Veneer

by Daniel Verastiqui

  “Thinking of joining the team, Ms. Yushchenko?” asked Coach Stiles as she shuffled past.

  Ilya tried to smile politely, but the reaction from the coaches seemed to indicate she had gotten the emotion wrong. They walked on without further comment.

  “Excuse me,” said a voice from the right.

  The stranger was standing at the bottom of the bleachers, a fake smile plastered on his veneer.

  “I’m Agent Ruiz,” he continued, touching his chest. “I was wondering if I could have a quick word with you.”

  Agents, thought Ilya. No Dahlstrom graduate ever wanted just a quick word. She made a show of checking the time on the scoreboard. “No, my bus will be here soon.”

  “I won’t take much of your time,” said the agent, climbing the bleachers with surprising agility. He sat down a few feet away from Ilya. “I understand you’re acquaintances with Rosalia Collier.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “We’ve been dating for a couple weeks now.” Ah, the fantasy. Just saying the words lessened the pain a miniscule amount. If dreams were the only place she could have Rosalia, then so be it.

  He didn’t flinch, whether from training or a frozen veneer, she wasn’t sure. “So she has ended her relationship with Deron Bishop?”

  “That loser? Yeah.” Screw him, she thought.

  “Interesting,” muttered the agent. He made a note on his palette. “By any chance have you seen Deron lately?”

  So that was what this was about. Deron may have returned and Rosalia may have been reunited with her true love, but the cops evidently knew nothing about it. “Define lately.”

  The agent shrugged. “Last couple of days. Any time after Sunday.”

  “So you haven’t found him yet?” It was Ilya’s turn to smile. “If I had known running away was so easy, I would have done it a long time ago.”

  Agent Ruiz sighed, gave Ilya one of those looks that adults liked to reconcile before they schooled a young person in the ways of the world. Ilya braced for the condescension.

  “If you really want to run away, you have to be very careful in how you go about it. I wouldn’t even recommend trying it here. Go to Paramel if you can. Their security is lax compared to ours and since you’re not a local, they won’t be expecting you to be there for a long time. But if you just walk out your front door, like Deron, then it gets a little complicated. I mean, advertisers will pick you up if you get too close to a wall, a record is updated every time you pay for something, and not to mention the security at the gates. It’s impossible for someone like you to get through unobserved.” He smirked and puffed his chest out a little. “I mean, I could do it...”

  “But you haven’t found him.” Ilya touched her face idly and found that her tears had since dried.

  “It’s only a matter of time. We’ve been picking up traces all day. The last one led me here.” He nodded thoughtfully, his eyes drifting to the trees beyond the football field. “I think he’s very close by.”

  Of course he was. All the agent had to do was walk down to Parker Avenue and then he’d have the mystery solved.

  “She still likes him,” said Ilya. “More than me, I think. But if I told you anything, she’d be mad at me.”

  “That’s very considerate, but you’re not thinking about the big picture. Whether Rosalia likes him or not is irrelevant. His mother, the woman who gave birth to him, has not seen her son in days. What do you think is worth more? The guilt you would feel for betraying your girlfriend or the anguish of a childless mother?”

  It would have solved a lot of problems if Deron’s mother had never conceived him in the first place.

  The whoosh of hydraulics drew Ilya’s attention to the front of the school. A large yellow bus had just pulled up, followed closely by two more. One of them would take her home, take her away from the nightmare and back to the safety of her room. There, she could relax with her pictures of Rosalia and dream of better times. It wasn’t much, but it beat sitting on the bleachers answering questions that she didn’t want to think about.

  Ilya stood abruptly. “I have to go now.” When the agent started to protest, she interrupted him. “I love her. I’d never betray her.” There was resignation in the lines of his veneer. “But if I were trying to find the only person that stands between me and her, I would start walking in that direction.” She pointed towards Parker Avenue. “At some point, I’d probably stop for a smoothie at Perrault’s.”

  The grin that spread on Agent Ruiz’ face turned Ilya’s stomach. He stood and adjusted his jacket. “You did the right thing. I’ll have him back home to his mother in no time.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to go home?”

  “He’s seventeen,” said the agent, his voice turning stern. “He doesn’t have a choice.” He stepped down the bleachers, jumping over the bottom row to the grass. “Spasibo za pomoshch, Ilya.” He left the insincere gratitude hanging in the air as he walked away.

  Fine, she thought. Go get him. Go take Deron back to his mother. Maybe she’d ground him forever or send him off to some reform school south of the border. At least that way she’d get Rosalia back.

  And ultimately, that’s all that really mattered.

  51 - Deron

  Night fell prematurely on Easton. The reconciled reeds at the bottom of Gillock Pond were illuminated in a soft green glow for anyone that could still see them. A few yards away on a covered chair swing, a pair of inseparable teenagers sat together. The girl had her head on the boy’s shoulder and her eyes on the undulating colors dancing in the water. The boy, with his arm wrapped around his prize, had his eyes closed and a peaceful look on his face. They rocked gently back and forth, lost in the simple moment.

  At least, that was how Deron imagined it. In his mind, he saw himself the way a passerby would. They were just two kids out for some alone time who had sought shelter under the wide canopy of a swinging chair. The rain was visible only when a bolt of lightning lit up the sky, suspended in the air for that fraction of a second. Otherwise, it was too dark to see much of anything. There were no veneers to light his way, to show him the borders of streets and sidewalks and buildings. Without Rosalia by his side, he probably would have been scared of the overwhelming darkness. But she was there, able and willing to be his candle.

  “I don’t want to go home,” she whispered.

  “Then don’t,” he replied, content to sit on the swing all night if she allowed it.

  “We can’t stay here.” Rosalia rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “The rain’s getting worse.”

  It wasn’t too bad, but the thunder was ceaseless in the distance, speaking to something on the horizon. Placing his hand on the back of her neck, he asked, “Where do you want to go?”

  “Somewhere warm,” she replied, squeezing him. Her eyes came up and scrutinized his face. “Somewhere we can be alone.”

  There was something overtly sexual in the way she spoke, some intent in the way her lips pressed together and came apart.

  “Just you and me,” she added with a smile.

  The list of potential places appeared in his mind, the most preferred locale being his room. “I don’t know. We can’t go to my house.”

  “Or mine,” said Rosalia. “I’m already in enough trouble with Lynn.”

  “Then...” Deron drew out the silence, gave both of them time to think. When the answer finally popped into his head, he chuckled at the providence. “My dad has an apartment he doesn’t use,” he suggested.

  With a gentle push on his chest, Rosalia sat up. “He’s not there?”

  “He’s never there.”

  “Take me,” she commanded. Her playful eyes showed awareness of the double meaning.

  “Okay,” was all he could think to say.

  Deron tried to shake the awkward feeling as he stood and took Rosalia’s hand. They walked through the rain to the intersection, his anxiety worsening with each step. It felt like a bubbling in his stomach that increased every time his thoughts drifted ahe
ad into fantasy. Somehow, he made it onto the tram, managed to sit down without throwing up all over the slick floors.

  The ride to his dad’s apartment passed slowly and the silence from Rosalia didn’t make things easier. He glanced at her a few times; she seemed to be lost in a daydream just like him. Once, she noticed his eyes and smiled, but no words, no discussion of things that needed discussing. Deron started putting together the conversation in his head, tried to figure out how he was going to tell her about Dos Presas, how he could convince her to come away with him. The more he examined the problem, the bigger it became until it had grown into an unmanageable jumble of arguments and loosely connected evidence.

  Finally, they were stepping off the tram in his dad’s neighborhood.

  “You sure he’s not home?” asked Rosalia as they approached the apartment complex.

  Deron shrugged. “If he is, we’ll just find some other place.”

  She nodded in agreement and slipped her arm inside his. Her clothes were damp, like her hair. It glistened when the lightning struck.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. You just look...” Abandoning the compliment, he led Rosalia through building’s outer door. They stepped into the humid stairwell and began climbing. Deron felt each step in the small of his back. Whatever demon had settled there, it knew he was getting closer to his apartment, to the blankets he would lay on the living room floor, to...

  Deron knocked twice, but nobody answered the door. Beside him, Rosalia let out a relieved sigh.

  “We go in?” she asked.

  The apartment looked the same; no one had been there in the interim.

  Rosalia’s hand slipped away from him and he watched her explore the apartment. She approached the couch and looked off to her right in the direction of the bedroom. “Hello?” she called, but got no response. Turning back to Deron, “We’re alone.” Another look around. “It’s not as bad as you made it sound.”

  “It’s better than Gillock Pond,” he admitted. Better, too, than the cabins in Dos Presas. The urge to tell her was overwhelming.

  “Come sit with me,” she instructed, moving around the couch while shedding her jacket. Underneath was a gray t-shirt, damp around the bottom edges where it was exposed to the rain.

  Deron followed suit, matched her casual repose on the dusty leather. She wanted him, that much was for sure, but he noted how different her eyes looked now that he could really see them. There used to be a fire, a spark buried in the pupil, visible whenever she got too happy or excited. Now, they were plain, lacking the normal enhancements. She was probably still reconciling the flames, having forgotten that he couldn’t see them.

  Rosalia reached for his face with her hands, but Deron pulled them out of the air.

  “Before...” For some reason, he couldn’t finish his sentence. Before we have sex, his brain muttered. Before we make love. Before we fuck. There were lots of ways to say it, but none that his tongue could understand. “I need to tell you something.”

  She looked hurt by his interruption, but withdrew nonetheless.

  Deron explained about his first day, about the markings that caught his attention and ultimately led him to the border of Easton and beyond.

  “You left the city?” she asked. “Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I was hoping there’d be other people like me. I thought maybe they could help me get my power back. That was before I knew about the chips.”

  “You could have gone to the hospital, maybe they—”

  “I did, remember? Don’t you think they would have checked for that?”

  Rosalia looked away.

  “Besides, it’s only a problem if I live here in Easton.”

  That got her attention.

  Before she could question him, he said, “There’s a town full of people just like me. They don’t have veneers at all there. It’s... wonderful.”

  “No,” said Rosalia, shaking her head. “That’s horrible. You can’t stay out there, Deron. You have to stay with me.”

  Deron dropped his head, looked at his hands in his lap. “I don’t know if I can. You’re right about school. I wouldn’t even...” He sighed, looked up. “Dos Presas is the only place I can go.”

  “But when will I see you?”

  “That’s just it,” he replied, then paused. “I want you to come with me.”

  Her mouth opened to reply, but whatever she wanted to say was lost to shock. She simply sat there staring at him.

  Deron had never considered the possibility that Rosalia might not want to join him. Hadn’t he convinced her that veneers were a lie? Hadn’t he proved his love by risking his life to come back and get her?

  “I thought,” he began, but Rosalia interrupted him.

  “Reconciliation is the only thing that makes me special,” she said.

  “Not to me.”

  “It’s important to me. Maybe the most important—”

  The world went mute.

  Deron stared at her moving lips, but there was nothing to hear. His brain had shut off, unable to deal with the idea that reconciliation could be more important to Rosalia than his love. Who was this girl sitting in front of him? Did he know her at all? Dejected, he turned away, gazed into the darkened bedroom.

  After a while, he heard her voice again. “It’s okay to cry,” she whispered. “I cried too when I thought I lost you.”

  He was surprised to find tears on his cheeks.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  Deron tried to apologize, but his voice broke.

  A minute of silence went by while they listened to the thunder.

  “Did I ever tell you about my mom?” Rosalia didn’t look up; she wasn’t interested in Deron’s response. “My dad says she got sick when I was nine, but I never knew anything was wrong until a year later when she went into the hospital. Me and dad stayed with her the whole time.”

  Deron shivered at the pain in her voice.

  “She was brave, you know that? She never let on how much it hurt. My dad used to say she had an unbreakable veneer, that nothing in the world could bring it down. But that was how she wanted him to see her. With me... it was different. She was all smiles until he left. It didn’t matter how long he was gone, just to the bathroom or to get some food. When it was just her and me, she...”

  He put his hand on her knee.

  Rosalia looked up, her eyes devoid of the redness that usually accompanied tears. “She cried. Just... cried and didn’t stop until he came back. All I could do was sit there and not understand why my mom was so sad, why she kept breaking down when we were alone. And that’s how she went. She died crying.” Sniffling, she added, “She died sad.”

  Death would be a welcome alternative to living without you, thought Deron. If he couldn’t take her with him, what good was it to go back?

  “But, there was one time when she woke up and said she was sorry. And I asked her why.” She placed her hand on his. “She said she was sorry for leaving me.” Rosalia tugged his hand and when he didn’t respond, she reached for his chin and pulled his face towards hers. “Deron, I’m—”

  “No,” he said, putting his fingers awkwardly to her lips. “Let’s just... talk about it tomorrow.”

  She shook her head, “I can’t—”

  “Please,” he implored her. “In the morning.”

  Reluctantly, she took his hand in hers and said, “Okay, in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” he said, drawing her into an embrace. Her wet hair felt cold against his face, but the rest of her was warm and welcoming. Then it slipped out, the words he had often imagined saying but never had the guts. “I love you,” he rasped, his lungs barely able to power the words.

  “I love you,” she repeated.

  And then her lips were against his and every ache and pain that had plagued his body melted away. It wasn’t the way he had imagined it, not with tears drying on his cheeks, not with the world one short night away from des
truction. But those worries were in the impossible distance, chased there by the urgency of Rosalia’s kisses.

  She pushed against him, made him lean back against the arm of the sofa until she was on top of him, her pelvis pressing painfully against his erection. He grabbed at her waist, tried to move her into a better position.

  “Let’s go to the bedroom,” she suggested.

  “It’s dirty,” he replied.

  “I don’t care.” Rosalia slipped off the couch, took Deron’s hand, and pulled him to his feet.

  52 - Rosalia

  There was a hidden surface in her mind, one full of veneers, reconciliations of possible ways and places to lose her virginity. Most of them involved Deron, some starred just shadows, but common to them all was a beautiful setting, soft light, and a scent on the air that reminded her of home. Rosalia had been collecting the veneers since the moment she first understood the concept of sex and had rarely considered the possibility that from her list of potentials, she would ultimately select none and instead forge a new option, one that was less than preferable, one that smelled faintly of cigarettes.

  Just inside the bedroom door, she stopped to reconcile a new scene on her wall of possibilities, a new veneer that didn’t have the grandeur of its predecessors. There wasn’t much to it: a dresser, a folded-up treadmill, an opaque window that barely held out the flashes of lightning, and finally, the bed. Rosalia felt one of Ilya’s points of no return slip past her like a warm breeze. Whether or not she really wanted it, whether or not she really owed him, it was going to happen right there on the worn sheets.

  Deron busied himself with removing the covers from the mattress. He found a comforter in the closet and spread it out on the bed. All of this unfolded with a dreamy quality that made Rosalia question whether any of it was happening at all.