Skinned -1 (20 page)

I wasn’t sure if I was mad at him or he was mad at me. Or if neither of us was mad. There was an uncertain silence between us, like we were deciding whether to settle in and get comfortable or to leave.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“What makes you think I want something?”

“We don’t even know each other, and you keep—you know, sticking up for me. Being
nice.
And now you show up here. What is it?”

“So you think if someone’s nice to you, it means they want something?” he asked. “Interesting.”

“What’s so interesting about that?”

“If I were a shrink, I might wonder what it means for your relationships with other people and what you expect to get out of them,” he said.

He was so deeply weird. “What the hel is a shrink?”

“They were like doctors, for your moods. Someone you talked to when you were feeling screwed up.”

“Why would you
talk
to some random when you could just take a b-mod to feel better?”

“This was before b-mods, I think,” he said. “Or maybe for people who didn’t want them.”

“Sounds kind of stupid, if you ask me.” Who wouldn’t want to mod their mood, if they could? Something to make you happy when you wanted to be happy, numb when you wanted to be numb? I missed them more than chocolate. And what did I get in exchange? Eternal life, for one thing.

And to help with the feeling-screwed-up part? I supposed there was always Sascha.

I missed the drugs.

“And, by the way, my relationships are just fine,” I said. “At least I
have
relationships, unlike some people.”

“Oh, excuse me,” he said with exaggerated contrition. “I forgot—You’re
popular
.”

For some reason, maybe because it was so far from reality, maybe because he made being popular sound like a fatal condition, maybe just because there was nothing else to do but cry and I was a few tear ducts short, I laughed. So did he.

“People are idiots,” he said when he caught his breath.

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not just saying it. Those girls you used to hang out with? Superficial bitches. And the guys—”

“Stop,” I said.

“They’re not your
friends
,” he said. Like I needed a reminder. “They dropped you.”

“I noticed. Thanks. But they’re stil …” I shook my head. “So is that what you think of me, too? Superficial bitch?”

“I think…” For the first time he seemed not quite sure what to say. “You’re different now. And that interests me.” It wasn’t an answer.

“So that’s why you helped yesterday? I’m, like, some kind of scientific study for you?” I said bitterly. “Something neat to play with?”

“Why do you have to do that?” he asked.

“What?”

“Turn everything into something smal like that. Mean.”

“Are you trying to be my shrunk again?” I said.

“Shrink.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I just want to know what it’s like,” he said. “Being…”

“Different?” I suggested. “It sucks.”

“No. I know what it’s like to be different.” He wound the strap of his bag around his fingers. “I want to know what it’s like to be
you
. To be downloaded. To have this mind that’s total y under your control, to know you’re never going to age, never going to die, this body that’s perfect in every way…” He looked up at me, blushing. “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, I just…”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “No one’s meant it like that. Not since…before.”

He blushed a deeper pink. “You do, though,” he mumbled. “Lookgoodlikethis.” It took me a second to decipher what he’d said. “Better than before. I think, at least.” The body couldn’t blush. Not that I would have blushed, anyway, just because Auden Hel er gave me a compliment. The Auden Hel ers of the world were always giving compliments to the Lia Kahns of the world. It’s what they were there for.

But it was the first time in too long that I’d real y felt like a Lia Kahn.

“Thank you,” I said. “For yesterday, I mean.”

“So what
does
it feel like?” he asked eagerly.

“Like…not much.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to explain it to him. I
did
, that was the strange part. But I didn’t know how. “Everything’s almost the same, but not quite. It’s al a little wrong, you know? It sounds different, it looks different, and when it comes to feeling…”

“I read that every square inch of the artificial flesh has more than a mil ion receptors woven into it, to simulate organic sensation,” he said.

“If you say so.” I hadn’t read anything; I didn’t want to know how the body worked. I just wanted it to work better. “But maybe a mil ion isn’t enough. I can feel stuff, but it doesn’t feel…” I brushed my hand across the surface of his bag. This time he didn’t pul it away. “It’s like if I close my eyes and touch the bag, I know it’s there. I know it’s a rough surface, a little scratchy. I
know
al that, but I can’t…It’s just not the same. It’s like I’m living in my head, you know? Like I’m operating the body by remote control. I’m not
inside
it, somehow.” Auden nodded. “The sensation of disembodiment, an alienated dissociation common to the early phase of readjustment. I read about that, too.”

“That doesn’t mean you understand,” I snapped. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

“I know I don’t,” he said. “But I want to, believe me.”

I almost did.

The final note, a fever-pitched, keening whine, seemed to stretch on forever. It didn’t fade, didn’t swel , just sliced through us, a single, unending tone until, without warning, it ended. For a second everything froze—and then the applause crashed through the silence. A thunder of cheers and screams. The band went nuts, jumping up and down, smashing instruments against the stage, waving their arms in an obvious signal to the fans: more applause, more shouting, more, more, more. Only the lead singer stayed frozen, her mouth open like she was stil spooling out that final note, this time in a register too high for us to hear. I felt like she was looking at me.

“Nothing?” Auden asked, stripping off his gear.

“Nothing.” I dumped the earplugs and goggles on the pile of crap next to his bed. “But that’s what I figured.” Auden had thought that maybe some live music—or at least, as live as it gets these days—would penetrate in a way the recorded stuff couldn’t. That maybe it would get my heart pounding, even though I didn’t have a heart; my breath caught in my throat, even though I didn’t have any lungs; my eyes tearing up, even though I didn’t have any ducts…You get the idea.

We both knew it was a long shot.

But I’d been wil ing to give it a try. And even though it hadn’t worked—even though the music made me feel cold and dead inside, just like always—it was better, having Auden there. This time it didn’t feel like a disappointment, or like I’d lost yet another piece of myself. It just felt like an experimental result—not even a failure, because when you’re experimenting, every new piece of information is a success.

That’s what Auden said, at least.

And that’s what he cal ed them: experiments. At least going to a virtual concert was more fun than sticking my head in a bucket of ice water to see how long I could stand the cold. (Result: longer than Auden could stand waiting for me to give up.) We’d spent the week “experimenting,” trying to see what I couldn’t do—and what I could. It wasn’t like before, on my own, when I’d pushed the body until it broke. This wasn’t about testing limits, Auden said. This was about getting to know myself again. Because maybe that would lead to liking myself. Just a little.

I laughed at him for saying that—it was a little too Sascha-like for my taste. But I went along with the experiments. Partly because I didn’t have anything else to do—or anyone else to talk to. Partly because I wasn’t sure he was wrong.

“What’s it like?” he asked now. “Linking in with your mind?”

“I don’t know.” He was always asking me that: “What’s it like?” And I never had a good answer.
What’s it like to breathe?
I could have asked, and stumped him just as easily.

What’s it feel like to dream, to swallow, to age?

“I mean, how do you do it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think about linking in, and the network pops up on my eye screen.”

“But
how
?”

“Same way I do anything, I guess. How do I shut down at night? How do I stand up when I want to?” I asked, wishing we could change the subject. “How do
you
?” Auden looked thoughtful. “I just do it, I guess. I want to, and it happens.”

“Wel , same thing,” I said, even though we both knew it wasn’t.

“So how come you can’t do more?”

“More like what?”

“Like, you stil need a keyboard,” he said. “Why can’t you just
think
commands at the network and make stuff happen? Like you did with the language hookup.” I’d told him al about the computer that had spoken for me, how horrible it had been. Except he didn’t get the horrible part; he thought it sounded cool.

“I just can’t,” I said. “It’s not the same thing.”

“It should be,” he argued. “If they have the tech to do it in the hospital, that means they have it, period. They could have wired your brain right into the network. It’d be like telepathy or something.”

“It’d be weird, is what it would be,” I said. “And they were trying to make us normal.”

It had been cal -me-Ben’s favorite word, Sascha’s too.
You are normal.
Or at least,
as normal as we can make you.

“You’ve got to get over that,” Auden said.

“What?”

“The normal thing.”

Because I wasn’t. “Thanks for rubbing it in.”

“But you’ve got something so much better,” Auden said, and I knew where he was going. He had the same dreamy look in his eyes that adults always got when they talked about how I would never age.

“I wasn’t afraid of getting old,” I said.

“What about
not
getting old?” Auden asked. “What about dying? You always act like it’s nothing, Lia, but it’s everything.
You can’t die
. What about that is not amazing?”

“I don’t know. I never real y thought about it much. Before, I mean.” I’d never known anyone who had died. At least not anyone who mattered. Everyone dies, I got that. But I’d never quite believed it would happen to me. And now it wouldn’t. That didn’t seem amazing. Weirdly enough, it just seemed like the natural order of things. “I guess I’ve never real y been too afraid of it. Death.”

He paused and looked away. “Maybe you should be.”

Somewhere below us, a door slammed.

Auden flinched. “Shit. What time is it?”

“Almost six. Why?”

“Nothing. Forget it. You should go.”

I’d come to his house every day after school for a week, but I’d always left by sunset—until today.

Footsteps tramped up the stairs.

I put my hand on the door, but before I could open it, Auden grabbed my arm. “Wait,” he whispered.

I shrugged him off. “What? I thought you wanted me to go.”

“Yeah, but not…” He shot a panicked glance at the window, like he was trying to decide whether to push me through it. Anything to get me out of the house before whoever was out in the hal way came into the room. Before they saw me.

“Are you
hiding
me?” I asked loudly. “Embarrassed or something?”

He put his finger to his lips, silently begging. I couldn’t believe it. At school he acted like he didn’t care what anyone thought. He kept tel ing me that I was better off being different, if my only other option was being the same. I didn’t believe him, but I’d believed that
he
believed it. At least, until now.

“Auden, you actual y got a girl in there with you?” a man’s voice cal ed from the hal way. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“Just me,” Auden cal ed back weakly.

Screw him.

I twisted the knob. Opened the door.

The man in the hal way didn’t look anything like Auden. He was blond and handsome, his features perfectly symmetrical, green eyes, rosy cheeks, square chin. He could have starred in a pop-up for a gen-tech lab. And the two little girls clutching his hands were just as picture-perfect. Their blond hair was tied back into pigtails; green eyes sparkled; identical dimples dotted their identical cheeks.

Auden had never mentioned having sisters.

He’d never mentioned much of anything about his family, and I’d never thought to ask.

The man shook his head, looking disgusted. “I should have known.”

“Don’t,” Auden said quietly.

“Girls, go to your room,” the man said. But the girls didn’t move. They were staring at me.
“Now
.” Their giggles drifted down the hal way, then disappeared behind a door.

“Get it out of here,” he said, glaring at me.

I bared my teeth. “Nice to meet you, too, M. Hel er.”

“This is disgusting,” he said to Auden. “Even for you.”

“We weren’t—”

“You bring this on yourself, you know,” the man said. I couldn’t think of him as Auden’s father. Not with the ice in his eyes. “If you would just try a little harder, you wouldn’t have to resort to…
that.
”

“We’re leaving.” Auden grabbed my wrist and tugged me into the hal , past his father.

“Didn’t you learn anything from what happened to your mother?”

Auden froze. “Don’t.” His voice had gotten dangerous.

“You’re just like her, you know.”

Auden stood up straighter. “Thank you.”

His father snorted. “Take that out of here,” he said, and even though he was no longer glaring at me, I knew what—who—he meant. “And you can take your time coming back.

Tara’s cooking a special dinner for me and the girls.”

“Family bonding,” Auden said bitterly. “How sweet. And I’m not invited?”

“Can you be civil?”

“Unlikely.”

“Then enjoy your evening,” the man said. “Somewhere else.”

We didn’t talk until we were out of the house.

And then we didn’t talk some more.

Auden walked me to my car. I got in, then left the door open, waiting. After a moment, he climbed in too. His hands clenched into fists.