Shattered Read Online Free Page A

me sound like a wounded seal. Quinn had mastered it back when we were still in rehab. And she loved rubbing it in. “If I were you, I’d ditch it immediately.”
    â€œAs in strip down right here while you’re watching?”
    â€œNow or later,” Quinn said with a soft giggle. “Remember what I said.”
    I’m always watching
.
    I started heading back to the house.
    â€œWrong way,” Quinn said. “I have something for you.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œJust a little treat. Trust me.”
    â€œBusy,” I said.
    â€œDon’t you think Jude’s ass could use a break from all that kissing?”
    I stopped walking.
    â€œYou don’t want to give him a rash,” Quinn added.
    â€œMeaning?”
    â€œMeaning back when you thought we were all freaks, Jude was enemy number one, and now you prance around here like his trained monkey.”
    Thanks to the VM, I could answer even with gritted teeth. “Jealous?”
    â€œOf you?”
    Jude liked his toys new and shiny, that much I’d figured out. I suspected that Quinn had started to look a little rusty by the time I showed up. Besides, he may have been a mech, but he was still a guy—and when it came to guys, no toy was shinier than the one they weren’t allowed to play with.
    â€œIt’s not sucking up if I actually agree with him,” I reminded Quinn. “We all want the same thing, right?”
    â€œI know what I want,” she said. “What about you?”
    â€œYou first.” Not that I was avoiding the question. The question was irrelevant. What I wanted I couldn’t have, so I’d decided to stop wanting it.
    â€œI want you to come play with me,” she whined.
    â€œAsk Ani.”
    â€œAni’s busy.”
    Hard to believe. Quinn’s attention span was half the size of Jude’s—out of sight, out of mind was a way of life. And Ani knew it. “I guess Ani and I have that in common.”
    â€œSomehow, I think the vidlifes can get by without you for a few minutes,” Quinn drawled.
    â€œYou know, I do have a life outside the network,” I lied. Living on my own with no parents, no school, and no obligations was a freedom the old Lia Kahn would have killed for. Freedom to hook up with Walker, to party all night dosed up on Xers and zone the days away on a cloud of chillers and chocolate, to dance in the moonlight with Cass and Terra while the randoms watched our flickering shadows, wishing they could steal our lives.
    Now Walker was hooking up with the sister I hadn’t spoken to in half a year, and b-mods modded nothing. Music was just noise to me, the same way Cass and Terra were just names of people I used to know. My own life had taken a permanent trip to the department of dull. Who could blame me for preferring someone else’s?
    It’s not that I’d become a total vid-head. I wasn’t one of the wastoids who spent all day and night whispering directions into the ears of the vidlifers and watching a bunch of strangers act out my wildest fantasies. I didn’t need to pull any strings to watch my dark and shameful fantasy unspool across the screen. Because it was there for me at any hour of the day, in infinitevariations: the vidlifers themselves, head cases who had given up their identities, their wills, their
lives
to the masses. They spoke no words that weren’t piped into their ears, made no choices that weren’t chosen for them by randoms spread across the network. They’d erased themselves.
    â€œCome on,” Quinn wheedled. “You don’t want to miss this.”
    I gave in. “Fine.” The only thing more embarrassing than watching vidlifes was envying the vidlifers. I wasn’t about to put myself at Quinn’s lack of mercy. “Where are you?”
    â€œEverywhere,” she hissed in a deliberately spooky whisper. Then cackled. “But right now? Down by the pool.”
    I