LYDA
SECOND SKIN
Lyda set the orb so that the living room looks like part of a suburban ranch house, pre-Detonations—she would never share her ashen world with anyone but Partridge. She hasn’t seen him since their meeting with Foresteed where she gave Partridge permission to marry Iralene—or did she urge him? And if she’d said no, would it have actually mattered to a man like Foresteed? Looking back, she thinks they were meant to wander the room, and she was meant to find her psychological evaluation. In retrospect, it was a silent threat—lifelong institutionalization.
Now she’s in the care of a woman named Chandry, who is unloading a tote full of yarn balls and knitting needles. “So what would you like to start with? Booties? A baby hat? A blankie?”
“Can I ask who sent you?” Lyda says, trying to sound sweet.
“Oh, it’s my duty! I’m in charge of preparing you for your little bundle’s arrival.” She pats Lyda’s knee. “Plus, it’s soothing to knit. Knit your troubles away!” she chirps. “I have friends who are truly shattered by the recent events, but not me! Not with knitting on my side!”
She either means Partridge’s speech about the truth or the suicides or both. “Recent events?” Lyda says, playing dumb.
“You know,” Chandry says. “You of all people…”
Lyda, of all people. She wonders if Chandry blames her somehow.
Chandry starts to knit while giving a play-by-play of her quick work. Lyda interrupts, “What’s wrong with shattered? Sometimes it’s the right way to feel.”
This flusters Chandry, but she keeps stitching. She wouldn’t want to undermine her own arguments about the soothing powers of knitting. “Not for me!” she says, and she continues on, telling Lyda how to hold the needles. She gives her a little practice piece Chandry started for her at home. She seems oblivious to the fact that Lyda learned how to knit at the academy. All the girls did. But Lyda doesn’t tell Chandry. She pretends to be a terrible student. It’s not that she’s against swaddling her baby in handmade blankets; it’s that she doesn’t want to be soothed—not by anything.
“I’m also giving you a Baby’s Own baby book. You can start writing in it to log the joys of your baby—starting from the womb!”
“The joys.”
“Yes! The joys! Cute stories. You know…maybe you crave strawberry milkshakes! You could write that down in the journal. These are things your child will one day want to know about their fetal experience!”
Lyda craves ash on her skin. She craves hunting in the woods at dusk. She craves the unknown rumble of a Dust—the earth trembling underfoot. She says nothing. If she raises her child in the Dome, would she ever be able to tell her child these things?
The TV screen is blank. She’s watched too much of the news, which is feverishly whipping up excitement over Partridge and Iralene’s engagement while reporting that all else is well. They don’t mention the fights in the streets, the suicides. Instead there are pictures of Partridge and Iralene wandering the academy gardens, holding hands, smiling.
Chandry catches her gaze at the TV. “Oh, honey,” she says. “You don’t want to see what’s on that old chatterbox. You know that.” And she smiles at Lyda with deep cloying sympathy.
Lyda wants to slap her. She doesn’t want her sympathy. She folds her little strip of knitting, takes the needles and the ball of yarn and hands them back to Chandry. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Do you feel sick? Are you craving strawberry milkshakes?” she smiles.
“I’m going to my bedroom.”
“Yes!” Chandry says. “You must get off your feet some and lie down.”
Lyda grabs the orb and walks to her bedroom, shuts the door, and sets it to ash. She lies on the bed and stares up at the ceiling.
She couldn’t tell Partridge not to fake the engagement. The stupid photo shoots might actually save lives. But still, she feels fragile, as if made of fine glass. She could shatter. She remembers feeling this way when she was a student at the academy, but not outside the Dome—not among the mothers, hunting in the woods. Is all of her toughness going to erode? Is she bound to be the person she used to be in the Dome? Does the Dome, once she steps foot in it, define her?
When she hears Chandry talking to the guard and the door to the apartment shutting again, Lyda walks around her room, looking for something. What? At first she wants to make art—not something sweet like her old bird made of wire. No. She wants to make something tough that will endure.
When she opens her closet, she finds wire hangers. She pulls them out and drops them on the floor—which looks sooty and streaked.
She remembers the idiotic sitting mats they had her weaving with colored strips when she was locked up in the medical center, how she wove and rewove hers back in solitary. She sits amid the hangers and unwinds them so that each springs loose. She straightens each one and then begins weaving.
What is she weaving? She’s not sure. She just weaves and weaves until the metal forms a large rectangle. It doesn’t soothe her, which is good. It makes her feel vital, in control. She can still see Partridge in his father’s chamber, the pictures of his lost family strewn around him. She still loves him—murderer and all. But after seeing her psychological evaluation, her desire to get out has grown. She wants to be out there in the world—whatever it looks like, no matter how wild and untamed. Even if everything gets worked out and Iralene disappears and Lyda can move into that role—Partridge has promised her—she can’t stay here and be Partridge’s happy wife, wearing pearls, knitting booties, writing in baby books. That night when she and Partridge lay together under his coat in the brass bed frame in a house with no roof, only the gray sky overhead, he wanted her to come with him. She refused. This time, though, she’ll talk him into coming with her. This time, they’ll stick together. The baby will keep them together, right? That’s what babies do. They make families.
His father saw the end. Did he see how there will eventually be too little to live on? People will hoard and stand guard and then steal and fight and kill for what’s left. They’re all animals. She doesn’t want to be a caged one.
She keeps pulling the wires, tightening the weave until her fingers are too stiff to go on. She holds up what looks like a woven shield—beautiful, strong, but also bendable. She stands up and walks to a mirror—darkened by the image of ash. She can see her dim reflection. She presses the woven metal to her body. Her belly is going to swell, but the metal is malleable. It could be molded around a belly—however big.
And then she knows what she’s made.
Armor.
A second skin of metal.
It’s art, if anyone asks. But to her, it’s also protection and control. This is who she is—not someone who knits booties to soothe her nerves. She might feel a little shattered, but she’s also strong. She can’t rely solely on Partridge. She has to be able to defend herself. This is her protection.
She hides it in the back of her closet, behind fluffy maternity dresses.