Robin Wasserman - Torn

“I see you brought a friend,” my father said flatly, when we stepped into the living room. Riley, who had been holding my hand, let go. My father didn’t offer to shake. “Welcome to our home,” he said. “Riley, I assume?”

Riley nodded.

“You should have told your mother you were bringing a guest,” my father said.

My mother trilled a fake giggle and swept a hand through the air, dismissing the issue. It’s not fine, but I’ll say it’s fine, she said, without saying anything.

Suddenly I was tempted to grab Riley and drag him out of there before he had a chance to take in the imported marble, the networked walls, the way the priceless antique breakfront matched the silverware matched the gold-plated wall hangings. I didn’t want him to see that the four of us lived in a space large enough for a hundred—at least a hundred people willing to live the way he’d lived in the city—walled off from the likes of him by elaborate alarms, lockdown rooms, and bulletproof glass, waited on hand and foot by a flotilla of mechanical serving machines. Not that Riley had never seen a big house before. Quinn’s estate was three or four times the size of ours, a mansion fit for a queen, where ours was barely suitable for a low-ranking duke and duchess. But this was different, because this house—despite the fact that I had no control over anything in it—was mine. It might as well have been an extension of me, and now that he’d seen it, he would see it every time he looked at me.

“At least we won’t need any extra food, right?” I said. Mechs don’t eat.

My father ignored the lame joke. “Your sister’s in her room,” he said. Zo was always in her room. Less chance of running into any of us there, I figured. I’d never thanked her for helping me break into the Brotherhood’s temple to rescue my friends; she’d never apologized for joining up in the first place. Or for any of the other things she’d done to me since I woke up in this body: treating me like crap, stealing my boyfriend, convincing me that our parents preferred me dead. We’d never once talked about what she’d said the night I ran away. That she missed her sister. That she was trying to protect Lia’s life from its usurper, also known as me. It was the last real conversation we’d had. Now, when forced out of her cave, she traded monosyllabic grunts with the rest of us, obviously counting the minutes until she could slink back in.

Small talk taken care of, my father ushered us to the dinner table. Riley trailed me, lingering uncertainly behind an empty chair until everyone else had sat down. Only when Zo appeared did he take the final seat.

“Hey,” I said to Zo.

She shrugged in response, eyes widening slightly at the sight of Riley.

My father cleared his throat. “This is your sister’s friend—”

“We’ve met.”

Not much surprised my father. But that did.

Family dinners were, as a general rule, unrelieved misery. This one managed to be more miserable than most. My father decided to pretend that Riley was like any other ordinary boy I’d brought home when I was an ordinary girl. Too bad he’d spent all those years of ordinariness scaring the crap out of any guy I’d made the mistake of allowing through the front door. The more questions my father asked, the lower Riley sank in his chair, and the more gruntlike his answers became.

“And what do you do with your time?” my father asked.

Riley shrugged.

“He does Lia ,” Zo muttered.

I kicked her under the table. She scooped a forkful of ziti into her mouth, catching my eye as she did, then glancing pointedly down at my empty plate. My mother always laid out a setting for me at these Thursday dinners. As if pretending I still had a stomach let her believe I still had a soul.

“What do your parents do?” my father pressed on.

“Dad!” I said sharply. He knew Riley was from the city. He knew what that meant.

“Dunno,” Riley mumbled, and though I couldn’t blame him, I also couldn’t help wishing he would drop the hulk act and talk , even if it meant knocking over the table and shouting at my father to shut the hell up. But this was what he did when he was around people he didn’t trust—a group that included almost everyone on the planet: He kept his mouth shut. I knew my father well enough to see the wheels turning, and the giant NOT GOOD ENOUGH sign flashing in his head. Which only made his questions sharper and his frown deeper and guaranteed that Riley would never get why I wanted to be here or why I cared that he wanted me. All Riley saw was the jerk who wanted to know what he intended on doing with his life without a high school diploma and did he even know how to read.

“How do you support yourself?”

“He doesn’t need to support himself,” Zo said, out loud this time. “He’s got Lia to do it for him. With your money.”

“Be polite to our guest, Zoie,” my mother said quietly.

“I think Dad’s got that covered,” she said, glaring at him.

Our father silenced her with a look, and she swallowed whatever she was going to say next. I was almost a little sorry. The obnoxious running commentary was oddly comforting, taking me back to all those other dinners when Walker and the boys before him had suffered the same fate, blistering under my father’s stare while Zo lobbed her missiles, dancing as close to the line as she could before finally stepping over it. She loved watching the boys squirm, but not as much as she hated it when our parents tried to shut her up.

Zo caught my eye—in the old days this was my cue to join her in battle. I was tempted. But it occurred to me that the last time a boyfriend of mine had been in this house, he’d spent the night in Zo’s bed. So I ignored her. She went back to her food, sulking in silence through the rest of the meal.

As soon as the last bite of food disappeared off the last plate, Riley leaped up to start clearing the table. My mother made that half-embarrassed, half-shaming gurgle in the depths of her throat that let you know, in no uncertain terms, you’d made a wrong move. “We have that taken care of,” she said. Riley dropped back into his chair as she slid a manicured hand across the AI panel on the table. The servomechs skittered out from the kitchen and began to clear.

“That’s right, Mother,” Zo said. “What kind of idiot would think that just because we treat people like servants, they should act accordingly?”

“You think I’m too big an idiot to know you’re talking about me?” Riley snapped, finally speaking up loud and clear—at exactly the wrong moment. I realized he thought she was making fun of him —and I couldn’t correct him without making him feel even stupider.

“You will not speak to my daughter like that in my house,” my father said. He rose to his feet. “And I certainly hope you don’t speak to Lia like that, ever .”

Riley rose to meet him eye to eye. “I give your daughter the respect she deserves,” he said, then paused just long enough to give me hope… only to make it even worse. “Unlike some people.”

When my father got angry, he got quiet. His lips went pale and thin. You’d think he was retreating. But I knew better. “You had better not be implying—”

“Maybe we should skip dessert tonight,” my mother said quickly, in a fluttering voice. She patted an imaginary bulge in her belly. “I’m just back from a binge-purge, and trust me, it’s not an experience I want to repeat any time soon.” She threw in some obviously fake laughter when it became clear the rest of us wouldn’t oblige.

“No one wants to hear about your fat suctioning, Mother,” Zo said. “Although I guess that explains why you’ve got that disgusting vat of fat juice in the fridge. Maybe we should skip dessert if that’s what you’re planning to—”