Skinned

  Auden looked thoughtful. “I just do it, I guess. I want to, and it happens.”

  “Well, 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 still 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 all 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 call-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 really 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 really 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 hallway 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 telling 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 actually got a girl in there with you?” a man’s voice called from the hallway. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  “Just me,” Auden called back weakly.

  Screw him.

  I twisted the knob. Opened the door.

  The man in the hallway 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 hallway, 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. Heller.”

  “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 hall, 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.

  “You don’t embarrass me,” he said finally. “He does.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Parents are just…”

  “It’s not parents,” Auden said furiously. “Just him. Parent. Singular.”

  “Your mother…left?”

  “Died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You didn’t kill her.”

  I looked away.

  “I’m sorry.” He touched my shoulder, hesitated, then drew his hand away. I didn’t move. “It’s been a long time, but I still…”

  “Yeah. I get it.” I didn’t, not really. My mother wasn’t dead; my father wasn’t evil. I couldn’t get it, any more than he could get what it was like to be me.

  It was weird, how many different ways there were for life to suck.

  “I’m sorry for what he said. He shouldn’t have treated you like that.”

  I shrugged. “I’m getting used to it.”

  “You shouldn’t have to.”

  True. But there were a lot of things I shouldn’t have to get used to, and if I started making a list, I might never stop.

  “So Tara’s your stepmother?” I asked.

  “She’s the new wife.”

  “And the girls…?”

  “Tess and Tami. The perfect little daughters my father always wanted.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to keep asking questions, but I didn’t know what else to do. “Your mother was the one who wanted a son?”

  He snorted and, for the first time, he sounded like his father. “No one wanted a son.”

  “I don’t get it.” Everyone got what they wanted these days, even if you barely had any credit. Looks, skills, personality, that was all more expensive, but sex was basic. Check box number one for a girl, box number two for a boy, and that was it. Case closed.

  “My mother…” Auden squirmed in his seat. “It’s going to sound weird.”

  “Since when do you care about that?”

  “My mother was sort of old-fashioned,” Auden said. “She didn’t…
Well, she thought genetic screening was, uh, tampering with God’s work.” He paused, waiting for me to react. For once I was glad that my face’s default expression was blank.

  Because what kind of lunatic fringe freak didn’t believe in gen-tech?

  “I mean, she let them do the basics,” he said quickly. “Screen out diseases, mutations, all that stuff, but as for everything else…”

  “You’re a natural?” I asked, incredulous. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d even wondered a few times, back when Auden was just another weirdo to avoid, when it seemed like no one would choose to have a kid like him. It would explain the crooked nose, the slightly lumpy body, and all the rest of it. But it was still hard to believe. Families like ours just didn’t do things like that.

  He blushed. “Pretty much.” He turned his head toward the window, looking back up at the house. “Tara doesn’t even know, although I’m sure she suspects. When she decided to get pregnant, my father made sure he got everything he wanted. I always kind of thought that’s why he went for twins.” He laughed bitterly. “So he’d have an extra, like a replacement for the kid he should have had, when he got stuck with me instead.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t—”

  “Yeah. He does.”

  “So your mom…She was a Faither?”

  “No!” he said hotly. “Not all believers are Faithers. Just the crazy ones.”

  “Yeah, but how do you tell the difference?” I muttered.

  It just slipped out.

  Auden glared. “It’s not crazy to believe in something.”

  “My father says—” I stopped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Lia.” His expression hadn’t changed, but there was something new in his eyes. Something fierce. “What?”

  I sighed. “My father says that believing in something without any proof is, at best, sloppy thinking and, at worst, clinically delusional.”

  “Well, my mother said that in the end, all we have is belief,” he countered. “That you can’t know what’s out there, or who. And that denying the possibility of something bigger just means you’ve got a small mind, and you’re choosing to live a small life.”

  “So I’ve got a small mind?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, your mother did,” I snapped.

  His face was red. “Well, I guess if she were here, you could ask her yourself. Too bad she’s not!”

  There was a long, angry pause.

  “I’m sorry,” I said finally. And I was, although I wasn’t sure for what.

  “This is why she wasn’t a Faither,” he said, his voice quiet. “She didn’t think it was her business to tell other people what to believe. She was just happy believing herself. She said it made her feel like…” He looked down. “Like she was never alone.”

  I was almost jealous.

  “Do you?”

  “What? Feel like I’m never alone?” He barked out a laugh. “Not quite.”

  “No. I mean, believe.”

  He shrugged, still looking away. “I don’t know. I used to try. When I was a kid, you know? I wanted to be like her. But…I guess you can’t make yourself believe in something. Sometimes I think I do, I think I can feel it deep down, that certainty…but then it just disappears. That never happened to her. She was so sure.” Auden shook his head. “I’ve never been that sure of anything.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t either,” I suggested, “and she just made it seem that way. Maybe that’s what believing is—pretending to be sure, even when you’re not. Ignoring your doubt until it disappears.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Too bad I can’t just ask her, right?” He tried to laugh again. It didn’t work.

  “You miss her.”

  His answer was more of a sigh than a word. “Yeah.”

  And maybe I could understand a little, after all. I’d never lost a parent—but I’d lost plenty. I knew about missing things.

  “Auden, can I—can I ask you something?”

  He nodded.

  “All that stuff your mother believed in, about tampering with God’s will and…all that. You don’t…I mean, everything they did to me, you don’t think…?”

  “No!” He shook his head, hard. “I know that was—I mean, I know she wasn’t…” He pressed his lips together. He doesn’t want to insult her, I thought. Even now. Like he thought she could still hear him.

  But maybe I got it wrong. Because that really would be crazy.

  “I don’t agree with her,” he said finally. Firmly. “I think it’s incredible, what they can do. And what they did. For you. But…” He rubbed the rim of his glasses. “You want to hear something weird?”

  I smiled. “Always.”

  “You know how I wear glasses?”

  “Yes, Auden, I’ve noticed that you wear glasses,” I said, hoping to tease him out of the mood.

  “Ever wonder why?”

  “I just figured…” I didn’t want to tell him I’d figured he was a pretentious loser trying to look cool. “That you liked old things. All that stuff you’re always talking about. The way things used to be.”

  “That’s part of it, I guess. I do like that stuff.”

  “Because of your mother?”

  “Well, sort of. But also because—I don’t know. It was all different back then. There was more…room.”

  “More room?” I echoed. “Are you kidding? I thought you were supposed to be good at history. No one had any room back then, when they thought they had to live all crammed into the same place, all those people stuck in the cities….” I shuddered. It freaked me out just thinking about it. Made me feel like the walls were closing in.

  “No, I don’t mean more room for people. I just mean more room to do something. Change the way things worked. You could be important. Now…I don’t know. No one’s important.”

  “Everyone’s important,” I said. “At least if you’ve got enough credit.”

  “And if you’ve got no credit, you might as well not exist?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yeah, but you thought it,” he said. “Everyone does. And so all those credit-free people just end up in a corp-town or a city, and no one really cares, because that’s just the way it is.”

  “But that is the way it is,” I said, confused. “And they don’t care, so why should you?”

  “How do you know they don’t care? Do you actually know anyone who lives in a corp-town? Have you ever been to a city?”

  “Have you?” I countered.

  I could tell from the look on his face that he hadn’t.

  “I don’t want to fight,” he said instead of answering.

  “Then stop insulting me!”

  “I wasn’t—Look, I’m just saying, things weren’t always the way they are now. But people act like they were. Like the past doesn’t matter, because everything’s always been the same. And like it should always be the same.”

  I didn’t want to fight either. “So that’s why you wear glasses? To change the world.”

  He took them off. His eyes were bright green, like his father’s. “No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t just wear them because I like old stuff. I actually…I need them.”

  “No one needs glasses anymore.”

  “Trust me.” He squinted at me. “Without them, I can barely tell whether your eyes are open or shut.”

  “I don’t get it. Why not get your eyes fixed?”

  “I don’t know. I guess wearing them reminds me of my mom. Like it’s what she would have wanted.”

  That was…I didn’t want to think it, but that was sick. “What if you got sick or something?” I asked. “Would you not do anything about that? Would your mother want you to—” Die, I was going to say. But I didn’t. Because for all I knew, that’s what had happened to her. “—just stay sick?”

  “Of course not! I’m not crazy. It’s just this one thing. Just the eyes,” he said.
“So, I guess you think it’s pretty weird.”

  “Well…” I had the feeling he didn’t want me to lie. “Yeah. Very. But maybe I get it. A little.”

  “I should go,” he said, opening the car door.

  “Where? Your father said…”

  “Yeah. I know what he said. But it’s my house, too. And”—he shrugged—“not like I have anywhere else to be.”

  I probably should have stayed—or invited him to come with me. But I was supposed to be home for dinner, and I couldn’t picture bringing him along. Meals were bad enough without a stranger at the table, watching us not speak to one another.

  I let him out of the car. “Good luck,” I said, even though he was just going home.

  “You too.” Even though I was doing the same.

  I saw Auden at school after that, but we didn’t talk much, not like before. Not that I was avoiding him or anything. We just…didn’t. Talk. And there were no more “experiments.”

  Then a few nights later, I came home, linked in, and: ACCOUNT TERMINATED.

  That was it. Two words flashing red across a blank screen. They linked to a text from Connexion, the corp that carried my zone.

  A determination has been made that the owner of this account, Lia Kahn, is for all intents and purposes deceased. Although Connexion acknowledges that the entity now designated as “Lia Kahn retains legal rights to the identity under current law, the corporation has been afforded a wide latitude in this matter. As of today we will no longer extend continuing access to recipients of the download process. As per standard protocol in cases of the deceased, when the next of kin has made no request for continuing access, the account of Lia Kahn has been deleted. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Have a nice day!

  It was gone. All of it. My pics, my vids, my music, every voice and text I’d ever received or sent, every mood I’d recorded, everything I’d bought, read, watched, heard, played, all gone. Any evidence of the friends I’d had or the relationship I’d walked away from. Gone. The av I’d hidden behind since before I was old enough to pronounce the word. Gone. Proof that Lia Kahn had ever lived—still lived. Gone.

  Terminated.

  I panicked.

  Which I guess is why I didn’t scream for my father, who could probably have voiced someone at Connexion and bullied them into giving back what they’d stolen from me. I just linked into a public zone, I voiced Auden, and I told him I needed him.