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.
9. DATE NIGHT
“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 dead-weight that might as well have belonged to some invisible third passenger.
“Want to play Akira?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“Mind if I do?”
“No.”
Sometimes it felt like the body took over. That the body wasn’t the stranger, I was—just a passenger, carried along wherever the body wanted to go. Because that wasn’t me, letting Walker disappear into the network when I just wanted him to be with me—or, more to the point, wanted him to want to be with me. The strange voice that poured out of the strange mouth told him he could do whatever he wanted, I would go wherever he went, I didn’t care, I was fine, everything was fine, it was all good. That wasn’t Lia Kahn.
The car stopped in the usual place, at the bottom of the curving driveway that sloped up to Cass’s guesthouse. Walker grabbed my hand before I could get out. He leaned close, and when he spoke, his stubble scratched against my ear; it didn’t hurt. “Upstairs?” he said. “Later?”
“Definitely.” I turned to face him, my cheek scraping against his, but he pulled away just before our lips made contact. Even in the dark, his eyes were closed. “Later.”