Girl of Flesh and Metal

by Alicia Ellis

  She jumped away from me. Wet tears smeared her mascara. Claire shot me a glare that cowed me and leaped from her seat to wrap her arms around Harmony.

  “I’m sorry.” I took a step toward them but thought better of it and stopped. “I didn’t mean to. I can’t control . . .” The cafeteria was deathly silent except for the sound of my voice.

  My friends and I had chosen this particular table three years ago because of its privacy. Teachers and other students had to walk past every other table to get here, and they usually didn’t bother. Our voices had to travel that same distance to be heard.

  Today, Harmony’s shout had spanned that distance. I turned my neck to the right, just an inch, and students’ eyes stared back at me like a field of spotlights. All nearby chatter had stopped.

  For a moment, I fantasized about crawling out the window. It stood only fifteen feet away, and I could get there without having to pass any other students. But a window exit would make me more of a spectacle.

  “You should go.” Claire didn’t look at me as she hugged Harmony to her chest.

  Melody opened her mouth to say something, but I’d already reached my breaking point. This day was a disaster. My life was a disaster. I couldn’t stay here a second longer.

  I ran from the cafeteria.

  8

  For the rest of the day, I went over the scene in the cafeteria again and again. I didn’t know how I could have handled it differently. Twisting Harmony’s arm like that—it had been instinctive, a reaction to the pain with tensions running as high as the ceiling.

  Why hadn’t Harmony just left me alone? Why did she need to argue about everything?

  As I sat in my AP Chemistry class, with the clock ticking down the final minutes of the school day, all I could think about was the crowded hallway that would meet me outside.

  At the beginning of the school year, my friends and I had chosen lockers nearby one another. Now I regretted that.

  Too embarrassed after the lunchtime fiasco, and too annoyed with Harmony, I’d avoided my friends—and my locker—all afternoon. I couldn’t avoid them any longer. I needed to grab my books for homework.

  A few minutes before the bell that would end this last class of the day, I raised my hand—my left hand, just for good measure. Our instructor was in the middle of describing the properties of a particular molecule—which one I couldn’t say, because I’d spent the entire class planning my escape.

  A three-dimensional model of the molecule floated above our heads, in the virtual world. The one positive thing about being plugged into the network was that I no longer had to slip on a pair of EyeNet-enabled glasses to see the virtual objects our instructors used for teaching.

  When I raised my hand, the metal palm went straight through the bottom of the object, causing the space around my arm to flicker back and forth between empty air and the molecule. Ms. Lincoln paused for a second before calling on me. When she nodded her approval for me to speak, her attention stayed on my hand.

  I scrunched up my face into what I hoped looked like pain. It wasn’t hard, since the ache in my head never went away. “I’m not feeling well. May I go home early?”

  “Of course, Lena.”

  Before she could change her mind or insist that I go to the school nurse, I tossed my hand-screen into my bag and rushed out the door. The hall lay empty and quiet, and my shoulders relaxed as soon as the door to the classroom closed behind me. I hurried down to the first floor and to my locker.

  On the inside of the locker door, a virtual message informed me I was supposed to be in class. I figured that was another quirk of being networked. My locker had never given me any messages before, and I didn’t appreciate it now.

  I brushed my fingers across the words, and the notification disappeared, replaced by a list of all my homework assignments for tonight. At least that was useful. I moved books back and forth between my bag and the locker to make sure I would have the textbooks I needed.

  I reached the side door of the building before I remembered the novel I was supposed to be reading for English. I could picture the book lying at the bottom of my locker, where I’d stuffed it after my morning English class.

  Maybe I could purchase a digital copy. I could finish it on my hand-screen. Only then, I wouldn’t have all the notes and highlights I’d already made in my physical copy. With a frustrated grunt, I spun around and headed back to my locker.

  Of course, I’d tossed my other textbooks and notebooks on top, so I had to shift all the contents. I grabbed the book just as the final bell rang.

  Students trickled into the hallway from their classrooms. With my head down, I wove my way through them to the exit. Whispers chased me. When I was only twenty feet away from the side exit, a small cluster of students blocked my path near the door.

  One of them spoke words I couldn’t hear from this distance. Her friends—two boys and a girl—stopped talking to stare at me. I had an audience.

  The girl who’d originally spotted me slid to her left until she stood between me and my exit. I didn’t know whether she meant to torment me or soothe me, but either way, I wasn’t in the mood.

  “Lena, I—”

  “Move.” I sidestepped around the girl.

  That left me toe-to-toe with a tall boy with wide shoulders and a mean grin. I elbowed past him—with my left arm. My elbow hit him square in the chest. I barely felt the impact through my shoulder, but at once, I knew I’d hit him too hard.

  The boy’s feet left the ground, and he flew backward. His back slammed against a row of lockers. A loud clang sounded at the impact.

  The boy slid to the ground. He blinked a few times, eyes glassy. His friends froze in shock. For the second time today, I had the attention of everyone in earshot. The last two kids in my way pressed themselves against their lockers to clear a path.

  I fled the building.

  I didn’t stop running for two blocks. When I’d put enough trees between me and the school so that I could no longer see the site of today’s disasters, I slowed to a stop.

  A light drizzle sprinkled down on me, and I thanked the sky for the cool water on my hot nerves.

  By the time I walked the two miles home, my curly hair would grow to twice its size, but it was worth not having to wait in front of the school for Lionel to show up and drive me home. I pulled out my hand-screen and sent him a message, saying I didn’t need a ride after all.

  “Hey, Lena!”

  I turned toward the familiar voice to find Olivia jogging toward me. Trailing behind her was Hunter.

  “Liv? What are you doing?”

  She stopped next to me and gave me a nervous grin, while smoothing her black-and-blue hair back into place. “What does it look like?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Walking you home.” She pointed to her companion. “This is Hunter. He transferred in last semester, and he’s my Physics partner. We’re going to study at my place.”

  “We’ve met,” he said. “Lena makes a great first impression.” His grin told me the opposite was true. “The second one isn’t bad either.”

  Lucky for him, I’d reached my quota of slamming people around today. He would have to wait until tomorrow if he wanted some of that.

  Liv gestured for me to continue walking in the direction of my house—our houses, actually, since we lived near each other. We walked in silence for a few minutes, which gave me time to get my breathing back to normal after my run.

  She reached into her backpack and extracted a small bag of gummy candies, which she held out to me.

  “Those are my favorite.”

  She laughed. “I got so used to keeping them around that I never stopped.” She undid the twist tie keeping the bag closed and popped a green one into her mouth. “They’re pretty great.” She pushed the bag toward me again.

  Never one to turn down sweets, I accepted and grabbed a handful. She retied the bag and tucked it back into her backpack.

  “I assume you’re bei
ng nice to me because I’m an outcast now,” I blurted out as I put a blue gummy candy into my mouth.

  “I’m being nice to you because I like you. A few years of radio silence can’t change that.”

  I shot her grateful look.

  “How’s Jackson, by the way?” she asked.

  Unless his condition had changed since I checked this morning, he was still lying in a bed at CyberCorp. He should have been on his way home from school right now. I didn’t know whether we’d still be together as a couple, but at least he would be conscious if it weren’t for me. “Still unconscious.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  “Who’s Jackson?” Hunter, who had been lagging behind us, now squeezed between Liv and me and fell into step beside us. “And what’s wrong with him?”

  “Her boyfriend,” Liv said. “He was in the accident with her.”

  “Ex-boyfriend.” I cringed even as I said it. The least I could do for Jackson was to claim him. But the words were out there now, and I couldn’t put them back. “We broke up that night.” I stuffed three more gummies into my mouth and watched my feet rise and fall along sidewalk—anything not to look at the two of them.

  Hunter stared at me for long enough that the side of my face tingled from the pressure, and I finally looked up again.

  “Do you mind if we talk about something else—anything besides the accident?” If we talked about Jackson a second longer, the guilt might rip me in two.

  Liv chewed her lip for a moment, then gave me a bright smile. “I have a new boyfriend.”

  Some of the tension and awkwardness flowed out of me. “What’s he like?”

  Hunter slowed his steps to allow Liv and me to walk side by side again.

  “He’s older. Mature.” She shot me an apologetic glance. “Super into high-tech stuff.”

  “Don’t look at me like that. We’ve been friends again for all of five minutes. Give me a few days before I start judging your boyfriends.”

  She laughed, and it was odd how familiar the sound was. Like an old favorite movie that had been tucked away for years before reappearing. More of the awkwardness between us melted away.

  “I think you mean boyfriend—singular, as in the only one I’ve ever had. They’re not exactly knocking down my door to get to me.”

  “That’s because the boys you like are always stupid and blind.”

  She gave me a grateful smile. “He’s got these amazing eyes that make me want to melt. I introduced him to my family a couple weeks ago. Both my dads love him, but of course they’d prefer I date a high-school boy.”

  “You’re doing parent meetings already? It must be serious.”

  “I haven’t met his family yet. It’s just him and his dad, and he’s worried about introducing us because his dad’s an alcoholic and a mean drunk.”

  I squeezed Liv’s hand briefly and then released it. “How’d you two meet?”

  Hunter cleared his throat loudly. “You think we could talk about something other than boyfriends?”

  “Fine. No more girl talk.” I turned back to Liv. “Now what? We become friends again? A band of outcasts?” My mind flashed back to the scene in the cafeteria, and I couldn’t shake the regret from my voice. “And Hunter.” I waved a hand toward him.

  “Hey, I want to be an outcast too,” he said. “Can we get matching T-shirts?”

  Liv gave him a playful shove. “We can start with a walk home and go from there.”

  We walked slowly. It had been a long day, full of emotional ups and downs—mostly downs. The gummy candies helped, but I couldn’t wait to get home and curl up in front of the vid-screen with Allie.

  Maybe in a few days, if my headaches cleared up, I could convince Dr. Fisher to install the skin she promised me. By next week, no one would care about my arm anymore. I made the mistake of glancing over and caught Liv staring down at my exposed silver hand.

  “You want to ask me about that?” I asked.

  “Would that be okay?”

  I nodded. I desperately needed to vent, and I couldn’t think of better company with whom to do that.

  “What does it feel like?” she asked.

  I held the arm toward her. “You want to touch it?”

  Her face lit up. “If you don’t mind. But really, I was asking what it feels like for you.” She reached over and stroked the arm. “It’s cold.”

  I shrugged. “It’s metal, and we’re outside in winter. As for what it feels like for me, I’m still getting used to it. At first, it was like a remote control that needed new batteries. I had to stare at it and think exactly what I wanted it to do. Then it still wouldn’t do a great job if I could get it to move at all. Now, I barely have to think something, and it just reacts—which I guess is how my old arm worked too. Except when I have headaches. Then, I lose control of it all over again.”

  When Liv released me, I offered the arm to Hunter. He hesitated for only a second but then lifted my hand. Without my thinking about it, my arm bent at the elbow to allow him to raise the fingers to his eye level.

  He rotated it at the wrist. “It’s beautiful, Lena.”

  I couldn’t feel the pressure of his fingers, but I watched him hold my hand. Hunter traced the metal joints with his fingertips, and while I felt nothing on the outside, a flutter of nervousness kicked up in my stomach. He let go of the hand, and I dropped it back to my side.

  Despite the chill afternoon air, my face felt warmer.

  “It’s stronger than a human arm,” Liv said. Her tone made it more of a statement than a question. So she’d seen my little display on my way out the door.

  “You saw that?” I stared down at my feet.

  “He had it coming,” Hunter said before Liv could answer. “Your prosthetic doesn’t give other people the right to bully you.”

  His voice sounded more sincere than I would have expected from him—more serious than the grinning boy in the Superman shirt I’d met at CyberCorp. He still favored his right leg, but he somehow managed to exude confidence with each step.

  It was different for him though. After years in and out of a wheelchair, the new knee was salvation. For me, this arm was a life sentence, made a hundred times worse by its artificial intelligence.

  Perhaps I’d judged Hunter too quickly. He’d been a little annoying when we first met at CyberCorp, but maybe his positive energy would rub off on me.

  By the time we arrived at my house, it was like Liv and I were friends again. She caught me up on her two dads and brother, and I assured her my parents and Allie hadn’t changed a bit. Hunter inserted himself into the conversation every few minutes, but he remained so cheery that I wasn’t even annoyed.

  “I guess we’ll see you tomorrow,” Liv said.

  For the first time in the last forty minutes, it occurred to me that I still had the problem of my eyes to handle. I was supposed to visit CyberCorp after school today, but I already sent Lionel on his way.

  Oh well. They couldn’t completely turn off my chip’s network capability right now anyway, and I could go another day seeing things on the EyeNet.

  Right now, all I wanted was to be myself, cling to the remnants of the positive energy from this walk, and pretend everything was how it used to be.

  9

  For the first night since I woke from the coma, my dreams contained no wrenching metal, no screams. No feeling like my arm was being torn from its socket. Tonight, after I drifted into a deep and peaceful sleep, a cool night breeze tickled my face. Light rain drizzled on my skin. I felt relaxed and carefree.

  The blaring honk of a car horn spun me back to consciousness.

  I woke with a gasp and found my dream was reality. Water pounded down on me, slicking down my face and clothing.

  Light assaulted me on all sides. For a long moment, I couldn’t tell up from down, left from right. Headlights blended with digital billboards blended with streetlamps. The world was ablaze, and my feet locked to the ground in the midst of it.


  Another car barreled past me, horn screaming. Everything slammed into focus.

  I ran to the safety of the grass that lined the road. I’d gone to sleep in my bed, snuggled under pink covers. Now, I stood in the pouring-down rain on the side of the street.

  I pinched my right forearm to confirm I was awake. The pinch stung the skin and left a red mark. I was definitely awake, and definitely standing outside instead of lying at home in my bed.

  The light rain I’d enjoyed in my dream proved more of a pain in my waking state. Although a hooded sweatshirt covered most of my head, the downpour had soaked the hair toward the front of my face. It stuck to my skin in heavy, drenched clumps.

  My fleece pajama pants clung to my legs and weighed down each step. I wore my running shoes, without socks, and my feet squished with each movement.

  I recognized my surroundings. I’d taken this two-lane road before, and now I was turned toward home, which was over a mile and a half away.

  I had walked over a mile in my sleep. And before doing that, I’d somehow managed to get dressed. I reached into the pockets of my pajama pants, but my hopes plummeted when I found no hand-screen there. I had no way to call someone to come get me.

  For the first time, I wished I had a micro-comm. With it stuck behind my ear, I couldn’t have left home without it.

  A digital billboard in front of me spread a multicolored glow over the road, casting the passing cars in pink, then blue. Pink. Then blue again.

  On the billboard, a teenage girl I didn’t know—probably someone passing in a nearby vehicle—sported a pair of fuchsia rain boots. The boots covered the bottom of designer jeans. She strutted across the display to show the footwear from every angle.

  The display flickered, and a new teenage girl replaced the last one. I guessed that, like my locker, the billboard couldn’t read my ID chip inside my arm. Otherwise, I’d be the one on display.

  Despite the rain and the ridiculous situation, I grinned up at the billboard. ID chips came with a lot of conveniences—and a lot of privacy invasions. This was perhaps the first good thing to come of my accident.