Project Paper Doll (18 page)

T
HREE 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.