Skinned -1 by Robin Wasserman Page A

it.
    “It’s nice,” he said, like he was trying to convince himself. “I like it.”
    I hated it. Someone else’s voice, husky and atonal, coming out of the mouth.
    My mouth, I reminded myself. My voice. But I could only believe that when I was alone. With Walker final y standing there, watching me, I was forced to admit it: The voice belonged to the thing , to the body, not to me.
    “It’s been a while,” I said, even though I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to bring it up. He hadn’t voiced me back on Thursday night or on Friday. And then Saturday came, and he was here. That should have been enough.
    Walker shrugged. He rubbed his chin, which was shadowed with brown scruff. Without me around to remind him to shave, he’d grown a beard. “I was going to text you, but…”
    “Yeah. But.” I stood up. He was stil in the doorway. If he wouldn’t come to me, I would go to him. It can be difficult at the beginning, Sascha had said. But the people who know you, the people who love you, they’ll see beneath the surface. They’ll get that it’s really you under there. You just have to give them some time.
    No one knew me better than Walker. But when I curled the hand around his wrist, he jerked away. “Sorry, I—” I stepped back. “No, it’s fine.” It wasn’t. “I shouldn’t have.” He shouldn’t have.
    “No, real y. I just…” Walker final y stepped into the room, edging around me as he passed, careful not to touch the body. He sat in my desk chair, back straight, feet flat on the floor. Arms crossed, hugging his chest.
    I dropped back down on the bed and waited.
    “I’m very glad you’re al right,” he said final y, like he was passing along a message from his mother to some old lady who’d broken her hip. Like he’d been rehearsing.
    I risked a smile. I’d been rehearsing too. “I missed you.”
    “You, too.” He stared down at the floor. His hair was longer than I’d ever seen it, almost to his shoulders, like one of Zo’s retros. I wanted to smooth it back. I wanted to stand behind him and bury my face in it, resting my cheek against the back of his head, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, letting him grip my hands in his. But I stayed where I was. “It’s, uh, it’s pretty,” he said. “I mean— you’re pretty. Now. Like this.”
    “You don’t have to lie.”
    He shifted in the seat. “No—It’s just, I guess, I just thought you’d look a little more like…I mean, on the vids, and you looked…But now…I thought you’d look more…”
    “Like me?” But as soon as I said it, I knew that wasn’t what he’d meant. I didn’t look like me, not anymore, not with the hair that was the wrong color and texture and wasn’t even hair, just a synthetic weave that was grafted on and would never grow. The nose was too smal , the eyes too wide, the fingers the wrong thickness, the wrong length, the teeth too straight and too bright, the mouth bigger, the ears smal er, the body tal er and too symmetrical, too wel proportioned, too perfect. But it wasn’t that. I knew what he’d wanted to say; I knew him too wel .
    I thought you’d look more…human.
    And I saw the body again like I’d seen it for the first time, like he was seeing it. The skin, smooth and waxy, an even peachy tone stretched out over the frame without sag or blemish. The way it moved, with awkward jerks, always too slow or too fast. The stranger’s face with dead eyes, pale blue irises encircling the false pupils, and in the center of the black, pinpricks of light, flashing and dimming as the lens sucked up images. The eyes that didn’t blink unless I remembered to blink them. The chest that neither rose nor fel unless I pretended to breathe. The body that wasn’t a body.
    His girlfriend, the machine.
    “It’s just weird,” he admitted. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t—”
    “It’s okay,” I said quickly. “It is weird. It’s weird for me too.”
    “I mean, I know it’s you, I