Skinned -1 (23 page)

We hung back, but fol owed the group along the river, tramping through the mud for a little over a mile, a rumbling in the distance swel ing to a roar, until we final y rounded a bend in the river—and stopped short at the edge of a cliff. The river tumbled over the side, thundering down the rocks into an explosion of whitewater below. Far, far below.

“It’s a forty-foot drop,” Jude said. He peered down the fal s. “Eighty thousand gal ons of water per second. Welcome to your new life.” The other mechs—there were seven of them—lined up along the edge.

“What are they doing?” I shouted, over the roar of the water. “Are you al insane?”

“It’s incredible, Lia!” Quinn shouted back. “You’l love it.”

I shook my head. “They’re going to kil themselves.”

“Not possible,” Jude said. “They—we—can’t die. Can’t drown. So we get a little bashed up on the way down. Trust me, it’s worth it.” Someone jumped.

One moment there were seven shadowy figures standing on the rim, the next, there were six. And a human-shape form disappeared into the churning water. I didn’t hear a scream.

A moment later two more leaped into the air. They were holding hands.

“You’re more durable than an org,” Jude said. “This won’t hurt you—not much, anyway. Although, I should warn you, it
will
hurt.”

“So what the hel is the point?” I asked. Another mech took the jump.

And then there were three.

“The
pain
is the point,” Jude said. “At least for some of them. For others, it’s the rush. Like adrenaline or Xers, only better. Intense feelings—intense
pain
—it’s the only kind that feels real. And for some of us…” He paused, just long enough to make it clear that he was talking about himself. And maybe about me. “It’s about facing the fear—and conquering it.

Mastering al those sordid animal instincts and rising above them. And having a hel of a good time on the way. Don’t tel me you’re not tempted.” I looked over the edge, just as Quinn and Ani jumped, their arms around each other’s waists. Way down at the bottom, I could see the water churning, but not much else. It was too dark to pick out any individual features, like bobbing swimmers. If any had survived.

“You can’t actual y be thinking about doing this,” Auden said. “It’s crazy.”

“Crazy for
you
,” Jude snapped. “You’re not like her.”

“And
she’s
not like you,” Auden said.

“Don’t hold her back just because you can’t move forward.”

“Better I should let her jump off a fucking cliff?”

That was enough. “No one
lets
me do anything!”

Auden rubbed the rim of his glasses. “Lia, I’m just saying—”

“If
I
were an uninvited guest,” Jude said. “I’d keep my mouth shut.”

“Would you both shut up!” I shouted. “I need to think.” They opened their mouths, but I walked away before either of them could start arguing again.

There was no one left on the edge of the fal s. There was just me and the rushing water.

I’d never been much of a swimmer.

It was crazy.
Jude
was crazy. But what he’d said about the rush, about the pain…It made sense. Sascha had said the same thing about strong sensations flooding the system, fooling it into accepting them as real. Maybe it wouldn’t matter that I had no goose bumps, no heartbeat—not when I was plunging over a forty-foot drop with eighty thousand gal ons of water slamming me into the rocks. There wouldn’t be time to notice what was missing. There would only be the body, the water, the fal . The fear.

To feel something again, to
really
feel…

I peered down, trying to imagine launching myself off the solid ground. I would bend my knees. Flex my ankles. Shut my eyes. Then in one fluid motion thrust myself up on my toes, off the edge, into the air, arms stretched up and out, and for a long moment, maybe, it would feel like flying.

Then I would smash into the water. And together, the water and I, we would crash to the bottom.

I can’t die,
I whispered to myself, testing the words on my tongue. They stil didn’t seem real.
I can do this.

I
wanted
to do it.

A hand wrapped around mine. “We can go together,” Jude said. “On three. You won’t be sorry.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t move.

“One…two…”

I ripped my hand away. And then I jumped—the wrong way. Into the shal ow pool trapped behind a ridge of rocks, just before the fal s. The water was nearly stil , and I let myself sink to the bottom, settling into the packed mud. Everything was a murky black. And silent.

It was the first time I’d been underwater since the accident. I could stay there forever, I realized, hiding out. Because I didn’t need to breathe.

I had never felt more free.

I had never felt less human.

I launched myself off the bottom and exploded out of the water, scrambling onto dry land, soaking. Auden tore off his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. I let him, although I wasn’t cold. And he was stil shivering. I grabbed his hand without thinking and squeezed tight. It was so warm, so human. I didn’t want to let go.

Jude watched, disgusted.

“We’re leaving,” I told him.

“This is a mistake.”

“This
was
a mistake,” I said. “I’m fixing it.”

Jude came closer, close enough that I could see his eyes flashing, his silvery hair glinting in the dim moonlight. “You don’t belong with him. With them. You’re strong, they’re weak.
He’s
weak.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.

“Tel yourself that if it helps.”

“What do you even care?” I asked. Auden squeezed my hand.

“I don’t. But I can’t stand waste.” Without warning Jude’s hand shot out and gripped our wrists, tight enough that I couldn’t pul away. “And you’re wasting your time, pretending that the two of you are the same.” Something flashed in his other hand. The gray metal of a knife. “Don’t believe me?” Jude’s grasp tightened. He dragged the edge of the blade across my palm, then Auden’s.

Auden gasped. Blood beaded up along the narrow cut, then dripped across his skin, thin red rivulets trickling from his hand to mine.

I didn’t bleed. The knife had barely punctured the artificial flesh, and the shal ow scratch was already disappearing as the material wove itself back together. Self-healing.

Whatever pain there’d been in the moment was already gone.

Jude let go.

A moment later, so did Auden.

“You can pretend al you want,” Jude said, looking only at me, talking only to me. “But you’l never be the same.” Auden walked me to my door. We had driven home in silence.

“I’m sorry that was so…I’m sorry I made you go,” he said as we stood on the stoop. I wasn’t ready to go inside.

“No. I’m glad we did.”

“Liar.” We both laughed, which helped, but only a little.

Auden rested his hand on my arm. “Lia, what that guy said, it’s not true.”

“No. I know.” I ducked my head. He rubbed his hand in smal circles along my arm, which was stil wet. “He’s crazy. They al are.”

“Especial y him,” Auden said with a wide-eyed grimace that made me laugh again, harder this time.

“Thanks for coming with me. Real y. I’m glad we went. At least now I know. And”—it was the kind of thing I usual y hated to admit, but for some reason I didn’t mind admitting it to him—“I couldn’t have done it alone.”

“Like I would have let you.”

I gave his chest a light shove. “Like you could have stopped me.”

“He was right about one thing, you know,” Auden said quietly. “You are strong.”

I didn’t know what to say.

So I hugged him. His arms closed around me. I shut my eyes and pressed my face against his chest, imagining I could hear his heartbeat. Imagining I could hear mine.

“What’s this for?” he asked, his voice muffled. I wasn’t sure if it was because my ear was against his coat or his lips were against my hair.

“For nothing. Everything. I don’t know.” I held on.

But I opened my eyes. And over his shoulder, I raised my hand to where I could see it, stil spattered with Auden’s blood.

“Lia, there’s kind of something I’ve been wanting to—”

“I should go inside,” I said, letting go.

He backed away, and locked his hands behind his back. “Right. Wel , good night.”

Auden left quickly, but I didn’t go inside, not that night. I’d learned my lesson about taking care of myself, and I’d been fol owing a normal schedule—an
org
schedule, Jude probably would have said, his lip curling in disgust—shutting down for at least six hours every night. But not that night.

That night I sat outside, leaning against the front door, eyes open, wide awake as the reddish glow of night faded to the pinkish glow of a rising sun, remembering the thunder of the water, wondering what might have happened if I’d had the nerve.

If I had jumped.

“Maybe I wasn't programmed to want.”

I
hate it,” I told Auden as we walked to class. The hal way was mostly empty, but not empty enough.

“What?”

“The way they al stare at me.”

“No one’s—”

“Spare me,” I said.

“Okay. They’re staring. But at least they notice you,” he said. “Would you rather be invisible?”

I didn’t want to tel him that he
wasn’t
invisible, that al those people he hated were perfectly aware of his existence. They just chose to ignore it. “Let’s blow this off,” I suggested.

Auden looked doubtful. “And go where?”

“Who cares? Anywhere but here.”

“We only have a couple more hours to get through…”

Since when did a couple hours of hel qualify as
only?
“Whatever. You stay. I’m going.” I turned on my heel and headed quickly down the hal , but not so quickly that he couldn’t catch up, which he did after a couple steps. He always did.

“You win,” he said. “Where to?”

“Out.” I pushed through the door at the end of the hal , wishing I could smel the March air. It no longer got much warmer as winter shifted to spring, but there was stil something different in the air, something sweeter—fresher. Or maybe that’s just how I like to remember it. “Then we’l come up with something.” But we wouldn’t.

The exit we’d chosen was tucked at the end of a mostly unused corridor and opened into the al ey behind the school, usual y packed with delivery trucks, repair units, garbage compactors, and the steady trickle of students who’d elected to seek their education elsewhere for the day and preferred to do so without getting caught. But that afternoon it was empty except for a couple groping each other against the brick wal , her tongue shoved into his mouth, her back to the wal with her shirt creeping up to expose a bare, flat middle while his hands pawed her skin, snaking beneath her skirt. His fingers found her neck, her arms, her abs, her hair; hungry, grasping, needing, she sighed, he groaned, they breathed for each other. I couldn’t see their faces.

I didn’t need to.

I recognized the sound of him first, eager panting punctuated every so often by unprompted laughter, like a little kid, like an unexpected joy had overwhelmed him. I recognized his hands. Especial y the way they crept beneath the skirt, massaging bare thigh.

It took a moment longer to identify her, although it shouldn’t have, even without her face. I knew her arms, her legs, her sighs, her lanky blond hair. I’d just never known them like this. Or maybe I didn’t want to know.

I let the door slam behind us.

They sprang apart. Walker looked up. Gasped. My sister took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

She looked like she’d been waiting for me.

I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t look at Auden, either. I couldn’t stand the idea of him—of anyone—seeing me see
this
. I wanted to run the scene backward, slip back into the school, back to the hal way, back to class, like none of it had ever happened. Some things were better not to know.

Because once you knew, there wasn’t much choice. You had to deal.

Somehow.

“I’m sorry,” Walker said. His hand was resting on her lower back. Like he was trying to keep her steady.
Her
.

“It just happened,” he said.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said.

He was stil touching her.

“I don’t know how it started,” he said.

Enough.

“
I
know.” My voice was steady. That was easy. My legs weren’t shaking. My stomach wasn’t heaving. My heart wasn’t pounding. I was steady. “You shoved your tongue into her mouth. My
sister’s
mouth. That’s how it started.”

“You’re wrong,” Zo said. And she was steady too. “I shoved my tongue into
his
mouth. That’s how it started.”

“Zo,” he said, like he was pleading. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” she said. “Aren’t you sick of this? How long were we supposed to wait?”

“How long?”
I didn’t want to know what the words meant.

I knew what the words meant.

“How long, Walker?” I asked.

He looked down. So this wasn’t the first time. “After the accident…”

I wished for a stomach, so I could throw up. But there was no way of getting it out. It was al inside of me, stuck. Rotting.

“I was upset, and she was upset, and it helped to, you know, talk. To each other. And one day, we…we just…It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“So, just to be clear. I almost
died
,” I said, stil calm, stil steady, “and while I was learning how to walk again, fighting to
survive
, you were back here,
fucking my little sister
?”

“We weren’t doing that.” Zo paused. “Not then.”

“This is disgusting,” I said. “You’re disgusting.”

“Lia—”

Zo put her hand on his arm, and he stopped talking. Apparently she was the boss. I’d taught her wel . “I told you this would happen,” she said quietly. “Just let it go.”

“Oh, you
told
him this would happen?” I laughed bitterly. “What, that I’d have the nerve to get upset about my boyfriend screwing my sister?”

“I’m not your boyfriend anymore, Lia. You made that clear.”