Robin Wasserman - Frozen

“Trying to what?”

“Trying to be normal!” I lost it. “Look what you’ve got—and you’re wasting it!”

A scowl flashed across his face, then disappeared just as quickly. “What I’ve got?” He raised his eyebrows. “You mean like a flesh-and-blood body? A ‘normal’ brain?”

“That is not what I said.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be normal,” he said calmly. “Maybe it’s okay that you’re not.”

“Who said I’m not?”

He just looked at me, like it was obvious, like I was stupid for even asking such a question when I was standing there forming a response with a brain that ran off the same wireless power grid as the school trash compactor.

“Why am I even talking to you?” I said, disgusted.

“You tell me.”

“It was a rhetorical question.” I brushed past him. He didn’t flinch as our arms grazed against each other. “Just don’t bother ‘helping’ again.”

“Don’t worry.”

I didn’t ditch school. I went back to class, kept my head down, paid attention. I went to lunch, ready to face Bliss, whether it meant an apology or a fight. But she wasn’t there. Nor was Cass or Terra or their new boy toys or Zo or Walker. Becca, who would probably have spent the whole meal babbling about some species of frog she was intent on rescuing from extinction, wasn’t there either. I found out later that they’d all cut out, grabbed lunch at Cass’s place, and gotten an early start on the weekend partying. “I know we told you,” Cass said later when I finally tracked her down. “You must have forgot.”

Auden ate at an empty table tucked into a corner, half hidden behind a thick wooden pillar. I could feel him watching me.

I didn’t eat, of course. But I took a tray of food and sat in the usual spot, alone.

It was the best meal I’d had all week.

“You’re going like that ?” Zo asked, leaning in my doorway. The cat hissed at her from the foot of the bed. Psycho Susskind had, without my permission, made it his new home.

“What?” I braved the mirror again. Black retro shirt, baggy pants that looked like some kind of insect had gnawed off the cuffs, and—courtesy of an illicit raid through Zo’s supplies—plum-colored lipstick and some kind of violet grease smeared across my eyelids. I looked like Zo. I also looked, as far as I could tell, like crap, but these days, so did everyone else who mattered. So at least I would fit in.

Zo rolled her eyes. “Nothing.”

I shoved past her. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tonight .”

I paused at the top of the stairs. “You’re going?”

“Terra’s picking me up in five,” Zo said. “Is that a problem?”

Like she cared. “No problem.”

She looked like she wanted to say something else. But she waited too long, and I was out the door.

Walker’s car was in the driveway.

“You’re early,” I said, slipping in beside him. “You’ve just been sitting out here?”

He nodded. “It’s okay.”

“If I’d known you were out here…”

“It’s okay,” he said again, and put an arm around me. His pupils were wide; he’d obviously gotten an early start on the night, tripping on something or a lot of somethings. But it didn’t matter. Not if he was going to put his arm around me again.

“You ready?” He leaned forward, keyed in Cass’s address, then paused, waiting for permission, like the old days.

I wondered what would happen if I told him that we should skip the party, that when he’d said he wanted to go out, I’d thought he meant the two of us, alone.

Before, I was the one who dragged us to parties. Again? he would whine, like a little kid, and it would be cute, but not cute enough to change my mind, so we would spend another night surrounded until the waiting got too intense, and then he would squeeze my hand or I would squeeze his ass and—signal sent, message received—we would sneak off together to one of the extra bedrooms or a closet or that spot between the trees or once, after everyone else had passed out, the glassed-in pool, our bodies glowing in the eerie blue of the underwater lights. It was tradition, and keeping it tonight had to mean that he wanted to go backward. I wasn’t about to risk a change.

I thought he might kiss me as we sped along in the dark; that was tradition too. But he stayed on his side of the car and I stayed on mine, and his arm rested on my shoulders, a dead-weight that might as well have belonged to some invisible third passenger.

“Want to play Akira?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“Mind if I do?”

“No.”

Sometimes it felt like the body took over. That the body wasn’t the stranger, I was—just a passenger, carried along wherever the body wanted to go. Because that wasn’t me, letting Walker disappear into the network when I just wanted him to be with me—or, more to the point, wanted him to want to be with me. The strange voice that poured out of the strange mouth told him he could do whatever he wanted, I would go wherever he went, I didn’t care, I was fine, everything was fine, it was all good. That wasn’t Lia Kahn.

The car stopped in the usual place, at the bottom of the curving driveway that sloped up to Cass’s guesthouse. Walker grabbed my hand before I could get out. He leaned close, and when he spoke, his stubble scratched against my ear; it didn’t hurt. “Upstairs?” he said. “Later?”

“Definitely.” I turned to face him, my cheek scraping against his, but he pulled away just before our lips made contact. Even in the dark, his eyes were closed. “Later.”

Inside, things were the same as always: bodies sprawled on the couches and across the greenish-gray carpet, writhing in the throes of whatever new b-mod mix Cass had cooked up; walls pulsing in time with the music; couples tangled up in each other; lonelyhearts on the prowl; screens encircling the room, set to flash up Cass’s favorite vidlifes and a rotating selection of random zones; the lost dancers, gyrating to music that played only and forever in their heads; and in the glassed-in pool, girls with swanlike bodies skimming through the water, giggling, sputtering, chasing boys, chasing one another, the shifting patterns of their solar bikinis fading as the light disappeared.

The bikinis weren’t the only tech. Sonicsilk, LBDs and LCD tees, net-skirts, girls in microminis smartchipped to grow—or shrink—when they bent over, gamers in screenshirts that broadcast their kills… Almost everyone was in something lit up or linked in, everyone, that is, except for me. And Zo, of course, who didn’t count.

Bliss met us at the door, wearing a dress I’d seen before—a transparent fabric made opaque by the careful patterning of glowing light, but always, in its shifting translucence, offering the promise that if you watched closely enough, a glimpse of milky skin would slip through. She raised an eyebrow at my dead black shirt. Then leaned forward, voice lowered and fakely kind. “You should know, that retro look is totally wiped.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I got that.” I turned to blast Walker for letting me walk in blind, not that he could be trusted on the subject, being barely able to dress himself, much less me, but I was decked out in freakwear and needed someone to blame. Too bad: He’d already slipped away, probably off to join the gamers or get zoned.

Terra drifted over, her face—like everyone else’s—cosmetic clear, her shirt whispering melodies with every move. She stopped dead when she saw what I was wearing.

“Nice, uh… outfit,” she said.

“You could have told me.” It’s not like we made some big announcement about which looks were in and which were out. But things got old fast, and when they did, either you knew—or you didn’t.