She blinked her djinni and tapped into Olaya, pulling up the full list of family members. Everyone was in the house, with the doors locked at her father’s maximum security level—the outside doors, and her bedroom door. When they grounded someone, they meant it. Marisa blinked on Sandro’s name and started a private call.
“Hey, Mari.” His voice was almost maddeningly calm—how did he do that?
“Hey. Can you help me out with something?”
“You want to become a Super You?” he asked, repeating the company’s sales slogan.
Marisa rolled her eyes. “I’ve got the stupid thing right here, can you help me out?”
“Not with your door locked.”
“Come on, Lechuga, what do you think I am? Helpless?” She’d hacked Olaya’s AI three years ago, and kept a backdoor program hidden in the code for situations just like this. She blinked into it now, and prepared to pop the lock, but realized suddenly that she was still wearing her green dress from the club. Where before it had made her feel sexy and independent, now it just felt itchy and uncomfortable, tight and loose in all the wrong ways and places. Worse, its long sleeves would make switching the prosthetic impossible—not to mention, the sleeve over the damaged arm was pretty damaged itself. “Score one more point for the giant truck.”
“What?” asked Sandro.
“Just looking at my dress,” said Marisa. “Give me a second to change out of it.”
“I need to gather my tools anyway,” said Sandro. “And don’t call me Lechuga.”
“Bueno,” said Marisa, and ended the call. She wriggled out of the dress, doing her best with only one good hand. The broken outer plates on the Jeon arm kept catching in the holes in the ripped sleeve, ripping it farther, until finally Marisa growled in frustration and tore the dress off in one long pull, tearing a gash down the sleeve from elbow to hem. She threw the dress at her closet with a grunt of rage and pulled on a Pinecone Neko T-shirt that was so long it hung past her knees. She kicked the dress into the corner, much harder than she had to, letting it stand in for everything else that had gone wrong all night. She waited a moment, wondering where Sandro was, and realized with a wince that she’d forgotten to unlock the door. She opened it with a blink, and collapsed facedown onto her bed.
“Wow,” said Sandro. “You look worse than I expected.”
“Shut up.”
“I mean your arm,” he said. She felt the bed move as he sat next to her. “Did you really get hit by a truck in the middle of the freeway?”
“You should see the truck,” said Marisa, trying to sound tougher than she felt. She kept her eyes buried in her pillow. “I gave as good as I got.”
“Really?”
“No.” Marisa sighed and peered out. “Sandro.” She paused. “Am I a bad person?”
Sandro raised his eyebrow. He somehow looked just as tidy and professional in his pajamas as he did in his school clothes. “Do I actually get to say I told you so?”
“No,” said Marisa. “Because I was trying to do the right thing—I wasn’t the one doing drugs, you know, I was saving Anja’s life.”
“You were also the one who sneaked out and went to a place where people were doing drugs,” said Sandro. “What did you think was going to happen?”
Marisa flopped back down on the pillow. “How do you make that sound so reasonable?” she asked. “I wanted to punch Dad when he said the same thing.” She peeked out again, sitting all the way up. “I ought to punch you for it,” she said, but she didn’t feel it. Her rage had all bled away, leaving nothing but guilt and sadness. And fear: just a centimeter more, and that broken arm could have been her entire body.
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” said Sandro, examining the damaged arm more closely. Marisa could feel the movement in her shoulder, the only part of the arm that was still flesh and bone, but with the prosthetic’s sensors offline that was all she could feel. The arm was inert and useless, like a pirate’s peg leg. Marisa pulled up her floppy T-shirt sleeve, exposing the full arm and shoulder, and then sat still, letting him work.
“I should be recording this,” said Sandro. “I could probably convince Ms. Threlkeld to give me extra credit in robotics.”
“Don’t,” said Marisa.
He nodded and grabbed his socket drill.