Disconnected
A story about the girl without a face.
He never could quite get the hang of faces. It always baffled him how people could just look at a face and know what they were. For him, faces were subtle optical illusions that he had never quite mastered the trick of seeing.
For a long time he had tried to deconstruct the different bits of faces. The mouth slightly upturned, cheeks flush, eyes down. Embarrassment, maybe shame. Forehead scrunched, eyes narrowed, mouth tight. Frustration. He sometimes practiced in front of a mirror, trying to make his face do those things. But it felt forced, wrong, and the few times he'd tried it in public confirmed it. His face was different.
Then Faces had started appearing, and the world seemed to change. A digital replacement for his own face? One that could respond normally? Never smiling at the wrong time, or failing to look properly sad, or even just looking blank when he didn't know what expression to make? He needed that, desperately.
At first it had attracted attention. Think the government is tracking you? Off to protest something? Didn't feel like putting on makeup today? He suspected they were mostly asked in jest, perhaps even derisively, but he answered them plainly enough. No, I don't think I'm important enough to track. But I think they could track me if they wanted to. No, this isn't because I'm going to a protest. I would prefer they didn't raise the price of the weekly train ticket, but that is not related. No, I didn't put on any makeup today, but I don't normally wear it either.
But soon people stopped asking questions about it, because soon it was irrelevant. Everyone was wearing a Face. Some changed their Face often. He supposed there was the thrill of it, being someone new every day. Others - like him - kept the same one. It made no difference. His Face could track who was who and, more importantly, it could track what other Faces were doing, what his was supposed to do.
He made some friends - well, perhaps acquaintances - at work. He started going out in public more. He couldn't remember the last time his hands had started clenching as he struggled to decipher an expression. He even suspected it was why he had suddenly gotten two very good promotions.
For some reason, it all made him feel a little guilty. Everything felt easier now, but also a little less satisfying, less interesting. It was like he was cheating somehow. But he supposed at least now it was a level playing field - if he was cheating, well, so was everyone else.
That's when he noticed the girl without a Face.
What was strange - or stranger, perhaps - was that wasn't the first thing he noticed about her. The first thing he noticed was her slender neck, and the way it tapered down perfectly to meet her collarbone and shoulder. A small heart-shaped locket sat just above her breast on a delicate gold chain.
The first thought he had wasn't Where is her Face?, but I wonder what it would be like to kiss that neck.
He felt himself harden slightly at the thought. That, more than anything, was what made him snap back into himself. He glanced up at her face and away, pretending to be looking at something out the train window.
It wasn't until a few moments later that he registered what he had seen. Green eyes. A slim, slightly pushed-in nose. Pink lips. Her face! There had been no shimmer, no slightly-surreal gleam on the skin. Her real face.
No, that can't be right. She had a Face. She just didn't have a cheap Face. They were improving all the time, always trying to beat the scanners. No doubt there were some out there now that were almost imperceptible. Why someone who could afford that class of Face would be catching public transport was beyond him, but it was more believable than someone not wearing Face.
He tried to catch her reflection in the window, but it was pointless. It was too bright outside, and the window was all scratched up anyway. He waited for the stops to arrive - there were four before he got off - but at each one the passenger list of the cabin stayed the same. No one got on, no one got off. No excuse to vaguely look up, scan the surrounds, and try to study her out of the corner of his eye.
At the fourth stop there was a rap on the window. He jolted back, looking up at the person behind the glass. A pair of green eyes; a pushed-in nose; a dangling heart-shaped locket. And no Face.
The next day, he sat in the same seat as before, across from the empty seat where she had been sitting. He felt his hands clenching inside his jacket. He was nervous. He wasn't sure why. It reminded him of the time before he got a Face - he wasn't sure what to do exactly, but he felt like he should do something, and if he could figure it out and do it then things would be… better.
He had meant to keep an eye out for her, but she surprised him again. She sat in the seat opposite him. Normally he would have difficulty remembering a face, but he remembered the green eyes and the locket. And, of course, she wasn't wearing a Face again today. Even he could remember the girl without a Face.
"You were staring at me yesterday."
His Face read her expression: wary, curious.
It was a strange question. Well, not a question exactly. A strange conversation opener. But perhaps it wasn't meant as a conversation opener. Staring, he had learnt, made people uncomfortable. She wanted him to stop staring.
He thought about denying it. He tried to think of a sensible reason he may have been staring, but he wasn't a very good liar. Often they got him into more trouble than if he had just been honest. So he went with honesty.
"I'm sorry. I was looking at your neck. I'm not sure why. I won't do it again."
She frowned and leant back in her seat. It was a confusing combination of relaxing and tightening actions that he would have had a hard time interpreting on his own. His Face told him she was relaxing, curious.
She was still watching him, thinking something through. He waited for more questions, but after a few moments when they didn't come he ventured his own.
"Why don't you wear a Face?"
She shrugged. "No reason. Why do you wear a Face?"
He looked down. He'd been asked a dozen variations of that question at the start, when he first started wearing the Face. But the questions were always oblique. Think the government is tracking you? No one had ever just asked outright, so he had never had to answer. Inside his Face, he struggled.
"I have trouble with real faces. I don't understand them. And my face is wrong. This makes it easier."
She kept staring at him for a moment, her head tilted to one side. She suddenly straightened up and nodded, clapping her hands once.
"Ok, well you've seen my face. It's only fair that I see yours."
He pondered this for a moment. He didn't really have a problem with people seeing his face. He thought maybe it was a slightly intrusive request, but then he had been staring at her yesterday. Maybe this was fair. He shrugged, and turned off his Face.
At first she just stared blankly. The train clacked along, the rest of the cabin silent. He was about to check he had turned his Face off properly when suddenly her mouth opened wide and her eyes crinkled upwards. Her head went backwards and she hugged herself tightly, falling into the back of her seat. He didn't need his Face to help him figure out this one. She was laughing uproariously.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she gasped. Her eyes were tearing up. She reached over and gripped his forearm lightly, as though worried he was about to leave. He had been considering it.
"I'm sorry, it's just your Face… your Face looks exactly like your real face! Exactly! When you said your face was wrong I was expecting, I don't know… something different. But it's the same!"
He shrugged. "The Face can smile. My real face can't. Or frown, or laugh. I can't do those things properly. So I wear the Face."
"Really?" She leaned forward. Her hand was still on his arm. "Tell me about it."
And so he did.
The next few weeks went by in a blur. Each morning she would get on the train, sit opposite him, and begin to talk. He always tried to get on the same cabin as usual, but it wasn't always possible, and she always found him anyway. They talked about books and movies and holiday plans. What they liked, what they hated. They talked about nothing and everything, and it was never enough.
Work days seemed to drag in a way they never had before, and the train ride that had always been too long kept arriving at his stop too quickly. He would lie in bed and think about what they might talk about tomorrow. He wondered what his Face would tell him about her if he wore it, but he always turned it off on the train now. Talking to her was easy, but it wasn't like wearing the Face. It didn't feel like cheating. He knew if he ever put on the Face around her again that would change.
He was changing, he knew. At work the scanners had pulled aside for secondary identification. His Face had given them the correct ID, but apparently his gait had been different from usual; they had to double-check. When he wasn't on the train, he still wore his Face, but underneath it he was smiling. It no longer felt forced. It felt right.
It had been a few days since he'd last seen her. There was the weekend, of course - they only caught up on work days - but now it was Wednesday and she still hadn't gotten on the train. The last few days he felt like something had been tightening its grip on the back of his neck.
In the past, she had always found him. This time he resolved to find her. It felt strange, walking through the cabins of a moving train, and doubly-strange because he wasn't wearing his Face. He had only taken it off for her - he had forgotten other people could see him without it too. It felt a little embarrassing.
He was on his third loop of the train, and about to give up, when sunlight flashed in his eyes. A heart-shaped locket glittered at him from across the cabin. The grip on the back of his neck suddenly released, and his whole body seemed to relax back into itself. He waved, then hurried over.
"Oh, hey!"
The Face glanced briefly at him, and then away. "Sorry, I think you've got the wrong person."
He stopped, halfway in the act of sitting down. He stared at the heart-shaped locket sitting on her collarbone, the words reverberating in his skull. The other Face continued to stare impassively out the window.
His hands were damp on the seat rest, and his stomach dropped somewhere below his knees. He realised he had been awkwardly half-standing, half-crouching there for too long, halfway to taking a seat he was no longer welcome to.
"Oh… of course. I'm sorry."
With an effort, he straightened up and stepped back. He wanted to run from the cabin, but he didn't. He calmly returned to his original seat and stared out the scratched window. He wondered what he had done wrong. After a moment he turned on his Face.