Skinned

  “It’s fine.” I just wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’m over him, I think,” I said, and it felt true. “If he was with someone else, anyone but—” I couldn’t say it out loud. Instead I lowered my head and pressed the heels of my hands over my eyes. “What he said, about being willing to try? He was. And what if he’s the only one who…What if no other guy…I mean, who would want me like this?”

  His hand brushed my neck, flitted to my shoulder, then disappeared. “He’s not the only one.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No. Lia. I’ve been waiting to—I mean, I didn’t know how—I have to tell you—” The hand was back, resting firmly on my shoulder this time, heavy. “He’s not the only one who would. Want you. Like this.”

  Shit.

  “Auden, you don’t have to—”

  But he wouldn’t stop.

  “I know you probably don’t see me like that,” he said, talking quickly, like if he paused for breath he wouldn’t get himself going again, although I guess that was too much to ask for. “But I think you’re amazing and when I’m with you, it’s like we really understand each other, you know, and I think you’re beautiful, you’re more beautiful like this than you ever were before—”

  Not now, I thought, furious with him, furious with myself. Not now, when I need you. Don’t do this.

  “I know I shouldn’t say anything, I know, I always say something, I always ruin things, I should just let it happen, but I can’t let you think that no one would—because I would, I do, I just…” His entire body had gone rigid. “What do you think?”

  “I’m a little…This has been a weird day for me,” I said, stalling. “You know, with—” I glanced toward the spot they’d been leaning against, where I imagined I could still see their afterimage bright against the bricks.

  “I know.” He shook himself all over. “I know. It was stupid. Bad timing.”

  Damn right. But, “No, it’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have thought—”

  I kissed him.

  Because he wanted me to. Because he wanted me. Because no one else did. Because he’d saved me, more than once.

  Because why not?

  And in the fairy tale that’s it, the end, happily ever after.

  In the fairy tale they never mention the part about your tongues scraping against each other or your foreheads bumping or your nose getting bent and flattened or his tongue just sitting there in your mouth, limp and wet, and then spinning around like a pinwheel, bouncing back and forth between your fake palate and your porcelain teeth. In the fairy tale they never mention how it tastes, although to me it didn’t taste like anything at all.

  I’m not saying he was a bad kisser.

  I’m not saying he was great, because he wasn’t. But I’m not saying it was his fault, even though maybe it was. Or maybe it was mine.

  I’m just saying it was bad.

  Worse than bad. It was nothing. Like kissing my own balled-up fist, as I’d done for practice when I was a kid. I wanted not to care, to just go with it, because it would have been so easy, it would have made him happy, and it would have made me…not alone.

  When our faces separated, he was smiling, his eyes glazed and dewy, his mouth half open, like he wasn’t sure whether to speak or to lunge in for another round.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as gently as I could. “I can’t.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No!” I said quickly. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  He sagged, a deflated balloon. “I should have known you would never…not with me.”

  “It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just too much right now.”

  “You don’t have to say that,” he said bitterly. “I know I’m not Walker. I do have a mirror, you know. I get it.”

  “It not you.” I wanted to touch him, to shake him. “Everything’s so…screwed up. And I’m”—I gestured down at myself, at the body—“I’m different. We’re different, and I don’t think the two of us…”

  “Is this about what that guy said? Jude?” Auden’s fingers flickered across the bandage on his palm. “I told you, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “It’s not about what he said. It’s what I know. This wouldn’t work. And if it didn’t…” Now I did touch him—I took his hand. He pulled away. “I don’t want to mess this up, what we have. I can’t risk that.”

  “Why not?” He was edging toward a whine. “If you really want something, sometimes it’s worth taking a chance.”

  But what if you really didn’t want something?

  “It’s not going to work, Auden.”

  “Because you don’t want it to work,” he snapped.

  “Because it won’t!” Why couldn’t he just let it go? “Stop pushing it!”

  “I know you’re scared,” he said. “I’m scared too. But we can try this together. We can.”

  I needed to make him stop. And I was pretty sure I knew how to do it.

  “Why do you really want this so bad?” I asked in a low voice. “Is it me, or is it this stupid body?”

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  “Admit it, you’re obsessed with what I am, with what it’s like being a mech, with everything about it—”

  “Because I’m your friend,” he protested. “Because I care!”

  “But that came later. You were obsessed before—before you even knew me. You couldn’t stay away.”

  “So I was curious! So what? And you know I was just trying to help.”

  “Maybe—or maybe you’ve got some weird mech fetish. And you can’t stop until you know how everything works, right?”

  He drew himself up very straight and very still. “I can’t believe you would say that.”

  I couldn’t believe it either. And I couldn’t keep going, even if it was the one thing guaranteed to drive him away. Because I didn’t want him to go away. I just wanted him to shut up and leave it alone.

  “I didn’t mean it,” I admitted.

  “I would never…” I could barely hear him. “That’s not who I am.”

  “I know.”

  Then neither of us said anything. We just sat with our backs to the wall and our shoulders almost, but not quite, touching.

  “I shouldn’t have pushed,” he said, finally cutting through the dead air.

  “I shouldn’t have said that to you. That was cruel.”

  Another long pause.

  “We would never have been friends, would we, if it weren’t for your accident,” he said, asking a question that wasn’t a question. “We probably would have graduated without ever having a single conversation.”

  I kept staring straight ahead. “Probably.”

  “And even if we had talked…”

  “You would have hated me,” I said. “Shallow, superficial bitch, remember?”

  “You wouldn’t have bothered to hate me. It wouldn’t have been worth it to you.”

  I didn’t deny it.

  “But I’m different now,” I said. “Everything’s different.”

  “I know. But would you keep it that way?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you had a choice, if you could go backward. Would you want to be the old Lia Kahn again, with your old life and your old friends—or stay like this, who you are now?” Stay with me, he didn’t say, but it was all over his face.

  “Auden—”

  “Don’t lie,” he said. “Please.”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “I’d go back. Of course I’d go back.”

  “Even if it meant losing—”

  “No matter what it meant,” I said firmly. “If I could have my body back, my life back, don’t you think I’d want it? No matter what?”

  “No matter what.” He stood up. “Good to know.”

  “Auden, that’s not fair. You can’t expect me to—”

  “I don’t expect anything.”

  “Don??
?t go,” I said. “Not like this.”

  “I can’t stay,” he said. “Not like this.”

  He left. I stayed. Maybe I should have tried, I thought. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was me.

  Before, rejecting guys had been easy—and I’d had a lot of practice. Before, I knew what it felt like when it felt right. I knew what I wanted. And I knew there would always be someone new who would want me.

  Before.

  He’s just not my type, I thought. Too scrawny. Too intense. Too weird.

  But I couldn’t be sure. Walker was my type—and I didn’t want him, either. Not really. Not anymore.

  Maybe I wasn’t programmed to want. Maybe that was just something else lost, like running, like music. Something else that had slipped through the cracks of their scanning and modeling. Maybe it was one of those intangibles—like a soul, like free will—that didn’t exist, not physically, and so wasn’t supposed to exist at all.

  CONTROL AND RELEASE

  “Nothing was left but an absence.”

  The waterfall wasn’t loud enough to drown out my thoughts. But it was a start. I found myself a wide, flat rock near the bank, a few feet from where the water plunged over the edge. The place looked different in the light. For one thing, you could see the bottom clearly. Which made it look even farther away. Beyond the rumbling white water, the river ribboned out flat and calm again, but not for long. There was another precipice, another plunge, another fall. From where I sat, I couldn’t see whether it was as long or as deep; the river just dropped away. I took a pic—not of the second waterfall, but of the empty space beyond the river, the air where there should have been land. It was crap—a little crooked, like I’d tried an artistic shot and failed miserably when, in fact, I just hadn’t cared enough to steady the lens. I posted it to my new zone anyway. Anything to fill up the empty space.

  A mist rose from the gushing water. I was tempted to stand by the edge, wave my hand through the dewy cloud, but that seemed too close. I might have fallen in; I might have jumped. I stayed where I was, watching the water, trying not to think about Auden and Walker, and especially not about Zo.

  But I couldn’t help hoping that one of them might voice me to apologize, to tell me I’d misunderstood and the whole thing was a hideous mistake. One hour passed, then two. No one did.

  “You probably shouldn’t jump in the daylight. Too easy to get caught.” Like the waterfall, Jude looked different during the day. Every silver streak, every black line etched into his skin, stood out in sharp relief. And seeing him against the pastoral backdrop made him look all the more machinelike.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, jumping up as he sat down.

  “I should ask you that,” he said. “Last I checked, this was my place.”

  “Oh, so now you own the river?”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t scare me. Fire away. I’m staying.”

  “Enjoy,” I said. “I’m going.”

  “After I came all this way? I would have thought a girl like you would come equipped with better manners.”

  “So you’re stalking me now? How’d you know I was here?”

  “I know all.” He smirked.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Okay, wait!” He spread his arms wide in truce. “Your zone, okay? You posted the pic. I recognized the view.”

  “You’ve been lurking on my zone?”

  “What can I say? I have a lot of time on my hands,” Jude said.

  “Use it for something else,” I snapped. “Stay out of my life.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I think you’re worth a little extra effort.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Not another one. Not today. At least this time around I wouldn’t have to worry about letting him down easy. “Look, I’m flattered—Well, I’m not, actually, but let’s say I am. I’m not interested, okay? So—”

  “You think I’m interested?” He burst into laughter. “You really are an egomaniac, aren’t you? I mean, I knew you were spoiled and self-absorbed, that’s par for the course. But this? Please. Trust me, I’m not into the chase. When I want something, it chases me.”

  And I was the egomaniac?

  Still, I sat down again. He had some kind of agenda, that was obvious. And if it wasn’t the expected one, that was interesting. Or at least interesting enough to distract me from the things that actually mattered.

  “So why are you here?” I asked.

  “Brought you something.”

  “What?” Like I cared.

  “Just something to help you let go.”

  “What makes you think I have any interest in doing that?”

  He smiled. “Because letting go, that’s the key. If you’re too scared to let go, you’ll never be in control. Not really.”

  “Is that supposed to make sense?” I asked. “Let go so I can get control? Do you even listen to yourself talk, or do you just spit out this crap at random?”

  “It’s all connected,” he said, so disgustingly pleased with himself. So sure. “People only fear letting go because they fear they won’t be able to get the control back. That they’ll keep going until their urges and instincts destroy them.”

  “But you know better?”

  “I know you’re afraid of what you’ve turned into, but only because you don’t know what it is, not yet. And because you don’t understand it, you think you can’t control it.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “You’re a machine,” he said. “And that means absolute control—or, if you so choose, absolute release. You have the power to decide if you let yourself.” He pulled something out of his pocket, small enough to fit snugly in the palm of his hand. “You wanted to know why I came looking for you? To give you this.”

  He tossed the object at me, and I caught it without thinking. It was a small, black cube with a tiny switch on one side and a slim, round aperture on the other. Harmless.

  “It’s a program,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For you. Or for your brain, at least. You can upload it wirelessly through your ocular nerve.”

  “That’s not possible.” No one at BioMax had said anything about additional programming; no one had hinted that I might be able to…reprogram myself.

  You have a computer inside your head, the Faith leader had said. Programmed by man.

  Normal people—human people—didn’t adjust their programming. They didn’t rewire themselves with chips and wireless projections. They just changed. Or they didn’t.

  “Anything’s possible if you know the right people,” Jude said smugly, like he said everything.

  “What’s it do?”

  “Let’s call it a vivid illustration of my point.”

  I faked a laugh. “You want me to stick something in my brain based on your predictably vague recommendation?”

  “I don’t care what you do,” Jude said, and the way he said it, I almost believed him. Not that it mattered. “Think of it as a dream.”

  “We don’t dream.”

  He gave me a knowing smile. “Yes. That’s what they told you.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Only one way to find out. You say you’re not afraid, right? Prove it.”

  I tossed his little black box back to him. “Just how stupid do you think I am?”

  He smirked. “You really want an answer to that?”

  “Excuse me for not just buying all your crap without question, like one of your brainwashed groupies.”

  “I don’t have to brainwash them,” Jude said. “They know the truth when they hear it.”

  “Unlike me?”

  “Apparently.”

  “So that’s what this is?” I asked. “You’ve made it your own personal mission to convert me?”

  He laughed. It made him look like a different person. No, that’s not quite right. It made him look like a person. “See what I mean?” he said. “Total egomaniac. You should really get that checked out.”
br />   “You’re here, aren’t you?” I pointed out. “Following me?”

  “Maybe I was just in the mood to talk.”

  “To me?”

  He looked around at the wilderness. “Seems like my only viable option.”

  I shrugged. “So talk.”

  “Let’s start with: What’s wrong?” he asked.

  He almost sounded like he really wanted to know. Not that it mattered. “No. I’m not talking about me.”

  “Because?”

  “Recovering egomaniac,” I reminded him.

  He grinned. “The first step is admitting you have a problem.”

  “And the second step is acknowledging that other people do too. So let’s start with you. Why are you following me? Really.”

  He shook his head. “No cheating. That’s still about you.”

  “Fine. How about: Where do you live? What do you do all day when you’re not stalking me? How did you end up a mech—”

  “I told you before,” he said, the joking tone gone from his voice. “The past doesn’t matter. All that matters is what I am now, and that’s everything I want to be.”

  “Come on, how can you say that?”

  “Easy. It’s true.” His eyes flashed.

  Everything I wanted to be had died in that car crash.

  “You really don’t miss it?” I asked. “Not at all?”

  He smiled wryly. “There’s not much to miss. We weren’t all like you.”

  “What’s ‘like me’?”

  “Rich,” he said, ticking it off on his fingers. “Treasured. Sheltered. Deluded.”

  “Is this fun for you? Insulting me every time you open your mouth?”

  “A little.”

  I started to get up again, but he grabbed my arm. “Okay, I’m sorry,” he said. “Don’t go. Please.” I glared, and after a moment he let go. But I sat down again.

  “You think this is some kind of punishment,” he said. And again it almost sounded like he cared. Or at least that he understood.

  “I don’t—”

  “You do,” he said. “Because you don’t let yourself see the possibilities. All you can see is what you’ve lost.”

  Everything.

  “Some of us didn’t have that much to lose,” he continued with less intensity than usual.

  “You do realize you’re being ridiculously vague, right?”