Under Their Skin

  Whatever it was, it was loud. It was loud enough that the woman wouldn’t be able to hear anything from the living/family room, not even if Ava and Jackson screamed.

  Probably not, anyway.

  Nick started shimmying away from the window and out from under the evergreen.

  “Where are you going?” Eryn whispered.

  “To meet Ava and Jackson,” Nick said. He stood up. “What else did we come all this way for? I’m going to knock on the door.”

  SEVENTEEN

  “Wait for me!” Eryn called after Nick. She wiggled out from under the tree too.

  We’re both totally covered in snow, and that’s a problem, she thought. This is all going to be a shock for Ava and Jackson, so we’ll have to be the ones thinking clearly. We can’t let them invite us into the house, not even just into the foyer, because then all the snow will melt on the floor and Ava and Jackson’s mom will be suspicious unless they clean it up perfectly. . . .

  Nick reached the front porch, and Eryn stepped up behind him only a split second later. She reached toward the doorbell, then froze.

  “No, no—that might be loud enough for the mom to hear,” Nick warned her. “It might make its sound all over the house.”

  “That’s what I just figured out,” Eryn whispered back.

  She didn’t know why she was whispering. They wanted to attract Ava and Jackson’s attention.

  Nick pulled off his glove and tapped his fist gently against the wooden door.

  Nobody came. Eryn could still hear music blasting from the back of the house.

  “We have to knock louder,” Eryn said, trying with her own fist.

  Nothing.

  “What if they went back to get their mom?” Nick whispered. “What if she’s the type of adult who won’t even let her kids answer the door, because she’s afraid they’ll be kidnapped or something?”

  Eryn slid down off the porch, which was easy to do with all the snow piled around it. She landed crooked, righted herself, and sprang up immediately to peer in the nearest window.

  Fortunately, this one still provided a view of Ava and Jackson. They were looking up from their computers, toward the door, so obviously they’d heard the knocking. But then they glanced back and forth between the door and the doorway where the loud music came from, as if they were trying to decide what to do.

  Eryn tapped on the glass and put her face close to the window and called softly, “Hey! Open the door! We’re kids, not kidnappers!”

  Ava and Jackson both looked toward her. Eryn grinned, trying to look friendly and kind and harmless. She pointed toward the door and mimed opening a doorknob.

  Ava’s and Jackson’s faces both looked blank and puzzled. Evidently they didn’t recognize Eryn, but they wouldn’t have much to go on: She was so bundled up that really only her nose and eyes poked out from above her scarf and below her knit cap.

  Ava and Jackson stood up from the couch. They looked at each other. And then they started walking toward the door.

  Eryn scrambled back up to the porch so Nick wouldn’t have sole responsibility for the first part of the conversation. She yanked the scarf from around her neck and the knit hat from her head. Then she knocked her hood back, too, letting her curly hair spill out.

  “What are you doing?” Nick asked.

  “Making it so we’re recognizable,” Eryn said. “What do you bet Ava and Jackson have seen our school pictures too?”

  She shoved his hood and hat back as well. His hair stuck up all over the place, so she hastily smoothed it down and hoped hers didn’t look just as bad.

  Just then the door opened. Jackson stood there in the foyer, with Ava right behind him.

  “Most people use the doorbell,” he said.

  “We didn’t want to—” Eryn began, then decided her first words to them shouldn’t be about sneaking around behind their mother’s back. “We’re Eryn and Nick!”

  “Who?” Ava asked.

  “You know, your stepsiblings,” Nick chimed in. “Your dad just married our mom. Didn’t anybody tell you about us?”

  Eryn didn’t know why he’d had to ask that question. The answer was clear in both kids’ blank expressions: No. Nobody had told Ava and Jackson about Eryn and Nick.

  EIGHTEEN

  Oh brother, Nick told himself. And we thought Mom handled the whole stepsibling thing in a weird way.

  “Okay, look,” Nick said, holding his hands out like he was trying to keep everyone calm. “You know your dad got married, right?”

  “Well, yeah,” Jackson said, nodding. “Duh.”

  “On November first,” Ava said. “He married Denise Louellen Custer Stone.”

  “See, you do know that!” Eryn said, her voice too bright and fake. “We’re Denise Stone’s kids. Now does it all make sense?”

  Nick cut his eyes toward Eryn to warn her: Don’t treat them like idiots. You want them to hate us? It’s not their fault if Michael and their mom kept them even more in the dark than our parents did with us.

  “We thought it was weird that Mom and Michael wouldn’t tell us anything about you, and didn’t want us to meet,” Nick rushed to add. He smiled his friendliest smile. At least, he hoped it looked friendly. “We didn’t know why, and we figured you were curious about us, too, and—”

  “Okay,” Jackson interrupted. “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you very much for coming. But we’ve got homework.” He spoke in a rush, mashing his words together. Maybe he even said all of them in one breath.

  Then he put his hand on the door and started to swing it shut.

  Thinking fast, Nick stuck his foot out and jammed it between the door and the doorframe.

  “Wait!” Eryn cried, pushing her hand against the door too. “We want to talk to you! We want to get to know you! We—”

  “You can’t,” Ava said.

  She looked down at Nick’s foot like it was just a thing: an annoyance, an obstacle, a piece of trash that wasn’t even worth recycling. She kicked her own foot against his. She had a surprisingly strong kick for a sixth-grade girl. She was just wearing a pair of Keds, and it still hurt. Nick jumped back, and had to resist the urge to pull off his boot and clutch his foot in his hand and hop up and down crying ow, ow, ow!

  Then Ava and Jackson together overpowered Eryn’s hold on the door too. They shut the door right in Eryn’s face.

  NINETEEN

  “That did not go well,” Nick said.

  Eryn gave him her fiercest glare. It felt like her eyebrows were climbing on top of each other.

  “That’s not funny!” she said. “It was awful! What’s wrong with them? They didn’t even blink when we told them who we are. Don’t they care? Do they hate us? Oh, no—what if they were lying, and just planning the whole time to tattle on us to their mom? And then she’ll tell Michael and he’ll tell Mom and—”

  “They’d have to care, to tell anyone,” Nick pointed out.

  Eryn barely heard him.

  “Oooh,” she moaned. “What if they’re telling their mom right now?”

  She practically threw herself off the side of the porch, down into the snow beneath the window she’d tapped just a few moments ago. She smashed her face up against the glass once again.

  Inside Ava and Jackson were walking back toward the couch where they’d left their laptops.

  Sit down, Eryn thought at them. Sit down and pick up your laptops and whatever you do, do not call into the kitchen for your mom. . . .

  Both Jackson and Ava stopped in front of the couch. They had their backs to Eryn, so she couldn’t see their expressions. Maybe they were thinking, Okay, that was a funny trick to play on Eryn and Nick. Now let’s get back to the door before they leave, so we really can find out why their mom and our dad didn’t want us to meet.

  Maybe they were thinking, Hey, it was kind of nice to stan
d up and walk around and stretch our legs for a minute. We really don’t want to sit back down and go back to doing homework quite yet.

  Or maybe they were thinking, That was a weird conversation. We don’t believe anything those kids told us. Mom needs to protect us from weirdos like that. Mom! Mom!

  Eryn was usually so good at figuring out what people were thinking. But she was totally mystified right now.

  Jackson began nodding his head up and down, up and down. Had Ava said something that Eryn missed, and he was agreeing? Really, really, really agreeing, because he kept nodding and nodding and nodding?

  Eryn felt Nick slide in beside her and smash his own face up against the glass.

  “Did I miss anything?” he muttered.

  “Them walking,” Eryn muttered back. “Jackson nodding.”

  He was still nodding. It had crossed the boundary from being odd to being very, very odd about ten nods ago.

  “Is he having a seizure?” Nick suggested. “Is it epilepsy?”

  “With epilepsy I think he’d be, like, down on the ground,” Eryn told him. “Totally thrashing around. Not just having one or two neck muscles acting strange and everything else being fine.”

  “Maybe it’s just something like that,” Nick said.

  “Mom never would have said Jackson was ‘different’ if he had epilepsy,” Eryn retorted. “She would have bent over backwards to make sure we were being sensitive and caring toward him.”

  Jackson was still nodding. Beside him, Ava cocked her head. Was she just now noticing?

  “Mom!” Ava screamed. “Mom! Shut off that music and come help! Jackson’s acting broken again!”

  Broken? Eryn thought. She decided this was maybe a code word in Ava and Jackson’s family. Evidently he had some disease or problem that Eryn couldn’t recognize that made him nod too much.

  The music stopped, and Ava and Jackson’s mom appeared in the doorway from the back of the house. Eryn knew that she should probably duck her head down out of sight, but she really wanted to see what happened next. And she wanted to make sure that neither Jackson nor Ava mentioned Nick and Eryn.

  Jackson was still nodding. His mom ran toward him.

  “Reboot yourself, Jackie, honey,” she cried. “Come on. You can do it.”

  “C-c-can’t,” Jackson said.

  Jackson’s mother reached his side and hit him on the back.

  “C-c-c-c-c-c-c . . . ,” Jackson said.

  “Shut the blinds!” Jackson’s mother screamed at Ava. “Then come back and help!”

  Eryn ducked down below the level of the windowsill so quickly that she smashed her face into the snowdrift. Nick didn’t react as fast. Eryn had to reach up and pull his head down too.

  She crouched with her face in the snow and her heart pounding until she heard something falling above her head and on the other side of the glass—blinds cascading down, she guessed.

  Ava already knew Nick and I were out here, Eryn reassured herself. It doesn’t matter if she sees us.

  Eryn dared to lift her head again. She thought it was a hopeless move, since the falling blinds had undoubtedly blocked her view of anything happening inside. But miraculously, there was almost a full inch of uncovered glass at the bottom of the window. Maybe the blinds had caught on something. Maybe Ava had been moving too hastily to let them all the way down.

  Either way, Eryn could still see what was going on inside Ava and Jackson’s house.

  Jackson’s mom peeled off the boy’s hoodie. Ava shoved her brother’s T-shirt up toward his neck, so Eryn could see the boy’s long, muscular back.

  Is he choking? Eryn wondered. And they’re doing the Heimlich maneuver?

  Eryn was pretty sure it was only choking babies who needed to be pounded on the back—not anyone older than that. And anyhow, why would Ava and her mom need to raise Jackson’s shirt to hit his back?

  Jackson’s mom seemed to be just tapping his back very deliberately, in spots she measured off by spreading her fingers and rotating her hands.

  And then it looked like Jackson’s entire back sprang open, revealing a mass of wires and circuitry inside.

  TWENTY

  He’s a robot? Nick thought. Jackson’s a robot?

  He glanced toward Eryn, to see if she’d figured out the same thing. Her face was suddenly, explosively red, and her eyes had shrunk into tiny slits. Her jaw dropped.

  She’s going to scream, Nick thought.

  He clamped his hand over her mouth.

  But maybe his face looked the exact same way, because at the same time she shoved her hand over his mouth.

  For a moment they just stared at each other, bug-eyed. Then Nick lifted his other hand and pulled Eryn’s away from his mouth. She did the same to his.

  “Keep watching,” she whispered.

  “Right,” Nick whispered back.

  Jackson’s mom was pulling all sorts of wires out of his back, like she was looking for the source of his malfunction. Er—was it still right to think of her as his mom if he was just a robot?

  Or, what’s the word for a robot that’s shaped like a human? Nick tried to remember. An android? That’s not even really possible, is it? Not this good of an imitation. Aren’t androids just imaginary? Pretend?

  Nick had never been a robotics kind of kid, so he didn’t really know what was possible. He knew kids at school who were on the robotics team—but that was just about building little vehicles out of Legos and using a remote control to make them move. That wasn’t someone looking and acting and seeming like a normal sixth-grade boy who was actually totally mechanical.

  Or is he totally mechanical? Nick wondered. Isn’t there something where a person could be part human, part robot? A cyborg?

  Nick couldn’t quite remember if that was the right term or not. His own brain seemed just as stuck as Jackson’s. It was a little amazing that Nick wasn’t stammering c-c-c-can’t b-b-b-be.

  “Help me turn him,” the mom was saying to Ava inside.

  She’s still a mom as long as Ava’s not an android or a cyborg or whatever, too, Nick told himself.

  The mom and Ava shifted Jackson’s body a quarter-turn, so now he had his back toward the foyer, not toward the window where Nick and Eryn were still spying. Then the mom pressed something on Jackson’s side that made his whole body open up. The back half of his body stayed in place; the front half sprang to the side, facing the couch and revealing all of Jackson’s innards.

  Now Nick could see into Jackson’s body head to toe, and it was like taking the back panel off a computer, or like looking inside a TV. Jackson was full of wires and circuitry and computer chips everywhere. There was no room left for a heart or a brain or lungs.

  Okaaay, Nick told himself. Definitely an android, not a cyborg.

  He was proud that he could be so analytical and rational, but he found that he’d pressed his gloved hand into his mouth—gagging himself this time, so Eryn didn’t have to do it for him. Eryn must have had the same thought; she pressed both hands over her mouth and face, only leaving the barest gap for her eyes.

  Inside, Nick noticed, Ava reacted dramatically as well, turning her head away from Jackson and shielding her eyes with her hands.

  “Mom,” Ava said. “Mo-om, please . . .”

  The mother paused in the midst of twisting wires inside Jackson’s body.

  “Ava, this is nothing to become anxious about,” the mother said. “It’s a fact of life. You have to become comfortable with this.”

  “M-m-m-mom,” Ava said, shaking her head side to side. The action was just as odd and troubled and troubling as Jackson’s nodding.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” the mother said. Leaving Jackson’s body open and exposed, head to toe, she reached over toward Ava, lifted the back of the girl’s shirt, did a series of taps—and then revealed wires and circuitry
in Ava’s back as well.

  “Ava’s a robot too,” Eryn muttered. Her eyes, the only thing that showed above her gloves, were wide and shocked. “They’re both robots. Mom and Michael lied. We don’t have stepsiblings. Michael doesn’t have kids. He only has robots!”

  “Yeah . . . ,” Nick whispered back.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off Ava and Jackson and their so-called mother. It was like passing a car wreck on the highway: He didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t look away.

  “Time for some diagnostics,” the mother said grimly, turning back and forth between Ava and Jackson.

  No—she was nobody’s mother. Not if Ava and Jackson were both robots. She was only Michael’s ex-wife.

  Then the woman reached up under her shirt and touched something on her own stomach. Wires slid out, which she connected to both Ava and Jackson.

  She’s not Michael’s ex-wife, either, Nick thought numbly. She’s another robot.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Eryn gasped. It was a loud gasp, containing every bit of shock and surprise she’d been holding back since she’d first seen the wires and circuitry in Jackson’s back. But she still had her hands pressed over her mouth; the winter wind still howled behind her—she thought gasping was safe.

  What she really wanted to do was scream. Scream and scream and never stop.

  I want my mommy, she thought, which was ridiculous. Mom would be furious if she knew where Eryn and Nick were, if she knew they’d disobeyed her and gone to meet Ava and Jackson.

  Or would she, if we told her everything? Eryn wondered. What if Mom doesn’t even know that Ava and Jackson and their mom are robots? What if they’ve always acted normal around her? What if Michael’s fooled her?

  Eryn had to put that thought aside, because just then the robot mother turned her head toward the window. Had she heard Eryn’s gasp? Had she suddenly realized that Ava hadn’t pulled the blinds all the way down?

  Either way, Eryn and Nick had to get out of sight.