Skinned by Robin Wasserman Page B

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