Skinned -1 (21 page)

“You don’t embarrass me,” he said final y. “
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 kil 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 stil …”

“Yeah. I get it.” I didn’t, not real y. 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, skil s, personality, that was al 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…Wel , 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, al 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 al the rest of it. But it was stil 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 al believers are Faithers. Just the crazy ones.”

“Yeah, but how do you tel 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, clinical y delusional.”

“Wel , my mother said that in the end, al 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 smal mind, and you’re choosing to live a smal life.”

“So I’ve got a smal mind?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, your mother did,” I snapped.

His face was red. “Wel , 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 final y. 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 tel 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, stil 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 al . 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.

“Al that stuff your mother believed in, about tampering with God’s wil and…al 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 stil hear him.

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

“I don’t agree with her,” he said final y. 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 tel him I’d figured he was a pretentious loser trying to look cool. “That you liked old things. Al 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?”

“Wel , sort of. But also because—I don’t know. It was al 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 al crammed into the same place, al those people stuck in the cities….” I shuddered. It freaked me out just thinking about it. Made me feel like the wal s 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 wel not exist?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, but you thought it,” he said. “Everyone does. And so al those credit-free people just end up in a corp-town or a city, and no one real y 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 actual y
know
anyone who lives in a corp-town? Have you ever
been
to a city?”

“Have you?” I countered.

I could tel 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 tel you. I don’t just wear them because I like old stuff. I actual y…I need them.”

“No one needs glasses anymore.”

“Trust me.” He squinted at me. “Without them, I can barely tel 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 al 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.”

“Wel …” 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 al 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 wil 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. Al 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, al 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—stil 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 bul ied 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.

Then I sat on the edge of my bed, waiting, wondering what I’d been thinking, and whether he would come and what good it would do if he did, and whether I should voice him again and tel him to forget it. And I tried not to think about how my entire life had been deleted.

Psycho Susskind nudged his head against my thigh, then started licking my hand. He rol ed over, and I rubbed my fingers along his bel y, knowing he would pretend to enjoy it for a minute, then twist around and snap at me, tiny fangs closing down on the heel of my hand. He did, and I let him. “Think I liked it better when you hated me, Sussie.” But I scratched him behind his ears, and I let him curl up on my lap.

Auden showed up. Zo let him in, which was lucky, because it meant no explaining. She didn’t talk to me any more than she had to, which worked for me. So Auden was alone when he stepped into my room, hesitantly, with that look on his face that guys get when they think you’re going to cry.

Even though he knew I couldn’t cry.

“It’s al gone,” I said, even though I’d already told him. “They wiped me.”

“It’s just your zone.” He stayed in the doorway, his eyes darting around the room, like he was trying to memorize everything in case the lights suddenly failed—or in case he never got to come back.

“It’s my
life
. And you know it.”

If I could cry, that’s when I would have done it. But instead I hunched over and covered my face with my hands. He sat down next to me, his hands clasped in his lap, like he was afraid of touching me. He’d done it before, but maybe that was why he didn’t want to do it again. Who wanted to touch the dead girl?

“It could be worse, Lia.”

“Is that supposed to be
helpful
?”

“No, I just mean…” He turned red. “I meant that this is bigger than just losing your zone, and maybe you’re lucky that’s al it was. Connexion’s not the only corp that’s trying this. I read there was this one guy who almost lost al his credit when—”

“I don’t give a shit about some guy!” I exploded. “This is about
me
!”

Even I knew how hateful that sounded. But I couldn’t take it back.

“What’s going on?” he asked quietly.

“I’m pretty sure I just told you.”