Free Project Paper Doll by Stacey Kade

shoulder.
    I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Yeah, fine. If Rachel wanted a game, she’d get one. All I had to do was convince Ariane Tucker to play.

I N THE LAB , someone was always watching. I was never alone. One wall of my room was glass—it could go from opaque to translucent with the press of a button. And it did, often. Sometimes in the middle of the night when I was sleeping (with the lights on to see how I’d handle sleep deprivation). Or when I was eating (my initial response to ice cream was to spit it out—it was too cold for my teeth) or watching the screen embedded in the opposite wall, which played military training videos and a carefully selected mix of modern American programming to teach me the cultural shorthand humans use in daily interactions.
    I grew to expect the disappearance of that “wall” at any second. The area on the other side of the glass—filled with monitors and computers—always had people tracking my movements, measuring every change in my pulse or respiration or brain waves. They also had cameras that recorded what I did when I thought no one was watching. That worked only until I was old enough to figure out that they shouldn’t have been able to interrogate me about something I’d done when the “wall” was up unless they had some other way of watching. (For prize-winning scientists, foremost in their field, they weren’t very smart. Once I knew that any illusion of privacy I had was just that—an illusion—I took to hiding under my cot, with the sheet hanging over the edge to block their view, when I needed a moment alone.)
    In short, I was used to the feeling of people watching me—that was my normal. In fact, the first night I spent in my father’s house I made him leave my door open. The idea of privacy, as thrilling as it was, was terrifying in its newness. I’d never been alone before.
    And it took me weeks to get used to the idea. I became the most paranoid grade-schooler in existence. I could never quite shake the feeling that I was being watched, that GTX was seconds away from swooping in and taking me away. The world seemed huge (and so very loud), and every person in it was staring at me.
    If it hadn’t been for my father and his Rules, I might have cracked, suffered a complete mental break, and ended up living under the bed in my new room with a hat constructed from aluminum foil (which, I can tell you, doesn’t work. I could still hear you all thinking, even with a double layer).
    But he taught me that humans noticed what was different, what stood out. And screaming every time a stranger tried to talk to me…well, that was definitely different. (My father would explain my unusual behavior to concerned strangers as trauma from spending so many years in and out of hospitals and then losing “my” mother and moving to a new place.)
    My objective became to blend in, to become invisible. It was a game to me, fooling everyone and protecting myself. I made mistakes occasionally (hey, when your education about the real world consists mainly of what you see on television, you’d probably think a whole lot of crazy things are possible, too. Including that, it would appear, the vast majority of children in the United States don’t know who their biological father is, based on daytime talk shows). But I caught on fairly quickly—desperation is a powerful motivator.
    I still suffer occasional spikes in paranoia when someone holds eye contact with me for a split second too long, or when the same car passes our house twice within a few minutes. Lost pizza delivery guys are the bane of my existence.
    Or when I walk into school and everyone is staring at me.…
    It took me a few seconds to notice, as focused as I was on tuning out the massive wave of thoughts and emotions. The main hall was jammed with people, everyone flooding in from the gym to their lockers before first period. I’d avoided the morning cattle call by leaving my house eight minutes later than