Projection

by Risa Green

  Ariel shook her head and fixed her eyes back on Jessica. “It’s enough,” she said quietly but firmly. “This is ridiculous.” She stood up purposefully, but Jessica grabbed her arm.

  “Don’t,” she hissed. “You don’t know what you’re doing.” Ariel hesitated, and Jessica knew she had her. “Just sit down, Ariel. This is what she wants.”

  But Ariel shook free of Jessica’s grip. “Maybe it’s what she thought she wanted, but I don’t think it’s working out quite like she planned.” Jessica watched helplessly as Ariel strode over to Gretchen’s table and sat down next to her. People instantly began elbowing each other—look at this—and within seconds, the grove had become silent.

  Molly Carson leaned across the table. “What is she doing?” she whispered to Jessica.

  But Nick responded before Jessica had a chance to answer. “She’s being nice,” he said. He shot Jessica a dirty look. “She’s doing what we all should have done when she first came back here. The girl’s mother was murdered, for God’s sake.” Then he picked up his lunch and went over to join them. A few seconds later, everyone else followed him. Only Connor and Jessica were left at the table.

  “Shit,” Connor said. He glanced anxiously at the other table, then at Jessica. “Why do you hate her so much?”

  Jessica flushed. She wasn’t prepared to answer this right now. She and Gretchen had managed to create enough speculation over their supposed former romance, they’d never needed to explain themselves. Whenever people had asked about it, she just said that she didn’t want to talk about it; that alone had always been enough to make people think they’d had some sort of lover’s quarrel. Leave it to Connor not to pick up on the signals.

  “I don’t hate her,” she admitted. “It’s complicated.”

  “Well, you look like a huge bitch right now.” He picked up his lunch and stood up, but he didn’t go over to the other table right away. He just stood there, glancing back and forth between Nick and Jessica.

  Jessica sat for a second or two, trying to decide what to do. It doesn’t matter anymore, she finally realized. Ariel’s right. She got up and joined Connor at the other table. Soon after, the noise in the olive grove returned to normal.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  It was only later, after school—when the three of them were alone at the teepee in the park—that Jessica realized how much rage Gretchen still had bottled inside her. Her face was nearly purple, and her hands were balled up so tightly that her knuckles were white. “What were you thinking?” she shouted at Ariel. “Why did you bring all those people over to my table at lunch today?”

  Jessica sighed. She’d been listening to Gretchen rant and rave all afternoon. “Look, Gretchen, for the last time, Ariel wasn’t trying to mess things up on purpose. She cares about you. For real.”

  But Gretchen could not be assuaged. “She was there,” she said, lowering her voice, looking only at Jessica.

  “Where?” Jessica asked.

  “The graduation party. She was there.”

  Jessica pursed her lips. They’d been through this so many times. “You don’t have any proof of that,” she reminded her. She glanced at Ariel, expecting her to protest. But Ariel’s face had turned the color of an eggshell.

  “Yes, I do.” Gretchen turned to Ariel now. Her voice was calm but with an edge. “Your mom told me,” she revealed. “When we projected. I told her that I’d heard the police were thinking about reopening the case. And she said that I shouldn’t worry about it. She said that the police had already questioned her twice and that there was no reason for them not to believe her about where you were that night. She said it was a good thing that nobody saw you at the party. But I did see you.”

  Jessica’s hands suddenly felt clammy. She could hear the blood pounding in her ears. She turned to Ariel. “Is that true?” she breathed. “Were you really there?”

  Ariel looked down at the ground. “Yes, but it’s not what you think—”

  “Enough!” Gretchen cut her off. She was hysterical again. “You killed my mother!” she screamed. “I knew it was you!” Without warning, she lunged forward and grabbed Ariel by the throat. Ariel lost her balance and tipped backward, catching herself with her palms. Unable to use her hands to fight back, she drew her knees up to her chest and kicked Gretchen in the stomach with the soles of both feet.

  “Stop it!” Jessica shouted, planting herself between them. “Both of you, stop it!”

  Gretchen let go of Ariel, clutching her stomach as she returned to her spot on the ground. Ariel rubbed the red, irritated skin around her throat. They both glared at each other. Jessica crossed her arms in front of her chest.

  “Ariel, you’d better have a good explanation.”

  Ariel swallowed a few times and cleared her throat. In a hurried and embarrassed jumble, the story came out: how she’d come to Gretchen’s house that night to crash the party, how she’d peered through the window, how she’d changed her mind and left … how she was already running away when she’d heard the screams.

  “That’s bullshit,” Gretchen spat.

  But Jessica held her hand up. It wasn’t bullshit. She could tell from the terrified look on Ariel’s face. “Think about it, Gretchen. Yes, you saw her. Your suspicions are confirmed. But still, you only saw her outside, and only for a minute. Nobody saw her inside the house. Nobody. Her story makes sense.”

  Ariel took a deep, shaky breath. “I just don’t understand why you think I would have wanted to kill your mother.”

  Jessica kept quiet. This one was for Gretchen to answer. After a long silence, she finally spoke.

  “Because you hated me. And because you hated the Oculus Society.”

  “But there are other people you suspected,” Ariel pointed out. “I saw the files in your desk.”

  “Their alibis all checked out,” Gretchen answered. “Yours was the only one that didn’t. I knew I had seen you that night. I was positive. So I never believed that you were home with your mother.” She paused. Her eyes had become watery. “But if you didn’t do it … then there’s nobody left to suspect.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ariel murmured. “Why are you so sure that it only could have been me or those other women in your files?”

  Gretchen shrugged. “Because you were the only one who hated me, and they were the only ones who knew about the anklet. And hating me or getting the anklet are the only motives I can think of for killing her. The police have questioned practically everyone else in town, and there’s nobody who would have wanted her dead for any other reason.”

  Ariel looked confused. “But how do you know that nobody else knew about the anklet? Couldn’t someone in the Oculus Society have told someone else?”

  “Only five other people in the Oculus Society knew about it,” Jessica said, “and they’re all sworn to secrecy. You don’t understand how seriously they take this. Nobody would tell. They just wouldn’t.”

  “You did,” Ariel pointed out.

  Jessica shook her head. “It’s different.”

  “Not really. Doesn’t everyone rationalize why it’s okay to do something they’re not supposed to do? Couldn’t someone else think that their situation is different, too?”

  “I guess,” Jessica said, but she didn’t really mean it. She simply couldn’t imagine any one of the other board members telling someone else about the Plotinus Ability.

  “What about Michelle?” Ariel asked.

  “She didn’t do it,” Gretchen said resignedly. “She was fooling around with some other guy.”

  “Mike Renwick,” Ariel said, nodding. “I saw the picture of him in your files. Is that where she was at the time of the murder? With him?”

  Gretchen nodded.

  “That’s where she said she was,” Jessica corrected. “But we don’t know that for a fact.”

  Gretchen rolled her eyes. “I caught her with him at the Club, remember? It makes sense.”

  “Of course it makes sense. She’s smart. She wouldn�
��t tell a lie that doesn’t make sense.” Jessica exhaled loudly. Nobody understood just how cunning Michelle could be.

  Ariel met Jessica’s eyes with a solemn, questioning stare. “I know you think she’s awful, but do you really think she’s capable of killing someone? I mean, she is your family.”

  Jessica’s emotions rose up in her without warning. Her voice broke as she answered. “She’s not my family. My parents were my family. Michelle’s just a relative who’s raising me out of a sense of obligation.” Jessica wiped the tears from her eyes roughly, furious with them for being there. “The only family I have now is Rob.” She let out a harsh laugh. “And that’s pretty pathetic.”

  Ariel opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked frightened about what she was about to say. “Let’s say Michelle didn’t do it. Could she have told someone else about the anklet?”

  Jessica shook her head. Michelle was certainly capable of murder, but she was loyal to a fault—she would never betray a secret like this. Never. “No. She couldn’t have.” Jessica said it forcefully, as if it were the end of the discussion.

  But Gretchen cocked her head to the side, as if she’d heard something in Ariel’s question that interested her. “Why?” she asked. “Is there someone you think she told?”

  Ariel’s face turned grave. “Yes. I do.” She looked Jessica dead in the eye. “I’m sorry, Jess. But I think she told Rob.”

  Shortly after the philosopher’s last diary entry, there is evidence that his patron Gemina was imprisoned for treason, though there are no existing accounts of what led to her arrest …

  Jessica had read this sentence three times already, and yet the words couldn’t register. She was still fuming from the accusation that Ariel had made against Rob yesterday. She’d barely slept the night before, replaying it over and over again in her mind, and now, no matter how hard she tried, she still couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Yes, Rob was a lost soul. But he was harmless. He was her lost soul. She knew what people thought: that he was a fool who’d wasted his adult life. But he was smarter than anyone gave him credit for. More sensitive, too. Accusing him was, in Jessica’s mind, almost the same thing as accusing Jessica herself. He was, after all, the closest thing she had to a parent. Michelle had never bonded with her the way that Rob had.

  Besides, Ariel didn’t even have any evidence. Absolutely nothing to go on. Just a feeling, she’d said, based on nothing but the fact that Rob buys alcohol for high school guys, and a secondhand conversation with Nick Ford when Rob had let his guard down and admitted that he wasn’t happy with his life. And really, how many adults were happy with the way their lives turned out? There’d be a lot of murderers running around if that were the only criteria. At least when they’d accused Ariel of the murder, they’d had a reason for doing so. Gretchen had seen her at the party that night, and Ariel had lied about being there. That was evidence. A feeling was just bullshit.

  Jessica sighed. She knew that this was just Ariel’s way of getting back at them for suspecting her. She was hurt, and she wanted to hurt Jessica right back. Well, it wasn’t going to work. Ariel was not going to make her doubt Rob of all people. The only thing was, now that Gretchen had it in her head that Rob was a potential suspect, Jessica knew she’d never hear the end of it. This, she thought, is how celebrities must feel when the tabloids just make up a story about them, and everyone in the world believes it.

  There was a quick knock at her bedroom door, and then Michelle’s face was peering in at her.

  “Can’t you at least wait for me to say come in?” Jessica asked.

  The left side of Michelle’s upper lip rose as if it were attached to a string held by an invisible puppeteer. “This is my house that I pay for, and I’m entitled to go into any room that I want, whenever I want. You’re lucky I even knock at all.”

  Jessica sighed. “What do you want?”

  “You have to drive me to the office. The bust I’m reporting on is on Monday, and I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes that I’m not prepared for. I need to read some things on the way over.”

  “I’m busy,” Jessica protested. “I’m working on the thing that Tina asked for.”

  Michelle frowned. “God. I haven’t even looked at that yet, and Tina gave me the file three days ago. It’s still sitting in my office.” Her anxious expression suddenly gave way to a self-satisfied smile. “Hey, I know. Take me to the office and just work on it there. You can use my computer. I’ll only be an hour.” She preemptively wagged an index finger at Jessica. “And before you try to come up with a lame excuse for why you can’t do it, just know that there’s only one ending to this conversation, and it’s you asking me where the car keys are. So let’s go.”

  The NBC affiliate station in Delphi occupied three stories of a squat, nondescript building in the center of town. What made it stand apart from the rest of the squat, nondescript buildings on the block was the oversized peacock logo affixed to the stucco, along with a massive billboard that seemed to rise out of the roof, emblazoned with a horribly airbrushed picture of Michelle and the rest of the News-on-Nine Team. This heightened version of Michelle—with the overly white teeth, the impossibly unblemished skin and the helmet of too-perfect hair—still made Jessica cringe.

  Inside, the office was frantic. Interns rushed with stacks of paper; people in cubicles urgently shouted across the room. The husband in the domestic dispute was thirty-four, not thirty-seven! The teacher charged with molestation had a prior arrest for engaging in lewd acts! The mother of the little boy rescued from the fire spent time in rehab last year! Nobody said hello as Michelle and Jessica walked down a carpeted hallway toward the row of offices that lined the back wall.

  “They’re not very friendly,” Jessica observed.

  “They’re news people,” Michelle quipped, as she opened the door to her office. “Lacking social skills is a job requirement. Haven’t you lived with me long enough to have learned that by now?”

  Jessica almost smiled. At least she’s self-aware.

  The office was cramped and cluttered with DVDs and stacks of accordion folders everywhere. There was a television atop a black metal stand in the corner and a rectangular, curtainless window along the back wall. The front wall was dominated by a large window overlooking the rest of the office—shielded by blinds that had been lowered to half-mast, so that Jessica could only see the legs of the people scurrying past. On the desk were several pictures in silver frames: one of Michelle and Rob on their wedding day, one of Michelle with some of her friends at an Oculus Society event, one of Michelle and Jessica’s mother from when they were children. And there was a candid one of Jessica at her eighth grade graduation. She was wearing her cap and gown, laughing at something off camera.

  Jessica had never seen the photo before. She hadn’t even known that it existed. She’d never been in this office for longer than fifteen seconds at a time, and usually those brief periods where spent buried angrily in her phone—anything to escape. But inside of her, in the icy place where she stored her feelings about her parents—about Michelle, about how sad it was that there was nobody who really, truly cared about her—a tiny little piece chipped off and melted.

  Michelle eyed Jessica as she took in the photo, but didn’t comment on it. “Just stay in here,” Michelle instructed. “You can use the computer, but Do. Not. Touch. Anything else. I’ll be back in an hour.” She smoothed her hair and smiled into the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the door. “Thanks for telling me that I had lipstick all over my teeth.”

  “Well, I’m thinking about becoming a news person myself,” Jessica answered dryly.

  Michelle smirked and pulled the door shut behind her.

  Jessica sat at Michelle’s desk, waiting. As she studied the photo of herself, doubt began to pry its way under her convictions, lifting them up and unsettling them, like tree roots beneath concrete. Is Michelle capable of killing someone? Could she really have murdered Gretchen’s mom?

  Finally,
the coast was clear. She pulled open the top desk drawer: mints; a light blue, suede makeup case; a travel-sized toothbrush. In the drawer beneath that were a company handbook, a folder of HR materials, and a black address book filled with the names and numbers of various public officials, police officers, newspaper reporters, union leaders and CEOs of local companies. Jessica picked through some of the accordion folders lying on the floor, keeping one eye on the legs moving around outside the window.

  She was just about to give up when she found a single manila file folder leaning against the side of the desk. The words Oculus Society had been typed onto a thin label that ran across the tab of the folder. She picked it up and sat back down at the desk.

  Inside was a memo written to Tina Holt from a Ralph Sheasby, Licensed Private Investigator.

  I regret to inform you that after a lengthy and comprehensive investigation, I have found no further relevant information regarding this case. Although I know how much you and your family may want closure, it is my professional opinion that continuing this investigation will be a costly and, ultimately, futile exercise.

  Jessica’s heart sank a little. She had heard Tina say that the private investigator had found nothing, but seeing it in writing—so stark and bleak—drove it home. She flipped through the rest of the file. Tina Holt had supplied Mr. Sheasby with a list of people who were aware that the anklet was a “rare and ancient artifact,” and he had compiled a dossier on each of them. Tina’s list matched hers and Gretchen’s exactly, with the exception of Ariel, of course. But she frowned when she saw that Ralph Sheasby had extended this initial list to include the husbands, families, and close friends of each of them, as well. Jessica turned straight to the page on Rob.