Project Paper Doll: The Trials (34 page)

“Okay, okay,” I shouted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And frankly, it was better that way.

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

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

It was never her.

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

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

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

I just had so little of her.

According to Linwood Academy High School, when I’d called them pretending to be the parent of a concerned friend, Ford, Nixon, and Carter had transferred to a private school in some small
European country. Never to be heard from again, of course. That was the official story for their fate.

I was swimming in official stories these days. Or just plain gaps in information. No one had ever reported the discovery of Carter’s body or Adam’s.

Based on what I’d heard last from Emerson, Adam’s family was still searching for him, and I hated that. But I didn’t know what either of us could do without pulling the entire
house of cover-ups down around our ears. Emerson agreed.

So I just kept doing what I could—going to school, sending e-mails, waiting for my freaking moment, whenever or whatever that was.

Quinn dropped me off at school with just minutes before the first bell, which was how I preferred it these days. I didn’t want to be hanging around the parking lot, trying to pretend
everything was okay.

My morning classes were, as usual, endless. I lived for the moments between when I could check my e-mail on my phone, even though I knew that odds were against my ever hearing anything useful. I
had to keep trying.

Reaching lunch every day felt like an accomplishment. But I wasn’t the only one suffering.

Rachel was sitting alone at the table today. Pretty much every day now.

“Hey,” I said, setting my tray down next to hers.

“Missing your little girlfriend? Looking for an easy substitute?” she asked as I sat down.

I just waited, staring at her. She still snapped at people, but it was more like an automatic defense mechanism. She had no ground to stand on, and she knew it.

“Sorry,” she muttered, dropping her fork in her wilted salad.

If my dad was sort of lost without GTX, Rachel was even worse off. She’d have rather pretended that the last few months hadn’t happened, but that wasn’t an option.

The company still existed, but her grandfather was no longer in charge. Bedridden and partially paralyzed from the bullet that had damaged his spine, he would never be in charge again.
Prosecutors were still trying to decide if he was even fit to stand trial on the ethics charges being brought against him, thanks to my mom’s very public allegations.

So, yeah, the shine was definitely off GTX and the entire Jacobs family.

Rachel hunched her shoulders a little tighter. Her sweater, in her characteristic red, looked too thin for the weather. Her tan had faded. No one to take her on expensive vacations to warm
places anymore.

“How’s everything going?” I asked.

“I wish everyone would stop asking me that,” she said, but the heat was missing from her tone. “It’s going crappy. How else should it be going? My
grandfather”—she said the word like it tasted gross—“is a sicko perv criminal, my father is useless, and my…” She trailed off and shook her head.

For a second, I thought she was going to mention Ariane. Her sister. Or her sisters, if you counted Ford. That, too, had to do a number on her head.

But instead, she said, “My mom is coming home next week.”

I looked up from my pizza, startled. “Really?”

“My grandfather is the one who pulled strings to put her away in the first place, and without him around to keep pulling…” She shrugged. “Besides, my dad has no clue
what to do without someone telling him. I think he’s hoping she’ll be able to boss him around.”

I imagined Rachel in that huge, empty house without anyone checking on her now. Her grandfather had been the only relative to visit her fairly regularly. Now that her dad was laid off, another
casualty of the fallout from this scandal, he should have been there more often, but somehow I doubted it. They still had the house only because Dr. Jacobs had bought it through an LLC separate
from his other enterprises—the one saving grace he’d provided his granddaughter.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t.” Rachel waved her hand, and the bangle bracelets on her arm gave off halfhearted chimes, as if they couldn’t be bothered anymore, either.

She retrieved her fork from her salad and stabbed the lettuce with more force than was necessary.

Guess that conversation was over. It had lasted longer than most of the ones I had with her, or anyone else, these days.

I pulled my phone from my pocket surreptitiously to check e-mail.

“You know that’s never going to work. She’s gone,” Rachel said, gesturing at my phone with her fork.

I ignored her.

“I’m serious, Zane.” She touched my arm, a quick, fleeting brush almost as if she was afraid I’d shove her away.

I looked up to find her frowning at me. Genuine concern looked strange on her face, like she was sitting on something uncomfortable.

“How long are you going to keep that up?” she asked. She knew, if only in general, about what I was doing because I’d been forced to ask if she’d heard anything while
I’d been away.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Uh-huh. That’s why you’re glued to your phone twenty-four-seven and you barely leave your house anymore.”

“I’m recovering from severe trauma and memory loss, remember?” I asked tightly. That was my official story. Yeah, I got one, too. I’d been “found” in the
conference room along with the injured and the dead, which only lent credence to my mother’s claims of kidnapping. Jacobs denied it, of course, but Laughlin was too dead to do the same, so
most of the blame for my abduction and the mass shooting landed on him.

My weeks of mental and emotional “recovery,” as well as my continuing memory loss, had been officially documented at a facility I’d never seen. Emerson had handed me the
paperwork on my way out of his lab. But no one had even bothered to ask for it yet. More of DHS’s influence, I was sure.

Rachel snorted. “Yeah, okay. You’re crazy if you think anyone believes that.”

“Whatever,” I muttered.

“Look, I may not like her, but she did what she had to do. And I’m just…” She made an exasperated noise and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, as if she couldn’t
believe the words she was about to say. “I’m just asking, do you think this is what she would have—”

“If you say, ‘Do you think this is what Ariane would have wanted you to do,’ I’m going to walk out and never speak to you again,” I said.

Her mouth fell open before she snapped it closed with a loud click. “Fine. God. Whatever. I’m…trying to be a friend.”

“Well, stop,” I said.

She gathered up her tray and stood. “Fuck you, Zane.” And she sounded shockingly close to tears.

I sighed. “Rachel…” But she was gone before I could apologize. Or explain.

The truth was, I knew Rachel was right. This was absolutely
not
what Ariane would have wanted for me. In fact, she probably would have been pissed that I was wasting all these
opportunities at “normal” experiences.

But I didn’t know how to let go. I didn’t want to. It was like the world had been opened up to this whole other level—aliens, government conspiracies, a hybrid girl who loved
french fries and kicked ass—and now I was trying to cram myself back into this one tiny corner of it and pretend that was okay.

I dragged myself through my afternoon classes—playing the role of a still dazed and recovering victim to the hilt, though I had no idea how I was going to manage next semester—and
stared out the windows at the snow that had started to fall.

After the last bell, thank God, I was at my locker, slowly gathering my stuff, when my phone buzzed.

My heart immediately jumped, thinking it might be an e-mail. But it was just a text. Quinn. He was going to be later than usual picking me up because of the roads.

Which sucked because everyone else I knew with a car had already bolted, trying to get home before the weather got any worse. So now I’d have to wait.

I put my coat on, hitched my backpack on my shoulders, and slammed my locker shut before heading for the main doors to wait for Quinn.

The entryway was quiet except for the roar of the heaters and the thoughts—just mine, but that was enough—circling loudly in my brain. As much as I’d hated Rachel asking those
questions, now I couldn’t seem to shake them from my mind.

How long was I going to wait? There were only so many e-mails I could send. And then what?

How many months? How many years?

As long as it takes,
I promised myself.

But at a certain point, I’d have to give up, wouldn’t I? I’d have to admit that she was gone or…dead. That seemed inevitable suddenly.

My breath caught in my chest, and I felt like I couldn’t get enough air, the dry heat pumping too hard from the vents on either side of the entryway.

I pushed through the outer doors, the snow immediately seeping into my shoes and turning my feet to ice. The fresh air burned my lungs, a distraction I welcomed.

I started trudging in the direction Quinn would have to come to get me. Movement was an improvement over standing still. Action helped focus my attention elsewhere. A temporary fix, I knew, but
better than nothing.

I hadn’t gotten more than halfway into the parking lot when a clump of snow hit the back of my neck, dripping down under the collar of my coat.

Damn it.
I was not in the mood for whatever dumb-ass had decided to pick a fight with me right now.

I turned sharply, furious words on the tip of my tongue, and froze.

Ariane, or a very vivid hallucination of her, stood in the middle of the snow-filled parking lot. She wore a puffy blue coat, shades lighter than anything I’d ever seen her in before, as
if she didn’t mind if someone noticed it or her. Her hair was pulled back, snow dusting the top of her head, and her cheeks and ears were pink. She wasn’t wearing her contacts, her dark
eyes a stark contrast to her skin.

“Sorry. I always wondered what that would feel like.” She made a face at me and held up her bare hand. Her fingers were red with cold and dripping with melted snow. “It’s
cold, messy, and provides too much opportunity for retaliation and escalation.” She paused with a contemplative tilt of her head. “An arms race, I suppose.”

And that was what sold me. This was not a hallucination. Only the real Ariane would say something ridiculous and weird and perfect, just like that.

I stumbled and clomped toward her in the snow, hurrying as fast as I could, which wasn’t very, while she did the same.