Kim

by T Cooper

  Audrey, whom I could see only from behind, seemed to sink in her chair and exhale loudly when Mr. Crowell called our names, subtly glancing up through his floppy bangs to gauge my reaction. I kept chill, mostly to placate him. He’s a good guy, means well. He didn’t have all the information, so I couldn’t really blame him.

  “Can we swap partners?” this girl Sara asked.

  “It’s not Secret Santa, Sara. You can’t trade for someone else. And if you think you can just blow off these study sessions without my knowing,” Mr. Crowell yelled as people were beginning to do the rude thing of packing up while the teacher is still talking, “then you are wrong! I will require proof of your meeting—a photo of the two of you together somewhere, preferably off-campus. And then a file card with three things you know now about your partner that you didn’t before.”

  At this the entire class began grousing aloud. “A photo of me and Wiz Khalifa? I die,” Chloe snarked as the bell rang. At which point Jerry picked up his skateboard, grabbed his backpack, and blew by Chloe as she exited, yelling, “On like Donkey Kong!”

  “Well?” I said to Audrey as she gathered her belongings. There were just a few of us left in class.

  “I guess we’re doing this,” she said. She seemed preoccupied—but oddly, not by this.

  “You want to go to Starbucks after school?” I asked. “To get it over with?”

  “Sure,” she said, rushed. “Sounds good.”

  “What time? Is four okay? I have to catch a 5:05 bus.”

  “Okay,” she said, heading out the door. “Wait, the one by school?”

  “Yeah.” You know, the one where you and Oryon interviewed Mr. Crowell for the love-themed issue of the Peregrine Review. And where you and Oryon met up before you went back to his apartment and—

  “Kim,” I hear Mr. Crowell saying. It’s just the two of us in the classroom now.

  I shake off the memories of that night. That life-altering, amazing, messed-up night. “Yeah?”

  “Are you okay?” he asks, perching on a desk beside me. “I’ve been concerned about the grades situation.”

  “I don’t know if Tracy filled you in on all this, but,” I double-check to make sure the classroom is truly empty, “the Council provides official transcripts for our Monos to use to apply to colleges, so none of this really matters.”

  He looks taken aback, gathers himself. “It’s not really about the grades per se. I’m more concerned about the habits you learn along the way, and your grasp of the material, you know? The bigger concepts.”

  I try to think of a polite way to tell him I don’t need a Static’s help with “bigger concepts.” “I know what you mean,” I say, “but I don’t think a study session with Audrey is the solution.”

  “I just figured it might be a nice ice-breaker.”

  “Well, you got the ice part right.”

  He snorts as I shift my backpack to the other shoulder. I feel exposed in front of him, and I just want to go. I don’t want to have to confront my ugly, naked history in the glaring light of my high school homeroom.

  “Tracy said you’ve been having a rough go of it,” he says then, not giving up. “She guards your privacy of course. And maybe it’s not my business. But you should always remember how loved you are. By so many. And from where I stand, you have weathered way bigger storms before this.”

  “Climate change, Mr. Crowell. It’s no joke.”

  He snorts again. “That’s it right there. You haven’t lost your sense of humor. A sense of humor is a life raft, Kim. You can save yourself with it.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll consider it.”

  * * *

  Audrey blows into Starbucks five minutes late. I’m holding a couple cushy leather seats for us in the back by the restrooms.

  “Howdy,” I say, soon as she dumps her stuff on the other chair.

  “Hey.”

  “So . . . this is awkward.”

  “I know,” she agrees, somewhat relieved.

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Uh, sure, I guess.” She reaches for her wallet.

  “On me,” I say, then head over to get in line and order for us.

  Once I come back and set the drink in front of her—soy cappuccino with one sugar—Audrey says, “Thanks. Wait, is this soy?”

  I nod my head in the affirmative, and just sort of stand there with my iced coffee.

  “How’d you—” Audrey starts, then stops herself, puzzled, but less ragey than she was at our Toot N Tote-um showdown.

  I don’t say anything, just take my seat and diligently pull out my planner, open it on my lap, keeping it official.

  Audrey sips her coffee, and by the way her lips flinch ever so slightly around the hole in the plastic lid, I can tell it burns. She puts the drink down, opens up her planner too. Like she’s supposed to.

  “So,” I say, “what’s the secret to your success?”

  Audrey makes a face. “Study Buddies have got to be the lamest thing ever invented.”

  “I know, he’s off his rocker,” I say. “But I’m sure Principal Redwine is hounding the teachers to get all of our scores up.”

  “How’d you know how I like my coffee?” she asks suddenly.

  “Sorry?” I say, completely off-guard. Trying not to make this tip into yet another conversation about my SAF (single Asian female) obsession.

  She waits.

  “I guess, well, like I was trying to tell you,” I stammer, girding myself, “I, uh, I just pay attention to things. To people.”

  “That’s a nice change of pace,” she says, sounding more like OG Audrey. “Most people I know are only concerned with themselves and what they want.”

  “Maybe you know the wrong people,” I say, all easy-breezy. Not invested.

  She sucks in her cheeks fish-face style, managing to look adorable. And I am reminded why I haven’t been able to forget her.

  We nominally go over our study schedules, with me explaining that I usually get all A’s and A-minuses, but that my living situation changed last semester, which has affected my ability to get my work done well, and on time. She’s extremely curious about my troubles at home, the “anarcha-queer freegan space” I’m crashing at downtown, and how my parents are even letting me do this. Audrey’s parents, she explains, “would not be down with that sort of thing.”

  Understatement of the freaking year.

  Aud’s ease around me appears to grow as the first hour passes, and then we’re approaching the two-hour mark. I try to remain detached but warm, and stick to the task at hand. I don’t try to tell her about herself anymore. I mean, I hate when people try to tell me about myself, so why would she want to hear it?

  I realize I’ve missed my bus, and we haven’t even done our sharing exercise yet. “Okay, so you have your first fact about me: I’m not living at home right now,” I say. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Well, unlike some people, I don’t know anything about you,” she replies cautiously.

  I don’t want to upset the carefully stacked apple cart, so I don’t pick up the trail she’s seemingly laying for me.

  “Fine,” she resumes after a few moments, “what’s your favorite movie?”

  “That’s impossible. How am I supposed to narrow it down to one?”

  “Just pick one.”

  “Okay, how about Some Kind of Wonderful?”

  “That’s a good one,” she says, sort of side-eyeing me.

  “What’s your last question?” I ask quickly.

  “Besides your parents, who do you love most in the world?”

  “Do they have to be living?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it weird to say my dog? He’s really been there for me in ways people haven’t.”

  “That’s not weird,” she says. “What’s his name?”

  “Elvis,” I lie, because of she’s made Snoopy’s acquaintance. “Okay, you have your three.”

  “Now you ask me,” she says, addi
ng sassily, “if there actually is anything you don’t know.”

  Again I refuse the bait. Just feels wiser at this point to let that wayward e-mail fade into oblivion. I try to think of things I don’t know about Audrey. There aren’t a lot. “Uh, how about . . . Okay, where do you want to live when you’re older?”

  “I haven’t really thought much about it. Outside Tennessee, I guess,” she says, kind of sadly.

  “I mean, if you could like live anywhere, where would you want to be, even if it’s just for a while?”

  “I guess I’m really curious about New York City. It just seems like you can slip into the chaos and be whoever you want to be.”

  “That’s cool,” I say. “Who do you want to be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said be whoever you want to be. So, who do you want to be?”

  Audrey knits her brow. It seems like she’s going to confess something, but instead, she takes a big gulp of her coffee and answers, “It was just a metaphor.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I deflect. “So. What kind of toothpaste do you use?”

  “Ooh, deep,” she chuckles. “Colgate.”

  “Okay, and big finish: besides your parents, who do you love most in the world?”

  I hear the blood whoosh to my skull. It starts pounding like the surf. Audrey is staring at me, her eyes narrowed, not answering, not answering . . .

  “Crap, I need to catch the next bus,” I blurt, then start frantically stuffing my binders back into my bag.

  “Wait, we still need to snap a photo for Mr. Crowell!”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, zipping my backpack. “Let’s do it outside.”

  The sky to the west is bright orange, the clouds blowing past fast and furious, the sunlight breaking in and out as if being turned on and off by a switch.

  “Let’s not have ourselves in the shot,” Audrey suggests.

  “Oh, so you’re ashamed of being seen with me?” I tease. Damn, I wish I didn’t just say that. “I’m not even on social media,” I add.

  “It’s not that,” she says. “After what we were talking about, let’s not make it about us, you know? Let’s make it about the experience.”

  “Give me your phone.”

  The sun is nearly gone now, but what light remains is casting long shadows everywhere, including up against the side of the boring-ass-same-as-every-other Starbucks, making it look somehow new. We stand side-by-side, inching closer to the building so the shadows jutting out from our feet creep up the gray stucco wall. Hers is thinner and taller, mine shorter and rounder.

  I open the camera on Audrey’s phone and frame the shot perfectly—only our shadows are visible, plus the lower half of the Starbucks sign—so Mr. Crowell will know that we were together off-campus. I snap the first, but then Audrey’s shadow suddenly pumps a fist in the air like Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club, so I snap another.

  “Now we’ve fulfilled our duty,” I say, handing her phone back. “You want to e-mail that to Mr. Crowell? You can tell him you scared me straight and it’ll be all A’s henceforth.”

  “Well that was easy,” she says sarcastically. “But yeah, I’ll send it tonight.”

  “Study Buddies for life.”

  “Long live Study Buddies.”

  For a second it feels like old times.

  “See you around,” I say.

  “Yeah, see you around,” she echoes, as I turn toward my bus stop.

  Change 3–Day 191

  When I got home from school this afternoon, Benedict and a few members of the crew were crowded around a computer, as Wylie the dreadlocked IT whiz madly pecked at the keyboard.

  “Kim!” Benedict yelled, waving me over. “We’re finally launching.”

  “Sweet,” I said, kind of wishing I were coming home to some apple slices with peanut butter and lemonade like Mom used to make for me sometimes, instead of yet another rebel plot to subvert the establishment. “Launching what?”

  Wylie tipped the display so I could see a little better. It looked like a bunch of gibberish to me, html code and whatnot, but at the bottom of the page was a tiny thumbnail photo of Chase, as his first V.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, now genuinely curious.

  “Taking WeAreChangers.org live,” Benedict explained. “Finally honoring everything Chase stood for, what he died for—what we all stand for.”

  I thought back to Chase telling me about the website that the RaChas were intending to launch right around the first time he brought me to HQ. It was meant to introduce Changers philosophy to the world, to take action that the Council could not control nor have any part in. And do it in a way that didn’t put any actual Changers at risk, which sounded like a difficult needle to thread. But that was the last I remembered hearing of it.

  “How are you getting Internet?” I asked (selfishly, if I’m being honest—what a privilege it’d be not to have to rip off Starbucks for wireless).

  “Wylie cracked the gallery next door’s WEP Wi-Fi password. But nobody can use it except when they’re closed.”

  “Sweet,” I said. “When’s it launching?”

  “Tonight, at 11:01, or 12:01 on the East Coast. At which point, we shall hide in the shadows no longer,” Benedict said, and then added as though beginning a ghost story, “because those who lurk in darkness can never light the way.”

  (Where does he come up with this stuff? And so much of it . . . )

  “Uh, isn’t it sort of . . .” I started to ask, then thought better of it.

  Sensing a challenge, Benedict cocked his head toward me, asked, “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?” he goaded. “Just say it. What?”

  “I was just going to ask, isn’t it sort of dangerous to be coming out like this? I mean, with the recent Abiders stuff?” I mean, I would know.

  “It’s not like we’re putting our faces and names out there—yet,” Benedict said defensively, like I was intimating he hadn’t thought this through sufficiently.

  “No, I’m not saying—”

  “Once people’s eyes are forced open, I believe most will choose acceptance,” he declared, louder than he needed to for me to hear. But there was something else in his tone, like maybe even he didn’t completely buy what he was selling.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked by way of changing the subject.

  “I think we’re in good shape,” Wylie said. “I just have to iron out a few of the widget issues, and then we’ll beta test for a couple hours, and hopefully be set to launch by the deadline.”

  “Right on schedule,” Benedict echoed, clapping Wylie on the shoulder.

  “What are you doing with Chase’s photo?” I asked.

  “We’re including a memorial to him on the site, kind of like an altar where we’ll keep a cybercandle burning for him forever.”

  I nodded my head. But inside, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that particular aspect of the endeavor. I don’t think Chase would’ve wanted his face splashed across 100 percent fair trade T-shirts like Ché Guevara, so hopefully this wasn’t going to tip into that territory.

  I went to the quiet zone to try to get in some studying for my last two finals before spring break. I opened my books and put some headphones on, but there was a lot of noise and activity all over HQ, and it was hard to concentrate. So much for pulling the grades up this term. Sorry, Mr. Crowell. #StudyBuddiesFail

  * * *

  When I came back out to the main space a few minutes before midnight, it was oddly hushed. Benedict and the rest of the RaChas were hunched around Wylie, all of their faces aglow from the monitor. I joined the scrum to look closer at the screen, and I could literally smell the tension in the air. As in wet dog b.o. wafting off each and every one of them. I smelled my own armpit as a self-conscious reflex.

  “It’s go-time,” Benedict said under his breath.

  Wylie looked back at him and nodded. Pressed Enter.

  People slapped hands,
clapped. And then . . . we waited.

  The site looked the same as it did a second before—a giant modified Changers emblem with many arms and legs circling da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, more arms and legs than on the regular Changers emblem (the RaChas thereby essentially seizing and reappropriating the emblem for these verboten purposes—Turner the Lives Coach is not going to like this!):

  Only now the site we were looking at was apparently live and public for anybody in the world to see. Wylie clicked back and forth between windows, e-mailing cryptic press releases to many news sites, blogs, and social media platforms.

  Benedict asked me for my laptop, to check what the site looked like on a different computer. I gave it to him, and he logged on to the pirated Wi-Fi using the password Wylie read aloud: “L-I-F-E-I-S-A-R-T.”

  “I’m in,” Benedict said, pecking w-e-a-r-e-c-h-a-n-g-e-r-s-dot-o-r-g into my browser. He studied it for a second, refreshed the page, then refreshed it again. Looked at the site that kept coming up. Spanning the entire home page was the normal eight-limbed Changers emblem. Benedict looked confused. “Wylie, did you leave the old emblem up by accident?”

  “No,” Wylie answered, still shooting off press releases. “Why, what do you mean?”

  Benedict brought my laptop over, and Wylie looked at it, started clicking around the website on my track pad. Or trying to.

  “No,” Wylie said after a few clicks.

  “What?” Benedict was starting to lose his cool.

  “No, no, no.” Wylie went back to his own computer, pecking and typing madly.

  “What the hell is going on?” Benedict asked. “Answer me.”

  Wylie dropped his head on the keyboard, mumbling, “They got us, they hacked us.”

  “Who? What?”

  “The Council. Who else?”

  “How?”

  And then the whole HQ erupted into hysteria and havoc for at least the next hour, while Benedict surveyed the damage and Wylie tried to figure out how the Council had managed to jam the new website, and had put up their own version of it, which looked at first glance like a promotional site for a new reality TV show.