Veneer (50 page)

Ilya did a double take and pressed her cheek against the glass. She could barely make them out, twin lines of red fireflies stretching into the distance. It was the only color in the world.

Her robe was draped over the footboard and she pulled it on as she headed down the stairs. It looked different now, no longer the mix of emerald and topaz, but rather a dull white, almost gray. Not that she could see it well; the living room and foyer were both pitch black. Ilya navigated the room slowly until she was standing at the front door. Opening it allowed a breeze into the foyer, reminding her to tie the sash at her waist.

Though the rain had passed, the ground was still wet and puddles dotted the street. Gusts of wind tore at Ilya’s robe, exposing her legs to the cold. She held the ends down as she walked, winding around the deeper wells, her feet becoming wet and numb within seconds. At the sidewalk, she turned right and headed towards the light. As she got closer, she noticed shadows moving down the street. Two of them walked in unison, pausing at the same time while a red flash exploded in front of them. Ilya could hear the sizzling from a distance.

“Excuse me, Miss,” said a voice from her right.

Ilya jumped at the sound. She hadn’t even seen the large man approach.
He was dressed like a uniform, but his clothes were gray and lacked the designatory stripe. From what she could see of his face, he was a younger guy with a crooked smile and some kind of rash on his cheeks. The image was intriguing and repulsive at the same time.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Something slipped from his sleeve, a short tube that glowed neon green. He held it up to her face.

Ilya raised her hand, but not before noticing his eyes go wide. “I’m fine,” she replied, squinting against the light.

“I need you to return to your home. There is a dusk ‘til dawn curfew in effect.”

“What time is it now?”

He reflexively glanced at his wrist. “I don’t know. I’m just here to keep the streets clear.”

“And them?” Ilya gestured to the line of flares. “What are they doing?”

“Marking the road for emergency services.”

Ilya shook her head. “But
why
are they doing that?” She felt emotion spill onto her face and tried to cover it up with a veneer.

The uniform cocked his head to the side and studied her face. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?” She pushed past him and walked as quickly as her bare feet would carry her.

“Miss!” Footsteps sounded behind her, closing fast. “You need to return to your home.”

Ilya yelled over her shoulder, “Why?”

“For your safety!”

She stopped, turned, and put her hands on her hips. “Safety from what? From who?”

The uniform squirmed; he wasn’t used to being disobeyed. Maybe it was Ilya’s appearance that gave him so much trouble. He could hardly resist staring at her, couldn’t keep his eyes from scouting the curves of her breasts under the thin robe. Had she the energy, she would have used his lecherous nature to get her own way. As it stood, the Oxycodone had a hold of her system now, giving the world a dreamlike quality.

She remembered the bandages and cringed. The uniform wasn’t ogling her; he was captivated by the assortment of cuts and bruises on her face. Except the only way he could have seen them was if Ilya chose to allow it. As far as she knew, she had spent more than an hour the night before reconciling the evidence away. Either the uniform possessed some kind of magic that allowed him to see under the veneer or...

Gravity doubled, then tripled, and Ilya felt herself falling. The uniform grabbed her before she hit the ground.

“Careful,” he said, pulling her arm around his shoulder. He tried to stand her up, but the height difference was too much. With a grunt, he leaned her back and slipped his other arm under her leg.

Ilya took her first breath in what felt like minutes and found herself being carried back to her house. The stars were twinkling and multiplying in the sky, occasionally disappearing behind a fast-moving cloud. Out of the individual points formed larger patterns, even belts. There was so much detail and on such a large canvas.

“Which house is yours?”

She turned her head to the sound and saw the uniform’s face again. He was smiling. Ilya resisted the urge to smile back.

“Miss?”

“Two down,” she slurred. It was the kind of side effect she’d expect from Mellow, but not from just one dose of Oxy. Or had she taken two? Two down.

“You don’t have to be scared. I’ve got you.”

Ilya frowned. Her veneer should have been blank.

“Aw, don’t be sad either.”

“How are you doing that?”

The uniform returned his attention to the sidewalk. “I’m not doing anything. You’re the one making faces.”

“But how can you see my face? My veneer...”

He sighed. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. There’s going to be an official announcement in the morning.”

Ilya felt the world dissolving around her. Stay awake, she told herself.

“Something happened to the veneer last night,” he said, whispering.

Her heart stopped as they climbed the front steps. “What?”

The uniform nodded to the door. “I’d like to speak to your parents. Can you knock for me?”

“Just press the doorbell.”

“There is no doorbell.”

“Yes there is,” she replied, trying to lift her arm to point to the portal beside the...

“No, you don’t understand. There’s no doorbell... there’s no veneer at all.”

65 - Rosalia

Rosalia stood on the corner at the end of her street for fifteen minutes before she realized that the trams weren’t running. Dawn had just broken over Easton and the usually busy street was empty. Friday mornings meant commuters heading to work and kids in the neighborhood heading to school, but neither graced the sidewalks or the benches at the tram stop. Instead, it was quiet, with nothing in the streets except spent flares and glow sticks that looked inert in the glare of the sun.

Everyone was still in shock.

She nodded to herself. It explained why people were hiding in their homes, unable to come to terms with the absence of the veneer. Rosalia was not immune to the uneasy adjustment; had Deron not prepared her for what it would be like, she might have run screaming into her closet and never come out. But then what was the loss of the veneer against a human life? Against Deron’s life? The context lessened the blow and allowed her to accept what she believed in her heart to be a temporary setback. If it all came down to chips and computers, then they would find a way to bring back the veneer. Just send a guy down to replace a fuse.

The image made her laugh, but it was cut short by Deron’s face merging with the overweight man in tight coveralls. It was that face alone that propelled her forward, made her feet move despite the distance involved. If she had to walk all the way downtown, then so be it. There had been enough time wasted screwing around. It was time to involve the police.

Sebo had tried to talk her out of it, but nothing he had said the night before made any sense. He stayed with her a long time, let her cry on his shoulder even as the color drained from the veneer. He left her with a promise that if she waited until morning, he would be at her door at dawn so they could go to the police together.

Rosalia didn’t know why she had bothered believing him.

Still, his lack of commitment wouldn’t stop her, nor would the tram service’s inability to function without the veneer. So she walked and took solace in the smell of fresh rain, of dew-covered grass that refracted the sunlight in a million little sparkles. Deron had been right; there was so much to see in the world, if you knew where to look.

Crossing Marsh Street, Rosalia noticed a man walking down the sidewalk towards her. The way he moved suggested middle age, but his head swung from side to side like a child discovering a toy store for the first time. Though he smiled, his eyebrows pitched at the middle, as if he were going to cry. When he saw her, he froze for a moment before turning back the way he had come.

Another street down, she found a couple walking hand in hand and pointing to various plants and birds that had reemerged after the storm. They were dressed like the man, just like Rosalia, in gray clothes. They looked like they had both escaped from the same mental hospital.

Rosalia laughed, though she didn’t understand why she found it so amusing. Maybe it was the justice of it all. Agents had taken Deron away from her and he had broken their precious veneer in return. Now everyone would feel the same fear. She certainly had.

Her mind wandered as she turned the corner towards Gillock Pond. She replayed the night in his dad’s apartment, of her sneaking out of bed and out of Deron’s life. She shivered. Had it really happened? Or had it all been some terrible dream? Looking down at her hand, at the bruises dotting her knuckles, she knew it had all been real—real enough to scar beneath the veneer.

Voices carried on the wind, mixing in with the sound of insects. It sounded like a crowd and sure enough, Rosalia discovered several people gathered together in the micro-park.

She suppressed outrage at their presence. The intruders had trespassed on her special place, the only piece of Easton where she and Deron had ever felt together and alone. It was where they had shared their first kiss and first touch and...

So many firsts, thought Rosalia, unable to recall anyone interrupting their time together. What had changed that made people so interested now? Was Gillock Pond hiding something under its veneer?

“Look at you,” said a woman in a nightgown.

“I know.”

“Marshall, my hair! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Reflections,” whispered Rosalia. They were all looking at their reflections in the pond. Mirrors were nothing more than reflective portals built in the veneer. With those gone, the only place to see a reflection would be...

It was so low-tech, yet so effective in altering a population’s mood. The wonder on their faces made their eyes dance and their mouths curl. Deron had ripped out the backbone of an entire city and its people were reveling in it.

Nightgown woman noticed Rosalia and beckoned to her. “Come here, dear. Pretty thing like you has no reason to be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” she replied, trying to steel her veneer out of habit.

The woman’s husband stepped aside and gave Rosalia room at the edge of the pond. After a deep breath, she leaned over and looked at her reflection.

Freckles—dotting her cheeks. Deron had never mentioned those. And her hair wasn’t completely blonde; there were streaks of brown that set off the golden color. Reconciliation had changed the shape of her mouth over the years, adding contrast to define the edges. In the smooth water, she saw that her lips weren’t as full as she had made them out to be. The difference was small, but Rosalia couldn’t shake a decade of self-image so quickly. The girl in the pond looked like a long lost relative, someone known in childhood but sent away only to develop into a woman in the interim.

Then it hit her. The reflection was what Deron had embraced on the sidewalk after coming back for her. He saw her for what she really was and still wanted her.

“She’s speechless.” A wrinkled hand appeared on her shoulder. “You were expecting someone else, maybe?”

“Not really,” she admitted, though it certainly wasn’t the same girl she had seen in the mirror the day before.

“Well, at least you don’t have any gray in your hair.”

“I like it,” said her husband. “It matches your clothes.”

They tussled playfully behind Rosalia’s back. All around her, people where shaking their heads at the aberrations they saw in the water. Some looked pleased; a few pressed tenderly at old wounds or unexpected wrinkles. Within minutes, there were was no free real estate left around the pond. The crowd grew and Rosalia gawked at the variation, at the imperfection of natural humans.

Ugliness has returned to Easton, she thought. If nothing else, it would make school more interesting.

“What is it, dear?” asked the woman.

Rosalia remembered herself. She had to get used to her emotions betraying her. “I just realized... I mean, everyone I know. I might not recognize them.”

“Well, just think of it as a second chance to make a first impression.”

“I’ve done that already,” said Rosalia, thinking of Deron on the sidewalk.

“Oh. And how did it go?”

The memory made her smile. “He said I was beautiful.”

“He sounds like a smart boy.”

“But I don’t know what he looks like.”

The woman shrugged and looked at her husband. “Will it matter?”

The dagger in Rosalia’s heart twisted. “Not anymore.”

She withdrew from the crowd without waiting for a response. It was time to leave Gillock Pond and continue towards downtown, but Rosalia felt another attack coming on. They had plagued her all night, each one trigged by some lingering memory of Deron. This one spawned from the appearance of the swinging chair at the edge of the park; she was sure that if she sat down on it, she would keep to one side and leave Deron enough room to sit beside her.

Her heart pounded. Only one thing stopped the attacks: progress. So long as she kept pursuing justice, kept working towards the goal, the pain lessened. But then downtown was so far away, even by tram.

A sound Rosalia hadn’t heard all morning broke out over the relative quiet. It was as much a surprise to everyone else; they all turned together to look at the gray cruiser creeping up the street. A uniform was hanging out of the passenger window with a bullhorn held to his mouth.

“This is a city-wide notice. A mandatory meeting will be held at Easton Central High School this morning. Please proceed to the school by foot. Do not attempt to drive as all traffic lights have stopped functioning. All of your questions will be answered by city officials. The Easton Police Department has no further information at this time.”

He repeated the message twice before noticing Rosalia and her new friends. The cruiser stopped in the middle of the street and both uniforms got out.