Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful. Arwen Dayton Elys

care so much about Reverend Tadd?” he asked. “He’s just a nutjob on the radio.”

      This was the precise question I didn’t want to answer. I felt myself retreat in fear and I stammered, “I—I just wanted to hear what you think. I’m trying to get to know you.” I managed to make the last part sound flirty.

      Gabriel shook his head, as if he would humor me because obviously he was so into me. “I don’t know.” He shrugged again. “I mean, we’re religious, all of us at St. Anne’s, aren’t we? And, like, should we be doing everything that God can do? What about these people who are going to other countries to freeze themselves and avoid a natural death? Even kids? They might be frozen forever. Is that what their lives are supposed to be? Does that seem like something we should be doing? I don’t know.”

      “So you agree with Reverend Tad Tadd?” I whispered the question, knowing that if I tried to say it in a normal voice, it would come out too loud.

      Here’s the thing. I’d heard snippets of Reverend Tadd’s broadcasts from time to time and seen him spouting sound bites on TV, but I’d never really thought about him too much. Sure, he was a ridiculous bigot, yet the important word had always been ridiculous. Tonight, though … tonight his hatred had unexpectedly intruded upon our intimate space, and it was like his voice and his sentiment had somehow become tied up with the pain and with the monstrous weight of death that had pressed down on me for so many months. And now, even if I was scared of where the conversation would lead, I couldn’t let him go.

      Gabriel said, “I think Reverend Tadd is crazy. He sounds like … like …” He groped for the words.

      “Like he tells everyone else how to be holy and then he goes back to a house full of alcohol and hookers?” I suggested. The words had been enraged inside my head, but they came out sounding more like a joke. Thankfully.

      Gabriel gave me a whispery laugh. “Something like that. Maybe not that bad. It’s just … My grandma’s from a different generation—”

      “But what’s the difference between a half-real heart and taking antibiotics, or getting a doctor to set a broken bone?” I asked, still whispering. I was starting to feel ill. And I needed to hear him say the right thing.

      “Yeah, that’s what’s crazy,” he agreed. “How are they drawing the line? It’s so …”

      “Arbitrary?” This word came out too loud, but it was only one word, so I don’t think he noticed. I bit my lower lip to try to rein in my voice.

      “Right, arbitrary. But my grandma is so sure certain things are too close to what God is supposed to take care of. Or not take care of. Maybe certain people aren’t meant to live—she thinks,” he quickly added.

      I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, tried to untie the knot in my stomach. I was not lying unconscious, crushed inside a car. I was not watching helplessly as doctors called for more blood. I was here at the drive-in and no one was singling me out. To Gabriel, this was only a theoretical debate and I was one of those religious girls who loved to argue. Maybe he was walking a fine gray borderline between skeptical friend and thoughtless objector, but what he was saying wasn’t terrible. No matter what his grandmother thought, Gabriel was trying to be tolerant, which was all I could hope to ask in a world where the Reverend Tadd and others were turning medicine into philosophy.

      “I didn’t know you were so into politics,” he said, teasing me a little.

      “I guess this isn’t the best topic for a first date.” I managed a little laugh.

      The adrenaline pumping through me was calming down. And I was calming down. His arm was around my waist, which was keeping the make-out hormones flowing, in spite of everything. My attention came back to his hands, his lips, the backseat. I was here because I wanted to be here.

      So we kissed then. I mean we really kissed. We started out sitting up, but soon I was lying wedged in the corner of the seat and he was almost on top of me, and it felt so good. Like, unbelievably good. The only damage I’d received to my face had been a small jaw fracture and that thing with my eyes, so my mouth and tongue and teeth and everything were totally normal. They wouldn’t feel weird to him, which was important because he was totally in my mouth with his tongue. Which I liked.

      But then I didn’t.

      As the adrenaline settled, the make-out hormones (some of which were naturally mine, and some of which were, you know, added extras from the meshline) were also cutting out,my body sputtering like an old-school gas engine with dirt in the fuel line. Suddenly it was like watching myself kiss him, like this was another movie, playing inside the car, and I could think that it looked sexy, but I couldn’t feel that it was sexy. It was more like our mouths were raw chicken breasts we were mashing repeatedly against each other.

      I was thinking about this while still kissing him, trying to recapture why I’d wanted to put my tongue into his mouth when that now seemed, essentially, disgusting. Because I was distracted, I didn’t notice that he had worked my shirt out of my pants and his hand was sliding beneath it.

      “Wait—” I said, struggling to sit up.

      “You’re so pretty. I want to touch you …”

      “Wait—”

      But it was too late. His hand had expertly worked its way up my torso and his fingers were under my bra. Yes—that quickly. The tips of his fingers—some of the most sensitive and discerning parts of the human body—had touched the exterior skin-layer of the meshline. His fingers stopped and I watched confusion vying with arousal in his face. His hand slid out of my bra, down my torso, this time sensing more artificial skin, which he had not noticed the first time he’d touched it.

      “What’s …,” he began. That question had already led him up a blind alley he didn’t want to be in. He sat back, confused. “Are you—are you all right?”

       4. CAST OF TWO

      I pulled my shirt down, wiggled upright. He had felt that some things were wrong, but he didn’t have to know the extent of it.

      “It’s just, in the accident,” I mumbled. “Some things had to be fixed.” This sounded weak, possibly because it was an absurd understatement.

      “Lilly told us it was just your legs. You broke your legs.” The movie played out across his cheek as his shadowed eyes studied me.

      “That was … mainly what happened,” I hedged. It was not right that anyone should pass judgment on me if I told the truth. And yet I did not, I did not, want to tell the truth.

      “Is it your skin under there?” He sounded almost mesmerized. A lump of fear had formed just above my stomach. He reached for my shirt, but I held it down.

      “Mostly.”

      That was a lie. The artificial skin he’d felt, covering more than half my torso, was based on my skin, maybe you could say it was partly my skin, but it was combined with the mesh that made a bridge from the parts that were all me to the parts that weren’t me anymore. It felt like skin—until you touched my real skin right next to it, which was what had happened when his fingers traced the meshline across my right breast. Then the difference became glaring.

      He was already pulling my shirt back up and I didn’t stop him this time; panic held me motionless. He would see, he would know! What should I have done? Slapped him? Escaped from the car and run from the drive-in?

      The movie had gotten brighter and in its light, the variance in texture and color of my body was discernible. The meshline traveled up from beneath my bellybutton, curved across my stomach and then cut across my right breast. On one side of the mesh was me, real flesh, one hundred percent Milla. On the other side, things were harder to categorize.

      “How far does it go?” he asked, looking at where