Skinned -1

Hacking Harvard

The Seven Deadly Sins series

For Norton Wise,

under whose warm and watchful eye

this story first began, even if neither of us

realized it at the time

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2008 by Robin Wasserman

Al rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as fol ows:

Wasserman, Robin.

Skinned / Robin Wasserman.—1st Simon Pulse ed.

p. cm.

Summary: To save her from dying in a horrible accident, Lia's wealthy parents transplant her brain into a mechanical body.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-9635-4

ISBN-10: 1-4169-9635-4

[1. Science fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.W25865Sk 2008

[Fic]—dc22

2008015306

Visit us on the Web:

http://www.SimonandSchuster.com

If you had never seen anything but mounds of lead, pieces of marble, stones, and pebbles, and you were presented with a beautiful windup watch and little automata that spoke, sang, played the flute, ate, and drank, such as those which dextrous artists now know how to make, what would you think of them, how would you judge them, before you examined the springs that made them move? Would you not be led to believe that they had a soul like your own…?

—Anonymous,

1744 Translated from the French by Gaby Wood

THE FIRST DAY

EYES WIDE OPEN

NOTHING

MOUTH CLOSED

VISITING DAY

FAITH

THE BODY

SOBERED UP

DATE NIGHT

LIFE SUPPORT

ONE OF US

TERMINATED

JUMP

TURNING BACK

CONTROL AND RELEASE

IN THE DARK

FORGIVENESS

LETTING GO

NUMB

Lia’s story continues in…
CRASHED

“As last days go, mine sucked.”

L
ia Kahn is dead.

I am Lia Kahn.

Therefore—because this is a logic problem even a dimwitted child could solve—I am dead.

Except here’s the thing: I’m not.

“Don’t panic.”

It was my father’s voice.

It was—and it wasn’t. It sounded wrong. Muffled and tinny, but somehow, at the same time, too clear and too precise.

There was no pain.

But I knew—before I knew anything else—I knew there should have been.

Something pried open my eyes. The world was a kaleidoscope, shapes and colors spinning without pattern, without sense until, without warning, my eyes closed again, and there was nothing. No pain, no sensation, no sense of whether I was lying down or standing up. It wasn’t that I couldn’t move my legs. It wasn’t even that I couldn’t
feel
my legs. It was that, with my eyes closed, I couldn’t have said whether I had legs or not.

Or arms.

Or anything.

I think, therefore I am
, I thought with a wave of giddiness. I would have giggled, but I couldn’t feel my mouth.

I panicked.

Paralyzed.

There had been a car, I remembered that. And a noise, like a scream but not quite; not animal and not human.

And fire. Something on fire. The smel of something burning. I remembered that.

I didn’t want to remember that.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t open my own eyes.

They don’t know I’m awake in here
. In my mind I heard the pounding heartbeat that I could no longer feel, felt imaginary lungs constricting in terror, tasted the salt of invisible tears.
They can’t
.

To my father; to my mother, who I imagined huddled outside the room, crying, unable to come inside; to the doctors, who my father would surely have had shipped in from al over the world; to Zoie, who should have been in the car, who should have been the one—

To al of them I would appear unconscious. Unaware.

I could imagine time slipping by, the doctor’s voice rising over my mother’s sobs. Stil no response.
Still no movement, no sound, no flicker of her eyes. Still no sign of life.

My eyes were opened again, for longer this time. The colors swam together, resolving into blurry shapes, a world underwater. At the upper fringe of my vision I caught something bulbous and fleshy, fingers prying my lids apart. And hovering over me, a dim, fuzzy figure, speaking with my father’s voice.

“I don’t know if you can hear me yet.” His tone was steady, his words stiff. “But I assure you everything wil be al right. Try to be patient.” My father pul ed his hand away from my face, and my eyelids met again, shutting me behind a screen of black. He stayed. I knew, because I could hear his breathing—just not my own.

As last days go, mine sucked.

The last day I would have chosen—the last day I deserved—would have involved more chocolate. Significantly more. Dark. Milk. White. Bittersweet. Olive infused. Caramel fil ed. Truffle. Ganache. There would have been cheese, too, the soft, runny kind that stinks up a room as it dribbles down your throat. I would have lay in bed al day, eating the food I can no longer eat, listening to the music I no longer care to hear,
feeling
. The scratchy cotton of the sheets. The pil owcase, at first cool to the touch, warmth slowly blooming against my cheek. Stale air hissing out of the vent, sweeping my bangs across my forehead. And Walker—because if I had known, I would have made him come over, I would have said screw my parents, forget my sister, just be here, with me, today—I would have felt the downy hair on his arms and the scratchy bristles sprouting on his chin, which, despite my instructions, he was stil too lazy to shave more than once a week. I would have felt his fingertips on my skin, a ticklish graze so light that, for al that it promised and refused to deliver, it almost hurt. I would have tasted peppermint on his lips and known it meant he’d elected gum over toothpaste that morning. I would have made him dig his stubby nails into my skin, not only because I didn’t want him to let go, but because along with one last real pleasure, I would have wanted one last pain.

This can’t be happening.

Not to me.

I lay there. I tried to be patient, as my father had asked. I waited to wake up.

Yeah, I know: total cliché.
This must be a dream.
You tel yourself that, and maybe you even pinch yourself, even though you know it’s cheesy, that the mere act proves it’s
not
a dream. In a dream you never question reality. In a dream people vanish, buildings appear, scenes shift, you fly. You fal . It al makes perfect sense. You only reject weirdness when you’re awake.

So I waited to wake up.

Big shock: I didn’t.

Stage one, denial. Check.

I learned the five stages of grief when my grandfather died. Not that I passed through them. Not that I grieved, not real y, not for some guy I’d only met twice, who my father seemed to loathe and my mother, the dead man’s only daughter, claimed to barely remember. She cried anyway, and my father put up with it—for a few days, at least. We al did. He brought her flowers. I didn’t rol my eyes, not even when she knocked over her glass at dinner for the third time in a row, with that same annoying aren’t-I-clumsy giggle. And Zo pumped the network and dug up the five stages of grief.