Free Crashed by Robin Wasserman Page B

difference.
    "You want to talk about it?" Riley said suddenly.
    "What?"
    "You know. What happened."
    Now I did laugh.
    "What?" he asked, looking almost hurt.
    "Since when do you want to talk ?" I asked, still laughing, but only in my head, where I couldn't stop. This is hysteria, I thought, my mental voice wracked with giggles, my body still and calm. Riley rested a hand on my upper arm, like he knew, and somehow it quieted the noise. He pulled his hand away.
    "I didn't say I wanted to talk," he said. "I asked if you wanted to."
    "Fine," I said. "But not about that."
    He nodded.
    "Tell me something," I ordered him. It felt good to boss a guy around. Normal, almost.
    "Like what?"
    "I don't know. Anything."
    He looked more blank than usual.
    "Like, tell me how you did that back there with the door," I suggested. I didn't particularly care, but it was something to say.
    "I used to do a lot of that stuff," he said. "It came in handy."
    I didn't have to ask him when. It was the same nebulous before we all had and never talked about. Jude's law. And Jude knows best, right?
    " Okay, but how did you do it? Who taught you?"
    He shrugged. "I just figured it out."
    "Fine." I crossed my arms. "Great."
    "What?"
    "Nothing."
    "Why do you always look at me like that?" he asked.
    "Like what?"
    "Like I'm saying something wrong. Usually when I'm not even saying anything."
    "You're never saying anything," I pointed out.
    "I am right now," he said. "You've still got the look."
    "Maybe because you're still not actually saying anything. Not really."
    "You're strange," he said. "Anyone ever told you that?"
    "Not really, no," I said coolly. Strange meant not fitting in; I defined in . "I saw a pic of you," I added, turning it back on him. "You and Jude and Ani. From before."
    Jude had freaked out when he'd heard that, when I threw in his face that I knew what he'd been, before . Riley didn't react.
    "It was a long time ago," he said tonelessly.
    "Less than two years. Not so long."
    "Long enough."
    "So you and Jude, you were friends?" I asked, even though that much I knew. "Before?"
    Riley smiled, a real smile, one of the first I could remember seeing on him. Sometimes, with mechs, a smile could transform the face into something even less human--the expression somehow incongruous on the synthetic lips, a quaint and unsettling party trick, like a dog propped at the dinner table with a fork and spoon. But Riley's smile was natural enough, and it made the rest of him seem more real. "You know Jude hates talking about the past."
    I glanced over my shoulder as if making sure. "Yeah, Jude's definitely not here," I said. "So?"
    "So nice try," he said, then grimaced like he couldn't stand not to answer. "But yeah, we were. Best friends."
    "Funny that he didn't ditch you along with the rest of his past," I said. "All part of embracing our bright new mech future, right?"
    But Jude's friendship with Riley apparently fit into the same category as our org names, one of the few things we weren't obligated to dump in the garbage as a testament to our new lives. In its own way, continuity was as important as discontinuity, Jude maintained. The radical break from our past, from our old families and old values, could only have meaning if we kept some core piece of ourselves intact--and then, of course, there was the small practical matter that keeping at least a tenuous grasp on our old identities was necessary if we wanted access to our zones and credit. And so the past was irrelevant . . . except when it suited him. When he needed it to pay the bills or to guarantee loyalty. Or to throw it in my face, remind me how I'd ended up with him and why. That was the thing about Jude. He spoke with conviction, but sometimes the distinctions he drew seemed arbitrary, invented ad hoc to serve his own purposes. Then he turned preference into principle, and his particular conveniences became our general rule.
    Though Jude would just say I wasn't seeing the big picture, and that's