Skinned

by Robin Wasserman

  Jude raised an eyebrow. Nothing touched him. Nothing.

  “You pushed me,” I said. “You wouldn’t accept that I wasn’t like you. And you just had to keep pushing and pushing, all that crap about losing control and letting go and I finally did, and he’s the one who has to pay? Congratulations, Jude,” I said bitterly. “It all worked out according to your plan. He hates me, and I’ve got nothing, just like you wanted. Just like you predicted, right? I’m fucking alone. Thanks for your help. Thanks a lot.”

  Jude leaned against the door frame of the greenhouse, ignoring the protruding shards of glass. “Deciphering incoherent rants isn’t really a specialty of mine,” he said, still perfectly calm. Detached. “But if I’ve got this right, you did something, your org got hurt, and this is somehow my fault because I told you to do it in the first place? You always do everything you’re told?”

  I let myself sink to the ground. It sounded even stupider out loud than it had in my head. The grass was still wet from a morning rain, and the cold water seeped into my filthy, borrowed clothes.

  “I hate you,” I said.

  “Not much of an apology. But I’ll take it. Want to tell me what happened?”

  I told him. All of it, from the fight with Zo straight through to the moment in the hospital room, the sound of Auden’s voice—the tone of Auden’s voice, cold and mechanical—when he told me to leave.

  And when I was done, Jude nodded. “Tragic,” he said. As emotionless as ever. I wondered if he’d discovered the secret to shutting down his emotions for good. And if he would teach it to me.

  “Feel free to do your little happy dance,” I said. “I know you hated him.”

  “I never hated him. I hated the idea of you pretending that he could matter to you or that he could ever understand you. That the two of you were anything but a disaster.”

  “Disaster’s right. I was the disaster,” I said. “I ruined his life.”

  Jude didn’t say anything. I looked up. “Aren’t you going to tell me it wasn’t my fault? That I shouldn’t blame myself?”

  Jude shrugged. “I don’t lie.”

  “He decided to jump in after me. I didn’t force him. I didn’t need saving.”

  “I know,” Jude said. “Because of who I am. He didn’t—because of who he is.”

  “Why is it so important to you to believe that we’re different, mechs and orgs?” I said. “Why do you need me to hate them?”

  He shook his head slowly. “We don’t hate them, Lia. They hate us.”

  Auden didn’t hate me.

  At least, he didn’t used to.

  “We’re machines,” Jude said. “Unchanging. Perfect—and that perfection is our only flaw. They age, they get sick, injured, always something. They decay. We stay the same. We drift in time; they drown in it. They’ve got a deadline; we don’t. And it’s the one thing they can’t forgive.”

  “It doesn’t have to make us inhuman.”

  “It does!” he shouted, raising his voice for the first time. “Humans are mortals. Mortals die. Living creatures die. The whole concept of living is meaningless without its opposite. Light is defined by dark. Life is defined by death. Death makes them what they are. Absence of death makes us what we are. That’s the difference. It’s absolute. You don’t get to just wish it away.” Jude slammed his fist against the door frame, splintering the rotted wood. “You never understood. You never even bothered to try. It didn’t occur to you that that’s why we go to the waterfall, why we take risks, why we push ourselves past the brink? It’s a reminder—that for us, death is not an option. It’s a reminder of everything that makes us different. You can blame yourself for Auden all you want—because you didn’t want to remember. So you let yourself forget.”

  “But—”

  “No,” he said fiercely. “You came to me this time. So you can either go or you can listen. You want to hear this or not?”

  And maybe that was the real reason I’d come. To hear what I already knew but couldn’t believe. Not unless I heard it from someone else. I nodded.

  “You got careless,” Jude said. “You let yourself believe that you and Auden were the same. You got emotionally tied to an org and refused to accept the reality of who you are—and the fact that it’s not who you were. You ignored the truth, and that put everyone around you in danger. Especially him.”

  “It was an accident,” I argued. “Bad luck.”

  “What would it have been if he’d gotten shot last night, in the city?” Jude asked. “Or if some thug had jumped him while we were up on the roof? Could’ve happened.”

  “I didn’t think—I don’t know.”

  “You do know,” Jude said. “You knew then, too. You did what you wanted to do anyway. Like you should have. But he didn’t belong there in the first place. You knew that, too. You just didn’t care enough to stop.”

  “I care about him more than someone like you could understand,” I spat out.

  “You care about yourself,” Jude said, smiling. “Something I understand entirely too well.”

  I stood up. “I don’t have to stay here and listen to this.”

  “No.” Jude stretched himself along the door frame like a cat. “Run away. It’s what you’re best at.”

  I stayed.

  “You brought him to that waterfall,” Jude said. “You brought him to the city. You would have dragged him somewhere else tomorrow. Or the next day. He’s probably lucky this happened. The next stupid decision might have gotten him killed.”

  “I would never—”

  “And that would have been your fault too.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” I asked. “Lock myself in a closet and shut down, to keep the world safe from the horror that is me?”

  “None of my business,” Jude said. “There’s no one I care about in the world. The org world, at least. But if I were you, and I still had someone, someone important…”

  Auden, I thought, in his metal cage. My father, on his knees. Zo, hiding behind a locked door, guilt tearing her apart. We had more in common now, I thought suddenly. Just imagine the sisterly bonding possibilities: So, who did you almost kill today?

  “I would think about what I was doing to them by denying reality,” Jude said. “By pretending. I’d think about who I was hurting and who I would hurt next.”

  And again, I saw him. My father. On his knees. Wishing me dead.

  “You’ve got options,” Jude said.

  “You?” I asked in disgust.

  “Us. You’re one of us. Under the right conditions, you could thrive. Or…” He glanced behind him, into the yellowish brown forest of dead plants. “You know what they say. Live like an org…”

  “Die like an org?” I guessed sourly.

  Jude frowned. “Except that you’ll never be the one to die.”

  “I’m not like you,” I said. “I don’t want to be like you.”

  Jude stared at me, and when he spoke, his voice was low and intense, filled with a new emotion. Anger, maybe. Or regret. “None of us are volunteers.”

  I left a message for my parents that I would meet them at BioMax, that I needed all of them, Zo included. That I was in trouble. And after not hearing from me in a couple days, I knew they would come.

  Which meant I would be free to go home. Slip into the empty house, pack up the few things I couldn’t live without, and disappear again without any messy good-byes. Without anyone crying and pleading with me to stay, which I didn’t think I could handle. Or without anyone smiling and waving me out the door.

  Which I knew I couldn’t handle.

  My parents fell for it. But when I opened the door to my bedroom, Zo was sitting inside. Waiting for me.

  “You’re not allowed in here when I’m not home,” I said automatically.

  “This is my sister’s room. I’m allowed in here whenever I want.”

  I decided to ignore her. She couldn’t stop me from leaving. Maybe it would even be easier with her there. The perfect reminder
of why I couldn’t stay. Why everyone would be better off if I left.

  “Whatever you are, I know how you think,” Zo said. “Because you think like Lia. Which means you can’t fool me.”

  I stuffed some clothes into a bag. Not my favorites, just whatever was lying on top of the pile. I was supposed to be starting a new life, creating a new identity. Which meant my old favorites were irrelevant.

  “You’re running away,” Zo said.

  “What clued you in?” I muttered, even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t engage. Also not needed in the bag or in the new life: My track trophies. The dried petals from the rose Walker gave me after our first breakup and makeup. The stuffed tiger that had belonged to my mother and my grandmother when they were children, that I had never actually slept with myself because it smelled. The book, an actual paper book, Auden had found in his attic and given to me, because he liked that kind of thing and so I pretended to, something called Galapagos. I hadn’t read it, partly because I was afraid of breaking it and partly because it looked boring. Still, it had meant something to me, because it had meant something to him. Not anymore. I didn’t need any of it, I realized. Or at least, I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have come home at all.

  “This is going to kill Mom and Dad,” Zo said. “Did you think about that?”

  I dropped the bag, kicked it under the bed. I could get new clothes. Wasn’t that the point? New everything. “You’re the one who said I should disappear. That everyone would be happier that way.”

  Zo shifted her weight and started rubbing her thumb back and forth across the knuckles of her other hand. The way she did when she was uncomfortable. Or embarrassed. “If this is about all that stuff I said…Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to make you—you know. Leave.”

  “Not everything’s about you.”

  Zo gave me a weak smile. “Isn’t that usually my line?”

  It was tempting to believe that was the beginning of something, that the smile was some sign of weakness—or forgiveness. An indication that maybe we could be sisters again, like we used to be.

  Nothing is like it used to be, I reminded myself. I wasn’t going to forget that again.

  “I have to go.”

  “Don’t,” Zo said. She hopped off the bed, but stayed where she was, safely across the room from me.

  “Mom and Dad will get over it. They have you.”

  Zo shook her head, rubbed at her eye with the back of her hand, like a little kid, furious that her body would betray her. “Like that’s ever been good enough.”

  I shrugged. “It’ll have to be.”

  “Where will you even go?” she asked, being very careful not to sound like she cared.

  “Somewhere.” And I made it clear that I didn’t care either.

  “You’re being an idiot,” she said. “This is stupid.”

  “Because you want me to stay?” I asked, surprised. On guard. I’d made a decision—I was going to stick to it. I had to.

  Zo stared at the floor.

  “Tell me to stay,” I said.

  But Zo didn’t say anything.

  “Better yet, tell me I’m your sister. Lia. And you want me here.” I waited in the doorway, waited for her to speak, waited to be ready to leave behind the room I had lived in since I was three years old. “Tell me all that, and maybe I can stay.”

  Zo finally looked up.

  “Tell me I’m your sister,” I said again, aware that I was begging. I didn’t care anymore. I needed her to say it. I needed to hear it.

  Maybe it would even be enough to make me stay.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  The doorway was wide enough that when she walked out of the room, we didn’t even touch.

  It’s not that I bought into Jude’s bullshit.

  Not all of it, at least.

  And it’s not that I was so eager to move into Quinn’s creepy castle and start painting my face silver and dangling off the side of buildings just because I could. It’s not that I wanted more face time with Jude, who obviously didn’t care about anyone or anything.

  Unlike me, who did.

  That’s what hurt.

  I didn’t leave because I was brave, ready to face the world on my own. I didn’t leave as some great sacrifice, eager to cast off my happiness—not that there’d been much of that lately—for the greater good. I didn’t leave because I was a coward, afraid to face what I’d done to Auden or what I could do next. I wasn’t a coward.

  I was tired.

  Tired of being trapped in limbo, living as half one thing, half another, not quite anything at all. Not quite dead, not quite alive. Not an original, not a copy. Not human, not machine. Not myself—but who else was there?

  I was tired of pretending that nothing had changed. That even with an artificial body and a computer for a brain, I was still the same person I’d been before.

  Denial was exhausting. As was anger. Bargaining was useless. Depression was bottomless. I was tired of it all.

  Which meant I was ready to accept it. The new reality of nonlife after nondeath. My new reality.

  Lia Kahn is dead.

  I am Lia Kahn.

  Except, I finally realized, here’s the thing.

  Maybe I’m not.