Authors: Sophie Hamilton
Stitch-Up
For Christopher
Contents
The Skin I Live In
THE railway tracks flashed like surgical knives in the sunlight. I drummed my fingernails against the train's tinted, bulletproof window. I was getting that locked-in feeling again. The Easter holidays stretched before me. I pinched the skin on the back of my hand, counting the seconds it took to sink down. Since the revelation, I had become obsessed with skin â not any old skin.
I was obsessed with saving
my skin
.
My skin covers about two square metres, weighs around three kilograms and contains seventeen kilometres of blood vessels. I shed 30,000 dead cells a minute, 600,000 an hour, and grow a brand-new skin every twenty-eight days â that's about 1,000 new skins in a lifetime, which, in case you were wondering, doesn't make me a freak. It's completely normal. The freakish part, or the bit that was freaking
me
out big time, was my parents' plan for it. I puffed out my cheeks â exhaled slowly. It was just plain wrong. I mean,
it's my skin and I live in it
.
BANG!
A rush of air slammed against the Star Academy's chartered train. I jumped. A civilian train raced alongside, its windows blanked out by speed. Watching the grey squares spool
past, like empty frames from a film, I found myself slotting images and headlines into the blank spaces, cutting together a trailer for the next tragic episode of my life. COMING SOON: TEENAGE GIRL METAMORPHOSES INTO BEAUTIFUL ZOMBIE DOLL! The images showed surgeons working on a girl in a high-tech operating theatre, followed by post-op shots of my bruised and battered face, eyes weeping blood. In the final shot I smiled to camera, my face smooth as a mask. STAY TUNED! Moments later, the civilian train was gone.
The carriage was a muss of chatter. Coco and her sparkly crew, the List â so-called because your parents had to be on the Rich List before Coco would consider you worthy of membership â were huddled over tablets, buying clothes for their holidays and acing each other's plans. Samantha, daughter of a retail magnate (Rich List number eighteen), said she would be chilling at the family villa in the Caribbean. Coco, heir to a candy empire (Rich List number fourteen) trumped her with holidaying on the family super-yacht. Anushka, daughter of an oligarch (Rich List number twenty-one) had a royal flush as she was doing both. I zoned out when they started arguing about the size of their parents' Learjets. I could outdo them all, if I cared. My dad was a media mogul and the king of the cosmetic surgery industry (Rich List number eight). But I wasn't into lists, especially Coco's. Her List ruled our class at the Star Academy, and their starry rules sucked. They were all sparkle and no heart.
WHOOSH! The train sped into a tunnel, sealing us into
a darkly mirrored bubble. In unison, the girls swivelled to check their reflections in the blacked-out windows, pouting, primping and spiffing their hair. I scowled. The List were such fakes; all they cared about was how they looked.
The plasma screen in the corner of the carriage was showing footage of burned-out police cars, a double-decker bus in flames, and hoodies looting a high street somewhere in the Edgelands way over east. The news was rolling soundlessly. The ticker tape on the bottom of the screen read:
Broken Britain. Hood-Rats Run Riot.
The girls' eyes flicked up to the screen and then back to their reflections. The Edgelands were a world away. Nobody gave a damn. Next up, my mother's perfectly-sculpted face filled the screen. Blab, blab, blab went her trout pout as she introduced the lead item on her prime-time show. My brow knitted into a frown. No escape! With my mother presenting daily shows on GoldRush TV, I often had the eerie feeling that her eyes were on me, spying on me from plasma screens, controlling me by remote. Despite the sound being turned down, I could guess Mum's angle. She'd be banging on about outcasts, hood-rats and bad civilian parenting, as if she were auditioning for the Mother of the Year award.
As ifâ¦
I caught Big Stevie's eye in the window. My frown deepened. He was standing with the other minders, monitoring my every move. Most girls had their personal bodyguards on board, even though the Bullet Train Company employed security guards as part of the company's bespoke service. This was because our security guards doubled as spies for our
parents. Every weekend our parents chartered a Bullet Train to ferry us from the Star Academy to London and back again. At fifty grand a pop, the Bullet offered a secure solution for super-rich parents as a precaution against the kidnap crews. My dad described it as the Hogwarts Express with guns.
Big Stevie was telling the other minders a joke; obviously I'd heard it a million times before. I rolled my eyes. It was weird to think that he'd been guarding me for more than ten years â over half my life. He'd outlasted every boyfriend and most friends, too. Even weirder, he knew more about my habits than anyone else in the world, including my parents. He shadowed me twenty-four/seven, and I hated him.
Suddenly laughter filled the carriage. Coco and the List turned towards me in a confection of she-wolf smiles, shimmery lipgloss and capped white teeth. Coco â the Fake in Chief â jumped up. Her blonde hair was immaculately styled and her bright pink nails clacked like lobster claws against her tablet as she walked over, shadowed by her tittering crew.
I mentally manned up.
“Oh my God, you've been
papped
,” Coco smirked, as she held up a photo of yours truly attending a premiere with my parents. I was getting out of a silver Mercedes in a lacy black dress. “Totes inappropes. Totes tragic. The corpse bride look is so over, Dasha. So
last century
.”
“It's called unique style,” I replied, without missing a beat. “Not that you'd know anything about that.” I let my eyes travel slowly across their uniformity.
The List crowded round her tablet.
“Nope. I still don't get it.” Coco's eyes lasered the photo. “You have shed-loads of stylists and you still look like trash. Now that's what I call an
achievement
.”
Her glittery crew burst out laughing.
“Go fake yourself!” I kept my eyes glued to the plasma, wishing for an ejector seat âpreferably one that would shoot me into a parallel universe.
But Coco shoved her face up close and hissed, “If your dad's so famous for fixing everyone's image, how come he sooo forgot about yours? I'd call that child neglect!” The List tittered. Her eyes flicked up to my mother's image on screen. “And your mum's cougar-chic is tragic, too.”
“You're just jealous,” I snapped.
“Like how?” But she was backing off.
I fixed her with a chilly stare as she retreated.
Anushka and Samantha hovered. Anushka nudged Sam. Sam giggled and nudged her back. Immediately I knew they must have heard the rumours. Sam drew closer. “Where are you going for Easter, Dasha?” she asked.
“One of the islands,” I said coolly.
I saw Coco's face cloud over. She tried to catch Sam's eye.
But Sam's desire for gossip made her break rank, and she continued in a hushed voice. “Is your dad giving you a makeover for your seventeenth birthday, Dasha?”
I shrugged. I couldn't have told them even if
I'd wanted
to â which I didn't â because my parents had made me sign a confidentiality agreement. That's the kind of brand, I mean family we were â
closeâ¦
But there was no harm in playing them.
“Dad's got plans.” A smile twitched the corner of my mouth. Although Coco tried to play it cool, envy glinted in her eyes. And in that moment I knew that she would do anything to swap places with me.
“Chilling in the Caribbean mainly,” I blagged some more. “So be afraid, be very afraid. I'll be coming back tanned and gorgeous.” I waited a beat. “A new person.” I flashed a dazzling smile, although on the inside I wanted to scream. But I couldn't give Coco the pleasure of seeing how terrified I really was.
Her face shifted with fury as they walked away.
Coco hated the fact that my parents owned one of the most powerful media corporations in the world, as well as a multi-million-pound cosmetic surgery business. Last year they had merged the two companies to form GoldRush Image Inc, which was the most influential image-making machine in the world. Coco was jealous as hell, but she didn't know the half of it. In two weeks' time, on my seventeenth birthday, I was going to become the brand-new face of GoldRush Image Inc. That was the reason Dad was whisking me off to one of his islands. Once there, GoldRush Image surgeons were going to give me a radical makeover. As I pinched the skin on the back of my hand again, I found myself once more dreaming of being propelled into a parallel universe.
The situation was freaking me out. It was totally intense, and there was no escape. I was twenty-four hours away from having my identity stolen, but this was identity theft with a twist, of course, because my parents were involved.
This wasn't about cracking a password, stealing bank details or personal data. My parents were physically changing my appearance for ever for their own crazy purposes.
My phone rang. I sucked in a breath. It was Dad.
“Precious?”
“Hi, Dad,” I said without enthusiasm.
“How are you feeling? Excited?”
“Like a freak show,” I said, chewing at my thumbnail.