I wish I could say I wasn’t trying to be mean.
She didn’t ask any more questions. Instead she talked. Aunt Clair was helping design a new virtual-museum zone with a focus on early twenty-first-century digital photography. Great-uncle Jordan had come through his latest all-body lift-tuck without a scratch, literally, since the procedure had worn away that nasty scar he’d gotten skateboarding in the exquisitely lame Anti-Grav Games, which, it turned out, were actually full-grav, anti-knee-pad. Our twin cousins, Mox and Dix, were outsourcing themselves to Chindia—Mox had snagged an internship at some Beijing engineering firm and Dix would do biotech research for a gen-corp in Bombay. Last I’d seen them, Dix had “accidentally” broken Zo’s wrist in a full-contact iceball fight, and Mox had tried to make out with me. Second cousins, he argued, so it was okay. Bon voyage, boys.
Then there was our parents’ best friend, Kyung Lee, who was having trouble with his corp-town, the workers who lived there rioting for better med-tech, something about a biotoxin that had slipped through the sensors. Kyung was afraid if things didn’t calm down soon, he might have to ship them all back to a city and hire a whole new crop, although the threat of that, according to my mother, should be enough to settle anyone.
As the half-hour mark passed, I tuned out. After another twenty minutes my father stood up, giving his pants a surreptitious brush, like he wanted to shed himself of the rehab dirt lest it soil the seat of his car. A new car, according to my mother. After all, I’d ruined the last one.
“This has been a lot of excitement for you today, Lia,” he said politely. “You must be tired.”
I didn’t get tired anymore. I only shut down at night because it was on the schedule, and I only followed the schedule because I didn’t have anything better to do.
I nodded. They filed toward the doorway, and I followed, half-wishing I could leave with them and half-wishing they would go and never come back. This time my mother forced herself to hug me, and I let her, although I kept my arms at my sides. It was strange to have her so close without breathing in the familiar scent of rosemary. But then, it was probably strange for her, with our chests pressed together and her arms around my shoulders, that I wasn’t breathing at all. I thought about faking it for a few seconds, just to make things easier for her. But I didn’t.
“We’re so proud of you,” she whispered, as if I had done anything other than what I was told—turn off, turn on, survive. I felt something brush my cheek as she pulled away, but I couldn’t tell what. Maybe a stray hair. Maybe a tear. Maybe I was just wanting to feel something so badly that I’d imagined it.
My father squeezed my shoulder. The new body was taller than mine, I realized. He and I were the same height. He didn’t say he was proud of me.
Another family policy: Kahns don’t lie.
Zo was last, and I stopped her before she could slip out the door. Her hair was looking better than usual. Not so greasy. And cut shorter, so that it bounced around her shoulders, the way mine used to when it was real.
“Zo, people at school…” I kept my voice low, so our parents wouldn’t hear. “Are people asking about me? Or, you know. Talking about me?”
She gave me a funny half smile. “Aren’t they always?”
“No, I mean…” I didn’t know what I meant. “Have you seen, I mean, have you talked to any of my friends? You know, Terra or Cass or…”
“Walker knows I’m here, if that’s what you’re asking.” Zo leaned against the doorway and kept scratching at the bridge of her nose, which, unless she’d developed a rash, seemed mostly like a convenient way to stare at her hand rather than at me.
“Did he—” But if he’d sent along a message, she would have said so already. And if he hadn’t, I didn’t want to ask. Besides, he would never reach for me that way, through Zo. “Is he doing okay?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but the world is managing to revolve on its axis even without your daily presence,” Zo snapped.
“Rotate.”
“What?”
“The world rotates on its axis,” I corrected her, because it was all I could think of to say.
“Right. It revolves around you. How could I forget?”
I grabbed her arm. She yanked it away, like I’d burned her. Her face twisted, just for a second, and then the apathetic funk was back so quickly, I almost thought I’d imagined the change. “Why are you acting like such a bitch?” I asked.
“Who says I’m acting?”
I hadn’t necessarily expected her to burst into tears and sweep me into her arms when she first saw me, just like I hadn’t expected her to tell me how much she loved me and missed me or to gush about how scary it had been when she thought I was going to die. I guess, knowing Zo, I hadn’t even expected her to be particularly nice. But we were sisters.
And she was the reason I had been in the car.
I’d expected… something.
“Come on, Zo. This isn’t you.”
She gave me a weird look. “How would you know?”
“I’m your sister,” I pointed out, aiming for nasty but landing uncomfortably close to needy.
She shrugged. “So I’m told.”
After she left, I sat down again on one of the uncomfortable benches and stared out the window, imagining them piling into the car, one big happy Lia-free family, driving away, driving home. Then I went back to my room, climbed into bed, and shut myself down.
I’d set my handy internal alarm to wake me nine hours later. But the brain was programmed to wake in the event of a loud noise. A survival strategy. The footsteps weren’t loud, but in the midnight quiet of floor thirteen they were loud enough.
“Sleeping Beauty arises.” A girl stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway fluorescents, a cutout shadow with billowing black hair, slender arms, and just the right amount of curves. “I guess I don’t get to wake you with a kiss.” She stroked her fingers across the wall and the room came to light. I sat up in bed.
It wasn’t a girl. It was a skinner.
I knew it must be the one Sascha had told me about, the one I was supposed to be so eager to bond with. I was mostly eager for her to get out and leave me to the dark. She didn’t.
“You’re her,” I said. “Quinn. The other one.”
She crossed the room and, uninvited, sat down on the edge of the bed. “And here I thought I was the one and you were the other one.” She held out her hand.
I didn’t shake.
Instead I stared—I couldn’t help it. I’d never seen another mech-head, unless you counted the vids. Or the mirror. So this was what my parents saw when they looked at me. Something not quite machine and not quite human, something that was definitely a thing, even if it could lift its hand and tip its head and smile. It was better at smiling than I was, I noticed. If you focused on the mouth and looked away from the dead eyes, it almost looked real.
“You’re Lia,” Quinn said, dropping her hand after realizing I wasn’t going to take it. “And yes, it is nice to meet me. Thanks for saying so.”
I didn’t speak, figuring I could wait her out until she got bored and left. But the silence stretched out; I got bored first.
“Quinn what?” I asked.
“Lia who?” she said. “Or Lia when? Lia why? If you want to play a game, you have to fill me in on the rules. But fair warning: I play to win.”
So did I. At least, when I was in the mood. Which I wasn’t.
“What’s your last name?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t ask if it mattered, I just asked what it was.”
“It was something,” she said. “But now it’s irrelevant.”