Skinned

“Even if what?”

  She looked at me like it was pitiful, the way I couldn’t figure it out for myself. “Even if it’s embarrassing,” she said, overenunciating. Slow words for my slow brain. “Being seen with you. Like this. And then you try to steal Jax?”

  I hadn’t even known that was his name. “I told you, he came on to me.”

  Terra shook her head. “I actually feel sorry for you. I mean, Lia was always self-absorbed, but whoever you are—whatever you are—could you be any more oblivious?”

  “You know who I am,” I pleaded. “Come on, Terra, you know me.”

  “Yeah, but there’s an easy way to fix that.” She walked away with mouth breather number two, leaving me alone again.

  Walker found me by the pool.

  “So it’s okay? To get wet?” he asked, sitting down beside me.

  I shrugged. I’d taken off my shoes and plunged my bare feet into the water. It was cold, or at least, I thought it was. Temperatures were still a challenge. “Everything’s okay.”

  He dipped his feet into the water, then shivered. Cold—I’d guessed right.

  “I heard what happened.”

  I shrugged again. That was an easy one for me, one of the first things I’d mastered. Maybe because it was so close to an involuntary twitch.

  “You should have texted me,” he said. “I was looking for you.”

  I’d been sitting out by the pool for almost an hour. He couldn’t have looked very hard. “It’s fine.”

  “So, were you, uh…you and that guy, you weren’t—”

  “You’re seriously going to ask me that? You think I was lying too?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked down, tapping his foot against the surface of the water, gently enough that it didn’t splash. “I guess not.”

  Our shoulders were touching.

  “You know what?” I said. “Just go.”

  He shook his head. Rested his hand on my lower back. Leaned in. “What if I don’t want to?”

  It felt like my first kiss.

  In a way, I guess, it was. And just like back then, I wasted it, worrying about where to put my hands and what to do with my tongue and whether I should be moving my lips more or less—and then it was over. At least he didn’t look too repulsed. His eyes were rimmed with red. But they were open.

  Most people had vacated the pool area once I showed up. The ones who’d stayed behind were staring at us. We got out.

  The grounds of Cass’s estate were huge—and, once you got away from the guesthouse, mostly empty. We had a favorite spot, a clustering of trees at the top of a sloping hill—the same hill that, when we were kids, Cass and I had rolled down, shrieking as we bumped and slid, the grass and sky spinning around us. Walker and I stayed at the top. He was shivering.

  “Nervous?” I asked. We sat facing each other, his legs crossed, mine tucked beneath me so that I could rise up on my knees and reach for him.

  He shook his head. “No reason to be.”

  He didn’t ask if I was nervous.

  Walker took a deep, shuddering breath, and then his mouth was on mine again, his hands at my waist, slipping beneath the black T-shirt. I stiffened. His hands on the skin—How would it feel? What would he think of the body when he saw it?

  “You okay?” he whispered. His eyes were closed again, his face pinched, like he was expecting a blow.

  “Okay.”

  “So, you can, like, do stuff?” he asked.

  “I can do anything.” I tried to force myself to relax.

  Asking call-me-Ben about it, back in rehab, hadn’t been the worst moment of that hell, not even close. But it had been humiliating enough.

  “Can I get wet?” I’d opened with something easy. “Or will I melt or short-circuit or something?”

  And call-me-Ben had had the nerve to laugh. “You’re fully waterproof.”

  “What about sleeping?” Another lob. Working my way up to the real question. I barely heard his answer.

  “The body will simulate the sensation of fatigue, as a signal to you that it’s time to shut down for a few hours, give the system a rest. Tests show that it’s probably a good idea to follow your normal schedule by ‘sleeping’ every night.”

  “Can I eat?” That was a no.

  Just like there’d be no more bathroom breaks, no more tampons. At this point, call-me-Ben suggested I might be more comfortable talking to a woman, but by woman, I knew he meant Sascha, and I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction.

  “What happens if I break?” I asked.

  “You’ll come to us,” said call-me-Ben. “Just like you’d go to the doctor. And we’ll fix you up. But if you take care of yourself, it’s unlikely to happen. Although we attempted to emulate the organic form as much as possible, you’ll find this body much more durable than the old one.”

  “Why?”

  He looked surprised. “Well, for all the obvious reasons. It seemed economically efficient, not to mention—”

  “No. I mean, why that, but no other differences? Why no superpowers or anything?”

  Ben frowned. “This isn’t a game. We’re not trying to create a new race of supermen, no matter what the vids want to claim. This is a medical procedure. We want to supply you with a normal life, as much like your old life as it can possibly be.”

  “So…I should be able to do anything I used to do,” I said.

  “Within reason,” Ben said. “Anything.”

  “What about…Well, I have this boyfriend, so…Could he and I…?”

  Call-me-Ben looked like he wanted to summon Sascha, no matter what I said. “As you’ve been told, your internal structure is—obviously—quite different. But the external structure mirrors the organic model completely.”

  I must have looked blanker than usual.

  “You and your boyfriend will be fine,” he clarified. “All systems go.”

  I didn’t think to ask him how it would feel.

  Now I knew: It felt wrong.

  We didn’t fit together: not like we used to. Our faces bumped, my elbow jabbed his chin, his legs got twisted up in mine, and not in a good way. Every kiss got broken by a murmured “sorry” or “ouch” or “not there” or “no, nothing, keep going” or, always, “it’s okay,” and we did keep going, his hands running up and down the body, my fingers searching his, trying to find the dips and rises they remembered, but everything felt different against the fingertips, distant and imagined, like I was lying in the grass alone, pretending to feel the weight of Walker’s body on top of mine.

  Things didn’t get very far.

  “Sorry,” he said yet again, rolling off me. I pulled my shirt back on. It was one thing for him to touch the body, but I didn’t want him to have to look at it while we were lying there. I didn’t want to look at it. If I didn’t have to see it, I could pretend. That was easier in the dark. “I can do this, I just need a minute.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. Like a parrot who only knew one phrase.

  “I know it’s okay,” he snapped. “I just need…” He snatched a pill out of his pocket, popped it into his mouth. “It’ll be fine.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. Just a chiller. Help me relax.”

  “Another one?” I knew he’d been popping them all night, and probably most of the afternoon.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He rolled over on his side. “Okay. Ready?”

  I pressed my hand against his chest, holding him in place. “You say that like you’re gearing up for battle.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It would just be nice if you didn’t need to be totally zoned out before you could touch me.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “Every time you come near me, you look like you’re being punished.”

  “And what about you?” he asked. “I touch you, and you freeze up. It’s like hooking up with—Forget it.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “
Just say it,” I insisted, and, maybe out of habit, he followed orders.

  “With a corpse.”

  I sat up. “What a coincidence. Me being dead and all.”

  He sat up too, and hunched over his knees, cracking his knuckles. “You have to admit…it’s kind of weird.”

  “Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed. Life has been oh-so-normal for me these last couple months. Not that you would know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means my life is shit,” I spat out. “And where are you?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” Walker drove a fist into the grass. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to be like you used to be.”

  “And I want you to be like you used to be,” he shouted, “so I guess it’s tough shit for both of us!”

  Silence.

  “You hate this,” I said quietly. “Me. Like this.”

  “Lia, I didn’t—”

  “No.” I sat very straight and very still. “Just admit it. The truth will set you free and all that.”

  He sighed. “Fine. I hate it. Not you. This. This whole thing. It’s weird, it’s gross, it freaks me out, but I’m doing my fucking best. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Because you feel sorry for me,” I said.

  “No.”

  Yes.

  “Because you think you owe me something,” I said.

  “Don’t I?”

  Yes.

  “Whatever it is, this isn’t it.” I stood up.

  “Don’t do this,” he said.

  “I don’t need this,” I said. “I don’t need your trying. I don’t need you forcing yourself to be with me, like I’m your personal charity case.”

  “I’m not telling you to go.”

  Which wasn’t quite the same as telling me to stay.

  “This is you, Lia. Giving up. If you walk away, just remember, that’s on you.”

  “And if I don’t walk away, I get stuck with someone who has to dope up before he can even look at me. I think I can do better than that.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  And that was the question, wasn’t it?

  Cass’s mouth breather didn’t count. He wanted to screw a mech-head, some kind of fetish fantasy, nothing real. It wouldn’t count even if he weren’t scum, which he was.

  No one normal—and especially no one beyond normal, no one like Walker—would choose me, not the way I was now. But Walker was stuck with me, and I knew he would stay, mostly out of obligation, with a little nostalgia thrown in for flavor, because I knew Walker. I could keep him. I could sit down beside him and let him kiss me, ignoring the fact that it made him cringe. Ignoring the fact that when he touched me, it felt like nothing. Not because I couldn’t feel his body on mine, but because the feeling was meaningless. It was like trying to tickle your own feet. Graze your fingers across your skin in the same places, with the same pressure, at the same speed, the mechanics all the same, but somehow the effect entirely different, the sensation lifeless. Not that I was ticklish at all, not anymore.

  The old Lia Kahn wouldn’t have hesitated. The old Lia Kahn knew she deserved better. But of course, the old Lia Kahn was hot. Her boyfriend couldn’t keep his hands off her.

  There was also the fact that I was probably in love with him.

  “What am I supposed to do?” he said, still on the ground.

  Not The turtle is hungry. Not I’m sorry. Not I love you.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have believed him anyway.

  Maybe I would.

  “I’m still Lia,” I said finally.

  “So? What’s that mean? Staying or going?”

  “It means you should already know.”

  LIFE SUPPORT

  “I don’t have issues, I have a life.”

  That was pretty much all it took to RIP my social life. Not that I did much resting in peace. More like resting in isolation and humiliation and doubt and regret. Just because you can’t take something back, doesn’t mean you don’t want to.

  Just because you want to, doesn’t mean you try.

  By the time I got home and linked in that night, I’d lost priv-access to Cass’s and Terra’s zones; I’d been blocked from Walker’s altogether. Everyone else followed their lead. I was untouchable, on and off the network. People still stared; they still whispered as I passed in the hall, with one big difference: They no longer bothered to shut up when I got close. Instead they got louder, so I could hear the words interspersed with the giggles. Freak. Robo-nympho. Skinner slut. Cass spread the word that I was a mechanical sex junkie, and her mouth breather threw in some spicy details about my tendency to go psycho when my lust was denied.

  Walker didn’t say anything, I was sure of it. But it was obvious we were over. And rumors spread: I’d attacked him, torn his clothes off, tried to force him. I’d cheated on him with a toaster. I’d malfunctioned in medias res, blowing sparks in a deus ex machina coitus interruptus that saved him from a nasty mistake. I didn’t deny any of it.

  Neither did he.

  Here’s the part where I say that my friends were shallow bitches and I’m better off without them. That Walker wasn’t good enough for me—that if he’d really loved me, he wouldn’t have let me leave, not without giving at least a modicum of chase. That I learned a valuable lesson about true-blue friendship, or maybe that surviving on my own was more fulfilling than depending on people who, deep down, didn’t really care.

  Wouldn’t it be nice to think so.

  They were, in fact, shallow bitches. News flash: So was I. It didn’t make me miss them any less. As for Walker…Life with a boyfriend? Far superior to life without. I probably shouldn’t admit that, but what am I supposed to do? Lie? So my friends hated me. So my boyfriend hated touching me. So my life was one big game of let’s pretend. Was that any worse than being alone?

  Maybe it was, and maybe that’s why I walked away. But I’m allowed to regret it.

  “I don’t get why I have to go in person,” I complained. “Can’t I just link in? What’s the difference?”

  My mother shook her head. “This is about growing comfortable with your new physicality, dealing with issues of disembodiment and bodily alienation. You can’t do that virtually.”

  “Physicality? Bodily alienation?” That did not sound like my mother.

  “That’s what the counselor said.” My mother twisted the edge of her shirt, which she did when she was nervous, at least until my father noticed and forced her to stop. “She thinks this is crucial to a successful readjustment.”

  “Readjustment?” That was Sascha’s term too, and I hated it. As if I’d emerged from a factory needing just a few minor alterations before I could rejoin my life. As if anything about this was minor. “I take it you’re still quoting?”

  My mother reddened.

  My father, who’d been monitoring some board meeting as if we weren’t even there, looked up from his screen. “You’re going.”

  I went.

  The group met in one of those buildings where they used to store paper books until no one wanted them anymore. You could tell because the shelves were still there, sitting empty, waiting for the world to change its mind and start printing with ink again—like that was going to happen. There were a lot of places like this, empty buildings that survived long after their purpose had died. Why go out for art, for drama, for literature, for fashion, when you could stay on the couch, safe from germs, weather, overexertion, crowds, annoying small talk, and get it all up close, personal, and on demand? I knew the corps had snatched up most of the useless land, keeping it around just in case. But I didn’t know that I would be the just in case, me and all the mech-heads in a hundred-mile radius, forced to drag our not-quite-dead bodies to a not-quite-dead library and spill our souls. If we had any. Which, depending on who you asked, was seriously in question.

  I was late. The other six were already there, their chairs aligned in a circle with an empty one waiting for me, right next to Quinn. N
ot my favorite person, but at least she didn’t completely suck, which was more than I could say for the familiar face on the other side of the circle. Sascha offered up her best patronizing smile as I slipped into the seat. “Now that everyone’s here, why don’t we go around and introduce ourselves, so that our new members will feel more at home?”

  Quinn slid a hand across her mouth, camouflaging her whisper: “If this is home, does that make her our new mommy?”

  I smirked. “Kill me now.”

  “Lia, why don’t you begin?” Sascha said loudly. It clearly wasn’t a suggestion.

  “Lia Kahn,” I mumbled.

  “Could you maybe tell us something more about your history?”

  I shrugged. “I was born seventeen and a half years ago, on a dark and stormy—”

  “I mean your recent history,” Sascha said, all sweetness and light. “Is there anything you want to share about the circumstances that led you to be here today?”

  “Circumstances.” That was almost as good as “readjustment.” Such a nice, neat word to sum up the smell of flesh crackling in a fire, the hours and days in the dark, the slices of frozen brain matter scanned in, tossed aside. Just a collection of unfortunate circumstances, nothing more. “You told my parents this was mandatory,” I said. “And they bought it.”

  Sascha cleared her throat. “Okay…Quinn? Is there anything about yourself you’d like to share with the group?”

  “Selected members of the group, maybe,” Quinn said, glancing at the girl to her right, whose pale skin looked nearly white against the long strands of indigo hair. “I have plenty to offer.”

  Sascha moved on. Quickly.

  The blue-haired girl was Ani, and had been a mech-head for almost a year. Judging from the effort she was putting into avoiding Quinn’s gaze, she wasn’t much into sharing. Aron and Sloane, who obviously knew each other—and, less obviously but still noticeably, played footsie beneath their folding chairs—were better behaved. Aron had traded in his disease-riddled, six-weeks-to-live body a few months ago; Sloane had tried to kill herself, but only half-succeeded, waking up immortal instead, courtesy of an ill-planned leap from a tall building that wasn’t quite tall enough. They’d met in rehab.