Skinned -1 (30 page)

I let myself rise to the surface. The water slammed me, like a building crumbling down on my head, and again sucked me under.

And again the silence, again up to the surface, again the storm, and again sucked down to the depths.

I wasn’t afraid. I knew I could stay below, swim far enough from the base of the fal s to surface in safety. When I was ready. Which I wasn’t, not yet. I was content to stay in the whirlpool, limp and battered, letting the water do what it wanted, fil ing myself up with the knowledge that I had done it, that I had jumped, that I had fal en. I had survived. I was alive; I was invincible. I wasn’t ready for it to end.

Until I surfaced and heard the wind scream my name again. Except it wasn’t the wind, it was Auden, who had come for me, who was screaming. I screamed back, but the water poured into my mouth. I waved an arm, but the water sucked me down again, and when I fought back to the surface, Auden was gone.

Then I did swim, deep and swift, my mind starting to seep back into itself and with it, panic. I was stil invincible; Auden wasn’t. I surfaced again, a safe distance from the churning water at the base of the fal s. Nothing.

“Auden!”

Nothing.

Then back down into the dark, swimming blind, my arms outstretched, so that even if I couldn’t see him, I would feel him, but there was just the water, parting easily as my body sliced through, water and more water and no Auden.

Until I broke through the surface and there he was, gasping and struggling to stay afloat, his hair plastered to his face, his eyes squinty and his glasses long gone. I grabbed him, squeezed tight, kicking hard enough to keep us both afloat.

“Are you okay?” As we drifted away from the fal s, the water grew shal ower until we hit a point where our feet touched the bottom, midway between the base of the first waterfal and the edge of the second, smal er drop-off.

“Okay,” he said, panting. The current was lighter here, easy enough to fight. “You?”

“Fine. What the hel are you doing?”

“Rescuing you.” He shivered in my grasp. “You were drowning.”

I shook my head.

He looked like he wanted to drop down into the water and never surface. “Stupid,” he said furiously. “Of course you weren’t. I just—I saw you up there, and when you fel , and you didn’t come up, and I thought—”

“Thank you,” I cut in, hugging him tighter. “My hero.” I didn’t need a hero, and I wasn’t the one who’d needed rescue. But he was soaking and freezing and had nearly drowned, and I figured there was no harm in giving him a little ego stroke.

“Uh, Lia?”

“What?” I asked, hoping that he wasn’t going to choose yet another horribly timed moment to start talking about the great love affair that was never going to be. An ego stroke was one thing, but there was only so far I could go.

“You’re, uh, not wearing any clothes.”

“Oh!” I let go, and bent my knees until I was submerged up to my neck.

“I couldn’t see anything, anyway,” he said. “Not without my glasses.”

I grinned. “So you were looking?”

His cheeks turned red. His lips, on the other hand, were nearly blue.

“Let’s get out of here,” he suggested, hugging himself and jumping up and down against the cold.

I wasn’t ready, not yet. “You go. I just want…” It was just another thing I couldn’t explain to him, the way it felt to go over the fal s, to know that I had absolutely no control and to just let it happen, let myself fal —and to survive. I knew I’d have to drag myself out of the water to see what damage I’d done, if any. I’d also have to deal with everything else. And I would. Just not yet. “I’m staying in. For a while.”

“Then me too,” he said.

“You’re freezing.”

He shook his head, stubborn. Stupid. “I’m fine.”

“Fine. Have it your way.”

So we stayed in, Auden making a valiant effort to pretend he wasn’t noticing my body. While I, for the first time,
wasn’t
noticing it. I wasn’t ashamed, wasn’t repulsed; I was just content to be where I was, what I was—and to be with him. We did backflips and somersaults and competed for who could hold a handstand longer before the current swept us over. We laughed. We didn’t talk about my family or about Jude or about “us” and especial y not about what had happened in the city or what was going to happen when we got back to shore. We didn’t talk about much of anything, except some supposedly funny vid he’d seen of a monkey in a diaper and whether if one was in a position to eat, daily chocolate was a required element of a healthy and balanced diet. Meaningless stuff like that. Easy stuff.

I hadn’t been so happy in a long time. Maybe since the accident.

“I think…I need…to get out,” Auden final y said as I resurfaced from a perfect handstand. His teeth were chattering so hard he could barely form the words.

I nodded. “Race to shore?” And before he could answer I took off, digging my strokes into the water, pushing hard to win. I missed winning.

Midway to the bank I popped my head up, checking to see if he was catching up…but he was swimming in the wrong direction. Swimming along with the current. Away from me, away from the shore, toward the edge.

“Auden!” I shouted. “Wrong way!”

He’s not wearing his glasses,
I thought suddenly, horrified.
He can’t see.

“Auden! Swim toward me! Fol ow my voice!”

But he didn’t cal back. He didn’t change direction. And I began to realize he wasn’t swimming at al . He was drifting.

Cold,
I thought as the water lapped against my body.
But how cold?
Cold enough that a person—a real, live, warm-blooded person—couldn’t take it anymore? Couldn’t fight back against the current? Couldn’t make it to shore?

“Auden!”
I screamed, and then I ducked under the water, pushing myself harder than I ever had on the track, when it didn’t count, pushing the legs to kick, the arms to dig, to reach him, to grab him before the current carried him away, before the water caught him and wouldn’t let go, not until it plunged over another edge, down another ripple of jagged rock, into a storm of erupting water, and down, into the silent depths, the center of the whirlpool.

I swam fast. The current was faster. He was one arm’s length away, close enough that I could see his pale face, his closed eyes, his arms floating limply and his head tipped back, bouncing along shuddering water—and then two arm’s lengths, and then three, and the river carried him away from me, the river claimed him. I screamed, I lunged, one last, powerful kick forward, one desperate grasp—and his body disappeared over the edge.

I went over after him. This time there was nothing joyous about the plunge. Nothing fast or chaotic. It seemed to last forever. Enough time for me to go over it in my head, again and again, seeing him on the shore, hearing him scream my name, clinging to his body—and then letting him go.
Hold on,
I thought furiously, as if I could communicate with the past, as if the girl in the memory could make a better choice.
It’s cold,
I told her.
It’s too cold.

But the girl in the memory didn’t notice the cold or didn’t care.

She was invincible.

I was sucked down again at the bottom, but there was no peace in the dark, quiet water. The empty stil ness just meant he wasn’t there. I fought my way to the surface, hoping, but I didn’t see him, didn’t hear him, so I dove down again, sweeping the river from one side to the other, swimming blind, arms outstretched. Tel ing myself that it would be like before, I would catch him, only for him to tel me that he hadn’t needed rescuing, and we would laugh over the misunderstanding, and this time I wouldn’t let go.

I don’t know how much time passed before I realized what I had to do. Seconds, maybe. Minutes, at the most. No time at al if you didn’t have breath to hold. And if you did? Too much.

Lungs fil ed with oxygen floated. Empty lungs sank to the bottom.

So that’s where I searched next, my bare stomach scraping against the muddy riverbed. I forced myself to keep my kicks slow and steady, covering the ground methodical y, hoping I would find him, hoping I wouldn’t, because if he was there, a stil body in the mud, if he was…

I didn’t let myself think about it.

I swam.

And then I touched something that wasn’t rock, wasn’t mud, was firm and long and foot-shaped, and I wrapped my hand around it, around him. I scooped up his body and kicked toward the surface, burst out of the water. And only then did I force myself to look at what I was holding. His eyes were open, rol ed back in his head. I had to turn away from the unbroken white stare. He wasn’t breathing.

CPR,
I thought, towing him to shore. I voiced for help, gave our coordinates, and someone would come for us, to save us—but maybe not in time.

Make him breathe. Breathe for him.

But I didn’t breathe at al .

Stil , there was air flowing through my throat, I thought. Hissing past my voice box, when I needed it, the stream of unfiltered air that made the artificial larynx vibrate so I could talk. I didn’t know if that would work. I had to try.

The network told me what to do. I tipped his head back. I placed my lips on his. They were so cold. Blood oozed from the cuts on his face, on his arms, blood everywhere.

Breathe,
I thought, forcing the air through my mouth, into his. Pumping his chest, maybe in the wrong place, maybe too light, maybe too hard, I didn’t know, but pumping, once, twice, three times, thirty times, just like I was supposed to. I paused, I waited, I listened. No change.

I breathed for him again.

And again.

He coughed.

Water spurted out of his mouth, spraying me in the face.

“Auden.” I cradled his face. “Auden!”

He didn’t say anything. But he was breathing. I could hear him. I could see his chest rise and fal . He was breathing.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I laid my head against his chest, listening to his heart. Night had almost ended; the sky was turning pink.

He was stil breathing when help arrived. They shifted him onto a backboard, immobilized his neck and spine, gave him an oxygen feed, loaded him into an ambulance. I got in after him, because no one stopped me.

It was only when someone wrapped a blanket around me that I realized I was stil naked.

No one would tel me if he was going to be okay. But I promised him he would, over and over again.

His eyes opened.

“You’re okay,” I told him, holding his hand. His fingers sat limply in mine. “You’re going to be okay.”

“I hope not,” he croaked, his voice crackly.

For a second I was so happy to hear him speak that I didn’t register what he said.

“They’l make me like you,” he whispered. “We can be the same.”

“No,” I whispered back, fiercely. “You’re going to be fine.”

That’s what I said.

That’s what I wanted to believe, about him, about myself.

I didn’t want to be a person who hoped he was right, that he would
not
be fine. I didn’t want to hope that he was hurt so badly that there’d be no other option, that he would die, only to be reborn as a machine, just so that I wouldn’t have to be alone.

I reminded myself what it would mean. I pictured him, even though it hurt—
because
it hurt—lying stil on a metal slab, pale and cold, the white sheet draped over his skul , where his brain had been scooped out, carved up, replicated. I pictured him trapped in the dark, stuck in a frozen body, thinking he might be dead, then wishing he was.

I didn’t want that for him.

Or at least, I didn’t
want
to want that for him.

But truth? Sordid, pathetic truth? I think I did.

If Auden were a mech, if we could go through it together, everything would be different. I would no longer be alone.

“You’re going to be okay,” I said again, uselessly. It was better and less complicated than the truth, and maybe if I said it enough, it would come true.

“Liar.” His eyes rol ed back in his head.

Somewhere, an alarm sounded, and one of the men pushed me out of the way.

“Flatline,” the man said, pushing on Auden’s chest, fiddling with a machine, as the alarm droned on.

“What’s happening?”

No one answered me.

The ambulance sped toward the hospital, and the men pounded on his chest, and the alarm beeped, and Auden’s chest lay flat, his lungs empty.

Flatline.

No heartbeat.

No life.

They’ll fix you,
I thought, squeezing his hand, holding on, like I hadn’t in the water.
They have to.

“Nothing hurts.”

A
t the hospital someone gave me something to wear.

Someone else brought bandages, patched up the gashes the rocks had torn in my skin. Even though there was no need. Nothing was gushing or dripping. Nothing hurt. Nothing had penetrated the hard shel around the neural cortex and—or so it seemed from the fact that I could stil walk and talk—none of the complicated wiring beneath the surface had been shaken loose. I was fine. But I let them patch the skin. I nodded when they told me I needed to get myself checked out—somewhere else, of course, where they knew what to do with things like me. I would have agreed to anything as long as they let me stay.

Auden was gone, swept away behind a set of white double doors, and I sat on a blue padded chair, staring at nothing, waiting.

This isn’t happening,
I thought, then cut myself off. No denial.

No rage, no bargaining,
no
acceptance. I wasn’t getting sucked into any of that five stages of grieving shit, because he was stil alive. Ergo, no grief. No denial.

This
is
happening.

I had wanted to feel. Now I wanted to stop. I wanted to be al those things people were afraid of. I wanted to be cold and heartless, like a computer, like a refrigerator, like a toaster. I wanted to turn myself off.

That, at least, I could do.

I didn’t.

The white doors swung open, and a doctor pushed through. He sat down next to me.

Not good,
I thought. If it was good news, he would stay on his feet, he would spit it out quickly, so we could al sigh and laugh and go home. But bad news, he’d want to deliver that face-to-face. He’d want to be close enough that he could pat me on the shoulder. Or catch me if I passed out. Even though, as a doctor, he would know that was an impossibility.