Skin Nation

by Joni Bing

  ****

  Living in OYZ Stats with Lary and the boys meant brushing my teeth using non-foamy toothpaste with my pointer finger, washing my face with my hands, and drying my body with the air around me. I remember waking up an hour earlier than the boys every day after that to be ready for their day because air drying took forever. While I waited, some days I 'd try to count as high as I could.

  For weeks, I only made it to twenty because I would ask the boys one by one every couple of days for the next number. I did it in a way that made it sound like I knew but forgot for a brief moment. They bought it and I began to learn. The day I reached thirty was the day Lary taught me things I should know about in order to survive without them. Numbers, letters, words, forming an actual written sentence. Lary and I both weren't the best spellers, but Lary could use big words out of nowhere to make up for it. In the end, all of us only knew a little less than Lary. Sometimes, I wonder if he purposefully kept it that way.

  But, before all that, I was in that bathroom waiting to be dry again. Shivering. I heard their voices: Reno, Z, and Mar. Talking about Lary, and tonight tonight. I wanted to know what about tonight and if I was invited. If I was safe by myself, if I wasn't given the okay to go with them. I raced back into my room and put on something I found deep inside the black chest on the floor at the foot of the bed. I was still kinda drenched and horribly cold from the worst shower ever, but I didn't care. I wasted enough time waiting around.

  “You almost got us killed, man. Did you see Lary's face when you came in with that cig?”

  Mar sat on the couch where Reno was before and Reno was sitting in his chair again. I smiled at that.

  “Lady Bleu looking fresh,” Reno winked.

  I smiled shyly and sat on the couch next to Reno against the wall that separated my room from the sitting room.

  “Nice dress.”

  I looked over where Z sat and really smiled.

  Had he just said that?

  The dress really wasn't all that nice though. I had never feasted my eyes on such an awkward yellow. Like, the shade of yellow the sun appears to be in the sky on a hot cloudless day. Plus, the dress had kind of white lacy design around the waist that looked shredded and stains at the bottom that someone failed to wash out after the incident. They didn't exactly have a color. They were aged washed out rings of clashing blues, reds, purples, and greens. I wished I knew how it looked before when it was new.

  “Where I'm from, girls would kill for that dress,” Mar commented.

  Reno agreed, Z looked out the window, and I stared the stains down. “Where'd Lary get these clothes for me?”

  “You...really wanna know?”

  “Yeah, that's why I asked...”

  I smoothed down the dress at the bottom as Mar stopped himself first, but said, “Other girls we helped.”

  I froze at that. I was wearing...what? That meant I was wearing another girl's...

  “They're washed though...I think,” Reno said.

  Just as the blood rushed back to my face, that same familiar tingling sensation pixelated underneath my skin once more as my imagination shot paranoid thoughts into my brain.

  “Don't be a fool. Lary always washes clothes before he lets another girl wear them.”

  I nodded at Mar who replied disgustedly at Reno's not-so-harmless joke, unsure if his comment was directed at Reno or me. Both of us were fools in Mar's eyes at the time so either option was highly possible.

  “So, what do you guys wanna do before Lary gets back for tonight?” Z asked.

  “Well, we could hear Mar's story a twenty -second time.”

  “Twenty-first,” Mar corrected him as Z laughed. “But, no. Not right now.”

  “Mar, c'mon.” “You always tell the story.”

  Their pleads sounded more like routine to my ears. I wondered who he was supposed to be that made him and his precious backstory so unique from everyone else's in the room.

  “I don't think she's worthy,” Mar said as he eyed me.

  I looked away with a cross of my arms and lifted my head. “I'm plenty worthy, it's you who's not worthy of mine.”

  Immediately, Mar flared in pretentious anger, hands motions and all. “I'll have you know...”

  Then, he went on and on about how his legal name was Mar because his mother didn't survive long enough after his birth to write -CO and he was taken in by a nurse shortly after who felt sorry for him, but had an abusive boyfriend who was a true Follower and beat him and her every day he lived under their roof until he was captured. THEN, the NR Center that held him employed Lary literally the day before they planned to skin him. They drugged him long enough to make him unconscious for a week in a body cell chamber because the Skinners were behind.

  “I remember it being so cold when I woke up. I was...so cold inside.”

  I stifled my laughter when he uttered those words because instead of allowing myself to engage into the emotion of the story, I watched Reno subtly quote Mar's story word for word. I couldn't really evoke any emotional empathy after seeing that.

  Lary saved him, shot up the place with a really cool gun-which I discovered was what Reno carried in his hands when Revolta paid us a visit and Lary's weapon of choice to carry when he saved people-and here he stood now. End of story.

  “Is that where Lary works? At the NR Center undercover near here?” I asked.

  “I used to live in Talle. It's hundreds of miles from here.”

  I looked at him. “Is that in Central Union?”

  “Lower bound on the right.”

  “Which province?”

  “FL.”

  “Ah.”

  I'd heard tons about FL before. I never knew it was far down in Central Union, partly because I had never seen a map of the entire Central Union, just the section where I resided. My mother said she used to live there, but got bored really fast so she moved when she could. I think I visited FL once when I was little back in Old Nation times. Before Carl Dickens screwed everything over.

  I remember doing something there—something in the water. I remember my mom gliding my body above the depths of the water, carrying me in her arms like she used to before I could walk. She kept telling me that she had to because I couldn't do it on my own. I hated hearing that. Hearing that I couldn't do something. She kept telling me not to breathe, don't breathe. It hurt, not breathing, which I partly believed sprouted my fear of death at an early age. I liked gliding through the water, just not those twinges of the beginning stages of death.

  I could've told Mar all of that, but instead I said, “My mother once lived there. Maybe my grandma too.”

  They stared at me as if I had suddenly grown two heads.

  “You knew your grandma?”

  I looked at them funny. Did I really have something they didn't?

  “Yeah, like, your mom's mom?”

  Reno nodded. Mar grunted, lowering his eyes onto his bitten down black lined nails and plopped down in a lounge chair available in the sitting room. They looked like they got it, but were still questioning what I said, almost like I lied about it or didn't know what I was talking about.

  “She must've looked weird,” Mar said, poking out his tongue.

  “Yeah, really old,” Reno added.

  Hearing someone call my grandmother old...I couldn't handle it. That I couldn't understand. She was about as old or younger than my mom the morning of my first capturing. Nothing like the graying near death of an examiner Lary hooked me up with to rip at my back. Yet, I didn't speak up. I didn't defend her.

  We heard the creaky door to our commune open and Reno stood to check and see if it was Lary in a synchronized fashion like a trained guard.

  “Hey, Lary-”

  “What are you wearing?”

  He stared me down, ignoring Reno's bright greeting, like I was something to eat and he missed a few days.

  “I'm wearing-”

  “Get out of it! Get out of that dress!” he exclaimed as he charged toward
me.

  “I-”

  “Now!”

  Now, he was facing me and ripping at the material on the dress covering my shoulders. I tried to jerk away and tears streamed down before I could wipe them away in time for them to go unnoticed by the boys. The boys stared on, looking indecisive about whether or not to involve themselves in the war between Lary and me. They watched, unmoved, as if they knew better. Like someone had stepped to Lary one too many times before, and they witnessed the end result.

  Finally, he released me, and I raced back into my room to change right back into the burgundy “Ivy League” shirt and average jean pants that wreaked like the passing of several days. I didn't mind the stench or the rap the boys gave me about it so long as it kept Lary like Lary. I stayed in the room for endless hours after changing to empty my eyes of the remainder of the tears that wouldn't dare go unshed, especially after hearing all those things Lary said about why he got so mad. I don't remember it all because I don't want to, but I remember him saying that all these cruel things happened to his mother in the dress I wore.

  The last time he ever saw her was in that dress being punished for not accepting the “regulations of the New Nation” the day before he was captured. He still didn't know if she survived or not. Lary and I had a lot more in common than he thought back then.

  When I came out hours later, the house was a pitch-black terror with the exception of a red light radiating from the room that all the boys seemed to share. I stepped out of my room and heard their voices talking low and fast, sometimes laughter ending their sentences. I finally neared the door and when I peeked in, their conversation ceased and concluded with all of them looking into my eyes. Lary stood closest to the doorway with his arms crossed and the other boys were sitting on the room's bed, which was the only piece of anything I ever saw when the door was open. Lary gave me a look of confusion and pointed his hand at my direction. “Why are you...”

  “I didn't know what to wear.”

  “You didn't have to change back into that. You wore it for two days.”

  “I don't know what to do and not do anymore since your freakout before-”

  Lary neared my face and yelled in that non-terrifying manner of his, yelling words I allowed to go one ear then out the other because I could careless. Nothing made what he did right. I survived long enough to know that. When he was done, I just said, “Show me what I can wear then.”

  He grabbed my hand to pull me from the sitting room to my room, but I pulled my hand away. One of the boys took in a surprised gasp. He looked at me with stretched eyes and I stared right back without an inkling of sympathy showing on my face.

  “Don't touch me.”

  “You stay in my flat, you abide by my rules.”

  “Since when has your right to harass me been a rule?”

  “Since rules could be implied. And, I'm not harassing you! I'm simply pulling you in the right direction.”

  I opened my mouth to yell something else, but Lary wasn't having it. He turned to walk into my room as if we never even fought. I took in a cleansing breath, trying not to think about the fact that at that very moment I could've been getting ready for a night out with Josh, Marty, and Blythe.

  I entered the room to find Lary searching through the black chest and placing all of the clothes on the bed above it, revealing the floral design decorating the interior walls. He checked each item and about every five seconds looked at his mom's dress I folded on the bed near my itchy pillow.

  “Look Lary I'm really sorry about...your mom.”

  “Don't...just don't talk about it.”

  Lary had been through too much for a person to have to survive with in mind yet he was so strong and smart. Moments like that, moments like when Lary showed a weakness of any kind were rare occasions, but always reminded me that I needed to not make his life any harder.