Skinned by Robin Wasserman Page A

it in my direction. “Catch.” I knocked it away before it could hit me in the face, but the body’s fingers weren’t fast enough to curl around it. The stick clattered to the floor.
    “Zo!” my mother snapped.
    “What? I said ‘catch.’”
    I picked up the stick, turning it over and over in my hands. It was a track baton.
    “We won the meet last week,” Zo muttered. “Coach wanted me to give it to you. I don’t know why.”
    “We?”
    My father smiled for the first time. At Zo. “Your sister’s finally discovered a work ethic.” He beamed. “She joined the track team. Already third in her division, and moving up every week, right?”
    Zo ducked her head; the better to skip the fakely modest smile.
    “You hate running,” I reminded her.
    She shrugged. “Things change.”
    “Tell us about your life here,” my mother said. “How do you spend your days? You’re not working too hard, are you?”
    I shook my head.
    “And you’re getting enough to—” She cut herself off, and her face turned white before she could finish her default question: You’re getting enough to eat?
    “Ample power supply around here,” I said, tapping my chest and noting the way her smile tightened around the corners. “My energy converter and I are just soaking it in.”
    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