Skin Nation

  ****

  I woke up an hour later, unable to sleep, but no night terrors in sight. It was funny how knowing Z was beside me scared them away. I wondered why that was and started to doubt he was the actual reason. In my world, there was always more to the story. I didn't wake Z to talk no matter how much I wanted to. He just looked so peaceful when he slept. I envied it, unable to remember the last time I got peaceful sleep. Probably sometime before my mom became a Mutual. Before Carl Dickens published Tri-Life: Be Successful, probably before Lary lost his mom and Mar got adopted, maybe a little after the Day of Evanescence when people disappeared without a trace like my grandmother.

  I walked into my room's bathroom and gazed at my reflection, thinking life over. When was the very moment life turned to total shit? It couldn't have started with Carl Dickens. Was it pre or post UIP? Was that it? When the seven nations converged into one giant System and dubbed themselves the United International Parliament?

  I clamped my hands around the sink and lowered my head above the sink bowl, trying to catch my breath. Too many thoughts at once. That blanket of heat started to cover me in sweat again. That same heat I kept feeling when I woke up and imagined flames overtaking the perimeter of my bed. I tried not to think about the sight of flames that came with the heat.

  I started to wonder what was wrong with me. I never had this problem before. I was this perfectly fine, perfectly average, perfect YA. I didn't need something like the Mass to make me cool, I made cliques like the Mass cool, and now I was this loser girl stumbling over her words and kissing the feet of everyone I lived with just to survive. Suddenly, I hated my life and wished that the flames I kept waking up to were real.

  “Hey, Bleu,” I heard a whisper.

  “What?!” I shrieked from the shock. I gazed into the bathroom mirror and jumped at Reno's appearance behind me.

  “Whoa, sorry, I didn't mean to scare you.”

  Reno walked into the room and joined me in front of the rustic sink. “I was wondering if you'd take a walk with me.”

  “Can't sleep?”

  “Nah, I haven't in days.”

  “Me neither.”

  “So?” he smirked.

  I couldn't stop myself from doing the same. “Let's go.”

  I walked out of the room and smiled at the sound of his footsteps. There's just something about being Followed.