CHAPTER TWO
LIFE’S A STITCH
The sun was finally up. Robins and sparrows were chirping their usual morning playlists. Outside Frankie’s frosted bedroom window, kids on bikes began ringing their bells and circling the Radcliffe Way cul-de-sac. The neighborhood was awake. She could finally blast Lady Gaga.
“I can see myself in the movies, with my picture in the city lights…”
More than anything, Frankie wanted to bop her head to “The Fame.” No. Wait. That wasn’t entirely true. What she really wanted to do was jump up on her metal bed, kick the fleece-coated electromagnetic blankets to the polished concrete, swing her hair, wave her arms, shake her booty, and bop her head to “The Fame.” But disrupting the flow of electricity before the charge was complete could lead to memory loss, fainting spells, or even a coma. The plus side, however, was never needing to plug in her iPod touch. As long as it was near Frankie’s body, the device’s battery had more juice than Tropicana.
Luxuriating in her morning infusion, she lay supine with a tangle of black and red wires clamped to her neck bolts. While the last electric currents ricocheted through Frankie’s body, she leafed through the latest issue of Seventeen magazine. Careful not to smudge her hardening In the Navy nail polish, she searched the models’ smooth, odd-colored necks for metal rivets, wondering how they managed to “amp” without them.
As soon as Carmen Electra (the name she’d given the amp machine, because its technical name was too hard to pronounce) shut down, Frankie delighted in the itchy tingle of her thimble-size neck bolts when they started to cool. Feeling invigorated, she pressed her pert nose into the magazine and took a long sniff of the enclosed Miss Dior Cherie perfume sample.
“You like?” she asked, waving it in front of the Glitterati. Five white rats stood on their pink hind feet and scratched the glass wall of their cage. A flurry of nontoxic multicolored glitter slid off their backs like snow from an awning.
Frankie took one more sniff. “Me too.” She waved the folded paper through the cold formaldehyde-laced air and got up to light her vanilla-scented candles. The vinegary chemical odor of the solution was seeping into her hair and dominating the floral notes in her Pantene conditioner.
“Do I smell vanilla?” her dad asked as he rapped on the closed door.
Frankie shut off her music. “Yesssss!” she trilled, ignoring his pretending-to-be-annoyed tone—a tone he’d been using since Frankie transformed his lab into a “Fab.” She heard it when she glammed up the laboratory rats, began storing lip gloss and hair accessories in his beakers, and glued Justin Bieber’s face to the skeleton (because, how voltage is that poster where he’s sitting on the skateboard?). But she knows her dad didn’t really mind. It was her bedroom now too. And besides, if he really cared, he wouldn’t refer to her as—
“How is Daddy’s perfect little girl?” Viktor Stein knocked again and then opened the door. Frankie’s mother followed Viktor into the room.
Viktor was swinging a leather duffel and wearing a black Adidas tracksuit and his favorite brown UGG slippers with a hole in one toe.
“Worn and old, just like Viv,” he’d say when Frankie made fun of them, and then his wife would swat him on the arm. But Frankie knew he was just joking, because Viveka was the type of woman you wished was in a magazine just so you could stare at her violet-colored eyes and shiny black hair without being called a stalker or a freak.
Her father, however, had more of an Arnold Schwarzenegger thing going on, as if his chiseled features had been stretched to cover his square head. People probably wanted to stare at him too but were afraid of his six-foot-four frame and super-squinty expression. But his squints didn’t mean he was angry. They meant he was thinking. And being a mad scientist, he was always thinking.… At least that’s how Viveka explained it.
“Can we talk to you for a minute, sweetie?” Viveka asked in a singsong way that mimicked the swooshing hem of her black crepe sundress. Her voice was so delicate that people were shocked when they heard it coming from a six-foot-tall woman.
Viv and Vik walked across the polished concrete floor holding hands, a united front, as always. But this time, traces of concern lay beneath their proud grins.
“Have a seat, dear.” Viveka gestured to the pillow-covered ruby-red Moroccan chaise Frankie had ordered online from Ikea. In the far corner of the Fab, along with her sticker-covered desk, her flat-screen Sony, and a rainbow of colorful wardrobes stuffed with Internet buys, the lounge faced the only window in the room. Even though that window had been frosted for privacy, it gave Frankie a glimpse into the real world—or at least the promise of one.
Frankie padded across the fluffy pink sheepskin path from her bed to the lounge, silently fearing that her parents had seen her latest charges from iTunes. Nervous, she pulled on the track of fine black stitches that held her head in place.
“Don’t pull,” Viktor insisted, lowering himself onto the chaise. The birch frame creaked in protest. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. We just want to talk to you.” He placed the leather duffel by his feet.
Viveka tapped the empty cushion beside her, then fussed with her signature black muslin scarf. But Frankie, fearing a lecture on the value of a dollar, tightened her silky black Harajuku Lovers robe and chose to sit on the pink rug instead.
“What’s up?” she asked, smiling and trying to sound as if she hadn’t just spent $59.99 for a season pass of Gossip Girl.
“Change is in the air.” Viktor rubbed his hands together and inhaled deeply, as if gearing up to tackle a hike up Mount Hood.
No more credit cards? Frankie speculated with dread.
Viveka nodded and forced another smile, her dark purple painted lips holding tight to each other. She looked at her husband, urging him to continue, but he widened his dark eyes to communicate that he didn’t know what to say
Frankie shifted uncomfortably on the rug. She had never seen her parents at such a loss for words. She fast-forwarded through her recent purchases, hoping to figure out which item had tipped them over the edge. Season pass of Gossip Girl—orange blossom room spray—striped Hot Sox with the cute toe holes—magazine subscriptions for Us Weekly, Seventeen, Teen Vogue, CosmoGirl—horoscope app—numerology app—dream interpreter app—Morrocanoil hair de-frizzer—Current/Elliott boyfriend jeans…
Nothing too major. Still, the anticipation was making her neck bolts spark.
“Relax, dear.” Viveka leaned forward and smoothed her hand over Frankie’s long black hair. The soothing gesture stopped the energy leak but did nothing for her insides. They were still popping and hissing like the Fourth of July. Her parents were the only people Frankie knew. They were her best friends and mentors. Disappointing them meant disappointing the entire world.
Viktor took another deep breath, then exhaled as he made his announcement. “The summer is over. Your mother and I have to go back to teaching science and anatomy at the university. We can’t home school you anymore.” He jiggled his ankle restlessly.
“Huh?” Frankie knit her perfectly sculpted eyebrows. What can this possibly have to do with shopping?
Viveka placed an I’ll-take-it-from-here hand on Viktor’s knee, then cleared her throat. “What your father is trying to say is that you are fifteen days old. On each of those days, he implanted a year’s worth of knowledge into your brain: math, science, history, geography, languages, technology, art, music, movies, songs, trends, expressions, social conventions, manners, emotional depth, maturity, discipline, free will, muscle coordination, speech coordination, sense recognition, depth perception, ambition, and even a small appetite. You have it all!”
Frankie nodded her head, wondering when the shopping part was coming.
“So, now that you’re a beautiful, smart teenage girl, you’re ready for…” Viveka sniffed back a tear. She looked over at Viktor, who nodded, urging her to continue. Licking her lips and exhaling, she managed to work up one last smile, then—
Frankie sparked. This was taking longer than ground shipping.
Finally Viveka blurted, “Normie school.” She said it like nor-mee.
“What’s ‘normie’?” Frankie asked, fearing the answer. Is that some kind of rehab program for shopoholics?
“A normie is someone with common physical traits,” Viktor explained.
“Like…” Viveka picked up an issue of Teen Vogue from the orange-lacquered side table and opened it to a random page. “Like them.”
She tapped an H&M ad featuring three girls in bras and hot pants—a blond, a brunette, and a redhead. They all had curly hair.
“Am I a normie?” Frankie asked, feeling just as proud as the beaming models.
Viveka shook her head from side to side.
“Why? Because my hair is straight?” Frankie asked. This was the most confusing lesson of all.
“No, not because your hair is straight,” Viktor said through a frustrated smirk. “Because I built you.”
“Didn’t everyone’s parents ‘build’ them?” Frankie made air quotes. “You know, technically speaking.”
Viveka raised a dark eyebrow. Her daughter had a point.
“Yes, but I built you in the literal way,” Viktor explained. “In this lab. From perfect body parts that I made with my hands. I programmed your brain full of information, stitched you together, and put bolts on the sides of your neck so you could get charged. You have no real need for food, other than enjoyment. And, Frankie, because you have no blood, well, your skin, it’s… it’s green.”
Frankie looked at her hands as if for the first time. They were the color of mint chocolate chip ice cream, just like the rest of her.
“I know,” she giggled. “Isn’t it voltage?”
“It is.” Viktor chuckled. “That’s why you’re so special. No other student at your new school was made like that. Just you.”
“You mean the school will have other people in it?” Frankie looked around the Fab, the only room she’d ever truly known.
Viktor and Viveka nodded, guilt and trepidation wrinkling their foreheads.
Frankie searched their moist eyes, wondering if this was really happening. Were they really going to just cut her loose? Drop her in a school full of curly-haired normies and expect her to fend for herself? Did they really have the heart to walk away from her education so they could teach lecture halls full of perfect strangers instead?
Despite their quivering lips and salt-stained cheeks, it seemed that they actually were. Suddenly, a feeling that could only be measured on the Richter scale rumbled through Frankie’s belly. It climbed up her chest, shot through her throat, and exploded right out of her mouth:
“VOLTAGE!”