Sitting on the stairs with his chin in his hand, Deron tried to visualize himself opening the front door. Rosalia was out there, maybe on her way to the cafeteria to collect her lunch. She’d stand in line with the rest of the sighted and ask for the light ranch, the skim milk, and the other healthy alternatives to the city-mandated lunches. Maybe that Ilya girl would be tagging along behind her.
Flashing on a foggy veneer, he saw Rosalia standing in the distance, looking at him, her eyes gleaming. And then Ilya emerged from the haze and took Rosalia by the hand, pulling her away, pulling her back into the land of color, of veneers and reconciliation, where boys could only see the beauty that girls created for themselves instead of the truth that hid beneath, the plainness or maybe even the ugliness. It wasn’t a pleasant idea to think that the girl he loved could be something less than perfect under her decorations. All he had to do was look at his mom to see what could happen eventually. Would he even recognize her? Would he recognize anybody?
It didn’t matter; he was fucked no matter what he did. They would categorize him as handicapped and treat him with special gloves until he died and the burden of his well-being was lifted from those who were paid to maintain it. He’d be an affliction to his mom and even Rosalia. No woman would want his company now that he couldn’t function in the real world.
Deron took a deep breath, sought solace in the simple act. His concerns were valid, but none of them needed immediate resolution. The trick was to break everything down into easily digestible fragments. All he needed to do was take that first step.
“Fuck it,” he said.
He was talking to the world in general: to the railing he used to pull himself up, to the floor he walked across, and to the friction of his shoes against the tile that propelled him forward. The front door swung open and Deron put a hand to his brow to shield his eyes from the sun.
Truth: the grass was not as green and luxurious as the veneer had made it out to be. Brown patches dotted the pale green lawn, the dead grass both natural and wrong at the same time. The sidewalk that took him from the front door to the street was cracked and stained, so unlike the previous sandstone veneer. When he reached the street, Deron turned and glanced back at the house, saw the same drab box he had seen when he returned home Saturday night. It didn’t look any better in the daylight, but at least now he understood its lack of color.
Deron felt the warmth of the sun on his neck and arms despite the chill in the air. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked slowly down the street, checking out the houses as if he had just moved into the neighborhood. At the intersection, he looked up and saw that the street signs lacked any writing. After crossing the unnamed street, he turned left.
It would all be okay if he could stay at Gillock Pond. The realization hit him as soon as he saw the micro-park still alive and vibrant. Nature’s colorful display melted away the anxiety. The smell, the sounds, and yes, even the sight of the pond, it all made him think that maybe everything could work out. The turtles, for instance, the ones sunning on the rocks, had no awareness of the veneer at all. Yet they lived their lives, swimming and sunning and breeding until they finally died. Every living thing was driving that long highway towards death; the veneer was just the decoration, the ceaseless billboards along the side of the road that briefly made an impression and then receded.
Although he wanted nothing more than to stay, Deron couldn’t ignore his sole motivation for leaving the house. There was still a chance Rosalia was out there and while that chance existed, he had to try to see her, tell her what had happened. It couldn’t have been easy for her to come all the way to his house only for his mom to turn her away. It sure wasn’t easy for Deron.
Again, the fog crept in, carrying with it the conversation they would have. She’d be happy to see him, maybe throw her arms around his neck in unrestrained joy. They’d kiss and look into each other’s eyes.
His smile faded when he thought about her eyes, her real eyes. Not the green she wore to entice him, not the blue she used to brighten his day, and certainly not the red, the passionate crimson that spoke of her attraction, the only indication of the lustful thoughts going on behind the scenes. They would never burn for him like that again. And even if they did, he wouldn’t be able to see it. He paused, stymied by the weight of the underlying truth. He was on the other side of some invisible barrier, occupying the same space, maybe, but existing in a completely different world.
Deron turned the realization over in his head and was surprised when he looked up and found himself already on Parker Avenue. He was standing at the light where it met with Treaty Oak or, more exactly, at what used to be the light.
So much of Easton’s transit system depended on the veneer, not only to distinguish one car from the other but also to direct traffic and let pedestrians know when it was safe to cross the street. Hanging above the roads on thin wires were blank rectangles that lacked their yellow framing and colored circles. The cars on Treaty were moving, so that must have meant the light was green, but Deron saw nothing.
Despite waiting for several minutes trying to pick out a pattern in the madness, Deron still managed to get a few honks from the passing cars. Evidently he had stepped out into the crosswalk at the wrong time and had to sprint to the curb as a tram came barreling down the inside lane. The noise attracted attention from the midday shoppers who all looked like paper dolls in their off-white clothes. The exceptions were the two men standing in front of a parking meter—they didn’t need their signature black and blue for Deron to know they were uniforms.
Before they could react, Deron slipped into the thin alley between Jilly Beans and a Get Ripped gym. He knew what was supposed to be happening on the walls as he passed them; the presence-sensing advertisements would have followed him all the way to the other side if he could have only seen them. He tried to imagine what they would have looked like, what they’d be selling at this time of day. There were always a few fast food ads, whatever new hamburger McDonald’s was trying to pass off as innovation. Someone would be hawking new cars and reminding even buyers with bad credit that they could afford a shiny gray hunk of fiberglass. Public service ads were rare, but he found one on the evercrete towards the end of the alley.
Deron stopped, blinked a few times. It was actually there on the wall in color he could see. He approached the sign, put his hand up to verify its existence. Some of the red marking got on his finger when he touched it.
So it wasn’t a veneer; someone had actually written on the wall.
YOU ARE NOT BLIND.
It was vindication, but from what source? Deron hadn’t considered the possibility that his was not a unique affliction. If there were others...
Beneath the block letters, he found smaller text.
Fifth & Navasota.
Deron looked away towards the school, to a distant destination that seemed to recede even further. Rosalia was there. He needed to see her.
But these words. This address. How could he ignore them?
25 - Rosalia
There had been a moment at lunch when something on the wind drew her eyes to the north, past the faculty parking lot with its aging cars and lone scooter, past the neighborhoods and mini-malls—past all of the empty places that were nothing more than obstacles, asphalt and evercrete that separated her from Deron. She had looked into the distance, seen nothing, but felt his mouth at her ear, felt him saying her name in one smooth whisper, drawing out each syllable. Then the wind had come up, rustled the trees enough to drown out the cry in the darkness, and when the sound abated, nothing remained. Not the voice. Not the swaying leaves.
Perhaps not even Deron.
Now, sitting in the waiting room of the nurse’s office, Rosalia stared blankly at the empty chairs around her. It wasn’t a very welcoming room, not with its bright orange color scheme and strongly worded posters reconciled on the wall. She tried to take her mind off her discomfort by reading them carefully, repeating in her head the necessity of pr
otected sexual intercourse. It was sound advice, but its presentation was too cartoony for its intended audience.
She was halfway through the benefits of regular flossing when Nurse Hendricks appeared from the examination room. Her veneer was spotless, as always, with a pressed uniform and a cute hat on her perfectly arranged hair. The smile on her face looked permanently tacked on, but it grew when she saw her patient.
“Ms. Collier,” she said, approaching the counter. “It’s been a while.” With a quick movement, she spun the sign-in sheet around in its portal and frowned. “You forgot to sign in.”
“Sorry,” said Rosalia, standing up. She shuffled from foot to foot, wondering if running out of the room screaming at the top of her lungs would be considered rude.
“No worries. I can put you down.” Her rosy fingertip traced across the portal, leaving behind Rosalia’s name. “What is the nature of your visit today?” she asked, mock-professionally.
“Just... questions.” Rosalia raised her eyebrows a little, looked around again at the empty waiting room.
“General health concerns it is.” With a satisfied smile, she beckoned to Rosalia. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go have a chat.”
Unlike the waiting area, the examination room was decorated for its purpose, with solid white walls and gleaming metal cabinets. A large exam table dominated the center of the room, a wide strip of paper running its length. As Rosalia sat down on it, she noticed the facing wall was shimmering, as if the entire surface were a portal instead of a simple veneer.
“Let’s do a quick checkup first,” said Nurse Hendricks, approaching the wall. When she touched it, the mirage dissolved into an image of an office. Seated at a desk was another woman wearing a white lab coat adorned with the Easton General Hospital emblem. A moment passed before she realized they were watching her.
“Lucy,” said the woman. She stood leisurely and came towards the wall as if she expected to shake her colleague’s hand. “How are things at Central? Any Westlake flu going on around there?”
“No,” laughed Nurse Hendricks. “Not on my watch.”
“And who do we have here?”
Evidently, this woman could see them as easily as they saw her.
“Ms. Collier, this is Dr. Blake.”
“Hello, dear,” said the doctor, her voice growing softer.
Before Rosalia could answer, Nurse Hendricks spoke, “Just a little woman to woman chat today, nothing I can’t handle.”
“That’s fine,” she replied, nodding approvingly. “So, just the vitals then?”
“Yes, Doctor.” The nurse pulled a stethoscope from the wall and approached Rosalia. She slipped one end under Rosalia’s shirt without warning and placed it against her chest. “Alright, Ms. Collier, let’s have three good breaths.”
As she concentrated on breathing, Rosalia noticed that boxes of data were appearing on the wall. All sorts of metrics spilled into the portal, displaying figures that represented her heart rate, oxygen levels, and average blood pressure over time. After the last breath, Nurse Hendricks turned around and examined the data with the doctor.
“To be young,” said Dr. Blake. “If only I had your blood pressure.” She touched a finger to the wall and her signature appeared at the bottom of the report, followed by the date. “Everything looks fine to me. I’ll leave the rest to you, Lucy.”
“Thank you,” replied Nurse Hendricks.
The far side faded out under the chart. After signing her own name, the nurse minimized the charts to the left, where they disappeared amongst the thousand other scribbles on the wall.
“Well,” she said, “now that that’s out of the way. What can I help you with today?”
Rosalia thought about telling her the whole story, how the night had begun at the mall with Ilya, turned to dinner, to shopping, to drugs. Then she thought about the sleepover, about describing the way Ilya had put her hand on her neck before she knew why. In that hazy moment of indeterminate motives, she had considered the possibility that—
“Sweetie?”
“Oh, sorry.” It took a moment to come out of the fog. “I... my friend and I had a question. We both have something in our necks. Here.” She pointed to where her skull met her spine. “If you press on it, you can feel something under the skin.” She had to dip her head to show the nurse, but upon looking up, she found her smiling kindly, the way an adult would look at a child who had just dropped her ice cream cone.
“There shouldn’t be anything in your neck except your Guardian chip,” said Nurse Hendricks. She walked around the table and put her fingers on Rosalia’s neck. “And I doubt you would have both suffered a hemorrhage at the same time.”
“A what chip?”
Ignoring the question, she followed up with, “Why didn’t you just ask your parents about this?”
“I don’t know,” replied Rosalia, thinking of how Lynn would have simply dismissed her.
“Well, I don’t blame you for being curious. I’ve always thought they should teach this stuff before senior year.”
“What is it?”
The nurse must have detected the trepidation in her voice. “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly harmless. Actually, the name pretty much says it all. Guardians are what monitor our internal systems and keep us healthy. Think of it like an around-the-clock physician that lives in your neck. Twenty-four hours a day, she’s checking your blood pressure and examining your neuro-electrical responses for any kind of anomaly. That’s how we got your vitals on the wall, by querying your chip.” She dropped her hands and walked around the exam table again. “Do you want to see it?”
“The chip?”
“I have an imager here,” she replied, motioning to the cabinets with her head. “I can take a picture and show you what it looks like.” Her face grew serious. “It’s the only way to make sure there hasn’t been any damage.” Without waiting for a response, she crossed the room and pulled a small box from the cabinet. From inside, she withdrew a thin sheet of what looked like plastic. After removing the paper tabs, she brought it to Rosalia. “Turn a little for me, okay?”
Rosalia felt the cool film on her neck and the warmer fingers of the nurse smoothing it out. A fuzzy picture appeared on the wall, but the colors were a little off, as if someone had simply guessed what each value should be.
“Just needs a little adjusting, I think,” said Nurse Hendricks. She placed her hand on the wall and made the image sharper.
It looked like a small square, though Rosalia had trouble picking out the surrounding tissue, couldn’t find a reference point to judge its scale. It was devoid of all markings and only after the nurse pushed through the image was Rosalia able to see the pins on the opposite side. Her stomach heaved involuntarily; the idea of a piece of metal tearing into her spinal cord didn’t sit right with her.
“Quite beautiful, isn’t it? And just about the size of your pinky nail. This is the most important piece of technology that you will ever own. Things your grandparents had to worry about—heart attacks, stroke, even asthma—will never concern you. It protects you—”
“Like a guardian angel,” said Rosalia, scooting off the exam table. She moved closer at the wall, still amazed and disgusted to be looking inside herself.
“So now you know. And you can go tell your friend.”
“I thought it was supposed to be a secret.”
Nurse Hendricks shook her head. “Just because things aren’t common knowledge doesn’t mean they’re a secret. This is just part of growing up. There are things that are mysteries until the day they’re revealed. That’s life.” She moved closer and put her hand on Rosalia’s shoulder.
Nodding, Rosalia returned her attention to the wall. She wanted to thank the nurse for her time, but a strange pattern on the image caught her eye. It looked like little letters on the edge of the chip.
“We can zoom in if you’d like,” offered Nurse Hendricks.
“Please.”
The picture grew on the wall, but whate
ver occupied the corner remained illegible.
Stubbing her finger against the portal, Rosalia asked, “Can you make this clearer?”
“Huh,” said the nurse. “I never noticed that before. Yeah, I think I can do something.” Her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “You know, most people think that nurses only have to know bio stuff, but there’s more to it. You also have to be an expert in reconciliation. Manipulating scans and x-rays and real-time imagers; that’s where the real work is. There, that’s the best I can do.”
They stared at the picture for a moment, each trying to sound out the barely legible word.
Finally, as if sensing competition, the nurse blurted out, “Vinestead!”
“Vinestead,” repeated Rosalia, picking the copyright symbol out of the jumble. “Never heard of them.”
26 - Russo
So much blood.
Just the sight of it pooling in the bathroom sink was enough to make Russo’s stomach turn. He’d seen blood before—there was more than enough flying around when he kicked the shit out of Deron—but this was different. This was his blood collecting around the drain.
Above the sink, a portal reflected Russo’s image back to him, providing no indication that he was even injured. His veneer still sported the all-back camouflage, making him blend in with the shadows. He could see his features, but none of the wounds that he knew to be there were visible. Little red drops fell from his chin, appearing suddenly just beyond his skin.
There was the issue of seeing the truth beneath the veneer, something he assumed doctors could do since they were the ones treating reconciled bodies on a daily basis. Or is it something else, he wondered, bringing his fingers to his face. He moved them gingerly over his lips, over his wet nose, and to his left side where an impressive mound had formed next to his eye. It felt like a large blister that had cracked at the top, the skin stretched so tightly that it had no choice but to bleed. Russo couldn’t see under his own veneer, but he could bring the cuts and bruises to the next level. With another pass, he traced along his face and as his fingers moved, they left behind color: reds, purples, and blacks. Within seconds, the consequences of his violent nature became apparent.
Veneer Page 16