Veneer (18 page)

The alarm cut off the second he touched the wall, giving credence to his perception theory. He tried to follow it to its logical conclusion, but kept dead-ending in blindness. The idea would have made sense had there been a physical clock in a dark room, but this...

Nothing added up. First, the alarm had sounded, which meant software was running in a portal somewhere. Second, when he touched the wall where the portal should have been, he activated the mute function. If he had closed his eyes while doing this, the events would not have seemed that extraordinary. So what did that all mean?

The question so consumed Deron that he began his morning routine without even noticing it. He put on a pair of pants and an undershirt and headed into the hallway. It was dark without the glow of the baseboards, but he had walked the path from his room to the stairs often enough to find his way without running into anything. The sight of the kitchen, usually filled top to bottom with colors that
popped
, as his mom put it, made him cringe. The description he had been avoiding since his initial discovery wormed its way into his head.

Dead. Everything looked dead.

It wasn’t until he sat down at the table and looked outside, watched the first rays of light come up, and saw the birds with their brightly colored feathers and yellow beaks. He didn’t know their names, didn’t really care. All that mattered was that there was still color in the world.

“What’re you all smiles about this morning?”

Oh yeah, thought Deron, remembering the other problem still plaguing him. It had to do with the strange woman roaming his house, an ersatz version of his mom that sounded the same, smelled the same, even told the same boring stories, but looked nothing like the woman who had raised him. This woman looked years older, had wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, splotches on her cheeks and neck. The skin on her arms and legs was pale, marked by blue veins that turned a sickly purple in places. Whoever she was, she thought herself Deron’s mother. So far, his plan had been to simply play along, wait for the right moment to confront that issue.

“Do you want breakfast?”

“No,” replied Deron, watching the birds fly away.

She seemed to know where everything was, had knowledge that his real mom couldn’t pass on in a single day. He tried to imagine the exchange, the information dump of so many collected years in the house. Most disturbing was the way she prepared her morning coffee, pulling blank containers from the cabinets as if she somehow knew their contents. It all added to a mystery Deron didn’t fully understand yet. Some things had color while others did not. The coffee can was gray, the scooper too, but when she dumped the grounds into the coffee maker, they were dark brown. Water looked like water, as did the milk when she poured it into a serving cup.

“You don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to.” She spoke with her back to him. Through the sheer robe, Deron could see too much.

He cleared his throat. “I’ll think about it.”

The woman poured herself a cup of coffee as soon as it was ready and took a seat opposite Deron. She sipped silently, staring at him with the same eyes but a different face. Finally, she asked, “Can you fix your veneer? I don’t like this all-black look. It makes you look like a hoodlum.”

Deron tried to remember how many times he had touched his face without realizing it. Sunday morning had been a mad dash to reconcile something, anything. It was possible that in the process he had ruined his veneer. There was no way to check, no real mirrors in the house that weren’t just portals with reflective software. It was all spurious: the mirror, the process of reflection, and even the image that came back.

He stood and walked around the table, careful to keep his gaze on his mom’s face. Kneeling down beside her, he asked, “Can you fix it for me? I’m having... trouble.”

Her face twitched, contorted in a way that somewhat resembled concern. It was then that he noticed the brown in her eyes was actually colorful, a gradient between amber and brown, nothing even remotely gray. She placed a finger on his cheek, blinked slowly. “There,” she said. “Good as new.”

There was no sensation. His face and body had just changed appearance dramatically, yet he felt no warmth, no coolness—nothing. More confused than ever, Deron left the kitchen, left Ania staring blankly after him. He walked the darkened stairs, crossed the loft to his room, and shut the door. It was brighter now that the sun had come up and his first response was to reconcile the windows to blot out the daylight. He couldn’t, of course, but as he stood there staring at the unyielding glass, his mind drifted back to Saturday night.

To the bus, to the windows.

The ride back from Paramel had been uneventful save for a landscape that looked nothing like it had on the way over. The first mile from the gate was a wasteland, but in the miles between, it was different. For one, it wasn’t as empty as previously shown, didn’t have that nuclear fallout aura that made it seem so forbidding. What Deron saw under the glare of the moon looked inviting. There were trees, brush, and a wilderness of unexplored land, full of overgrown grass and small animals darting through it. The abrupt change in content had made no sense then, but now, looking through the windows that couldn’t hold back the sun, he realized it had all been a smokescreen.

Someone had reconciled the windows on the bus to show passing scenery that fit in with the government’s storyline. It was the same with the windows in Swarm Survivor, just an overlay of veneer, a painting on a painting. He should have made the connection then, but the headache and the injury and...

“Fuck all,” he whispered.

Any semblance of control over the world was simply an illusion. The magic that let him change an object’s color was the same magic that veneered windows, only someone with a lot more skill had done those. Who could be trusted with such complete control over the world?

Deron gasped, felt the air start to leak out of the room. There was something else going on, something beyond schools and police and government. Something controlled the veneer at the deepest level, kept everyone in line with what amounted to lies.

Lies as unreal as the woman claiming to be his mom.

Deron considered the possibility that his imposter theory was just a way to deal with the truth about a mother who was barely recognizable anymore. No longer was she the picture of regal beauty that her veneer made her out to be. Underneath, she was still human, but that ancient kind that showed their age in their skin. It pained him for many reasons, for the face of a woman closer to fifty than forty, for the knowledge that the process would never stop. She would keep decaying, little by little, until she was dead.

Worst of all was the ignorance. Had she ever looked at her true image in a portal? Had anyone in the world for that matter? Was everyone just lying to themselves, letting death sneak up on them, suffering a heart attack with the face of a college graduate or a stroke at what looked like a professional thirty?

There was a tickle in his nose and Deron dropped out of the cloud long enough to realize his eyes had started to water. He stared at his lap, at the previously black jeans. A moment went by when he thought of nothing but Rosalia’s face only to see it consumed by a vortex of questions that blotted out all input.

A million miles away, he heard the door open.

“I’m leaving for work now,” said Ania, said the middle-aged woman with streaks of gray in her hair.

“Okay,” said Deron, standing and walking to the window. He took in the selectively colored world outside.

“I’ll call the school and tell them you won’t be in today.” She paused as if she wanted to say something else. “Don’t watch too much TV,” she said finally, her voice uneven.

“Don’t worry,” replied Deron to the closing door. “I can’t.”

22 - Rosalia

Rosalia was already imagining the discussion in her head when she stepped onto campus. Her route from home brought her into the parking lot, but over the last few weeks, she’d developed a habit of circling around to the courtyard at the front of the school to sit with Ilya. She got to school by bus and since it usually dropped her off early, Rosalia would often find her sitting on the evercrete wall that surrounded the plaza.

Ilya explained that school didn’t really start until eight o’clock, so even though they had the option of going inside, she preferred to spend as much of her life outside Easton Central’s walls as possible. Today was no different, except that instead of having her head buried in her palette, she was actively scanning her surroundings, probably in anticipation of Rosalia, of the impending conversation.

It would start with a question that expressed her struggles with understanding men, the entire gender in general, and Deron, specifically. And if she knew anything about Ilya, her attentive confidant would reply with some old-world wisdom probably passed down from her grandmother, which would make sense in a logical or mystical kind of way but wouldn’t apply to her current situation.

More than anything, Rosalia wanted to know what Deron was thinking when he did certain things or how to predict what he would do if she said certain words, made certain advances. There was no ancient insight for that, just conjecture, no better than Ilya’s or asking a random person on the street. The only way to test her theories would be to try them out on her boyfriend, and the wrong move could lead to disaster.

Rosalia shrugged when Ilya asked her why Deron had stood her up Sunday night. It seemed like the right response—a mix of ignorance and apathy, a nonverbal statement when no words would do it justice. Of course, she wanted details, as anyone who was living vicariously through her friend would. Sparing no mundane moment, Rosalia recounted the day, starting from Ilya’s departure Sunday morning. She had spent the day reconciling her outfits, trying to find the right colors to compliment the undergarments she had purchased. Around noon, she started sending instant messages to Deron. The fact that he didn’t respond didn’t bother her until dinner had come and gone. The romantic evening she imagined in her head was shattered, but even then, she was optimistic. After checking her veneer for the thousandth time, she set out for Deron’s house.

The next part made Ilya frown, out of concern, empathy, something. Rosalia described the evening, the chill in the air, the breeze blowing down the street, and the feel of her clothes as they moved across her body. She didn’t have the right words to say it was sensual without sounding dirty, so she went straight into the approach to Deron’s door.

His bedroom window was dark, along with the rest of the house. She knocked on the door and waited. His mom answered, flustering Rosalia. Ania didn’t actively dislike her; she was just leery of any girl that could get her little boy into trouble. Rosalia asked for Deron and Ania disappeared without inviting her in. She could only watch through the frosted glass as a shadow trudged up the stairs.

Ilya asked why Ania didn’t just let her go up or at least let her wait inside. Again, Rosalia shrugged, tried to explain the complicated relationship between them, but her words came out disjointed. Waving the topic away, she continued the story at the point where Ania came back downstairs and told her that Deron wasn’t feeling well, that he needed to get some rest. Rosalia asked to go up and when rebuked, even begged. His mom simply wouldn’t budge.

All the dreams, the fantasies of a special night with Deron, were engulfed in a blue flame and crumbled into a heap. And from those ashes rose more questions, most important of which being why he didn’t want to see her.

“Have you talked to Sebo?” asked Ilya.

“No, why?”

“I’ve seen the way Deron looks at you. I don’t think he’d pass up a chance to see you unless he had good reason. Or someone had convinced him not to.”

“Sebo’s not that kind of guy.”

Ilya ignored her and tried to change the subject. “Well, so you didn’t get to give him your cherry. At least we had some fun on Saturday, right?”

“Yeah,” she replied, recalling the feel of Mellow in her veins.

“And Deron’s out of the hospital, so he should be back in school today.”

“You think?” Rosalia had been sending him messages since yesterday and he hadn’t responded to any of them. Even if he were laid up in his bed, it would take minimal effort to reconcile a portal on the wall and send back a note saying he was alive.

“This is why we should question Sebo. He was the last one to see him, right?”

It sounded so ominous, as if she could have said, “He was the last one to see him
alive
, right?” But that would have meant Ania had his body stashed upstairs or already disposed of, weighed down with rocks at the bottom of Gillock Pond. She shook her head, dismissed the crazy theories. Ilya was right; before she went off thinking the worst, she should at least consult with Sebo. Maybe something happened in Paramel. He could have gotten into another fight. There were all sorts of people walking the streets there: punks, synth-addicts, and runaways that had nothing to barter except their bodies. Rosalia shuddered, flashing on a picture of Deron with one of those girls, her torn jeans aimed skyward as he ploughed her in an alley. It would have been Sebo’s idea, of course.

Ilya remained silent for a while and when Rosalia looked over, she found her averting her gaze politely. She was wearing her hair up today, matching Rosalia’s. It exposed her long neck and evoked images of Saturday night, of a discovery they hadn’t talked about since.

“Did you find out anything about our necks?” she asked, happy to see Ilya reengage the conversation.

“Nothing for sure. Some sites say they’re biological monitors, other people say they’re tracking chips so the government can keep tabs on us.”

“But everyone knows about them? How did we not—”

“I didn’t know I would bleed from my vagina until the sixth grade,” she replied, without missing a beat. “It’s like hearing aids or braces. No one teaches us about those, but people still have them.”

“Yeah, but people chose to get those things. They don’t wake up one morning and find something embedded in their necks. I don’t remember ever having anything put in, which means they must have done it when we were little.” A horrible thought occurred to her. “Who cuts open babies?”