Skinned (11 page)

“
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 bell, 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 all. 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 all 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.

“So no one knew what was going on with you…”

“And Zo just…”

“Surprised us,” Cass said.

“She’s different now,” Terra said.

I wasn’t buying it. “Seems the same to me.” Even though that wasn’t quite true either.

Cass looked away. “Maybe that’s because you’re different too.”

After that, we didn’t talk about it anymore.

Walker and I, on the other hand, did nothing but talk. Which wasn’t exactly our strong suit. I didn’t see him at school, not for days. That was no accident. He was avoiding me, and for a while, I let him. I wasn’t stupid. It’s not like I expected we’d just keep going like nothing had happened. Not right away, at least. He was weirded out, so for a few days, I let him hide. But I knew Walker, and I knew what he needed, even if he didn’t. He needed me.

I staked out his car. He emerged from the building surrounded by people—girls, to be specific, but there was nothing new about that. Walker was that type; he got off on it. But that was fine, because he always ended up with me. As he did this time. The girls spotted me before he did, and faded away.

I watched him walk. It was more of a lope, arms swinging wide, legs sucking up pavement. Walker had never asked me out, not in any kind of sweaty-palmed, bumbling, would-you-like-to-whatever kind of thing, not that anyone did that, but if someone were going to, it wouldn’t be Walker. When it happened, it had happened fast and unmemorably, as if all along both of us had known we would eventually end up together. There had been yet another party, yet another buzz. There had been a late-night, early-morning haze, a group of us sprawled on someone’s floor, heads on stomachs, legs tangled, fingers absentmindedly intertwined, lids dropping shut until only two of us were awake, and while I hadn’t been waiting up for him and he hadn’t been waiting up for me, it seemed like we had. Like the whole night—the party, the group, everything—had been expressly designed to deliver us to this point, to an empty patch of carpet shadowed by the couch, to his arm oh-so-casually sprawled across my thigh, to whatever would happen when he slid toward me and I rolled to face him and our bodies ate up the space between. By which I mean, I had known him forever, but I had never wanted him—until that night, when I suddenly did. He was the one who acted. Brushed my hair out of my face. Kissed me, sleepy-eyed and loose-lipped, soft, and then, like we’d waited too long, even though we hadn’t waited at all, hard. Afterward, when it was already obvious that this wasn’t just another night, that this was a beginning of something, he pretended that he’d been planning it for a while, secretly pining and plotting. He wasn’t lying, not to me, at least. I knew he believed it. But I also knew it had been the same for him as it was for me: lying there, fighting sleep without knowing why, knowing there was a reason to stay awake, something that needed doing, and then, somehow, just
knowing
.

And doing.

“You’re avoiding me,” I said, leaning against the hood of the car.

He shook his head no.

I shook my head yes.

He shrugged. “Been busy.”

“You’re
never
busy,” I said.

“Things change.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

“Walker, I…”

“What?”

I let myself sink back against the car. It was a thing; it had no choice but to hold me up. “It’s been a long week, that’s all.”

“You want to…talk about it?”

“Not really.” And I wasn’t even saying that because I knew he wanted me to, although he clearly did. Mostly I just wanted him to kiss me again, for real this time. But what was I supposed to do.
Ask?

“So…you want to get something to eat?”

I just looked at him.

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

“No problem.” He would learn; we would adjust.

“You want to come over, play some Akira?” he said.

We’d been into the game for months, although he liked it more than I did, especially since he spent most of his play on hunting ghosts in Akira’s craggy moonscape, and zooming down the canyons and slithering through the worm-ridden tunnels always made me a little motion sick. Not that queasiness was much of a problem anymore, but boredom was. Generally after twenty minutes or so of busting virtual creepy crawlies while Walker flirted with slutty snake-women, their naked chests covered with shimmering scales and their users probably a thousand miles away, looking for a quick and easy love-link, I was ready for a nap. Or at least, I was ready to lie down. Usually, with the right combination of sulk and seduction, with Walker on top of me. And maybe that was the point.

“Sure.”

And soon, side by side on his couch, goggled up and strapped in, we disappeared into the world of the game, his av and mine creeping down haunted hallways, hand in hand, touching without feeling, reality forgotten, or at least irrelevant, which was enough.

It was enough until it wasn’t anymore, and then I slipped out of the game and back into the world. He stayed in, twitching, ducking his head, clutching the air, and grabbing for invisible demons, a careful space between us. I could have touched him then. He was too lost in the virtual universe to notice a hand on his leg, his lower back, his face. I’d done it before, more than once, making a game of it; how far could I go before calling him back to the surface, how deep had he sunk, how quickly could I reel him back in. But I didn’t touch him, just waited for him to tire of the game, and when he did, I went home.

“No,” the coach said when I finally found the courage to ask her. “I’m sorry, Lia. I wish I could, but…no.”

“I know I’m out of shape, but I can get up to speed. I know I can.”

“It’s not that.” She was slim and blond, and I wondered, as I often did, why she’d chosen coaching as her hobby instead of teaching or crafts. Something cozy and indoors, like most in her position, afraid of leathering their skin under the open sky. I got that she had to do
something
. It was a social imperative for the jobless rich, since the children of the wealthy weren’t going to raise themselves (nor, obviously, be raised by the parents of the poor), but why opt for something that required so much actual work?

I suspected it was because, like me, she loved to run. Missed it, missed the uniforms and the competitions and the trophies and even the outdoors. I could imagine myself doing the same thing—except, of course, that I was destined for productivity. Let my spouse, whoever he turned out to be, ply his hobbies. I’d been informed from day one—still in diapers, spitting and drooling—that
I
would have a career. Eventually.

In the meantime I would run.

“Did you give my spot away?” I asked, glancing over at the track. Zo was powering through her second mile. We had the same genetic advantages, I reminded myself. The same muscle tone, coordination, stamina—she’d just never bothered to use hers before. And meanwhile I’d used mine up.

“It’s not that, either.”

“What, then?”

“It’s…” She looked me up and down, then grimaced, like it was my fault for making her say it. “Lia, I can’t let you run with the team, not like this. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“What’s not fair?” I asked. “It’s not like I can run any faster.”

“I have no evidence of that,” she said. “As far as the league is concerned, you’d be running with an unfair advantage.”

That was almost funny. “Trust me, there’s no advantage.”

“It’s just not
natural
.”

I couldn’t believe it. More to the point, I couldn’t
accept
it. I needed to run. “Jay Chesin runs with a prosthetic leg—
that’s
not natural.”

“That’s different.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them, I caught her sagging a bit in relief, as if she’d spent the whole conversation waiting—in vain—for me to blink.

“What about the Ana League? I’d run with them if I had to.” As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t real running, not if you were chemically amping your strength and speed. I knew I’d never be able to keep up if I ran natural, but much as I loved my trophies, I didn’t need to win. I needed to run.

The coach shook her head again. “They won’t let you run either.”

“But they’re
anabolic
,” I said. Paused, reminded myself not to whine. Be calm. Be rational. Be irrefutable. “It’s a whole league for people who don’t play fair. How can I be against the rules if there
are
no rules?”

“There are rules,” she said, mouthing the official party line, even though everyone knew the Ana League was anything goes. “They wouldn’t let you drive a car to the finish line…and they won’t let
you
run. Not like this.”

“But—”

“Lia, be realistic,” she snapped. “You don’t breathe. You don’t get tired. For all anyone knows, you can run as fast as you want, as far as you want. Slotting you in would make a mockery of the whole race. Do you really want to ruin things for everyone else?”

I didn’t care about everyone else. And until recently I’d never needed to pretend I did. When you’re winning, no one expects you to care. They only expect you to keep winning.

“I guess not,” I said.

“I really am sorry.” Like we could be friends again, now that I’d let her pretend she was doing the right thing.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.” She looked like she wanted to say no.

“Is it actually written in the rules somewhere that…” I still didn’t know what to call the thing I’d become. “…people in my situation aren’t eligible?”

The coach hesitated. “This particular…
situation
hasn’t come up before. Not in this league.”

“So you’re just assuming, then.”

“What are you getting at?”

“If the league didn’t care—if I got my father to talk to someone and made it okay—would you want me back on the team?” I could have done it. I knew it, and she knew it. It’s not about the money, my father always said. These days everyone has money. It’s about the power. And he had that, too.

But that wasn’t the question. I wasn’t asking if I could bully my way back onto the team. I was asking whether she wanted me to.

This time she didn’t hesitate at all. “No.”

Friday morning was Persuasive Speech, a weekly dose of posture, comportment, and projection techniques intended to smooth our eventual rise into the ranks of social and political prominence. The road to power may have been paved with lies, but according to Persuasive Speech guru M. Stafford, said lies had to be carefully candy coated with a paper-thin layer of truth. Or at least, the appearance of truth.

M. Stafford, of course, rarely told us anything we didn’t already know.

Of all the useless classes the Helmsley School offered—and there was little else on the menu—none was more useless than Persuasive Speech. M. Stafford was big into tedious presentations on even more tedious current events, which didn’t persuade us of anything except that we’d made an enormous mistake signing up for the class in the first place. A mistake, at least, for anyone who’d been expecting to learn something. For those of us expecting an easy A and plenty of time to lounge in the back of the room, linked in and zoned out while M. Stafford carefully ignored her snoozing audience, it fulfilled our every need.

So, all good. Except that while I’d been out “uh, sick”—that was M. Stafford’s feeble euphemism—Becca Mai had transferred into the class, and M. Stafford had given my seat away. Which meant that Becca sat in back with Cass and Terra and Bliss while I was stuck at a broken desk in the front row, wobbling on the loose leg every time I shifted my weight and trying to pretend that Auden Heller wasn’t aiming his creepy stare squarely in my direction.