Skinned -1 (29 page)

There was an echoing gasp from the doorway. I looked up to see Zo staring at me in horror.

I jumped off the bed, pressing my arm awkwardly to my side to cover up the long gash. The razor clattered to the floor.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” I said.

Yeah, right.

She smirked. “Whatever.”

“Seriously, you can’t tel ,” I pleaded. Our mother would freak out. Our father would…I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.

“Why would I tel ?” she said.

“I wasn’t trying to…hurt myself, or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I said. “I was just…It’s normal. What I was doing, it’s normal, it’s no big deal, so can we just—”

“I don’t care,” Zo said, slowly and firmly. “How many times do I have to say it before you believe me? I don’t care what you do. I don’t care how big a freak you want to be. I.

Don’t. Care.”

She real y didn’t. She couldn’t, or she wouldn’t act like this. She wouldn’t have stolen my friends, my boyfriend, my life. She wouldn’t glare at me like she wished I would disappear. Like she wished…

“You wish I was dead, is that it?” I started toward her, and she backed away. “You probably think it’d be easier for everyone if I’d died in the accident, so you didn’t have to deal with me like
this
.”

“Shut up,” she said quietly.

“Nice comeback.” I couldn’t take it anymore, her smug, lying face pretending that I was nothing to her. Let her hate me, fine. At least then there’d be some kind of connection, some emotion. We’d stil be sisters. “Why don’t you just say it? You wish I was dead.”

“I don’t wish anything,” she insisted. “I don’t care what you are or what you do. I don’t care.”

“Say it.
Say it!
You wish I was dead!”

“You
are
dead!” she screamed. The mask didn’t just fal off her face. It disintegrated. Her lips trembled. Her eyes spurted tears. Her cheeks blazed red as the blood drained out of the rest of her face. She swal owed hard. “My sister is dead.”

“Zo…” I crossed the room, tried to hug her, but she slipped out of my grasp. “No, Zoie, I’m not, it’s okay, I’m right here.” She turned away from me and crossed her arms, huddled into herself. “What you said before, about the accident? That it should have been me?” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was shaking. “It should have been me.”

“No. No, I should never have said that. I didn’t mean it.” But I had.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s true. I should have been in the car. I should be dead. But now—” She choked down a sob. “Now Lia’s dead, and it’s my fault.”

“I’m not—”

“
Lia’s
dead!” she shrieked, spinning to face me. “My sister is
dead
, and I basical y kil ed her, and then this
thing
pretending to be Lia moves into her house, into her family, into her life, and I’m supposed to pretend that’s okay? It’s not bad enough that I have to live with what I did, with the fact that she—” Another sob. Another hard swal ow. But when she spoke again, she was steadier. “I live with that. Every day. Every minute. And that I could handle. But seeing you…
act
like her, try to
be
her. Watching you take her place, like you ever could?” She shook her head, and continued in a cold hiss. “I hate you.”

“Zo, don’t.”

“You think I like it?” she asked, furious. “Wasting my time with those losers she cal ed her friends? Joining the track team, being Daddy’s perfect little girl? You think I
like
screwing my sister’s boyfriend?”

I flashed on the image of the two of them, lips fused. If she wasn’t enjoying it, she was a better actress than I’d thought. “Then why—”

“Because
she
would have wanted me to protect what she had.” Zo looked down. “Because if someone’s going to replace her, it damn wel isn’t going to be
you.
”

“But it
is
me.” I came closer again. She stiffened.

“
Don’t
touch me.”

“Fine.” I stayed a couple feet away, hands in the air.
See? Harmless.
“I’m not dead. I’m
not
. You didn’t kil me. I know I look…different.” I wanted to laugh at the understatement, but it didn’t seem like the time. “It’s stil me. Your sister.”

Zo shook her head. “No.”

“Remember when we had that food fight with the onion dip? Or when we got iced in the house for a week and filmed our own vidlife?” I asked desperately. “Or how about the time you thought I hacked your zone and posted that baby pic of you, the one in the bathtub?”

“You did,” she muttered.

“Of course I did,” I said, grinning. “But only because you rigged my smartjeans and I ended up bare-assed in front of the whole seventh-grade class.” She almost laughed.

“How would I know al that unless I was there?” I asked. “Every fight we ever had, every secret you ever blabbed,
everything
. I know it. Because I was there.
Me
, Zo. Lia. It’s stil me.”

She looked like she wanted to believe it.

But she decided not to. I saw it happen. The mask fel back over her features, stiffening her lips, hardening her eyes. She decided not to care.

“No,” she said. “Lia’s dead. You’re a machine with her memories. That doesn’t make you real. It definitely doesn’t make you her.”

“Then why am I stil here?” I asked angrily. “If I’m just some imposter, why do Mom and Dad—excuse me,
your
mother and father—want me living in
Lia’s
house? In
Lia’s
room.”

“They don’t,” she murmured.

“What?” But I’d heard her.

“They don’t,” she said louder. “They don’t want you here. They wish you’d never come.”

“You’re lying.”

“You wish.”

“They love me,” I said, needing to believe it. “They know it’s me.”

“They
loved
their daughter. Past tense. You just make it hurt more. They thought you’d make it better. That’s why they did it—made you, like you’d be some kind of replacement.

But you make everything worse.”

“You’re lying,” I said again. It was the only weapon I had.

“If I am, then why is Dad up every night, crying?”

“He doesn’t cry.”

“He didn’t used to,” Zo said. “But he does now. Thanks to you. Every night since you came home. He waits until he thinks we’re al asleep, he goes to his study, and he
cries.

Sometimes al night. Don’t believe me? He’s probably at it right now. See for yourself.”

“Get out of my room.” Nothing she said could make me believe that about my father. Nothing.

“None of us want you here,” she said.

“Get out!”

Zo shook her head. “I should feel sorry for you, I guess. But I can’t.”

She slammed the door behind her.

I told myself she was lying. Being cruel for the sake of cruelty. And maybe I couldn’t blame her, if she real y thought her sister was dead, if she thought it was her fault. But that didn’t mean I had to believe her about our parents.

If my mother had fal en apart, if she thought I was just an inferior copy—Wel , that I could deal with. It made even more sense than Zo. Our mother was weak, always had been. It wasn’t her fault; it didn’t mean I didn’t love her. But it meant lower expectations.

My father was different.

He was the strong one, the smart one.

And, although I knew he would never admit it—not to me, not to Zo, not to anyone—I was his favorite. He was the one who knew me the best, who
loved
me the best. No, things hadn’t been the same since the accident, but they were getting better. It would take some time, but I would get him back. Because he saw me for who I was, Lia Kahn.

His daughter.

I knew Zo was lying. I was sure. But not so sure that I stayed in my room and lay down in bed and closed my eyes. Not so sure that I didn’t need proof.

My parents always turned on their soundproofing before they went to bed. So they wouldn’t have heard Zo and me fight, not if they were already asleep. As they should have been at three in the morning. But when I crept downstairs, I saw the light filtering through the crack between the door to the study and the marble floor. And when I pressed my ear to the heavy door, I heard something.

Gently, noiselessly, I eased open the door.

He was on his knees.

He faced away from me, his head bent. His shoulders shook.

“Please,” he said, in a hoarse, anguished voice. I flinched, thinking he must be speaking to me, that he knew I was there and wanted me to leave before I hurt him even more.

But it was worse than that.

“Please, God, please believe me.”

My father didn’t pray. My father didn’t believe in God. Faith was for the weak, he had always taught us. Backward-thinking, cowering, misguided fools who preferred to imagine their destiny lay in someone else’s hands.

“I’m sorry.”

And worse than faith in God, my father had taught us, was the ridiculous faith in a God who listened to human prayers, who had nothing better to do than stroke egos and grant wishes. An omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being who troubled himself with the minor missteps of the mortal world.

“Please forgive me.”

He hunched over, bringing his forehead to his knees. “I did this to her. It was
my
choice. I did this. Please. Please forgive me. If I could do it again…” His whole body shuddered. “I would make the right choice this time. If I had a second chance, please…”

I closed the door on his sobs.

The right choice.

Meaning, the choice he hadn’t made.

The choice to let me die.

“They would age, they would die.
I
would live.”

T
here was only one place I wanted to go. And only one person I wanted with me. If he was wil ing. I left two messages, voice and text, both with the same apology, the same request, and the same coordinates. Then I snuck out of the house—easy enough when no one cared where you went or when—and pushed the car as fast as it would go, knowing that the longer it took to get there, the more likely I’d be to turn back. The waterfal looked even steeper than I’d remembered it.

I had forgotten how at night, you couldn’t see anything of the bottom except a fuzzy mist of white far, far below. I had forgotten how loud it was.

But I had also forgotten to be afraid.

Auden wasn’t there.

But then, I hadn’t told him to meet me at the top. My message had been very clear, the coordinates specific. If he’d woken up—and if he’d forgiven me—he would be waiting at the bottom. I would tel him everything that had happened, what my sister had said. I might even tel him how my father had looked, trembling on his knees, bowing down to a god in whom he was, apparently, too desperate not to believe. And just tel ing Auden would make it better. I knew that.

But this was something I had to do without him. Just another thing he could never understand, because he was an org. He was human, and I was—it was final y time to accept this—
not
. Which is why he was waiting at the bottom, if he was waiting at al . And I was at the top, alone.

I took off my shoes. Then, on impulse, I stripped off the rest of my clothes. That felt better. Nothing between me and the night. The wind was brutal. The water, I knew, would be like ice. But my body was designed to handle that, and more. My body would be just fine.

I waded into the water, fighting to keep my balance as the current swept over my ankles, my calves, my thighs, my waist.
Wet,
my brain informed me.
Cold.
And on the riverbed,
muddy. Rocky. Sharp.
The temperatures, the textures, they didn’t matter, not yet. But I knew when I got close enough to the edge, when the water swept me over, the sensations would flood me, and in the chaos the distance between me and the world would disappear.

Not that I was doing it for an adrenaline rush. Or for the fear or the pain or even the pleasure. I wasn’t trying to prove something to anyone, not even myself. It wasn’t about that.

It was about Zo and my father and Walker and al of them—al of them who hated what I’d become. Maybe because it had replaced the Lia they real y wanted or because it was ugly and different and, just possibly, if Jude was right, better. Maybe they were scared. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I just knew they hated me. I knew my sister didn’t believe I existed, and wanted me gone. My father wished—
prayed
—I was dead. Maybe it would be easier for al of them if I was.

Too bad.

I was alive. In my own unique, mechanical way, maybe. But alive. And I was going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. They would age, they would die.
I
would live.

There were too many people too afraid of what I’d become. I wasn’t going to be one of them. Not anymore.

I didn’t take a deep breath.

I didn’t close my eyes.

I stretched my arms out.

I shifted my weight forward.

I let myself fal .

The world spun around me. The wind howled, and it sounded like a voice, screaming my name. The water thundered. The spray misted my body. And then I crashed into the surface, and there was nothing but rocks and water and a whooshing roar. And the water dragged me down, gravity dragged me down, down and down and down, thumping and sliding against the rocks, water in my eyes, in my mouth, in my nose. It was too loud to hear myself scream, but I screamed, and the water flooded in and choked off the noise. There was no time, no space in my head, to think
I’m going to die
or
I can’t die
or
Why am I still falling, where is the bottom, when is the end?
There was no space for anything but the thunder and the water, as if
I
was the water, pouring down the rocks, gashed and sliced and battered and slammed and stil whole, stil fal ing—and then the river rose up to meet me, and the water sucked me down and I was beneath, where it was calm. Where it was silent.

Still alive,
I thought, floating in the dark, safe beneath the storm of fal ing water.

Still here.

I closed my eyes, opened them, but the darkness of the water was absolute. I was floating again, like I had in the beginning, a mind without a body. Eyes, a thought, maybe a soul—and nothing else. But this time I wasn’t afraid.