Skinned -1 (12 page)

It begins now.

The first thing that registered were their clothes. Loose, il -fitting, dul -colors, Cass in a T-shirt with a printed, unchanging slogan, Terra in jeans that sagged on her ass and a black shirt too loose and too worn, without any visible tech, like something you’d find in a city, or from one of those thrift zones Zo was always haunting for new retro rags.

The second thing:
“Zo Zo!”

That was Cass’s squeal, Cass’s wide grin—and then she saw me, and both of them faded away.

She’d cut her black hair short and spiky, cropping it with a dusting of pink. “Lia?” Cass narrowed her eyes as if squinting would squeeze my features back to their familiar shape—or maybe block them out altogether. “Is that…you?”

“It’s me.” I didn’t dare try a smile. “In the flesh.”

No one laughed. Terra looked sick. She hip-bumped Zo.

“Zo Zo, why didn’t you tel us that your sister was coming back today?” she asked with a determined perk. “We would have…done something special. To celebrate.” Terra’s hair was the same, but she was actual y—it didn’t seem possible—wearing
lipstick
. And some kind of purple glitter above her eyes. Which didn’t make sense, because no one wore makeup anymore, except the wrinkled poor who couldn’t afford gen-tech or lift-tucks, and trashy retro slummers who thought it was cool to pretend they fit in to the first group. Oh, and seniles, who didn’t count, since they didn’t even know what year it was and so couldn’t be expected to remember that makeup had gone out with TVs and artificial preservatives. Why spend al that credit on the perfect face if any random could match the effect with a black marker and some pinkish paint? Zo was wearing lipstick too, of course, but that was nothing new.

“I asked, uh,
Zo Zo”
—I shot Zo a look. She ignored it—“not to say anything.” A lie. Like I could ever have imagined Zo talking to
my
friends. “Don’t blame her.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Cass chirped. “You’re back!”

“Tel us everything,” Terra said.
“Everything.”

“Zo Zo wouldn’t spil ,” Cass said, thwapping Zo’s shoulder. “No matter how many times we asked. And, of course,
someone
has been total y zoned out forever.”

“Yeah…” I didn’t want to explain how I’d been lurking on the network in stealth mode, peeking over everyone’s shoulders, or why I hadn’t texted anyone back. Especial y not with Zo—excuse me,
Zo Zo
—standing right there, listening to every word. “Sorry about that. I had a lot to, you know, deal with. For a while.”

“We can imagine,” Cass said.

“No, we can’t.” Terra sounded pissed. “Because we don’t know anything.”

“But we want to.” Cass touched my shoulder. “We do.”

Zo flicked a finger across her inner wrist, and the smal screen she’d temp-adhered flashed twice. “Time, ladies.”

“Oh!” Cass blushed. “Right. We’re late. So, info dump later? Lunch?”

“Uh, sure—Wait, no, it’s Monday.” When it came to ruling the pack, lunch was key, but that was Tuesday through Friday. Mondays belonged to Walker. That had always been the deal, from the beginning.

“You and
Walker
?” Terra asked. “You mean he didn’t—”

“Walker wil deal,” Cass cut in.

He didn’t what?
I thought. But didn’t ask.

“It’l be fine,” Cass said. “Trust me. Lunch.”

“Lunch,” I agreed. Walker could wait. “But where are you going?”

“Too complicated.” Cass giggled as Terra tugged her away. “Later. Lunch.”

“Right. Later. Lunch.” I grabbed Zo before she could fol ow them. “So?”

She shook me off. “So what?”

“So since when do you steal my best friends?”

She smirked. “Maybe they stole me.”

“And where are you al going?”

“They’re
your
best friends. Shouldn’t you already know?”

“You know I haven’t talked to them in months,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“Zo!”

“I’m late.” She spun away, pausing only to shoot back the last word. “And at school it’s Zoie. Or Zo Zo.”

I was used to people watching me. I just wasn’t used to them gawking, then twisting away as soon as I caught them at it. The hal ways were the worst. Conversation died as soon as I got close—sometimes tapering off, like a seeping wound that final y, as the heart stops pumping, runs out of blood, and sometimes cut off in its prime, a gunshot victim dropped by eight grams of lead. I knew the conversations that reached a violent, abrupt end were the ones about me, the machine roaming the hal s claiming to be Lia Kahn. The other ones—the stumbling, mumbling trailings off into awkward silence—were just the result of nobody knowing what to say. That was at least better than the randoms who came up to me al day knowing
exactly
what to say, and this—no matter which words they used to disguise it—boiled down to “smile for the camera” as they aimed their ViMs at my face, zooming in for a close-up, pumping me for details they could post on their zone or a local stalker site and turn us both into fame whores.

I didn’t smile.

In class, even the teachers stared, not like they had much else to do beyond babysit us while we got our real education from the network. Which meant I watched my ViM screen while the rest of them watched me. The only relief came in biotech, usual y the worst of al possible evils, but hidden behind the thick plastic face mask, hunched over my splicing kit, I could almost pass for normal.

Walker didn’t respond to my text about lunch, and when I showed up in the cafeteria, he wasn’t there. So I sat with the usual suspects—plus Zo—at the usual table in the front of the room, where everyone could look as much as they wanted. Surrounded by my friends, it was almost possible to pretend they were staring for the old reasons, wondering what we had that they didn’t, where they’d gone wrong between
then
—the half-remembered, better-forgotten days of al -men-are-created-equal playdates and birthday parties when no one cared how loud you were, how rude you were, how ugly you were, how stupid you were, how lame you were, because we were al too young and so too dumb to notice—and
now
, when how you looked and how you talked mattered as much as it should.

The Helmsley School was built three hundred years ago, for people who were almost as rich as we were, and the cafeteria, with its wood panels, floor-to-ceiling windows, and scal oped ceiling, was a suitably regal match for the exterior, al stone columns and brick arches. Thanks to the population crash and the upswing in linked ed, only half the tables were fil ed, but any group larger than three is enough for an us/them divide. After al , that was—as we’d learned in kindergarten—the key to civilization and the survival of the species. Finite supply plus infinite demand equaled conflict, battle, nature red in tooth and claw; bloody struggle for turf, status, sex equaled survival of the fittest. And we were the fittest.

Staying at the top meant defying expectations and reversing the norm, because there was nothing exclusive about acting like everyone else. Which meant that if the rest of the school was gaping at my new face and freakish body, my friends, not to mention the people I counted as friends by virtue of social proximity, would ignore the obvious, forgo the questions, and act as if they ate with a skinner every day—as, from now on, they would. Except for the fact that the skinner wasn’t eating.

Which wasn’t as awkward as the fact that my sister was. And was doing so at
my
table.

Or the fact that everyone else was tricked out in retro slum gear, just like her. I was the only person wearing anything with visible tech—the only person at the table, at least. I was dressed exactly like everyone else in the room. Normal.

But the clothes didn’t explain why everything felt so wrong. You didn’t claw your way to the top of the pyramid without knowing how to read people. You needed a radar, something to sense the smal est of fluctuations in the social field. You needed the skil s to know, even with your eyes closed and your ears plugged, who was scheming, who was suffering, who was gaining on you, who was on the way out. If you couldn’t figure out that last one, chances are, it was you.

It wasn’t the kind of thing you could learn. You either had it or you didn’t.

Except it turned out there was a third option: You had it, and then you lost it.

Part of it was them. No one could act normal, not while I was in the room.

Part of it was me.

The things I used to know about people, the things I
understood
…It wasn’t a rational thing. It was just something I
felt
, like the way I could feel when someone was watching me.

I couldn’t do that anymore either.

I felt like I’d gone blind.

It didn’t help that I barely knew half the people at the table, especial y the two grunters pawing Cass and Terra—the reason, I quickly found out, they’d run off so quickly that morning. New season, new boys.

No sign of Walker.

No one asked me where he was.

Bliss had picked that day’s b-mod, which meant—big surprise—everyone was blissed out. Everyone except me, since b-mods wouldn’t do much for someone without brain chemicals to modify. I’d half expected them to opt for some retro drugs to match the retro clothes. Some of Zo’s dozers, maybe, or even something alcohol based, like in the bad old days of hangovers and beer bel ies. But no matter how in retro was, it couldn’t offer anything that would kick in immediately and wear off by the end of the period. Advantage: b-mods. As far as I was concerned, bliss mods were bad enough when I was on them too, always leaving a weird moody aftertaste, like crashing after a sugar high. Staying cold sober while the rest of them blissed up? Infinitely worse.

“So do you have, like, superpowers?” That was Cass’s mouth breather. It was worse when guys giggled. That just wasn’t natural. “Are you an evil crime fighter now?” Cass glared at him, smacking his hand away when he tried to squeeze my bicep.

Terra tugged at my print-shirt. “You got a uniform on under here? For your secret identity?”

Zo blew out a laugh. It was the first time since the accident that I’d seen her with a real smile. “
I’m
the superhero.” She narrowed her eyes at Cass. “The power to wither with a single glare.”

Cass clutched at her chest. “You got me!” She toppled over, tumbling into me. “Oh. Sorry.” She sprang up, posture straight, arms assembled in her lap, a careful four or five inches away from mine. No one spoke.

“Apparently I have the power of awkwardness,” I joked. Awkwardly. “Lia Kahn, super-buzz-kil er.”

No one laughed.

Terra’s boy—Axe or Jax or something; it wasn’t clear and since no one else seemed to care, I didn’t either—grunted something about his bal s itching, and how he’d prefer the power to scratch them without anyone seeing. Cass elbowed her guy, who was busy making an adjustment of his own. “How about
you
try that power sometime.” She pul ed his hand out of his lap—and didn’t let go.

“Power,” the guy repeated. “Pow-er. Weird word. Word weeeeiiiird.” He wrapped his hairy arms around Cass, who dissolved into a shivering mass of giggles.

The bliss mod was kicking it up.

“What if we only walk in wouble-woo words,” Bliss suggested, laughing.

Zo shrugged and flashed a sly smile. “Whatever works.”

“Why?” Terra asked.

“Why wot!” her boy crowed.

“Where’s Walker?” Bliss said, in a way that made me wonder if the whole
w
thing hadn’t just been a convenient way of getting around to the question, except that Bliss wasn’t smart enough to formulate such a plan, even when off the drugs.

“Walker’s waiting,” Cass said, and the others nodded, as if that made any sense.

“Wise Walker.”

“Or Walker’s whizzing!”

“What would Walker want?”

“
Who
would Walker want?” Bliss again.

“Walker wonders what’s worse, waiting or wanting or wussing,” Zo said in the tone of someone who knows she’s won a game. Everyone else nodded at wordwise
Zo Zo
. Hail to the chief.

I stood up. “See you guys later.”

“Wait!” Cass cackled. “We…uh, w—” The letter almost foiled her. Then, at the last minute, “We want Wia!”

Bliss pointed at me. “Whiner.” Then giggled and shook her head. “Whatever.”

Everyone lifted a glass, toasted. “Whatever!”

So I ditched the table and the cafeteria, and spent the rest of lunch outside, where I could be alone because it was too cold, at least too cold for anyone warm-blooded enough to care. Those of us running on battery power, on the other hand, could sit under a tree, wait for the bel , ignore the wind and the frost, because none of it—
none
of it—mattered.

Whatever.

That was the first day. And the next few weren’t any better. My social life was hemorrhaging. And time, contrary to popular opinion, did not heal the wound. I retrofitted my wardrobe; I stuck it out through one lunch after another, b-mod haze and al . I did
not
ask Zo how she’d managed to weasel her way into every corner of my life or what had happened to her own life and the randoms she used to know and love. I didn’t ask Zo much of anything. We shared a house, shared a lunch table, a set of friends, even—despite a lack of permission and my conviction that I was probably risking infestation from whatever hardy insects had survived al those decades in someone’s moldy attic—her clothes. But we didn’t talk. Which was fine with me.

I didn’t talk to Cass or Terra, either, not about anything that mattered. And when I asked them about Zo…The first time we were alone, there it was, flat out: Since when don’t we hate my sister? The conversation didn’t get very far.

“After, you know, what happened,” Cass stammered. “We were…”

“Upset,” Terra said. “And worried about her.”

“About you too, of course.”

“But you weren’t here.”

“And you weren’t linked in.”

I waited for them to say they were just being nice—out of character, maybe, but not out of the realm of possibility. That Zo had been so distraught by “what happened” that they’d needed to comfort her, to include her, what any friends would do for a suffering little sister. They didn’t.