Skinned -1 by Robin Wasserman Page A

trapped in the bed, when it seemed to crawl out from inside my head. But out of the bed, back in the world, pain was just as distant as everything else.

    “You’re beautiful,” Sascha said. “That’s something.”
    I was beautiful before.
    “And then there’s the big thing,” Sascha prompted. “A lot of people would envy you for that. If the government al owed it, a lot of people might even download voluntarily.”
    “Doubtful.”
    “To never age…” Sascha looked dreamy, and her hand flickered to the corner of her left eye, where the skin was pul ed taut. “Some might cal that lucky. Miraculous, even.” She couldn’t be more than seventy, I decided, since after that even the best doctors left behind a few stretch marks—and no younger than thirty, because you can always tel when someone’s had their first lift-tuck, and she definitely had. First, second, and probably eighth, I guessed. No one so lame could be any younger than that.
    Cal -me-Ben was the one who’d taught me how to back up my memories each night, preserving that day’s neural adjustments and accretions in digital storage—“just in case.” He’d had the same dreamy look as Sascha. They al did, when the subject came up.
    “The body ages,” I countered. “They say it’l only last fifty years.”
    “The body ,” Sascha said. “But now you know bodies can be replaced.”
    The body would last fifty years. But brain scans could be backed up and stored securely, and bodies could be replaced. And replaced again.
    I had died more than a month ago; I could live forever. Exactly like this.
    Lucky me.

VISITING DAY
    “Kahns don’t lie.”

    T hey were late. Only by ten minutes, but that was weird enough. Kahn family policy: never be late. It meant an immediate disadvantage, a forfeit of the moral high ground. Stil , at 10:10
    a.m., I was alone in the “social lounge,” which, if the building-block architecture, hard-backed benches, and spartan white wal s were any indication, was clearly intended to preclude any socializing whatsoever. I didn’t want them to come. Any of them. I hadn’t invited them, hadn’t agreed to see them…hadn’t been given a choice.
    10:13 a.m.: Waiting, my back to the door, staring at the wal -length window without seeing anything but my reflection, ghosted into the glass.
    10:17 a.m.: Three more ghosts assembled behind me, milky and translucent on the spotted pane. Three, not four.
    Not that I’d expected Walker to show up, to pester my parents until he got an invitation to come along, to perch nervously in the backseat, his long legs curled up nearly to his chest, his back turned to Zo as he stared out the window, watching the miles rol by, suffering the Kahn family as a means to an end—to me. If he’d wanted to visit, he wouldn’t have any need to tag along with them.
    If he’d wanted to visit, he already would have.
    “Lia,” my father said from the doorway.
    “Honey,” my mother said, in the tight, shivery voice she used when she was trying not to cry.
    Zo said nothing.
    I turned around.
    They stood stiff and packed together, like a family portrait. One where everyone in the family hated one another but hated the photographer more. The huddle broke as they moved from the doorway, my mother and father a glued unit veering toward me, Zo’s vector angling off to a bench far enough from mine that, if she kept her head in the right position, would keep me out of her sight line altogether.
    My mother held out her arms as if to hug me, then dropped them as she got within reach. They rose again a moment later; I stepped backward just in time. My father shook my hand. We sat.
    My mother tried to smile. “You look good, Lee Lee.”
    “This brain hates that nickname just as much as the last one.”
    She flinched. “Sorry. Lia. You look…so much better. Than before.”
    “That’s me. Clean, shiny, and in perfect working order.” I raised my arms over my head, clasped them together like a champ.