The words hang in the air between us, heavy and suffocating. “I don’t have a sister,” I say, my voice clipped, and my shoulders rolled back.
“Fawl, that’s unfair. The daughter of the woman your mother married.”
“Dru?” I whisper. The name powers through my temple like a jackhammer. The one line I have—the one betrayal I can’t forgive.
Fucking Dru.
Dru.
Dru.
Dru.
She came into our lives three years ago like a sandstorm. My mother, consistently drunk and inconsistently kind, fell for Dru’s mother, who is incredibly dainty with a tiny voice and rolling black hair. Black hair! Like we don’t know a dye job when we see it. She got a huge payout for her first husband and bought herself and her daughter outrageously expensive modifications. She boasts a cybernetic leg that makes her able to carry 20 percent more ore. She likes to show it off with high slits and flowy dresses. Dru, too, has a fashionable shimmery décolletage with cool, spongy-metal breasts that every man in the mines wants to cup in their palms, including Joshua, I guess.
Dru isn’t mean. That’s what makes it all so much worse. She isn’t some evil witch dripping with malice and plotting my downfall. No, Dru is simply…thoughtless in the way that a person can be thoughtless when they’ve never had to consider anyone outside their own orbit.
I keep waiting for the tears to come, the scream to bubble up, or maybe the urge to flip the table over and storm out, but all I feel is this numbing hum. Like when you’ve been standing too close to the generators and the buzzing just fills your skull.
“Fawl.” He looks tired. “I’m not a villain, but you need to know this so you can just stop.”
“Stop what?” My voice comes out smaller than I intended.
“It’s been happening little by little, you know? I mean, I didn’t realize it at first, but…your body…the skin.” He looks away then, his eyes flitting back to the men drinking behind us. “It’s a little beneath me now.”
I try to swallow, but it feels like there’s a stick lodged in my throat. This isn’t about us. It’s about me.
Josh tilts his head as if imploring me to give it up. “Oh, come on,” he says “you had to see the way people looked at us when we were together? That can’t have been good for you either—everyone wondering why I was with you.” He continued, “You had to notice how little we touched at the end. I went to counseling. I did everything I could. And I know you have an allergy, God. That’s why this is so hard. But I’m just not attracted to that…to you.”
The words lodge somewhere in my throat and for a moment I can't speak. I flail to justify myself. “Why do all those machines aboveground want unmodded partners, then, if we’re so disgusting? Why are there so many skin brides?” I ask. My voice is cracking and my chin wobbles with the effort to keep from bawling.
I know Josh. I know if I appealed to status, he would see the sense I’m making. Skin brides are for private enjoyment. Their skin is so lewd, so incredibly sexually vulgar, that if you ever see one outside the house, they are covered head to toe in black so as not to upset the delicate manners of the aboveground folk. They are objectively hot, right?
But his laugh is sharp, like broken glass. “You don’t get it,” he says. “It’s different for them. They have everything—money, power, control. They can afford to indulge in…novelties. But down here?” He shakes his head. “It’s survival, Fawl. Nobody’s picking a skin bride when they have better options. You think those computers want equal partners? They can’t even feel human emotion. They take skin brides so they can own something—have something they can break, and no one will give a damn.” He finally looks at me, and his face is almost pitying. “I’m not a machine. I don’t know if I’ll ever get past ten percent. But I started wondering what it would be like to have more. I deserve more. I deserve to stand next to someone wholooksthe part.”
“Like Dru. But I can…” I am too aware of how ridiculous it is to argue with someone about your own beauty, worth, and desirability, but here I am trying to make him remember when he wanted me.
He runs a hand through his hair. “I…just I got stuck. It happens.” He pauses, and his voice drops, the final blow landing with brutal honesty. “I couldn’t escape.”
I stare at him, and the words sink in like a syringe.Iwas his nightmare. He couldn’t escapeme.
There’s no air left in this place, no space for me anymore. The noise, the dust, the men’s laughter, it all closes in. Before I can even gather my thoughts, my family walks—as casual as you please—right into the middle of the MEAT Place.
This is when things go completely sideways, because what in the hell are they doing here? Why are they rolling up like somebody whisper-shouted their name in a primary school play? They rehearsed this.
“Ah, er, Johanna, I hadn’t expected you all here. I guess it’s for the better we all talk about this,” Josh says.
My stepmother takes one look at Joshua and nods approvingly. Dru—had she always watched Joshua with hungry eyes?—hovers near the corner, pretending to be busily looking at the menu. I slam the paper down.
“It’s all cloned lamb!” I shout.
Dru folds the menu. She looks up at me, and her face is a little pleading. “I didn’t?—”
“Dru, hush.” My stepmother silences her. “Joshua.” She clears her throat; she has the tone of an executioner who means well. I can tell by my stepmother’s darting looks to Joshua that he went off script, and she isn’t having it. “You must do what’s best for yourself. We understand. And our Fawl, well, she’s a strong girl.”
Joshua glances at Johanna, then back at me, and I can see the guilt flicker in his eyes, but it’s quickly buried beneath that need to get his rehearsed lines out.
Meanwhile, my own mother sits on the other side of the table, glued to her comm screen like she’s entered some sort of vegetative state. The Iku family name flickers on the screen, and she watches with the same expression reserved for lottery results. When she gets drunk on palm wine—which is often—she’ll talk about conspiracy theories.Everybody getting sick off Iku MEAT. They’re trying to kill us, she’ll slur.
