Skinned

  But the hallway was empty. Only one person waited for me, rocking back and forth from one foot to the other, his fist clenched around the ugly green bag he always carried.

  “You okay?” Auden asked.

  I walked right past him, down the hall, around the corner, all the way to the door that let out into the parking lot, where I could find the car and ride away. Let Zo figure out her own way home.

  He followed. “She was wrong, you know.”

  I put my hand on the door, but didn’t open it. I wasn’t against ditching school, not in principle, at least, but I also wasn’t about to let Bliss Tanzen drive me out.

  “She shouldn’t have said those things,” he went on.

  “It was an assignment,” I said, my back to him, undecided. Outside meant blissful escape; inside meant more pretending, smiling dumbly as if I didn’t hear the whispers that followed me everywhere. Inside meant going to lunch, facing Bliss and everyone who’d heard her. Everyone who’d sat quietly and listened. But outside meant running away, and I couldn’t do that.

  I wasn’t the type.

  “She was wrong,” Auden said in a pained voice. “About the download, about you not being—”

  I finally faced him. “First of all, she wasn’t talking about me,” I snapped. “You were the one who brought me into it, and second of all, thanks very much for that. You think I don’t know she was wrong? You think I need someone like you telling me who I am? And now, like I didn’t have enough problems, the whole school probably thinks we’re—” Rude enough, I told myself, and stopped.

  “We’re what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Friends?” He spat out a bitter laugh, his face twisting beneath his stupid black glasses. “Don’t worry. No one would think that.” His black hair was short, almost buzzed, and his nose was crooked. Someone had done a really bad job selecting for him, I thought. It was one thing to sacrifice looks for athletic ability or freakish intelligence or artistic aptitude—everyone was, of course, only allowed to be so special and no more—but I happened to know he didn’t have any of those things, or at least, not enough of them to justify his face. If I’d just seen him on the street somewhere, I’m not saying I would have assumed he was poor, but I wouldn’t have assumed he was one of us.

  And maybe that was his real problem: Credit or not, he wasn’t.

  “I’m not worried,” I said. “And even if I was, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “If I were you, I’d focus on helping yourself. You need it more than I do.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Just look at you.” The clothes: wrong. The face: wrong. The attitude: wrong. The tattered green bag that looked like something my grandmother would carry around: weird and wrong. “It’s like you’re not even trying.”

  “Trying to what?”

  “Trying to be normal!” I lost it. “Look what you’ve got—and you’re wasting it!”

  A scowl flashed across his face, then disappeared just as quickly. “What I’ve got?” He raised his eyebrows. “You mean like a flesh-and-blood body? A ‘normal’ brain?”

  “That is not what I said.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be normal,” he said calmly. “Maybe it’s okay that you’re not.”

  “Who said I’m not?”

  He just looked at me, like it was obvious, like I was stupid for even asking such a question when I was standing there forming a response with a brain that ran off the same wireless power grid as the school trash compactor.

  “Why am I even talking to you?” I said, disgusted.

  “You tell me.”

  “It was a rhetorical question.” I brushed past him. He didn’t flinch as our arms grazed against each other. “Just don’t bother ‘helping’ again.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  I didn’t ditch school. I went back to class, kept my head down, paid attention. I went to lunch, ready to face Bliss, whether it meant an apology or a fight. But she wasn’t there. Nor was Cass or Terra or their new boy toys or Zo or Walker. Becca, who would probably have spent the whole meal babbling about some species of frog she was intent on rescuing from extinction, wasn’t there either. I found out later that they’d all cut out, grabbed lunch at Cass’s place, and gotten an early start on the weekend partying. “I know we told you,” Cass said later when I finally tracked her down. “You must have forgot.”

  Auden ate at an empty table tucked into a corner, half hidden behind a thick wooden pillar. I could feel him watching me.

  I didn’t eat, of course. But I took a tray of food and sat in the usual spot, alone.

  It was the best meal I’d had all week.

  DATE NIGHT

  “Everything’s okay.”

  You’re going like that?” Zo asked, leaning in my doorway. The cat hissed at her from the foot of the bed. Psycho Susskind had, without my permission, made it his new home.

  “What?” I braved the mirror again. Black retro shirt, baggy pants that looked like some kind of insect had gnawed off the cuffs, and—courtesy of an illicit raid through Zo’s supplies—plum-colored lipstick and some kind of violet grease smeared across my eyelids. I looked like Zo. I also looked, as far as I could tell, like crap, but these days, so did everyone else who mattered. So at least I would fit in.

  Zo rolled her eyes. “Nothing.”

  I shoved past her. “See you tomorrow.”

  “See you tonight.”

  I paused at the top of the stairs. “You’re going?”

  “Terra’s picking me up in five,” Zo said. “Is that a problem?”

  Like she cared. “No problem.”

  She looked like she wanted to say something else. But she waited too long, and I was out the door.

  Walker’s car was in the driveway.

  “You’re early,” I said, slipping in beside him. “You’ve just been sitting out here?”

  He nodded. “It’s okay.”

  “If I’d known you were out here…”

  “It’s okay,” he said again, and put an arm around me. His pupils were wide; he’d obviously gotten an early start on the night, tripping on something or a lot of somethings. But it didn’t matter. Not if he was going to put his arm around me again.

  “You ready?” He leaned forward, keyed in Cass’s address, then paused, waiting for permission, like the old days.

  I wondered what would happen if I told him that we should skip the party, that when he’d said he wanted to go out, I’d thought he meant the two of us, alone.

  Before, I was the one who dragged us to parties. Again? he would whine, like a little kid, and it would be cute, but not cute enough to change my mind, so we would spend another night surrounded until the waiting got too intense, and then he would squeeze my hand or I would squeeze his ass and—signal sent, message received—we would sneak off together to one of the extra bedrooms or a closet or that spot between the trees or once, after everyone else had passed out, the glassed-in pool, our bodies glowing in the eerie blue of the underwater lights. It was tradition, and keeping it tonight had to mean that he wanted to go backward. I wasn’t about to risk a change.

  I thought he might kiss me as we sped along in the dark; that was tradition too. But he stayed on his side of the car and I stayed on mine, and his arm rested on my shoulders, a deadweight that might as well have belonged to some invisible third passenger.

  “Want to play Akira?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Mind if I do?”

  “No.”

  Sometimes it felt like the body took over. That the body wasn’t the stranger, I was—just a passenger, carried along wherever the body wanted to go. Because that wasn’t me, letting Walker disappear into the network when I just wanted him to be with me—or, more to the point, wanted him to want to be with me. The strange voice that poured out of the strange mouth told him he could do whatever he wanted, I would go wherever he went, I didn’t care, I was
fine, everything was fine, it was all good. That wasn’t Lia Kahn.

  The car stopped in the usual place, at the bottom of the curving driveway that sloped up to Cass’s guesthouse. Walker grabbed my hand before I could get out. He leaned close, and when he spoke, his stubble scratched against my ear; it didn’t hurt. “Upstairs?” he said. “Later?”

  “Definitely.” I turned to face him, my cheek scraping against his, but he pulled away just before our lips made contact. Even in the dark, his eyes were closed. “Later.”

  Inside, things were the same as always: bodies sprawled on the couches and across the greenish-gray carpet, writhing in the throes of whatever new b-mod mix Cass had cooked up; walls pulsing in time with the music; couples tangled up in each other; lonelyhearts on the prowl; screens encircling the room, set to flash up Cass’s favorite vidlifes and a rotating selection of random zones; the lost dancers, gyrating to music that played only and forever in their heads; and in the glassed-in pool, girls with swanlike bodies skimming through the water, giggling, sputtering, chasing boys, chasing one another, the shifting patterns of their solar bikinis fading as the light disappeared.

  The bikinis weren’t the only tech. Sonicsilk, LBDs and LCD tees, net-skirts, girls in microminis smartchipped to grow—or shrink—when they bent over, gamers in screenshirts that broadcast their kills…Almost everyone was in something lit up or linked in, everyone, that is, except for me. And Zo, of course, who didn’t count.

  Bliss met us at the door, wearing a dress I’d seen before—a transparent fabric made opaque by the careful patterning of glowing light, but always, in its shifting translucence, offering the promise that if you watched closely enough, a glimpse of milky skin would slip through. She raised an eyebrow at my dead black shirt. Then leaned forward, voice lowered and fakely kind. “You should know, that retro look is totally wiped.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I got that.” I turned to blast Walker for letting me walk in blind, not that he could be trusted on the subject, being barely able to dress himself, much less me, but I was decked out in freakwear and needed someone to blame. Too bad: He’d already slipped away, probably off to join the gamers or get zoned.

  Terra drifted over, her face—like everyone else’s—cosmetic clear, her shirt whispering melodies with every move. She stopped dead when she saw what I was wearing.

  “Nice, uh…outfit,” she said.

  “You could have told me.” It’s not like we made some big announcement about which looks were in and which were out. But things got old fast, and when they did, either you knew—or you didn’t.

  Terra shrugged. “Since when do you need me to tell you what’s wiped?”

  Zo found me later, sitting in a corner, head tipped back toward the ceiling as if I were zoned. Anyone who knew anything knew that I wasn’t in the business of getting zoned anymore, but it saved me from having to stare blankly at a wall or, worse, to make conversation.

  Finally someone I could blame. “I can’t believe you let me leave the house looking like this.”

  “What?” she asked innocently, perching on the side of the couch. “Like me?”

  “You knew better.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “So why didn’t you? Lia Kahn always knows what’s cool, right? Lia Kahn decides what’s cool. So what’s your problem?”

  I wanted to slap her.

  “What’s yours?” I asked instead. “If you knew retro was over, why come here like this?” I jerked my head toward her clothes, which were only slightly less gross than my own. But she was acting as if she didn’t care that the look was wiped, and no one else seemed to care either. Like the rules were somehow different for her.

  “Because maybe Zoie Kahn decides what’s cool too,” she said.

  “You can decide whatever you want. It doesn’t count if no one agrees. There’s no such thing as a majority of one.”

  “Yeah, one’s the loneliest number, so I heard,” she said. “Two is working out a lot better for me these days.”

  “Two?” I scanned the room, as if Zo’s new guy, if he really existed, would bear the mark on his face. “Who?”

  She mouthed a curse, as if she’d broken something. “No one.”

  This was getting interesting. “Who?” Zo and I had never been the kind of sisters who stayed up all night, giggling in the dark about pounding hearts and stolen kisses. But she’d ruined enough of my dates with her tattling, her teasing, and, as she got older, her eavesdropping and clumsy stabs at blackmail. She was, and always had been, addicted to information about my personal life; the more personal, the better.

  Karma’s a bitch.

  “I told you, no one.”

  “I’ll find out eventually,” I said. “You might as well tell me.”

  “Instead of wasting your time on my love life, maybe you should focus on your own,” Zo snapped.

  “Meaning?”

  Zo tapped her wrist and I noticed that, like Auden, she was wearing a watch. Maybe he was her mystery man. Lame and lamer—they’d make a good match. “It’s one a.m.: Do you know where your boyfriend is?”

  “He’s around.” But nowhere I could see. I wondered if he’d gone upstairs without me, if he was waiting for me to find him. Or if he wasn’t alone.

  “He always is.” Zo scowled and stood up.

  “Seriously, why do you hate him so much?”

  “I don’t.”

  “You’re usually a better liar that that.”

  “Believe whatever you want,” she said.

  I wanted to ask her something else. I wanted to ask her why she suddenly hated me.

  I didn’t want the answer.

  “Later,” she said, giving me a bitter half wave. “Terra’s got some new boots she wants to show me. Weird, isn’t it?” Zo smirked. “The way all your friends suddenly want my opinion?”

  “They’re just bored and looking for something different to play with,” I shot back. “You’re like their little retro mascot. Their token freak.”

  Zo shrugged. “Why would they need me for that? They’ve got you.”

  Venom released, she wandered off; I stayed where I was. I knew I should be circulating, but all I wanted to do was hide. Staying in place seemed like an acceptable compromise. And when I felt a pair of hands squeeze my shoulders, and a chin rest on the top of my head, I knew I’d made the right choice. I lifted my arms, let him grab my hands and pull me to my feet. “About time.” I turned around. “What took you so—”

  I yanked my hands away.

  Cass’s mouth breather leered. “Feels just like real hands,” he slurred. “Dipper thought they’d be, like, stiff or some shit like that, but…” He slithered his fingers across my waist. I knocked them away. “Feels real enough to me.”

  Cass had always liked them dumb and pretty.

  “You wanna know what’s stiff?” He lunged toward me, resting his forearms on my shoulders, linking his fingers together behind my neck when I tried to squirm away.

  “Fuck off.”

  He laughed. “I’d rather fuck something else,” he said. “And I do mean thing. Come on.” He plucked at my neckline. “I hear you’ve got all your parts under there, just like a real girl.”

  “I am a real girl, asshole.”

  “You want to prove it?”

  I tried to knock his arms away, but they were too thick and sturdy, and the more I strained against them, the tighter his grip.

  “Just because Walker’s too chickenshit to take a test drive—”

  This wasn’t a dark and empty path winding through the woods, and he wasn’t some Faither lunatic convinced that God had told him to screw my brains out—I had no reason to be afraid. But I wasn’t thinking through reasons. I was thinking about this loser’s grimy hands crawling all over the body—my body—and his breath misting across my face and his puny dick twitching at some fantasy of dragging me off and shoving himself inside me. All of which added up to not thinking at all. I punched him in the stomach.

  “Bit
ch!” he wheezed, doubled over.

  That’s when Cass finally decided to show up. “What the hell, Lia?”

  “She’s psycho,” the drooling pervert hissed, looping an arm around Cass. “Total nut job. Got pissed I wouldn’t do her.”

  If the mouth had come equipped with saliva, I would have spit at him. “You sleazy piece of crap! Cass, come on.” She was clinging to him, her arm tucked around his waist. “The perv was hitting on me.”

  The loser snorted. “Right. Liked I’d want it when I have you.” He nuzzled his face into Cass’s neck. She let him.

  Terra popped up beside them, her boy in tow. The two guys smacked hands while Terra glared at me. “Trouble?”

  “Trouble for Cass,” I said. “She’s dating an asshole.”

  “You were right about her,” Terra’s guy whispered loudly.

  I turned on her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means wake up, Lia,” Terra snapped. “This isn’t like before. You don’t get to have every boy in the world drooling after you. Not anymore.”

  Cass rolled her eyes. “And contrary to popular belief—excuse me, your belief—they weren’t all after you then, either.”

  “I never thought that—”

  “Right.” Cass choked out a laugh. “And you weren’t hitting on my boyfriend just now.”

  “Why would I want this assface when I’ve got—”

  “Walker?” Terra said with me. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

  “Walker and I are fine.”

  “Then take him with you when you go,” Cass snarled. She tugged the mouth breather away, without looking back.

  Terra shook her head. “She stood up for you. When you came back, and you were all—you know. She defended you. She said you were still the same person under there. That we should give you a chance, even if…”