couple concrete squares away from the actual intersection of Pine and Rushmore. Three minutes—though a devastating break in pattern for someone like me (assuming there was someone else like me) wasn’t much for a so-called normal person. I knew that from years of observation. Being three minutes late didn’t even require an apology, from what I’d seen.
Unlike, say, five minutes…
The next two minutes ticked by with excruciating slowness, but I felt every second of them. Exposed, left standing here, open for scrutiny by anyone glancing out their window or driving by.
And still no sign of Zane. I tensed with the sound of every car approaching, even if it was from the wrong direction. And every time, it wasn’t him.
Had something changed? Last night, the closeness between us had seemed natural and easy, despite the circumstances. But reviewing it in the harsh light of day, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d gotten it wrong.
Maybe I’d enjoyed last night more than he had. Maybe he’d simply made the best of a bad situation and humored me. I mean, in theory, this wasn’t about fun for either one of us.
I hadn’t picked up on any obvious deception in his thoughts last night—not that I’d been actively listening in. But people attempting to hide something tend to be rather loud about it in their thoughts—a consequence, I suspected, of trying to be subtle in their words and actions. Unless they’d been trained in lying or done it well for a really long time.
I sighed. More and more, I realized that my father was right. Hearing people’s thoughts was not nearly the advantage the scientists who’d tinkered with my genetic makeup thought it would be.
It led you to shaky and unreliable conclusions, and made you feel that you knew someone better than you actually did.
The worst part was not that Zane was late or maybe not even showing up, but rather that I felt it. My chest was tight with disappointment, and a weird stinging sensation in my eyes suggested tears.
They indicated that this fake situation had some kind of real meaning, enough to affect me, which I did not want or need. Particularly today, when I was already worried about what was going on with my father, what he’d found (or not found) at GTX.
I swallowed hard and added another sidewalk square to my pacing. I would not—could not—let this nothing with Zane get to me.
At 7:36 (and 30 seconds, give or take), according to my cell phone, I started walking to school. Waiting for someone who was seven minutes late (or not coming at all) seemed to be a particular threshold of patheticness I didn’t want to cross.
I’d gone about a half a block when Zane’s SUV pulled up to the curb. And despite the internal complaining I’d been doing about hearing thoughts and feelings, I sensed him before I saw him. The frustration and worry coming off him was intense and seemed legit, as far as I could tell.
Still, didn’t make it right. I kept walking.
He rolled down the window on the passenger side. “Ariane, I’m sorry,” he said, out of breath, as if he’d been running instead of driving. “My dad was being a dick, I had to get gas, and I’m just…late.” He lifted his hands helplessly.
I faced him. “You couldn’t call or text?” I waved my phone at him.
“I was afraid you’d leave anyway.” He gave me a sheepish smile.
“Right on that one,” I muttered.
“Come on, you going to get in?” he wheedled.
Before I could answer, he parked and scrambled out and around the front of the SUV. “I brought you breakfast.” He held up a grease-spotted bag sporting the familiar golden arches.
My stomach gave an interested—though, thankfully, quiet—rumble. I hadn’t been able to choke down much of my peanut butter toast this morning (Thursday is always toast day). It had been too strange, eating breakfast alone.
I raised my eyebrows. “You had time to buy food?”
He held his hands up, one still clutching the bag. “Only while the tank was filling, I swear. The other day you said you forgot to eat breakfast. I thought maybe if that was a regular thing…”
I looked at him, startled. I had said that—a lie to try to distract Jenna, but he’d obviously been listening. Before we’d entered this little arrangement of ours.
“Aaaand I thought it might make you less mad at me for being late.” He gave me a lopsided grin that did funny things to my insides and made me look a little too hard at his mouth. He had a very nice one. Empirically speaking.
Despite my best efforts, I could feel myself relenting. His open-faced sincerity was hard to resist. “That might work on other girls…” I began. Then my stomach gave a particularly loud rumble. I sighed. “And it’s totally going to work on me, too.”
He grinned again (causing my heart to do little flips that should have been anatomically impossible for either species I belonged to) and opened the door for me.
I crossed the grass and got in, setting my bag on the floor. He closed the door after me and jogged to the other side.
“We’re going to be late for school,” I said, when he opened his door. I couldn’t help noticing the two paper cups of orange juice in the drink holders between us, straws in their wrappers tucked behind them. He really had been planning on our eating together.
“Nope, we just have to eat as we go.” He climbed in and slammed the door. Then he set the bag on the armrest between us. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got a little bit of everything.” He gestured toward the bag. “Biscuits, burritos, McGriddles…”
I peeked inside the bag. “Hash browns,” I said, spotting the familiar wrapper, and snatched it. My obsession with fried potatoes was not limited to french fries. The crunchy outer goodness with that lovely soft but textured inside—yum. I’d have to watch my intake to make sure I didn’t fill up on carbs instead of protein (because I’d faint somewhere, oh, around fourth hour), but they were so good.
Zane looked at me oddly as he put the truck in gear. “Very glad I didn’t fight you for those. I might have lost fingers.”
“Shut up,” I said without heat, around a mouthful of hash browns.
He laughed. “You want to hand me something in there?”
I frowned and looked into the bag again. It was pretty full. He hadn’t been kidding about there being a variety of items available. “Like what?”
“Clearly not the hash browns.” He gave me a mischievous smile. “Whatever, I don’t care. I eat all of it.”
I rummaged until I found a breakfast burrito. That seemed like a guy breakfast item.
I held it out to him.
He raised his eyebrows. “Can you maybe…a little help?” He tipped his head toward his hands occupied with the steering wheel, his attention focused on the road. “Oh. Yeah.” I peeled back the wrapper enough for him to start eating and handed it to him, our fingers brushing in the process.
I tried to ignore the weird little jolt the contact sent through me.
“Thanks,” he said.
I unwrapped my straw and stuck it through the lid on my cup. I hesitated for a second, and then went through the same process for Zane’s. Why not?
Being here with him, it felt oddly intimate, not closed in and too close, as it had yesterday. The clean fresh scent of his shampoo and the delicious smells of salt, grease, and syrup filled the front seat. The low murmur of the radio was comforting, lulling. It felt cozy and real. More so than eating in a restaurant, or anywhere else.
“So what do you think today is going to be like?” I asked, more to fill the silence and calm the queasy, anxious-buteager feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Zane bobbled a bite, and cheesy egg—steaming hot in the cool air—dripped down his chin. He winced.
Ouch. I grimaced in reflexive sympathy and dug into the bag for napkins.
“Here.” Without thinking, I reached out to help, intending to wipe away the egg—it was, after all, the most expedient solution. But in a moment of colossal miscommunication, Zane tried to hand me the burrito and take the napkin, resulting in confusion and too many hands going in different directions.
I retreated immediately. “Oh. Sorry.” My face burned. “Did you want to, um…” My hand flapped uselessly, holding the napkin. Of course he did. Who wanted someone you didn’t know that close up in your face?
“Nope, go for it,” he said. “Clearly I cannot be trusted to feed myself.”
I leaned over and removed the offending bit of egg and cheese, careful not to block his line of sight. But it was closer than we’d been since last night, and something about the daylight made it seem so much more real.
He smelled good. Really good. Something that seemed to be exclusively him made me want to bury my face against his neck.
My heart thumping too hard, I scooted back into my seat before I did just that and humiliated myself. What was wrong with me?
Zane cleared his throat. “So…today. Probably like last night, times a thousand. People will be asking questions. Especially when they can catch either one of us alone. You gotta be ready for that.”
I nodded. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Tell them…it just happened.”
I snorted. “No one is going to believe that.”
He shrugged. “They’ll be way more interested in what we’re doing now than how we originally hooked up.”
Just the words “hooked up” made me blush again.
He polished off the last of his burrito and crumpled up the wrapper. “But it’s probably better for the illusion, and to avoid that kind of thing, if we meet up between classes and walk together—”
I frowned. “We have no classes together. It’ll be out of our way.”
He gave me a sideways smile—his teeth were so white against his tan skin—and my traitorous heart gave another improbable leap. “You’re such a romantic.”
He tucked his wrapper under his leg and then snagged a quick drink of juice.
“Hit me again.” He nodded toward the bag.
I pulled out a McGriddle, the paper sticky with syrup.
I peeled back the wrapper and handed it to him, taking care to keep my fingers out of the way of his. I didn’t like the disconcerting feeling of touching him—wanting to and being scared to at the same time. Too much conflicting data for my brain to process.
“Thanks,” he said.
We were getting close to school, and I still needed to boost my protein. I had peanut butter crackers in my bag for an emergency, but this was not that, yet.
I rummaged in the bag one last time and found an eggand-cheese biscuit. Good enough.
We munched in silence for a few minutes, and I watched the school rise up in the distance. It looked nothing like it had last night, once more all sharp edges and imposing.
Thinking of the activities fair, I had to ask, “What about Rachel? What should we expect from her? Other than smelling like she bathed in cheap aloe.” It was a petty dig, but I couldn’t resist.
Zane shook his head with a rueful smile. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Maybe a little,” I admitted.
He sighed heavily. “She’s been texting me since last night. I told her I was just doing what she asked me to. But it doesn’t matter. She’ll find some way to retaliate, to punish us for being there when she got hit with the pies. She doesn’t handle being embarrassed very well.” He grew quiet. “She didn’t used to be this bad.”
“Are you sure she’s the one who changed?”
He looked up sharply, and I wanted to take back the words.
“I’m just saying, she’s been mean for as long as I’ve known her, and you…you’re different.” I fumbled to explain. I knew about his mom leaving; everyone did. Thanks to Jenna, I had all the details I could have ever wanted. According to the rumor mill, his mom had taken off on his birthday, after sticking around for his brother’s graduation the night before.
Add that to the images I’d gotten from his head of his father screaming at him, and I had to wonder if all of that was contributing to this version of Zane. The new and improved. One who now seemed to think for himself instead of following Rachel’s directives blindly.
“What I’m trying to say is,” I said carefully, “would you have thought twice about doing what she asked if it was a couple of years ago?”
“I don’t know,” he said in a clipped voice, making the turn into the school parking lot.
Which we both knew meant no.
He crumpled his food wrapper with more force than necessary. “They’re my friends,” he said.
“I know.” But I was beginning to think he deserved better. I couldn’t say that—not without poking at his defenses with a too-sharp stick. For some reason, Rachel and her crew represented something important to him, and he wasn’t about to let them go.
I was trying to figure out how to end, or change, this conversation that I hadn’t meant to start in the first place, when his expression darkened.
“And maybe some people change for the worse,” he said, his mouth tight.
I followed his gaze, not sure what he was talking about at first. We were in a line of cars heading toward the section of graveled lot where Zane and his “friends” socialized before school. No gym cattle call for them.
I located Rachel first, leaning against her car, Trey’s arm slung around her shoulders. The twins were nearby, arguing over a scarf, judging by the way one would snatch it from the other and then the other would strike back.
But another girl stood in front of them with her back to us, her blond hair perfectly curled and bobbing with her enthusiastic hand movements as she talked.
I recognized those details immediately even though I couldn’t see her face.
Jenna. I sucked in a breath.
Her shoulders held a new level of tension, and she was keeping her distance from Rachel, as if not quite sure how close she wanted to get. But still she was there. On sacred ground, among Rachel’s circle of friends.
Exactly where Rachel wanted her this morning.
It wasn’t hard to see where Rachel was going with this. Aware of Jenna’s (obvious) crush, she wanted her to see me with Zane. But Jenna wasn’t the target this time. I was. Rachel had to know this would destroy my friendship with Jenna. Or whatever was left of it, anyway. I’d realized that was a possibility, but in setting us up like this, Rachel had all but guaranteed it.
“Damn it.” My hands curled into fists against the fury rising up in my chest. Zane had said Rachel would punish us for the shaving cream. I just never thought she’d go this far. She wasn’t just cruel; she was conniving. Which only went to show that it was a mistake to overestimate her capacity to act like a normal, feeling human instead of a sociopath.
“I take it you didn’t have a chance to tell Jenna,” Zane said, weariness in his voice.
I shook my head stiffly. “I tried. She’s not speaking to me. After the other day, she thinks being seen with me will blow her chances for being friends with Rachel. And ‘Oh, hey, btw, I’m fake-dating your longtime crush’ isn’t exactly text message material.” I wondered what Rachel had said to Jenna to convince her it was safe to approach again, after yesterday’s incident in the cafeteria. It probably wouldn’t have taken much; Jenna wanted to believe. Maybe Rachel had sold her on the idea that it was a joke that had gotten out of hand, hazing gone awry. Or maybe she’d simply apologized—hard to imagine, but I was willing to bet Rachel wouldn’t let one fake “I’m sorry” stand in the way of a bigger and better opportunity to hurt.
“What do you want to do?” Zane asked, surprising me. Did that mean he’d call the whole thing off right now if I said so? We were three car-lengths away, enough time to drive down a different lane and, well, run.
But no, it was too late for that. Even if Jenna didn’t see us together for herself, she would soon find out that we were at the activities fair last night. We were well past the point of no return.
“We have to go through with it,” I said grimly. I was not going to let Rachel win this round.
“Are you sure?”
My gaze locked with Rachel’s through the windshield, and she gave me a smug smile.
Yeah, let’s see how you like this. Nobody plays me, get it?
As usual, Rachel’s thoughts filtered through the rest of the white noise and past my resistance at a decibel that would make ears bleed.
I flinched.
She thinks I’m stupid, trying to turn this around on me. I’ll show her. I can’t believe Zane doesn’t see she’s scheming to get back at me. Unless he does and he doesn’t care. Unless he really likes her. Rachel’s smile faltered, insecurity rolling off of her.
Oh my God. Now I understood. The rumors were true. Rachel was in possession of tender feelings when it came to one Zane Bradshaw.
But I couldn’t dwell on that, or even take time to think it through.
“Ariane?” Zane prompted, sounding tense.
“Rachel’s not just trying to cause chaos this time. She’s calling our bluff, and she’s using Jenna to do it,” I said. “If we back down now, we’re done.” Hate for her boiled inside me. I couldn’t walk away now. Not when letting Rachel win would do nothing but make life more miserable for everyone involved. Not when I was so close to regaining control.
Zane shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “You do know that I never meant to…I mean, I tried not to do anything that would make Jenna…”
“Not your fault that you’re apparently irresistible,” I said, hearing the ice in my words.
“Doesn’t sound like a compliment when you say it like that,” he muttered.
He parked on the opposite side of the lane, away from Jenna, Rachel, and the others, giving us some space. At the far end of our row a black van with the bright red GTX logo rose above the other cars. The sight of it made my breath catch in my throat. It was probably another tech finishing up the camera installation, but the van served as a solid reminder of what was at stake. We had to keep the game going.
“Ready?” Zane asked, grabbing his backpack.
“No,” I admitted, but I pushed the door open anyway.
He met me at the rear of the SUV and extended his hand. After a second, I took it, feeling surprisingly comforted by the contact. His grip was warm, firm, and familiar. I felt more grounded, touching him. Was that why people did this? To feel less alone?
His thumb brushed over the back of my hand, a single reassuring stroke, and something tight in me eased. This was horrible, yeah, but I wasn’t here by myself.
Without my telling him to, Zane led the way, which was a small relief. It was hard enough to do this, let alone take the lead.
“Hey guys,” he said. “Rach.” He nodded at Rachel, who didn’t even bother to hide her triumphant grin. Exactly how stupid did she think I was?
“Zane!” Jenna turned, curls bouncing, her face lighting up immediately. With her tunnel vision focused squarely on him, she missed me at first. I watched as her gaze traveled down his arm to where our hands were joined and then shot over to my face.
“Ariane?” she asked, sounding confused.
I watched her deflate, the excitement and eagerness leaking out of her, replaced by disbelief and hurt.
Oh, Jenna. I bit my lip.
“What is this?” She looked from me to Zane and back again. “I don’t understand.”
“Uh-oh.” Rachel oozed closer—as much as anyone can ooze in stilettos on a gravel surface. “Do we have a love triangle?” she asked, her voice thick with mean-spirited amusement.
“I think you’re forgetting a side,” I snapped, staring her down. Maybe not my best comeback, but I wanted her to know that I knew.
Trey frowned. “What does that mean?”
I could see Zane’s equally confused expression from the corner of my eye.
But Rachel got it. Her mouth turned white around the edges of her perfectly applied lipstick. She flounced toward her car with Trey following. “Rach, I don’t understand. What was she talking about?” he asked.
“So…” Jenna edged closer, as if we were something that might explode if approached too suddenly. “This is what you were talking about in your message? This is what you wanted me to ignore?” Her voice cracked, and I could see her throat working as she struggled to hold back tears.
Guilt squeezed my chest, but before I could answer, Jenna shook her head. “You don’t even know each other. And Ariane, you hate these guys.”
An offended gasp rose up from somewhere nearby, probably from one of the twins.
I pulled my hand free of Zane’s—dimly aware that I missed the contact immediately—and edged closer to Jenna. She looked ready to bolt. “Look, we just need to talk about it.…” I hesitated. Which we couldn’t do here, and then there would be the issue of how much I could explain. As much as I wanted to trust Jenna, she had a huge blind spot when it came to Rachel.
None of that mattered, though; Jenna was already retreating, her face flushed and shiny with tears. “No.”
“Jenna.” I started to follow her.
She held her hands up. “You stay away from me. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to see you. You’re such a freak!” The last words were shouted as she ran for the building.
I winced, feeling her words dig into me, followed by the confirming titter of laughter from Rachel and her friends.
“Run, Jenna, run,” Rachel said with a cackle, stepping up with her cell phone to snap a picture.
This time I didn’t have to think, didn’t have to force the focus. An unexpected tingle of power told me the barrier was down, and then Rachel’s phone spun out of her hand, colliding hard with the side of her car.
“Oh my God!” She was on her knees immediately, scrambling for it. “Trey, you idiot, what is your problem?”
“I was nowhere near you!”
“You were the only one near me!”
They continued bickering, but I ignored them.
I’d done it. Taken another big step toward regaining control. I wasn’t entirely back to rights—I still needed Rachel to trigger whatever it was that pushed the barrier down—but I was closer, much closer. However, the triumph of the moment felt flat and artificial—tinny music on bad computer speakers.
What was the point, I had to wonder, of fighting so hard to learn to protect my life if I was destroying it in the process?
And how was I distinguishing myself from Rachel and her evil pillar-of-the-community grandfather if I was doing exactly what they did? Lying to get what I wanted and not caring who got hurt in the process.
I suppose there were good intentions and all of that, but I wasn’t about to kid myself that Dr. Jacobs didn’t write himself the same blank check of an excuse.
“Hey,” Zane said, startling me.
I turned to see him approaching cautiously with a concerned expression.
“She’ll be okay, you know,” he said. “She was just surprised.”
I made a face. “Yeah, people usually are in an ambush.”
He sighed. “You’re being too hard on yourself. You didn’t set this up.”
“No,” I said, “but I made it possible.”
And that, to my mind, was more than enough.
ARIANE WAS QUIET the rest of the day. I found myself deflecting the attention on our behalf, glaring at people who approached, and tugging Ariane down side corridors to avoid the worst of the staring.
Oddly enough, that seemed to do more to convince people that we were real than presenting ourselves for inspection and answering questions with cutesy but vague responses. By the end of the day, most of the spectators had retreated to watch and whisper at a safe distance. And that was only the most devoted of the big mouths. Most everyone else had already shrugged it off and gone on about their lives. Even Rachel had stayed away except for amused stares from across the hall and communiqués via text. My phone had been vibrating nonstop with long gloating messages and various instructions on how to “keep Ariane on the hook.”
Now, after the last bell, with most everyone gone, Ariane leaned against the locker next to mine while she waited for me to switch out books and grab my homework for the night (not much, thankfully). Her expression was much as it had been all day, perfectly smooth and impassive. She might have been happy and hiding it, or miserable and keeping it quiet—it was impossible to tell. But I knew that something—lots of something, most likely—was churning beneath that impenetrable surface.
I paused in shoving my chemistry book into my locker and looked over at her. Her face showed nothing new, but her hands, folded around the strap of her bag, were fidgeting, her fingers playing with a loose thread. Winding it around her index finger until it was tight, and then unwinding it. Over and over again.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I hated hearing the words come out of my mouth. I’d only asked her that about ten times, but I wasn’t sure what else to do.
“Fine.” Which was the same thing she’d said the last ten, now eleven times. In the same flat, unemotional, I’m-notreally-here voice.
I made a disgusted sound.
That seemed to startle out of her semicatatonic state. “What?” she asked, blinking and looking at me for the first time in hours.
“You’re not. You’re obviously not.”
Her brow wrinkled. “What?” she asked again.
“Fine,” I said with exasperation. “You’re not fine. That’s just what you’re saying so you don’t have to tell me what’s going on.”
“Zane—” she began, with a shake of her head.
“I’m serious. I may not be an expert on Ariane Tucker.” Not yet, but I was trying. “But even I know you’re usually a little more than a good imitation of a statue.”
She looked startled.
“I’ve even known you to smile. Every once in a while.” Usually in the presence of fried potatoes. Today, at lunch, the only thing she’d eaten with any kind of enthusiasm had been french fries. “We’re in this together. Talk to me.”
“It’s nothing.”
I leaned closer to her, though the hallway was deserted. “Is this about Jenna?”
She stiffened, and I saw the first cracks in her composure. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Too bad,” I said cheerfully. “I didn’t want to talk about Rachel this morning, but you didn’t give me the option.” I slammed my locker shut.
She narrowed her eyes. “You weren’t exactly bubbling over with information.”
I slung my backpack onto my shoulder and dug my car keys from my pocket. “Not my favorite topic. Come on, let’s go.”
She straightened up, looking more alert and interested than she had all day, and followed me down the hall. “You never said what she did that made you so angry.”
“No way.” I shook my head. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.” I shoved through the door to the parking lot and stepped back, holding it open for her.
She crossed the threshold and turned to face me. “Technically, we weren’t,” she corrected. “We were talking about you, and you were attempting to deflect the attention to me, when I am far more interested in—”
“You feel guilty. About Jenna,” I said, leading the way to my car.
She clamped her mouth shut.
I sighed. “I’m not stupid, Ariane. I saw you this morning. If Rachel was a grenade and you could have thrown yourself at her to save Jenna, you’d have done it.”
“Now, that’s an interesting mental image. Rachel as a grenade,” she murmured.
“But you don’t have anything to feel guilty about.” I hated seeing her like this, all closed in and shut off. Back to being the mysterious girl I didn’t and couldn’t ever know instead of someone who laughed at my dumb stories and quoted Star Wars.
“Because we’re not real, I know,” she said.
“No,” I said firmly. “You don’t have anything to feel guilty about because you didn’t take anything from her. I do not have feelings for Jenna. Never have. Don’t I get a say in the matter?” I asked, attempting to tease her into lightening up.
“No,” she said with a mirthless smile.
I sighed and unlocked the SUV. Ariane got to her door before I did and opened it for herself, sending me a challenging look.
I raised my hands in surrender and headed to my side.
Inside the stifling hot interior, which still smelled vaguely of breakfast, I chucked my backpack into the backseat and started up the engine, turning the AC on high. Ariane seemed undisturbed by the heat, sitting there calmly with her seat belt on already and her bag at her feet.
“Unlike some people,” she said, so quietly I could barely hear, “I don’t have as many options to choose from when it comes to abandoning one friend for another.”
I reached out to turn the fan down so her words didn’t get lost in the noise, half afraid that the quiet would scare her off.
“And before you say anything, I’m not feeling sorry for myself.…” She sighed. “It’s just, Jenna understands, or she did anyway. She never asked questions or tried to pry into my personal life—”
I laughed in disbelief. “So, in other words, you were friends as long as the attention was focused exclusively on her.”
“It’s not like that. She’s not like that,” Ariane insisted.
“Really? Because people who are your friends are supposed to want to know about you. And do I need to remind you that she’s the one who stopped talking to you because she thought it would make Rachel like her better?” I asked, disgusted. “Look, I don’t know Jenna as well as you do, but I’ve seen her in action. She’d run you over with a truck if she thought that would get Rachel to pay attention to her. And you deserve a better friend than that.” The words slipped out before I could stop them, and I wished them back, wincing in anticipation of her reaction. I barely knew her; who was I to say what she deserved?
But she didn’t gasp in fury or shoot back with some kind of cutting remark. She gave a strangled kind of laugh. “I thought the same thing about you this morning, when you were talking about Rachel.”
Her gaze met mine, and a thick electric silence fell between us.
She bit her lip—I’d noticed she did that when she was nervous or uncertain—and I was suddenly possessed with the desire to touch her mouth, to stop her from hurting herself even with that small pain, and to kiss her.
But before I could move, she broke eye contact and shifted to stare out the window.
A lost opportunity, one accompanied with more regret that I ever would have imagined. I frowned. What was going on here? I’d started this whole thing to get Rachel off my back and maybe to satisfy some of my curiosity about the strange girl in math class. How had it gotten this far?
Putting the SUV in gear, I pulled out of the nearly empty lot and started toward the intersection where I knew Ariane would insist on being dropped off.
Silence, of the awkward variety this time, held for several blocks.
“Speaking of feelings for you…Jenna’s, I mean,” she said suddenly, her face flushing red. “I’ve been wondering why Rachel was going to all this trouble.”
“A natural love of mayhem and messing with people isn’t enough?”
“No, not really…”
It took me a second to connect the dots between the first part of her sentence and the last. Feelings for you…Rachel. “Rachel?” I laughed. “No.”
“Oh, come on, haven’t you wondered why she’s so determined to involve you in all of this?” She turned toward me in her seat, warming to the topic, something she’d evidently been thinking about for a while. I was beginning to wonder if there was ever anything Ariane didn’t consider for hours or days before saying something. “If she wanted to punish me, there are easier ways.”
I nodded, tapping an uncomfortable rhythm on the steering wheel. “Which is why what you’re suggesting doesn’t make sense. If she…liked me”—God, I could barely force the phrase out—“she wouldn’t push me to pretend to pursue someone else for one of her games.”
“You’re not thinking about it the way she does,” Ariane said. “If she can get you to do what she wants, it means you’re hers.”
“She already has Trey for that,” I pointed out.
“Exactly, he’s no challenge, so it means nothing to her. But with you”—she tilted her head to one side, eyeing me speculatively—“she knows you aren’t as eager to jump, and it drives her crazy. She wants you to want her.”
I flashed back to Rachel kissing me the other night, right in front of Trey. “That is messed up.” But not entirely out of character, the part of her I knew that maybe the others weren’t as aware of. “How do you know? That that’s what Rachel’s thinking, I mean.”
Ariane hesitated. “I understand how she thinks. Maybe I’m more like her than I’d prefer.”
I knew she was blaming herself for Jenna again. “No. You’re not.” I stopped, trying to decide whether I wanted to go where this was headed—I didn’t talk about this, with anyone—but then the words were out, sounding loud and awkward. “I’m sure you know about my mom.”
“I know what people say,” Ariane responded carefully.
“My favorite ones are the Witness Protection Program and running off with some rich guy she met on the Internet,” I said.
Ariane stiffened, and I knew she’d heard both of those.
I focused my attention on the road and made myself keep talking. “I think it’s a lot simpler than that. My dad’s a dick, and she couldn’t take it anymore. And, unlike Quinn, I wasn’t enough of a reason to stick around.”
Ariane made some small noise—sympathy, surprise, a combination of both—but she didn’t interrupt.
Which was good, because that had been harder to say than I thought, even though so much time had passed. I cleared my throat. “So anyway, one night last year, I’m at a party at Rachel’s, and I was drinking. Okay, I was drunk,” I admitted ruefully. “And the party is a total rager, so I’m just trying to find a quiet corner that’s not already full of broken stuff or covered in puke, you know?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her nodding, though I was pretty sure she’d never been to one.
“And I find Rachel in her dad’s study, and she’s crying.” I pulled around the corner at Pine and Rushmore and parked.
“If this ends with you having sex with Rachel, you can stop now,” Ariane said with distaste, her hand on the door. “There are those rumors, too.” She raised her eyebrows at me in challenge.
“Never happened,” I said.
She nodded slowly, as if relieved.
“Anyway, she starts talking to me about stuff she’s never even hinted at before, and we had been friends forever. Her mom is in some kind of semipermanent spa/rehab joint in California, and it’s a mental thing, not just alcohol or pills. Her dad is always gone, traveling for GTX, shaking hands and schmoozing. Her grandpa is the only one who cares about her, and he’s always busy at work.”
Next to me, Ariane went rigid.
“I’m not telling you this stuff as an excuse for her,” I said quickly. “Just trying to show you how the conversation was going.”
Ariane seemed to relax.
I leaned back in my seat, tracing the lines of the emblem in the center of the steering wheel with my finger. “Anyway, so…she’s upset, and I’ve been drinking, and it suddenly seems like a good idea to talk about my mom. How she left and didn’t tell us where she was going. I mean, forget telling my dad, but what about me? And sticking around for Quinn’s graduation party one night but not for my birthday the next day?” I let out a slow breath and forced a smile. “It’s enough to give you a complex, you know?”
I dared a quick glance at Ariane, to find her watching me intently.
“In any case, we, uh, ended up, um, comforting each other.” It had not been sex or even close, but I didn’t feel it was in my best interests to go into detail about what it had or had not been. “Then someone set off a two-liter bomb in the backyard and everyone scattered, and we never talked about it again, except to agree that it didn’t happen. Until yesterday morning when Trey shows up at my house, trying to talk me into going along with Rachel’s plan even though he knows I’ve been all messed up and different since my mom left, blaming myself, and it isn’t my fault…blah, blah, blah.” I took a deep breath. “He never would have come up with all of that on his own. Trey and I have never talked about that kind of stuff. And I don’t want to talk about it or hear people talking about it ever again. Most of that had finally died down. But I knew if I kept telling Rachel no, all of a sudden it would be about poor, messed-up Zane again.…”
“Oh.” Ariane drew in a quick breath. “She used what you told her against you. Manipulated Trey into manipulating you. That’s what made you so angry.” Her eyes were bright, and I realized she was on the verge of tears. For me.
“And that’s how I know you’re not like her.”
She sat up straighter. “She should never have done that.” She sounded fierce on my behalf, like she would take on Rachel for me, and a rush of warmth and unexpected gratitude flooded through me. “I would—”
I didn’t let her finish. I leaned over the armrest between us and kissed her, a brush of my mouth over hers. Testing the waters.
Her lips were soft, and I felt her catch her breath in surprise.
My heart pounding (ridiculous from such a nothing kiss, but it was happening), I backed off immediately. “Okay?”
After a second she nodded, so wide-eyed I could see the edges of her tinted contact lenses, and some part of my brain registered that there was a decent chance this was her first kiss. Her father was pretty strict. And I’d never seen her even talking to another guy.
I felt kind of honored. I’d have to take it slow and make sure she had time and room to speak up, which was pretty much my policy anyway. Though most of the time, in recent months, at random party hookups, I’d been the one trying to keep up or slow things down. Girls sometimes got aggressive, especially with a Jell-O shot or three in them.
I kissed Ariane again, and this time she tipped her face toward mine, responding. And such a simple thing was a huge turn-on; it sent a bolt of heat through me. I was going to have problems if this went on for too long, as innocent as it was.
Her hands were cool and tentative at first, at the back of my neck and then moving with more confidence over my shoulders and through my hair.
Reaching up to touch her face, I could feel her delicate bones beneath soft skin—she never seemed fragile or small except for when I touched her. Her personality made her seem bigger, more powerful.
I slid my hand beneath her hair, which was heavy and soft and held the heat of her body, making me want to touch more. I tipped her chin at a slightly stronger angle and tasted her mouth, and she let out a gasp, her hands clutching tighter at my collar.
God. This little game we were playing didn’t feel much like a game anymore.