I take a step forward, and then pause. "Is this going to hurt you?"

"Fuck, man, what do you care?"

"I care."

"You say that now. Let's see if you ask me again in five minutes."

"Maybe I'm not your normal clientele."

He sighs. "No, we don't feel much pain, so clear your fucking conscience."

"Are you just telling me that or do you mean it?"

He runs his hand down his face. "Look, man. You can either do this or go home. But no one ever goes home, so just face the fucking music and get on with it."

So I do. I start off by slapping him hard across the face, and go from there. Five minutes later, I'm not asking, "Is this hurting you?"

Five minutes later, I'm straddling his chest, smashing his mangled face in with my bloody fists, over and over and over. He's shouting, "Stop it!" and I'm loving every second of it.

Hafwen's nickname is Zippy. She likes to skip and sing about the dishes as she's washing them, and write poetry with waterproof paper in the rain. She'll call me up just to tell me that she's discovered the name for those imprints left in the skin when you press it against a textured surface too long. A frittle.

So when I see her sitting cross-legged on my bed, motionless, not frowning, but not smiling, I know something's wrong.

I sit beside her and kiss her. "What's up, Haf?"

She doesn't look at me. "I have to tell you something."

My insides erupt. I'm afraid.

I'm afraid her feelings for me were just a frittle in her heart and now she wants to end what we have before I even have the chance to tell her I love her.

"Tell me," I say. I try to sound brave, but I fail.

"My mom," she says. "She's a Remade-American."

"Oh," I say. "I didn't know Cambree wasn't your real mom."

"No, Hadley. Cambree is my real mom. She's a Remade-American."

"Oh god... I'm so sorry. When did this happen? I saw her last week."

"No, Hadley. She was a Remade since before she married my dad."

"Oh."

"I'm a Remade, Hadley."

"But..." I can't think of anything else to say except, "You don't look like one of them."

"One of them?"

"I'm sorry. I..."

She looks at me now. "I should've told you before we started going out, but... I liked you so much. I wanted you to get to know me first before you... you know... decided."

"Oh."

"I told myself that I wasn't lying to you, because I never said that I was alive, but keeping this from you was deceitful and I'm sorry. I understand if you're angry at me. I'm angry at me too."

"I'm not angry," I say, and that's true. I'd have to be feeling anything to feel angry."

"I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad one," she says.

"Me neither."

She puts her face in the bowl of her hands and makes crying sounds. No tears come out, obviously.

I almost put my arm around her, but I don't.

"I can't keep living this way, Hadley," she says. "I'm a Remade. I'm tired of hiding it."

I want to tell her, "Don't worry."

I want to tell her, "I'll love you no matter what."

But I fail.

I thought Hafwen was happy before. But she tells me she wasn't. She says she was smiling on the outside and crying on the inside.

Now, she cries a lot.

Now she's pale, because she's stopped wearing makeup. She's cold, because she's stopped wearing heated clothing. Her hair is white, because she's stopped dyeing it. She looks dead, and says she's the happiest she's ever been.

I should be happy for her. Instead, I keep thinking about how someone else used to inhabit her body. I can't look at her the same way anymore.

She's used.

Second-hand.

Impure.

She says a lot of Remade girls try to pass for living, because they're ashamed of who they are. They buy into the whole natural is ugly paradigm. But natural isn't ugly, she says. Death isn't ugly.

Whether she's right or not, I don't know.

If there is a beauty in death, I don't want to see it.

I hate death. I hate that my mom died of thirst in a ditch on the side of the road. People drove by, but they didn't see her. They didn't hear her. Now when Hafwen stands right in front of me, I try to look through her. When she talks to me, I try to tune out her voice. Deep down, I know she doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. I also know that Porter doesn't deserve the beatings I give him every Tuesday morning.

I just don't care.

"Animal brains have to be illegal," I say. I say it with conviction, but I don't really know what I'm talking about. I defend the living and the systems controlled by the living only because doing otherwise would feel like a betrayal. "They're a gateway to human brains."

Hafwen laughs. "You really think there are hordes of Remades out there feasting on the brains of the living?"

"I don't know," I say. "It could happen."

"Hadley, animal brains are illegal because Remades eat them. They make us feel good."

"Have you ever eaten any?"

"No, but that's not the point. The point is, prisons are filled with Remades, and most of them are there just because they've eaten animal brains. The government sells these prisoners to corporations to use for manual labor, and every living person involved makes a lot of money. Doesn't this seem wrong to you?"

"I guess," I say. "But you have to admit, violent Remade crime is a big problem."

"If you read the statistics, you'd know that violent living crime is an even bigger problem. It only seems like a Remade problem because the media publicizes Remade crime a lot more often. A lot."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"But we are talking about it, Hadley. It's important to me."

A few days ago, Hafwen told me the story of her parent's divorce. I expected her to say that her mother lied about being a Remade, and when her father found out the truth he left her.

But that's not how it happened.

Her father, Barry, knew her mother was a Remade from the very beginning. He was an activist for Remade rights and that's how they met in the first place. He loved Cambree and he wanted to start a family with her. So they had a baby. Her name was Bronwyn. Since she was born from a Remade mother, Barry and Cambree knew that at any time she could pass away and be Remade with a new personality. This happened when Bronwyn was 19 years old. Barry loved Bronwyn, and refused to connect with Hafwen in any meaningful way, and all the while he blamed Cambree for his daughter's death. One day he left for work and never came home again.

Now, this story buzzes in my head. I know that Hafwen's just looking for some living person to listen to her. To understand her. To say, "You're right. These things are very unfair."

But instead I say, "I'm going to bed."

This is our coffee-shop, Hafwen's and mine. Neither of us drink coffee but we enjoy the comity and the photographs of dancing mannequins on the walls.

Today, I don't invite her. I've never seen a Remade in here before, though I tell myself the reason I don't call her is because I need some alone time.

A man and a woman at the next table converse in loud whispers.

I stare at my book like I'm reading.

"I'm no racist," the woman says. "But they have no legal right to be here."

"I say send them back to where they came from," the man says. "Start paving all the cemeteries and let that be the end of it."