Skinned -1 (8 page)

“I’m sorry.” I twisted in bed, risking a glance at her face.

She raised just one eyebrow this time, which was even more impressive. “Yeah. You are.” She turned away, revealing a broad swath of artificial flesh exposed by her backless shirt. I didn’t know how she could stand it. Even at night I tried to cover up as much as possible. The more of me I could hide under the clothes, the less there was for others—for me—to see. Beneath the clothes I could imagine myself normal. Quinn, on the other hand, left very little to the imagination. She stalked out of the room, but paused in the doorway, tapping her fingers against the wal console. Lights off, lights on. Lights off. “You coming?”

I was.

“What are you doing?” I whispered as we waited at the elevators. “It’s not like they’l work for us.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Wasn’t it obvious? “We’re not supposed to leave here. The elevators are probably programmed.”

“Have you actual y tried?” Quinn sounded bored, like she already knew the answer.

“No, but—”

“I have.” The elevator door opened, and as I hesitated, she asked again. “You coming?”

It had never occurred to me that I would be al owed to leave floor thirteen. Of course, it had never occurred to me to want to.

“The other floors are biorestricted,” Quinn said, nodding toward the skimmer that would col ect and analyze our DNA samples. If, that is, we’d had any to give. “But the ground floor’s al ours.”

“Where are we going?” It felt strange to be talking to someone new after al this time. I had no reason to trust her. But I did.

It’s because she’s like me,
I thought.
She knows.

But I pushed the thought away. It was like I’d told Sascha. Quinn and I had nothing in common but circuitry and some layers of flesh-colored polymer.

“Field trip.” She smiled, and, again, it kil ed me how much better her expressions were than mine, how much more natural. In the dark it had been easy to mistake her for someone real. No one would make that mistake about me. “Don’t get too excited.”

The grassy stretch bounding the woods was larger than it had looked from the lounge window. The grass was beaded with dew, cold drops that seeped through the thin BioMax pajamas, but that didn’t bother me. Just like the brutal wind raking across us didn’t matter.

“Can you imagine actual y seeing the stars?” Quinn asked. She’d selected a dark swath of grass sandwiched between the floodlit puddles of light, then stripped off her clothes and let herself fal backward, naked against the brush. I kept my clothes on my body and my feet on the ground.

At least at first.

“Get down here,” Quinn had commanded.

“Look, Quinn, it’s okay if you…but I don’t—”

She laughed. “You think I brought you out here for
that
?” She stretched her arms out to her sides and down again, stick wings flapping through the grass. “Shirts or skins, I don’t care. Just lie down.”

I wasn’t about to take orders from
her
.

But I lay down.

“You used to be able to see them. Stars and planets and a moon,” she said now, pointing at the reddish sky.

The back of my neck was already smeared with dew. But she’d been right. It felt good to lie there in the grass, in the dark. The sky felt closer.

“You can stil see the moon.” The tel tale white haze was hanging low, making the clouds shimmer.

“Not like that,” Quinn said. “A bright white circle cut out of pure black. And stars like diamonds, everywhere.”

“I know. I’ve seen.”

“Not on the vids,” she said. “That doesn’t count.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“If you say so.”

We were quiet for a minute. I stared up, trying to imagine it, a clear sky, a mil ion stars. Most of the vids I’d seen came from just before the war turned the atmosphere into a planet-size atomic dust bal . The dust was mostly gone—along with the people who’d built the nukes and the nut jobs who’d launched them and the thousands who’d gone up in smoke in the first attacks and the mil ions who’d been dead by the end of that year or the next. Along with the place cal ed Mecca and the place cal ed Jerusalem and al the other forgotten places that exist now only as meaningless syl ables in the Pledge of Forgiveness. The dust was gone, but the stars had never come back. Pol ution, cloud cover, ambient light, whatever chemicals they’d used to cleanse the air and patch up the ozone, the law of unintended consequences come to murky life. Someone would fix it someday, I figured. But until then? No stars. My parents talked about them sometimes, late at night, usual y when they were dropped on downers, which made them goopy about the past. But I didn’t get the big deal. Who cared if the sky glowed reddish purple al night long? It was pretty, and wasn’t that the point?

“Why are we here, Quinn?”

She clawed her fingers into the ground and dug up two clumps of grass, letting the dirt sift through her fingers. “So we don’t miss any of it.”

“What?”

“
This
. Feeling. Seeing. Being. Everything. The dew. The cold. That sound, the wind in the grass. You hear that? It’s so…real.” I didn’t know I’d had the hope until the hope died. So she wasn’t the same as me, after al ; she
didn’t
understand. She didn’t get that
none
of it was real, not anymore, that the dew felt wrong, the cold felt wrong, the sounds sounded wrong, everything was wrong, everything was distant, everything was fake. Or maybe it was the opposite—everything was real except for me.

I’d been right the first time. Quinn and I had nothing in common. “Whatever you say.”

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“What does?” Nothing did.

“The grass.” She laughed. “Doesn’t it tickle?”

“Yeah. I guess.” No.

“It’s like us, you know.”

“What, the grass?” I said. “Why, because people around here are always walking on it?”

“Because it looks natural and al , but inside, it’s got a secret. It’s better. Manmade, right? New and improved.” Just because the grass—like the trees, like the birds, like pretty much everything—had been genetical y modified to survive the increasingly crappy climate, smoggy sky, and arid earth, didn’t make it like us. It was stil alive. “The grass stil looks like grass,” I told her. “Seen a mirror lately? There’s no secret. We look like…exactly what we are.”

“You got a boyfriend?”

“What?” Under other circumstances I would have wondered what she was on. But I knew al too wel she wasn’t on anything. If there were such a thing as a drug for skinners, I’d be on permanent mental vacation.

“Or girlfriend, whatever.”

“Boyfriend,” I admitted. “Walker.”

“You two slamming?”

“What?”

“You. Walker. Slamming. Poking. Fucking. You need a definition? When a boy and a girl real y love each other—”

“I know what it means. I just don’t think it’s any of your business.”

“I’m only asking because…Wel , have you? Since, you know?”

The thought repulsed me. The idea of Walker’s hands touching the skin, the look on his face when he peered into the dead eyes, the feeling—the nonfeeling—of his lips on the pale pink flesh-textured sacs that rimmed my false teeth. The thick, clumsy thing that functioned as a tongue. Would I even know what to do, or would it be like learning to walk again? Or worse, I thought, remembering the grunting and squealing. Like learning to talk. And that was just kissing. Anything else…I couldn’t think about it. “Have
you
?” I countered.

She shook her head. “But look at my choices. Like I’m going to slam Asa?”

“You
trying
to make me vomit?”

“Good luck with that, considering the whole no-stomach thing.” She laughed. “Obviously options are limited. And I’ve been waiting a long time.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Longer than you. Four months, maybe? But that’s not what I’m talking about.” She didn’t offer to explain.

This girl was completely creeping me out. But not in an entirely bad way.

“So you haven’t, uh, had any visitors?” I asked final y. “No guys or…whatever?”

“No guys. No whatevers.”

“Sorry.”

“Why?” Quinn sat up, crossing her legs and resting her elbows on her knees. “According to you, it’s not like I’m missing out on much family fun time.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“What?”

“Ask. You know you want to.” Quinn brushed her hands through her long, black hair, smiling. “I love this,” she said, dropping the inky curtain across her face, and then giving her head a violent shake, whipping the hair back over her shoulders. “They got it exactly right.”

She was crazy, I decided. It was as if she
liked
living like this.

“Go ahead, ask,” she said again. “I real y don’t care.”

“And I real y don’t want to know,” I lied. “But fine. Why no visitors?”

“Dead parents, remember?”

If she wanted to act like it was no big deal, so would I. “Yeah. You said. Poor little orphan. But there’s got to be someone.” She lay back down in the grass, turning her face away from me. “Doctors. Staff. No one important. Not that it matters now.”

“Why not?”

“Because everything’s different now. Once I’m out of here? It’s a new life. Anything I want.
Anything.
”

“How did they die?” I asked quietly.

“I thought you didn’t want to hear the tragic saga?”

“Maybe I changed my mind. Unless it’s too hard for you to talk about.” But I didn’t say it the way Sascha would have, al fake sensitive and understanding. I said it like a chal enge, and that’s the way she took it.

“Okay, but I’m just warning you, it’s quite tragic. You’re going to feel pretty sorry for me.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“It was a car accident,” she said.

I flinched. And even in the darkness she must have seen.

“Yeah, weird, isn’t it? Who gets in car crashes anymore? But here we are. Statistical y improbable freaks.”

“Were you in the car? When it…”

“I was three. We were—” She paused, then barked out a laugh. “This is the first time I’ve ever had to actual y tel someone, you know? I didn’t know it would be so…”

“You never told
anyone
?” That was too much, too soon. Especial y from a girl who wouldn’t even tel me her last name.

“It’s not like you’re special or anything. I just don’t…I don’t meet a lot of new people. Or I didn’t. Before.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I was three,” she said quickly. “We were going to visit someone, I don’t even know who. I just remember they got me al dressed up, and it was exciting. I mean, they must have taken me off the grounds before, at least a couple times, but I guess I was too young to remember. I remember this, though. I remember being in the car seat, and listening to some song, and playing some stupid vidgame for babies—You remember, the one with the dinosaurs?”

I nodded.

“I was winning. And then—I don’t know. I don’t remember. Next thing, I wake up, and I’m in a hospital. They’re dead. And I’m…” She threaded her fingers through her hair, then let her arms fal across her face. “It was a bad accident.”

“You were hurt.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Bad?” I guessed.

“Worse.”

“Worse than what?”

“Than whatever you’re picturing. Worse.” Her voice hardened. “Let’s just say that prosthetics and organ transplants and al that? Fine. Great, if you’re an adult. But when you break a three year old, it’s not so easy to put her together again.”

Enough,
I thought.
I get it.
But I didn’t say anything. And she didn’t stop.

“Picture a room. Lots of machines. A bed. People to shovel in the food, shovel out the shit, shoot up the painkil ers. People to clean. People to do anything and everything. And in the bed, wel …a thing that eats and shits and gets high and gets cleaned and the rest of the time just pretty much lays there.” But I didn’t want to picture it. “How long did it take?”

“To what?”

“To recover.”

“Who said I recovered?”

“I just assumed….”

“Sorry to disappoint, but that was it. That room. That bed.”

“But what about school? What about friends, or…” Or a life.

“I saw it al on the vids. Same thing, right? That’s what you said.”

That’s what I had said.

“I had it al ,” she said. “Stuff to read. People to talk to. Vids to watch. The whole network at my fingertips. Wel , not fingertips. There weren’t any of those. But I got by. Massive amounts of credit wil do that for you. And then as soon as I turned sixteen…”

“What?”

She stood up. “This,” she said, sweeping her arms out and spinning around. “This body that actual y
works
. This life. Anything I want.”

“You did this to yourself?” I asked, incredulous. “On purpose?”

“Did you hear anything I said?”

“I did, I get it, I just can’t imagine anyone actual y choosing…
this
.”

“You obviously don’t get it. Or you would see this was better than anything I could have had. And from what I hear, anything
you
could have had, after what happened.” I should have known. The inevitable you-should-be-grateful guilt-trip bul shit. Like she knew anything about me.

“You let them
kill
you,” I said. “You walked in here—”

“Walked.” She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“—and asked them to kil you. To chop up your brain, make a copy, and stick it into some machine.”

“Damn right. Quinn Sharpe is dead. I would have kil ed her myself, if I could. You’re walking around here al day sulking—yeah, I’ve been watching; you’ve been too busy whining to notice—when you should be celebrating. You should be fucking ecstatic.”

“Look, I get it, I do. It makes sense, why you’d want to do it. And I get why this would seem better for you than before. But it’s different for me. What I was, what I lost—It’s different.”

Quinn shook her head. “The only difference is that you don’t get it, not yet. It doesn’t matter how you got here. What matters is that we’re here, now. The past is over. The people we were? Dead. Like you would be. Like you
should
be. Dead. You want the rest of your life to be a funeral? Or you want to actual y
live
?” That was my cue. I was supposed to jump to my feet and clasp her hands, spin in circles, somersault through the grass, dance in the moonlight, drink in the fact that I could swing my arms and pump my legs, that I was alive, in motion, in control. I was supposed to embrace the possibilities and the future, to wake up to a new life. It would be the turning point, some kind of spiritual rehabilitation, an end to the sulking and the self-pitying, a beginning of everything.