Skinned. - Skinned. Part 11
Library

Skinned. Part 11

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.

I was-well, "sure" would be the wrong word, but let's say "willing to accept the possibility"-that Auden didn't intend to be creepy. He'd never been particularly creepy before. But then, he'd never been much of anything, except different, and not in the right way. Those glasses, for one thing. No one needed glasses anymore. At least, no one who could afford the fix, and no one without enough credit for that would have been allowed within fifty miles of the Helmsley School. There were net-linked glasses, of course, but those hadn't been popular since we were kids. Now anyone who wanted that kind of access (and that kind of headache) could just pop in a lens while everyone else went back to screens and keyboards. The only reason to wear glasses now-especially glasses without tech-was to look different. It was the same with his watch. They didn't even make watches anymore. FlexiViMs you could wrap around your wrist, or tattoo onto your forearm? Yes. But all the watch did was tell time, and-as I'd discovered one day a few years ago when one of Walker's idiot friends snagged the watch to see if it would make Auden cry-it didn't even do that right. A couple of miniature sticks swept out circle after circle, and you had to calculate the angles to even know the hour. And, yes, I was smart enough to figure it out, but why bother to do a math problem every time you want to know what time it is, when you can just get your ViM to flash the info and then move on with your life?

We'd been assigned to deliver a five-minute speech on a current issue that we felt strongly about. "We" didn't include "me." I'd been excused by virtue of my "uh, extended illness." I wondered how M. Stafford would, if pressed, describe my sickly condition. Did she consider death, in my case, to be a fatal disease?

Auden went first, stammering his way through some lunatic theory that the government could solve the energy crisis whenever it wanted, but preferred using the power shortage to control the cities and the poor, oppressed masses who lived there. He didn't explain where he thought all this magical energy was going to come from, or why, if the masses were so sad and oppressed, they never did anything about it. Everyone knew you could work your way out of the city if you wanted, and not just to a corp-town-although even that was better since you were guaranteed power and med-tech-but to a real life. If they didn't want to bother, how was that our problem?

Auden's conspiracy theories never came with much evidence or follow-through. I suspected he just liked getting a rise out of people with his flashy, if stupid, claims: The corps are secretly running the country! The Disneypocalypse was an inside job! The organic farmers poisoned the corn crop and pinned it on the terrorists to scare people away from mass production! B-mods are the opium of the masses! Apparently, if they made good slogans, they didn't have to make good sense.

Next up, Sarit Rifkin, whose speech on the importance of eating more red meat didn't include the fact that her family owned the county's only cattle farm and reaped credit for every steak sold. Cass detailed the criteria she used to select new shoes. Fox T. spewed five minutes of crap about his favorite tactics for racking up Akira kills. Fox J.-also known as Red-tailed Fox, less because of his long auburn ponytail than because of the time he and Becca started making out in her father's kitchen and Fox planted his ass on the stove, apparently so engrossed in the hot and heavy that it took him a full minute to realize the stove was on-got in about half a minute of arguing that chest lift-tucks should be mandatory for everyone overage and under a C cup before M. Stafford cut him off.

That was when Bliss, with her Fox-approved D cups, took the podium. She stood there for a long moment without speaking.

M. Stafford had the kind of voice you might use to talk to a mental patient, slow and measured and just a little too understanding. "Go on, Bliss."

Bliss shifted her weight. "I'm not sure I should."

"Are you sure you want to pass the class?"

Bliss reddened. Then glared at me, like she was daring me to blame her for going forward. "I wrote this last week," she said defensively. "Before I knew that-" She stopped. "I wrote this last week."

"Then you should be tired of waiting to deliver it," M. Stafford said. "Go on, we won't bite."

Bliss Tanzen did bite, I happened to know-courtesy of Walker, who had been out with her a few times before trading up.

She cleared her throat. "A mechanical copy, no matter how detailed or exact, can never be anything more than an artificial replica of human life."

I sat very still, face blank.

"It is for this reason that I argue that recipients of the download procedure should not be afforded the same rights and privileges of human citizens of society."

I looked up, just for a second, long enough to note that everyone was staring at me, including M. Stafford. Everyone, with two exceptions: Bliss had her eyes fixed on her clunky speech. Auden had his eyes fixed on Bliss.

"You don't have to believe in something called a soul"-someone in back snickered at the word-"to believe that a person can't just be copied into a computer. They call it a copy because that's what it is-not the real thing. Just a computer that's been programmed to act that way."

M. Stafford wasn't going to stop her, I realized. Nor were Cass or Terra or anyone else. And I certainly wasn't going to say anything. Four more minutes, I told myself. Just tune her out and, when it's over, move on.

"Skinners can talk," Bliss said. Fox J.'s use of the term "tits" had been deemed too offensive for our sensitive ears, but apparently "skinner" was just fine. "But so can my refrigerator, if it thinks I need more iron in my diet. Skinners can move, but so can my car, if I tell it where to go. My refrigerator doesn't get to vote, and my car doesn't get to use my credit to buy itself a new paint job."

"She's not a car!" Auden said loudly.

I wanted to slink down in my seat-slink under my seat. But I stayed still.

"No interruptions," M. Stafford snapped. "We allowed you the privilege of speaking your mind; please respect your classmates enough to do the same."

"My mind isn't filled with ignorant trash," Auden said. "And what about respecting Lia?"

I wanted to strangle him.

"You can stay silent or you can go," M. Stafford said.

Auden went. M. Stafford looked at me, her face unreadable. "Anyone else?"

I wasn't sure if it was an offer or a warning. Either way, I ignored it. And when Bliss continued, I ignored her too.

When class finally ended, I stayed in my seat long enough to let everyone else drift out of the room. Then I waited just a moment longer, preparing myself for the inevitable onslaught of pity that would hit once I stepped into the hallway, Cass and Terra and random clingers assuring me that I shouldn't listen, that Bliss was a moron, that she was just jealous, that they were here if I needed to talk-which I did not. Nor did I need anyone's pity, but I would accept it with grace, because I had been well trained. Rudeness was a sign of weakness. Grace stemmed from power, the power to accept anything and move on.

But the hallway was empty. Only one person waited for me, rocking back and forth from one foot to the other, his fist clenched around the ugly green bag he always carried.

"You okay?" Auden asked.

I walked right past him, down the hall, around the corner, all the way to the door that let out into the parking lot, where I could find the car and ride away. Let Zo figure out her own way home.

He followed. "She was wrong, you know."

I put my hand on the door, but didn't open it. I wasn't against ditching school, not in principle, at least, but I also wasn't about to let Bliss Tanzen drive me out.

"She shouldn't have said those things," he went on.

"It was an assignment," I said, my back to him, undecided. Outside meant blissful escape; inside meant more pretending, smiling dumbly as if I didn't hear the whispers that followed me everywhere. Inside meant going to lunch, facing Bliss and everyone who'd heard her. Everyone who'd sat quietly and listened. But outside meant running away, and I couldn't do that.

I wasn't the type.

"She was wrong," Auden said in a pained voice. "About the download, about you not being-"

I finally faced him. "First of all, she wasn't talking about me," I snapped. "You were the one who brought me into it, and second of all, thanks very much for that. You think I don't know she was wrong? You think I need someone like you telling me who I am? And now, like I didn't have enough problems, the whole school probably thinks we're-" Rude enough, I told myself, and stopped.

"We're what?"

"Nothing."

"Friends?" He spat out a bitter laugh, his face twisting beneath his stupid black glasses. "Don't worry. No one would think that." His black hair was short, almost buzzed, and his nose was crooked. Someone had done a really bad job selecting for him, I thought. It was one thing to sacrifice looks for athletic ability or freakish intelligence or artistic aptitude-everyone was, of course, only allowed to be so special and no more-but I happened to know he didn't have any of those things, or at least, not enough of them to justify his face. If I'd just seen him on the street somewhere, I'm not saying I would have assumed he was poor, but I wouldn't have assumed he was one of us.

And maybe that was his real problem: Credit or not, he wasn't.

"I'm not worried," I said. "And even if I was, it wouldn't be any of your business."

"I was just trying to help."

"If I were you, I'd focus on helping yourself. You need it more than I do."

"Meaning what?"

"Just look at you." The clothes: wrong. The face: wrong. The attitude: wrong. The tattered green bag that looked like something my grandmother would carry around: weird and wrong. "It's like you're not even trying."

"Trying to what?"

"Trying to be normal!" I lost it. "Look what you've got-and you're wasting it!"

A scowl flashed across his face, then disappeared just as quickly. "What I've got?" He raised his eyebrows. "You mean like a flesh-and-blood body? A *normal' brain?"

"That is not what I said."

"Maybe I don't want to be normal," he said calmly. "Maybe it's okay that you're not."

"Who said I'm not?"

He just looked at me, like it was obvious, like I was stupid for even asking such a question when I was standing there forming a response with a brain that ran off the same wireless power grid as the school trash compactor.

"Why am I even talking to you?" I said, disgusted.

"You tell me."

"It was a rhetorical question." I brushed past him. He didn't flinch as our arms grazed against each other. "Just don't bother *helping' again."

"Don't worry."

I didn't ditch school. I went back to class, kept my head down, paid attention. I went to lunch, ready to face Bliss, whether it meant an apology or a fight. But she wasn't there. Nor was Cass or Terra or their new boy toys or Zo or Walker. Becca, who would probably have spent the whole meal babbling about some species of frog she was intent on rescuing from extinction, wasn't there either. I found out later that they'd all cut out, grabbed lunch at Cass's place, and gotten an early start on the weekend partying. "I know we told you," Cass said later when I finally tracked her down. "You must have forgot."

Auden ate at an empty table tucked into a corner, half hidden behind a thick wooden pillar. I could feel him watching me.

I didn't eat, of course. But I took a tray of food and sat in the usual spot, alone.

It was the best meal I'd had all week.

DATE NIGHT.

"Everything's okay."

You're going like that?" Zo asked, leaning in my doorway. The cat hissed at her from the foot of the bed. Psycho Susskind had, without my permission, made it his new home.

"What?" I braved the mirror again. Black retro shirt, baggy pants that looked like some kind of insect had gnawed off the cuffs, and-courtesy of an illicit raid through Zo's supplies-plum-colored lipstick and some kind of violet grease smeared across my eyelids. I looked like Zo. I also looked, as far as I could tell, like crap, but these days, so did everyone else who mattered. So at least I would fit in.

Zo rolled her eyes. "Nothing."

I shoved past her. "See you tomorrow."

"See you tonight."

I paused at the top of the stairs. "You're going?"

"Terra's picking me up in five," Zo said. "Is that a problem?"

Like she cared. "No problem."

She looked like she wanted to say something else. But she waited too long, and I was out the door.

Walker's car was in the driveway.

"You're early," I said, slipping in beside him. "You've just been sitting out here?"

He nodded. "It's okay."

"If I'd known you were out here..."

"It's okay," he said again, and put an arm around me. His pupils were wide; he'd obviously gotten an early start on the night, tripping on something or a lot of somethings. But it didn't matter. Not if he was going to put his arm around me again.

"You ready?" He leaned forward, keyed in Cass's address, then paused, waiting for permission, like the old days.

I wondered what would happen if I told him that we should skip the party, that when he'd said he wanted to go out, I'd thought he meant the two of us, alone.

Before, I was the one who dragged us to parties. Again? he would whine, like a little kid, and it would be cute, but not cute enough to change my mind, so we would spend another night surrounded until the waiting got too intense, and then he would squeeze my hand or I would squeeze his ass and-signal sent, message received-we would sneak off together to one of the extra bedrooms or a closet or that spot between the trees or once, after everyone else had passed out, the glassed-in pool, our bodies glowing in the eerie blue of the underwater lights. It was tradition, and keeping it tonight had to mean that he wanted to go backward. I wasn't about to risk a change.

I thought he might kiss me as we sped along in the dark; that was tradition too. But he stayed on his side of the car and I stayed on mine, and his arm rested on my shoulders, a deadweight that might as well have belonged to some invisible third passenger.

"Want to play Akira?" he asked.

"Not really."