Kim

by T Cooper

  I started crying. Desperate, no-way-out sobs. With a bucket of estrogen mixed in (again). God, I hate estrogen.

  “Why don’t you try your breathing exercises?” Mom said calmly, slowly rubbing my back and exchanging a knowing look with Dad that neither of them thought I could see through my wall of tears.

  “What’s the problem?” Dad asked stupidly.

  “Really?” I shot back, looking up at him like, You did this to me.

  “This is going to be a really educational year,” he said reflexively, sounding like Turner the Lives Coach during a Changers Mixer keynote address. “You’re going to grow by leaps and bounds.”

  “Oh, I think I’ve already grown by leaps and bounds.”

  “I don’t want to hear any of that smart-aleck attitude,” Dad said, now tipping into full disappointment in me.

  I turned to Mom. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “What’s to say?” she asked.

  “Seriously?”

  “Ory—Kim! That’s enough,” Dad said. “Don’t—”

  “Speak to your mother that way,” I interrupted, finishing his sentence. “Yeah yeah yeah. But you have to admit this is a rough card I just got dealt.”

  “Why? Because you’re a little heavier than you’re used to?” Mom asked.

  “A little?”

  “You’re actually quite lovely to look at. Empirically. Your lips are perfection and your skin is beautiful. You’re not exactly a walking horror show, Kim. Much as you may feel like one now.” She pushed the hair out of my left eye and tucked it behind my ear. It fell out and went back over my eye, a black curtain I was more than happy to duck behind. “In any event, you have to get ready for school,” she added, standing up and slapping her thighs. “Let’s see what we can come up with to get you out the door. And we’ll head to the mall later.”

  “Oh yay. The mall.”

  Mom chuckled despite herself, and Dad came over and awkwardly mussed my hair, sort of like he would when Ethan was around, then leaned down and planted a kiss on my forehead. “I have to get on the road. But you’re going to do great. No different than last year. Or the year before. You got this.”

  I didn’t bother arguing.

  In Mom and Dad’s closet were three garbage bags full of clothes from ReRunz. Tracy had dropped them off this time around to make my transition less stressful, what with the Tribulations lurking in the back of my psyche. There were boys’ clothes in various sizes, girls’ clothes in the same range. A pile of more gender-neutral offerings, and because it was Tracy, a whole shopping bag of accessories including scarves that smelled like the Civil War. I’d yet to inhabit an identity where I wanted to wear accessories, but I guess a Touchtone can dream.

  I riffled through the options, but nothing felt right. The stuff that fit was boxy and itchy, made me look like the whale in Moby-Dick. Or wait, is Moby-Dick the name of the whale? I can never remember. Anyway, all the clothes I liked were too tight in the middle, or choked my arms like fabric boa constrictors. I found a big, off-the-shoulder knit sweatshirt with an old-fashioned motorcycle on it. It was cool enough and it didn’t make me feel like a ham. I put on one of Dad’s gym shirts underneath, and a pair of his sweats, which were not made for any woman’s body, let alone mine. It was shaping up to be my best high school fashion debut yet.

  I pushed my boobs into Mom’s largest, most stretched-out jog-bra (now I know how sausage gets made), then jammed my feet into a pair of Drew’s old Converse. As I stood to appraise myself in the mirror, I heard a buoyant, “Helloooo! Guess whooo?” wafting in from the hallway.

  “In here!” Mom yelled to Tracy, while I mouthed Noooo! As if I could stop her.

  “Where’s my favorite Changer-in-waiting?” Tracy said, as her head popped in, followed by two giant mocha Frappuccinos from Starbucks, with extra whipped cream on top.

  “Well hello, gorgeous,” she said casually, acting as if seeing Kim Cruz in the former body of Oryon Small (oh the continued Oryony!) was something she’d expected all along.

  “Don’t even,” I snipped, looking back at myself in the mirror.

  “Your favorite,” she chirped, offering me the drink.

  “Like, two years ago,” I snarled, being a professional brat, as I struggled to untie the knot in the drawstring of my dad’s gray sweats. “Oh good, extra whipped cream. That’ll help.”

  Tracy slurped some white foam through her straw and set my frappe atop Mom’s dresser.

  “Your hair is so shiny. And those lips. Like a film star in the forties.”

  “Right?” Mom chimed in. “I was telling her.”

  I tried to look at my new lips, but my gaze kept dropping to my stomach, my thighs, my boulder boobs.

  “How’s it going?” Tracy asked, 95 percent directed at Mom.

  “So great,” Mom mumbled sarcastically.

  “Well, let’s get this show on the road,” Tracy said, fishing through her purse for the magnetic fob which initiates Y-3. “You applied the emblem?”

  “Nooo,” I moaned. In all my self-loathing, I’d forgotten the damn flesh-branding part of the morning. “At least there will be plenty of real estate to choose from.”

  Mom shot me her “enough” look as she emptied the packet from Changers Central. Out slid the dreaded lipstick tube from hell.

  “I can’t use the fob until the brand is in place,” Tracy reminded us, loving nothing more than following procedure.

  “I got it,” I said, snatching the brander out of my mom’s hands and heading into the bathroom to be by myself. I locked the door behind me, checking twice to make sure the latch was secure.

  I popped off the cap and was planning on just going for it and getting the grisly task done without thinking too much or anticipating the pain of the burn. Only problem was . . . I couldn’t reach the area where the thing is supposed to go on my butt cheek. I put a foot up on the toilet and twisted around, but I could only get the device perpendicular against the skin where it would probably be visible above my waistline. I tried propping up the other leg and reaching for the other cheek—but that one was even less flexible.

  Lovely. Not humiliating at all. I can’t even handle my own business in private.

  “Mom!” I yelled, angry as hell, but it came out in a way that sounded like I was crying. “Can you come in here?”

  I cracked the door, and she slipped in, giving her best accepting and calm “whatever” shrink demeanor. I held out the brander.

  “Do you need help?” she asked.

  “OF COURSE I NEED HELP!”

  “Okay, okay.” She took the tube, holding back every shred of mom-ness in her, which likely wanted to smack my butt as much as brand it. I turned around, pulled down Dad’s sweats. Mom quickly uncapped the weapon of mass excruciation, took a deep breath, which prompted me to take a deep breath, and . . . O-M-JESUS!

  That smell alone, like my own skin getting roasted on a spit. And the pain. Criminy. When I’m a full-grown Changer, my first order of business is going to be joining the Changers Council and decreeing the elimination of the whole bass-ackwards emblem ritual. I mean, what are we? Medieval savages?

  And yet, having my ass flesh seared by my mother in a cramped bathroom was a bounce-house party compared to what going to school was going to be like.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Mom asked.

  “You do it.”

  “I would if I could,” she said, almost wistfully. “Believe me.”

  “I doubt it.”

  She took a deep breath, took her time exhaling, and then: “When you have a child, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “What if I don’t want to have kids?”

  Before Mom could answer, Tracy asked from the other side of the door, “All good to go?”

  “Just finishing up,” Mom said, giving me the eye and then cracking the door and moving aside so I could get by.

  “Cool beans,” Tracy said, prepping the fob.

  “Cool b
eans?” I repeated. “So I woke up in a different decade, as well as a different body?”

  Tracy ignored me, pushing her thumb into the top of the gadget, which caused it to beep three times, glow red, and then turn blue. All clear. Mom tried to be helpful and started to hold up my hair to reveal my neck, but I batted her hand away. I wanted to do something on my own.

  I slowly pivoted and turned my back to Tracy, collecting my hair. It was the first time I’d really touched it since waking up, and I noticed immediately how thick it was, and straight, and very, very smooth. It was shampoo-commercial hair. In fact, if a guy were feeling this hair, he’d probably be way into it . . .

  How gross is it I’m thinking that stuff—about myself?

  “Okay, here we go,” Tracy said, brushing aside a few errant strands with her left hand and holding the fob up to the back of my neck with the other. I felt a little buzz, heard a beep, and then a few quick clicks at the base of my neck in the usual area of my Chronicling chip. A vague, distant buzzing sensation seemed to be radiating down my spine. “Finito!”

  “Cool beans,” I muttered, releasing my hair.

  As I swiveled around to face her, Tracy placed both of her hands on me, squeezing my shoulders like she was testing for ripeness. She looked directly into my eyes. I tried to squirm away, but she was determined.

  “What?” I said exasperatedly.

  “I’m so proud of who you’re becoming.”

  “You mean this V?”

  She didn’t say anything, just bored her pupils laserlike into my eyes.

  “You wouldn’t be so proud if you knew what I was thinking inside,” I added.

  “I mean you,” she said quietly. But the moment was lost on me.

  * * *

  After school, Mom made good on her promise (threat?) to take me to the mall. Spoiler alert: shopping as a person of size in the land of skinny jeans and crop tops is even more torturous than you think it’s going to be. Especially when you look at yourself in the mirror and cannot find even a single thing to like about what’s staring back at you. Not the curl of an eyelash, a shiny strand of hair, a patch of soft skin. Nothing.

  In the car on the way home, Mom suggested maybe my day was so horrible because of my attitude going into it, my attitude toward myself, toward Kim.

  “Oh great!” I hollered from the passenger seat. “BLAME THE VICTIM!”

  “I don’t think that applies in this instance,” she said sharply, “but I do know that how we feel about ourselves can color every aspect of our existence. Surely you’ve picked up on that in the last couple years, no?”

  But I wasn’t having the discussion. Not then. Maybe not ever. Mom doesn’t have to go through school as Kim. If she did, she wouldn’t be peddling her “Big Is Beautiful” BS.

  So, after what was left of any lingering self-esteem was pummeled into a fine powder by the dressing room lighting and the repeated apologies of the shopgirls that they didn’t “carry my size,” I bought some black PF Flyers (can’t do Converse, there’s no arch support, I noticed for the first time) and six extra-large black T-shirts. Two pairs of stretchy black pants, tapered at the ankle, one pair of tight Lycra jeans which Mom basically forced me to buy because she said it “showed off my figure” and (paradoxically) made me look trimmer. Whatever. Most importantly, I got a bunch of jog-bras that held my shit in, tight. And some XXL waffle-knit cotton boxers, which were the most comfortable things I tried on the whole excursion.

  Looking at all this black crap sprawled out on my bed, it sinks in. This is really happening. I am happening. This is who I am now. A plus-sized street mime, apparently.

  I don’t feel like doing anything I’m supposed to do. Not reading and memorizing the Kim Cruz portfolio from the Changers Council, not organizing my binders for class, not playing a game, listening to music, nothing but flopping onto the bed and putting a pillow over my face to muffle the sensations and sounds of the world. But I can’t even get into bed because it’s covered with the trappings of Kim Cruz, and I don’t feel like putting any of these clothes away in my closet, because that would make it real. Kim would be moving in for good. Here to stay.

  I feel like disappearing. To a better time. I want to be Oryon again, the cool-nerd skater-boy in the band. The boy Audrey liked. Not Kim, the girl Audrey ignored, the sort of person I probably wouldn’t notice either. Or if I did, I’d feel a bit sorry for. Pity plus neglect. What’s worse than that?

  Meh.

  Meh meh meh meh . . .

  Skype is calling!

  Elyse’s ringtone. At least somebody still loves me. Only because she hasn’t yet laid eyes on me . . . I can’t get to my laptop quick enough to accept her video chat—can’t wait to see what V she got. Nor can I wait to talk to the only person I actually feel like talking to right now.

  “I can’t see you. Turn on video. Let me see you!” I hear, the second our audio is connected. The voice is a little deeper, but still sounds like a girl. I toggle my video on, and then suddenly her video snaps on, and there she is: I am gob-smacked. And instantly consumed by jealous rage. She looks exactly like Rihanna. But with pale blue eyes.

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” we scream at the exact same time.

  “Wow,” I start. Because I don’t know what there is to say; nothing will come out.

  “What do you think?” she asks, turning her face side to side.

  “Wow. I mean, what do you think?”

  “I think I lucked the hell out, is what I think,” she says, leaning into her camera, presumably to get a closer look at me, in my (strategically) dark room. “And . . . that you are probably hating life right now, and also hating me, because you’re thinking I won the V lottery, and you ended up with the booty end of the Cycle.”

  “Uh—”

  “It’s okay, I’d feel exactly the same way about you if the situation were reversed,” she says.

  “I—I . . .” I don’t know how to respond. Candor feels too treacherous, but then again, she’s asking me for it.

  “I mean it. I totally get it,” she prompts.

  “It’s just . . . you’re the first person who’s actually been straight with me about it. About what I am, you know? My mom, dad, Tracy. Nobody will admit that this V sucks.”

  “I feel ya,” she says. “Honestly, though?”

  I nod my head, move closer to the camera to give her the chance to see me in the light.

  “It’s nowhere near as bad as I know you think it is.”

  “You swear?”

  “I swear,” she says, completely sincerely, which makes me almost believe it. “What’s your name?”

  “Kim,” I say. “Kim Cruz.”

  “Like Tom or Penelope?” she asks.

  “Cruz like Penelope.”

  “Not bad,” she tries.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Destiny White.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. Who’s your manager?”

  “Ha ha. It’s Destiny with a y, but just to be annoying, I’m going to tell people it’s pronounced Desteeni, with an i, like in martini.”

  “Wow, that is annoying.”

  “But a girl this pretty?” she says, narrowing her eyes and flipping her hair like a diva.

  “You’re a bona fide trap queen.”

  “What’s good, Kim Cruz? What’s good?”

  We laugh for a few beats, and then she asks, “So, how’d it go?” and sits back in bed and listens to me complain about my morning, my day, my life for twenty minutes straight, after which I talk about Chase, again, and how meaningless everything feels, and how it all makes me feel even worse for still caring about meaningless stuff.

  “You can’t help it. The external will always exert itself on the internal,” she says kindly. Though, in truth, hearing Elyse’s perceptive brilliance coming out of Destiny’s mind-numbing gorgeousness is discombobulating. It’s like getting Freudian therapy from a lingerie supermodel.

  Even so, after unloading my baggage on Elyse/Deste
eni/the luckiest girl in all of Tennessee, I feel the best I’ve felt all day. Not that I’m looking forward to tomorrow. I didn’t fall and get a head injury or anything. But I feel a little more accepting of what may happen, at least. Thank Gods for Desteeni.

  Change 3–Day 2

  When I arrived at school today I was informed that I’d been transferred to Mr. Crowell’s homeroom class. Tracy had decided it would be best to have an ally with eyes on me as much as possible, so she schmoopy-schmoopied her husband into working some behind-the-scenes clerical magic and presto change-o, I’m right back where I started with Chloe, Jerry, Audrey, and the rest of the gang.

  Mr. Crowell had also obviously been informed of what my new V was, because when I walked in with another (legitimate) transferred kid, he beamed as if he was seeing a double rainbow. “And you must be Kim Cruz!” he gushed, patting my upper arm a beat too long. An intimacy that did not go unnoticed by the rest of the class who, like all animals in the jungle, are sensitive to any whiff of disturbance in the status quo.

  “Why don’t you take that seat right in front? Or would you prefer the back row? Really, wherever you like. We want you to be as comfortable as possible here at Central and especially in our happy little homeroom. Right, class?”

  Nobody answered. They just stared at me like, Why is Chubbers getting special treatment? Mercifully, as I said, there was another transfer to the class, a guy named Kris who was dressed in silver Burberry sneakers, drop-crotch jeggings in neon yellow, and a sheer silver blouse. No joke. An actual blouse, like something my mom would have worn on a date when she was in graduate school. Kris and I gave each other the once-over, and knew undoubtedly what the whole class must be thinking in that moment: The freak show has rolled into town.

  Difference was, Kris seemed to embrace his divergence, whereas I was standing there in my all-black-everything puddle of shame, laboring to disappear even as I tried to catch Audrey’s eye. She could not have noticed me less. Maybe I should have worn neon-yellow jeggings.

  “Now Kim, you’ve recently moved here from Maine, where you went to a small Quaker school. Fascinating,” Mr. Crowell read from his clipboard, chewing over the “fascinating” way too conspicuously, like I was his own personal science project. “And Kris, Kris with a k, not a c, you’re here, looks like you were homeschooled before coming to Central. Well, this will be a real departure from that, but in a good way, I’m sure.”