My head hurts. It’s the first time I have felt this kind of pain. Almost like a headache. Are my biochips punishing me for trying to reveal the truth? Maybe I am programmed never to admit anything? Maybe I am self-destructing even as I stand here. I wince and drop my head into my hands, rubbing my temples.
‘Never mind, Jenna. You don’t have to tell me,’ Ethan says.
I press my temples, trying to sort it out. ‘I need to,’ I say. ‘I have to tell someone.’
It is odd. The sun is shining. The grass is a brilliant green. The cemetery is almost festive, with colorful flowers dotting the neatly trimmed graves. It is a shocking contrast to the ugly truth I am about to reveal to Ethan.
I lay my hands out, palms up, toward him. ‘Take my hands,’ I say. He does. He squeezes them. I wonder at the feelings it sends up my arms, through my brain, through all that i
s salvaged and new. I wonder at what is real and what is replicated, the braiding of genuine and fake. I wonder at the miracle Father has fashioned. ‘It’s not real, Ethan,’ I tell him. His brows draw together and he shakes his head. ‘The accident,’ I tell him. ‘I lost my hands in the accident. These are created. Like prosthetics.’
He gently turns my hands and examines them, as though he doesn’t believe me. ‘They’re beautiful,’ he says. He doesn’t let go. He caresses them. ‘Can you feel this?’
I nod. I feel every callus and crease of his fingers. I feel touch in ways I never did before. Velvety, fluid, and when I concentrate, I can almost feel his skin as my own. I sigh. ‘This isn’t all, Ethan. There’s more.’
‘Like?’
‘My arms. My legs.’ I watch his eyes. I look for the slightest bit of revulsion, but none is there. Yet. ‘Nearly everything,’ I blurt out. His eyes are steady. ‘Enough that I’m illegal. Very illegal. According to the point schedule Allys told me about, I could be illegal five times over.’ His eyes falter and I feel everything in me cave. I pull my hands loose. ‘So that’s why my grandmother doesn’t want me to see you. She is trying to spare you, not me. By her own words, she doesn’t know what to make of me. Neither do I, except that I’m some kind of freakish monster.’
Ethan walks away. He comes back, his hands jammed into his pockets. He stares at me. His face is stiff. Frightening. I feel weak. What have I done? I should have kept quiet. Listened to Mother. To Lily. I want to take back every word, but it is too late.
His soft brown eyes have turned to icy beads. All his warmth is gone. ‘I nearly killed a man, Jenna,’ he says. ‘Some people called me a monster for hitting him with a bat even after he was unconscious. But I never felt like a monster. I barely remember doing it—something inside me snapped.’ Sweat spreads across his face, even though the day is cool. His confession runs out in choppy breaths, on the heels of mine, like they are linked.
‘The guy was a dealer. He gave my brother HCP. My brother was only thirteen at the time, Jenna. He didn’t know anything about anything. So I went after the dealer. When they sentenced me, they said they couldn’t tolerate people out there like me, trying to wield their own form of law enforcement. “Vigilante justice”, they called it. It wasn’t justice. This guy’s free and my brother’s hooked. He’s been in and out of rehab ever since.’
He pauses and draws in a long, shaky breath. ‘So I know what a monster is, Jenna, and it’s not me, and it’s not you.’ His voice is choked. It is like my fear exposed his own. I slide my arms around his back and hold him, strumming the knots of his spine and the blade of his shoulder, weighing the events that have made us both who we are now. His lips nestle close to my ear, and I feel his labored breaths on my skin. ‘Don’t tell Allys,’ he finally whispers.
‘About you?’
He holds me tighter. ‘No. About you.’
Would They Ask That of Someone Who Was Real?
There were no days.
There were no nights.
Eighteen months was nothing.
And it was eternity.
Sixteen years of thought trapped in circuitry.
A spinning glass ball.
Shattering inward, moment by airless moment.
But everyone says, Don’t tell.
How can I not?
A Science Lesson
‘Catch up, Dane!’ I hear the bite in Rae’s voice. Her seemingly endless smile and patience must have its own invisible boundary. Dane flashes a smile from the top of the ravine and nods, but his face goes instantly expressionless when she turns away. I’ve heard about sociopaths, people who connect with no one but themselves and their own self-interests. That would be Dane.
I walk next to Allys as we make our way to a creek bed for our outdoor science and ethics session. Allys chose the site, which surprises me. She walks down the incline without her braces.
‘You’re doing better,’ I say.