Free Projection by Risa Green Page A

it. There’s no way she knows.”
    Gretchen crumbled a stray, brittle leaf between her fingers. She supposed that Jessica was right. There really was no way that Ariel could know about the Plotinus Ability—or the anklet, for that matter. She realized that maybe she’d indulged in a little wishful thinking of her own.
    “All right, I see your point.” She lifted her chin. “I still think she did it, though. I texted her tonight before we came here. I asked her if she hated the Oculus Society enough to commit murder.”
    “No, you did not. Please tell me you didn’t do that,” Jessica pleaded. But Gretchen just looked at her hands. At Jessica’s hands. Ew. The skin around her fingers was red and raw, and the nails were jagged, gibbous moons in their nail beds. Jessica let out a long sigh at Gretchen’s failure to respond.
    “What did she say?” she finally asked.
    Gretchen looked up. It startled her all over again to see her own face looking back at her. “She said that I would be sorry that I ever started with her. She said that I should consider myself warned.”
    Jessica shook her head. “Well, congratulations, then. You just unleashed the wrath of Ariel Miller.” She sighed again. “When we switch back, you’d better go and apologize to her.”
    “Why?” Gretchen demanded.
    “Because she may not know that we projected, but if she shows that video to anyone, our high school social lives will be over before they even start.” She shook her head. “And if we end up like Ariel—us, the future leaders of the Oculus Society and the entire town of Delphi—we’ll bring the whole Oculus Society down with us. Nobody will ever take them seriously again.”

CHAPTER NINE
    Jessica’s room was a mess. Piles of clothes, damp towels, out-of-date magazines, and empty shopping bags covered the carpet like moss on a forest floor. As she dangled her foot in the air, looking for an empty spot to place it in, Gretchen was reminded of when she used to walk across tide pools at the beach, searching out rocks sturdy enough to step on.
    It was strange enough being Jessica, but it wasn’t until she walked into Jessica’s room that she began to consider she might be in over her head. For starters, she had never been in Jessica’s room alone. She felt like an intruder. As she caught sight of a dirty bra lying on the floor, she thought of how Jessica was alone in her room right now. She cursed herself for not taking a few minutes to tidy up and to make sure that nothing embarrassing was lying around. Not that she had anything to be embarrassed about. Compared to Jessica’s, her room was spotless enough to be in a catalog.
    At the foot of the bed, she caught sight of Mr. Pants. She almost smiled. For the past few years, Jessica always madesure to put the worn little bear away when Gretchen came over. So clearly she wasn’t worried about any secrets Gretchen might discover.
    She picked up a few of the wet towels and hung them up in the bathroom, then searched through Jessica’s drawers for something to sleep in. The thought of having to wear Jessica’s underwear creeped her out a little, but she reminded herself that it was Jessica’s body, not hers. All she wanted to do was hide out in Jessica’s room and have as little human contact as possible.
    Gretchen slipped into a pair of sweatpants and an old looking T-shirt, feeling that same sense of creepiness again when she reached for Jessica’s toothbrush.
There is nothing gross about this
, she told herself as she brushed Jessica’s teeth. When she was ready for bed, she perused Jessica’s book shelf. It was mostly filled with books that had been required reading for school over the last few year:
To Kill a Mockingbird, Flowers for Algernon, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm
. But Gretchen managed to find a paperback with some relatively attractive, undead looking teenagers on the cover, and finally slipped into Jessica’s bed.
    She’d read about three chapters when