Free Skinned -1 by Robin Wasserman

and al the other forgotten places that exist now only as meaningless syl ables in the Pledge of Forgiveness. The dust was gone, but the stars had never come back. Pol ution, cloud cover, ambient light, whatever chemicals they’d used to cleanse the air and patch up the ozone, the law of unintended consequences come to murky life. Someone would fix it someday, I figured. But until then? No stars. My parents talked about them sometimes, late at night, usual y when they were dropped on downers, which made them goopy about the past. But I didn’t get the big deal. Who cared if the sky glowed reddish purple al night long? It was pretty, and wasn’t that the point?
    “Why are we here, Quinn?”
    She clawed her fingers into the ground and dug up two clumps of grass, letting the dirt sift through her fingers. “So we don’t miss any of it.”
    “What?”
    “ This . Feeling. Seeing. Being. Everything. The dew. The cold. That sound, the wind in the grass. You hear that? It’s so…real.” I didn’t know I’d had the hope until the hope died. So she wasn’t the same as me, after al ; she didn’t understand. She didn’t get that none of it was real, not anymore, that the dew felt wrong, the cold felt wrong, the sounds sounded wrong, everything was wrong, everything was distant, everything was fake. Or maybe it was the opposite—everything was real except for me.
    I’d been right the first time. Quinn and I had nothing in common. “Whatever you say.”
    “It feels good, doesn’t it?” she asked.
    “What does?” Nothing did.
    “The grass.” She laughed. “Doesn’t it tickle?”
    “Yeah. I guess.” No.
    “It’s like us, you know.”
    “What, the grass?” I said. “Why, because people around here are always walking on it?”
    “Because it looks natural and al , but inside, it’s got a secret. It’s better. Manmade, right? New and improved.” Just because the grass—like the trees, like the birds, like pretty much everything—had been genetical y modified to survive the increasingly crappy climate, smoggy sky, and arid earth, didn’t make it like us. It was stil alive. “The grass stil looks like grass,” I told her. “Seen a mirror lately? There’s no secret. We look like…exactly what we are.”
    “You got a boyfriend?”
    “What?” Under other circumstances I would have wondered what she was on. But I knew al too wel she wasn’t on anything. If there were such a thing as a drug for skinners, I’d be on permanent mental vacation.
    “Or girlfriend, whatever.”
    “Boyfriend,” I admitted. “Walker.”
    “You two slamming?”
    “What?”
    “You. Walker. Slamming. Poking. Fucking. You need a definition? When a boy and a girl real y love each other—”
    “I know what it means. I just don’t think it’s any of your business.”
    “I’m only asking because…Wel , have you? Since, you know?”
    The thought repulsed me. The idea of Walker’s hands touching the skin, the look on his face when he peered into the dead eyes, the feeling—the nonfeeling—of his lips on the pale pink flesh-textured sacs that rimmed my false teeth. The thick, clumsy thing that functioned as a tongue. Would I even know what to do, or would it be like learning to walk again? Or worse, I thought, remembering the grunting and squealing. Like learning to talk. And that was just kissing. Anything else…I couldn’t think about it. “Have you ?” I countered.
    She shook her head. “But look at my choices. Like I’m going to slam Asa?”
    “You trying to make me vomit?”
    “Good luck with that, considering the whole no-stomach thing.” She laughed. “Obviously options are limited. And I’ve been waiting a long time.”
    “How long have you been here?”
    “Longer than you. Four months, maybe? But that’s not what I’m talking about.” She didn’t offer to explain.
    This girl was completely creeping me out. But not in an entirely bad way.
    “So you haven’t, uh, had any visitors?” I asked