Robin Wasserman - Torn

“No heartbeat,” Jude said. She flinched, and jerked backward. “But I appreciate the thought.”

Zo helped him to his feet and led him, silent and dazed, to the curb. Then sat him down next to me and joined him on the other side.

“You okay?” I said.

He turned his head to look at me, then turned away. I didn’t know if it was disgust for the question, or the closest he was willing to get to shaking his head. No .

I rested a hand on his shoulder, lightly, thinking, This is wrong; he’s not the one I should be comforting; this isn’t my job.

But the one I should have been comforting was gone. Still, I took my hand away.

Jude didn’t move. He mumbled something.

“What?”

“He said he shouldn’t have started it,” Zo said.

“You didn’t start it.”

“I start everything.”

“What happened in there?” Zo nodded at BioMax. “Why was he so angry?”

There was a long pause, long enough that I thought Jude wasn’t going to answer. “It wasn’t about what happened in there.”

“Was he right?” I asked. “Have you been holding it over his head all this time?”

“It took about thirty seconds for you to start accusing me of things,” Jude snapped. “That’s a new record.”

“I’m not—” But I was. “Maybe if you’d bothered to talk to him, rather than letting him feel guilty so that you could use him—”

“We talked,” Jude said. “Yesterday.”

“About what?”

“Things.”

“What things?”

He raised his head and turned to me again, golden eyes blazing. “ You , for one. Want to know what he had to say? What I had to say?”

My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I didn’t even know what I was afraid of.

Even his smile looked broken. “Didn’t think so.”

“I’d like to hear,” Zo put in.

That got a more authentic smile, but not a response. “It doesn’t matter,” he told me. “This was going to happen eventually. It had to.”

“You’re pathetic,” I said. “Both of you. This had to happen? Like this was some kind of manly rite you both had to go through? A guy thing?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Right. Because I’m sane , and I don’t go around punching out my best friends.”

“Maybe because you don’t have any.”

“Screw you.” I jerked my head at Zo. “Let’s go. We’re out of here.”

Zo didn’t move. “I don’t think we should leave him like this… .”

She may have been right, but I didn’t care. “He’ll be fine; won’t you?”

“I’m always fine,” Jude said.

“See?”

Zo didn’t respond. She wasn’t even looking at me—she was looking past me with an exaggerated expression of horror.

“Nice try. What is it this time, monster behind my back?”

“Worse,” Zo muttered.

Of course, I thought. What else could make this perfect day complete? What else could make Zo tremble?

“Girls,” our father said. “Is this a bad time?”

“Can we go somewhere more private?” my father asked.

Zo and I spoke at the same time. “No.”

He lasered a look at Jude. “Then perhaps your friend here would be willing to leave us?”

“No,” we said again.

My father sighed. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to do this in front of strangers.”

“Funny how I don’t care,” I said.

Jude shifted his weight, as if preparing to rise. “I can go.”

“No.” My hand clamped down on his arm, holding him in place. “You’re not leaving. He is.”

“Not until you hear what I have to say.”

“So say,” I told him. “Then go.”

“I didn’t know you were going to be here, Zoie,” he said.

Zo let her hair fall across her face. “Don’t talk to me,” she said. “If she wants to let you talk to her, fine. But don’t talk to me.” She retreated to a spot on the curb several feet away, dragging Jude with her. They sat down together, close enough that they could still hear us, far enough to make very clear that she wouldn’t be participating in any rituals of apology and forgiveness.

My father sighed again, theatrically, like we were supposed to feel sorry for him and his grand, exhausting efforts. Why can’t I just punch him? I wondered. It would be so simple, curling my hand into a fist, forcing it into his jaw, wrestling him to the ground. In the end it was nothing but physics, controlling the electronic synapses that would set the limbs in motion, calculating the appropriate speed and angle of impact. I could hurt him, as Riley had hurt Jude. It had been easy enough for them to go from words to actions. So why couldn’t I?

“Are you wondering how I knew you were here?” he asked.

“You’re on the board,” I said, glancing at the BioMax building. “You know what they know.”

He got the implication. “I didn’t know what they were doing,” he said. “I never would have allowed it.”

“Because you have so much power over them.”

My father believed sarcasm was the refuge of the weak-minded, those incapable of meeting an argument head-on. He ignored it.

“Now that I do know, I’ll—”

“Put up a fight? Careful, Dad. You’re running out of daughters.”

He cleared his throat. “Your mother is worried about you. Both of you.”

“Is she still living with you?” I said.

“Of course.”

“Then she can’t be too worried.”

“Lia…”

“Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“My name.” He’d given me that name, after his dead grandmother. It meant “bringer of truth.” But when he said it, it meant I created you. I named you. I own you.

“I’m not going to beg, Lia. I’m sorry—deeply sorry. You will never know how much. I recognize how difficult it is to forgive, how much strength it takes—”

“So I’m weak?”

“I can see this is useless,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Now we agree.”

“I don’t know what more I can say. I’ll do whatever I can to make this up to you, Lia, but I’m not going to beg. I have my limits. I’ll always be here, when you change your mind,” he said, like it was a foregone conclusion I would. He’d always been this condescending, I realized. I’d just been too oblivious to notice or too desperate for his approval to care.

He walked away.

He had limits, all right. Limits on his capacity to be human, much less a father . I believed he was sorry. I believed he truly wanted me to forgive him. He just didn’t want it as much as he wanted to preserve his pride. If he actually loved me, he wouldn’t hesitate to beg. He wouldn’t give up so easily. He wouldn’t stand there so stiff and proud. He would be broken, like I was broken.

He wouldn’t have walked away.

“He doesn’t even want my forgiveness,” Zo said, sad and small on the other side of Jude.

“Would he have gotten it?” Jude asked.

But Zo was in her own world; I could hear it in her voice. Jude didn’t exist for her right now. Neither did I.

“He didn’t want it,” she said, sounding distant. “He didn’t even ask.”

There was nowhere to go. We let the car drive us in circles while we sat quietly, facing away from one another, staring out the window or, in my case, at our reflection. Zo broke the silence. “You know what I like about you being a mech?” she asked, then answered her own question. “It’s a lot quieter. You don’t do that annoying mouth-breathing thing anymore.”

“What?”