Changers Book Four

by T Cooper

  I could go on about the stats of the game, but in fifty years that’s not what I’m going to remember. What I’m going to recall forever, no matter who I am in this world, is the feeling of being that guy atop the dog pile, the one everybody admires, is talking about, wants to be like—my teammates, grown-ass men, kids, women of all ages. It feels as if I could have anything I want right this minute. And that’s a feeling that keeps feeding itself, like you’re Ryan Gosling or Bruno Mars, and you can do no wrong (even though like every human you do a lot of wrong in your life), and everybody loves you everywhere you go, and you kind of can’t help but let thoughts creep in: Yeah, maybe I AM better than other people. I DO deserve everything I get!

  And from there it’s not a far hop, skip, or jump over to: And that person over there doesn’t deserve it as much as I do.

  I could really get used to going through the world this way. Because I’m figuring out when you go through the world like Kyle, beloved and coddled, you only have to be one-tenth as good as a woman, or a person of color, or any person of difference, to be awarded ALL THE THINGS. I know this because, duh, I was a girl, and a person of color, and a kid who didn’t fit any standard of “normal.” Because I’ve read the experiments where they change names on identical resumes to sound “black” and those fake black people don’t get interviews; where they slap a man’s name on a woman’s manuscript and it miraculously gets published; where they do blind tests on tech programmers and women come out ahead, but still can’t get hired; where photos of plus-sized people are assigned all types of negative labels by kids, but the same exact people shrunken in the pictures are assigned nice qualities.

  I know all of the above because, of course, I wasn’t born this way. This white, straight, modern Greek god Adonis-being carried aloft and worshipped, his feet scarcely needing to touch the ground. And as I was up there watching the crowd blur by in the stands, shimmying and cheering, everybody giving me thumbs-up and patting my legs, basically pinning all of their hopes and dreams on my ability to lead a team to victory—all I could think of was that they would crap their pants if they knew.

  Knew that merely fifty-five days ago, I had boobs. And a vagina. And wasn’t white. Or “straight.” Or skinny. Or blond. Nor really welcome to take part in any of these rituals. It dawned on me up there on everybody’s shoulders that inhabiting Kyle feels like drag—drag that delivers every fantasy of masculinity these people ever had.

  It’s all too much to figure out, and anyway, who has the time, because after the local TV news sticks a camera in my face (the same reporter who covered the RaChas visibility march when I was Kim, in fact), the crowds on the sideline part, and a dude in all orange approaches me with a confident stride.

  Turns out it’s a college scout, and he barks, “Great game, great game, Kyle!” and extends his hand.

  “Thank you, sir,” I say, as more teammates, coaches, and fans tap me when they pass by, like they’re touching the hem of Jesus’ garment or something. This guy is acting as if he wants something from me, like I can really help him. And he can really help me. Like he holds all the answers to the universe beneath his bright-orange cap.

  We shake hands. “I think there’s quite a future waiting for you at Syracuse University,” he asserts, leaning in, beads of sweat on his brow glimmering in the lights around the field. Behind him, there’s another dude in a different shade of orange shirt and hat waiting to talk to me, and behind him, Audrey heading my way too. I haven’t seen her since she stuck that letter in my locker, and all I want to do is ditch this circus, take her by the river, and tell her how brave that letter was, and how I want to be that brave too.

  “You’re busy,” the Syracuse guy says, “but I’ll be in touch. I will definitely be in touch.”

  And then the next recruiter sneaks in before Audrey can, grabs my hand, shakes vigorously. “Dave Daniels, Auburn, great to meet you.”

  “Kyle Smith,” I say.

  “Oh, we know who you are, son, we’ve had our eye on you all season. I’ll let you go, but let’s talk after the playoffs, okay?”

  “Sure,” I say, and smile at Audrey to alert her she’s up next. (See? I’m already thinking like a celebrity, somebody even my friends need to line up to talk to.)

  “Great job,” Audrey says halfheartedly, once we’re (semi) alone, albeit with a riot of celebration flowing around us.

  “This is all really weird.” I gesture toward the college scouts.

  “What’d they say?”

  “They wanted directions to the nearest Chipotle.”

  “Don’t joke. This is a really big deal,” she says, punching my shoulder pad. “Trust me, I come from a football family.”

  As if on cue, one of my linemen jumps between Audrey and me, screams, “WOOOOOO!” at the top of his lungs, and then pours a cup of Gatorade over his head and crushes the empty cup against his forehead before running off.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Yeah, wow,” Audrey echoes, while a few more people come up to congratulate me and I quickly thank them and try to communicate subtly through body language without seeming like a dick that I don’t want to be interrupted. (Don’t look me in the eyes!)

  “I should let you go,” she says. “But I wanted to congratulate you. That was a great pass.”

  “I got your letter,” I blurt.

  “Oh, okay. We’re going there,” she says, slowly bobbing her head.

  “No, I m-mean,” I stutter. Then regroup: “I didn’t want you to think I was ignoring it.”

  “I didn’t think you were ignoring it.”

  “Can I call you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, great,” I say, relieved.

  “Want my number?” she asks, her cheeks pinking up like they do when she’s flustered.

  I have to stop myself from saying, I already have it on mental speed dial. I just nod.

  “Are you good at memorizing?” she asks, and I nod again, even though I’m not, and then she slowly speaks her phone number, three times in a row, to make sure I record it in my brain amidst the madness.

  “I’ll call you later!” I shout, as I’m dragged away again, this time by Coach Tyler, who is trying to gather the team around to take a knee so he can give us a quick postgame rundown, plus a stern warning that it’s fine to celebrate the victory tonight, but we have five days of practice to prepare for the semifinals, and he wants our butts ready to go first thing Monday afternoon.

  I might (presently) be a dumb jock, but I’ve learned one thing as Kyle: no post–football game house party is as fun as everybody thinks it’s going to be. In fact, in my experience (and Drew’s and Oryon’s), they are the ultimate, terrifying proof of chaos theory in motion. Meaning, if one human brain has something like eighty billion neurons and a trillion synapses to misfire at any given time, multiply that by 150–200 brains at one party, raised by the factor of negative-zero parents chaperoning said party, and there is an ever-present, exponential possibility for outright tragedy to emerge from the air displaced by even a single beer burp (much less the flap of a butterfly’s wing).

  Translation: I headed straight home and went to bed after Coach Taylor released us.

  I reread Audrey’s letter five times before I fell asleep.

  Change 4–Day 55

  I waited till eleven, then picked my way across the messy floor on heavy, sore legs, locked myself in the bathroom, and dialed Audrey. She picked up her phone after one ring, whispered, “Hold on,” and presumably headed somewhere for some privacy from her family too, the forbidden young lovers of the Montague and Capulet households back in action!

  “How are you feeling?” I ask after she returns to the line.

  “I should be asking you that,” she says. “My brother hasn’t stopped peacocking around the house in nothing but his ripped old Central jersey and tight-ass performance briefs. Like he was the one who threw that last touchdown.”

  “I think he believes he did.”

  “I c
an’t wait for his knee rehab to be over so he can go the hell off to college and be somebody else’s problem.” I can tell she’s outside, because it sounds like a big truck roars by. “Blergh, I don’t want to talk about him now. Sooooo . . .”

  “So,” I say.

  “So.”

  Our familiar pattern. She doesn’t know how familiar it is.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the letter,” I say then.

  “Too much?”

  “No!”

  “Oh, phew. I considered throwing it away without giving it to you.”

  “That would’ve been a national disaster.”

  “Remains to be seen.”

  “Okay, so I . . .” I begin to say, before stalling out.

  This is it. Here’s the line. I see it right in front of me. And now I have to decide whether to cross that line. Right here, right now.

  Audrey is quiet. I think I hear her soft breathing on the other end of the line. I can feel a rush of sweat in my pits, on the palms of my hands.

  “Uh. Well, I guess I wanted to say that you’re right. I am afraid of something.”

  “Oh?”

  “And there is something holding me back,” I continue. “But that’s not your problem. It’s my problem. And I’ll figure it out.”

  “Okay, wow,” she says. It seems like that wasn’t what she was prepared to hear from me.

  “Anyway . . .” I can feel my heart pounding through my rib cage. You know what? Fuck it.

  FUCK.

  IT.

  I can be with Audrey and not reveal who I am.

  We’re connected in some strange, inevitable way anyhow. What’s the difference whether she knows who I am or not? She’s drawn to me, so why does it matter why she’s drawn to me? I’ve been Kyle long enough that I know how to stay in check. If I can lead a team to a football championship, I can avert some stupid kiss vision. Besides, Tracy said it may not even be what it seems to be. Maybe the crash is a metaphor. Or a red herring. It must be, because come hell or high water, I could never act in a way that would enrage Audrey to that point.

  Fate can’t play out if you already know what’s supposedly going to happen. Like, if I know a deer is supposed to jump out from this tree at this exact time, on this exact road, I won’t go down that road. Problem solved.

  And let’s say, for the sake of argument, I find myself on the road regardless, and I’m about to come upon that time and place in the road where I know the deer is supposed to jump out: I can always slam on the brakes.

  I am in control of my life. My lives are not in control of me.

  And when it comes time to pick my Mono, maybe Kyle will need to be sacrificed (regardless of how good it feels living a life like his). Or maybe he won’t. I don’t have to decide that this instant. All I know is what I know. That I love this girl, and she loves me, and she knew about the whole Changer thing and was mostly unfazed by it, and so nothing will tear us asunder. Not even so-called prophesy or kismet or whatever you want to call it.

  So I clear my throat, speak right into the phone so there can be no confusion in the matter whatsoever, and say: “Audrey, will you go out with me?”

  ———

  ———

  ———

  Change 4–Day 240

  I thought I could stay a step ahead of the future.

  I thought I could beat back fate.

  I was wrong.

  Change 4–Day 241

  At least she’s alive.

  One tiny gift that the universe has seen fit to bestow.

  She’s alive. On life support, but alive.

  Audrey’s in a coma.

  There’s swelling in her brain, and it’s threatening to cause permanent damage. There’s nowhere for a swollen brain to go. The skull is a finite place, even if the mind is not.

  I’m staring at her from the left side of her hospital bed. It’s three a.m. and the nurse has let me sneak in to visit again tonight, thanks to Elyse who has a friend at Vanderbilt who knew somebody who works nights in the ER. (Nobody but immediate family members are allowed in ICU.) The drone of the ventilator is eerie; it whistles and sounds wholly antithetical to what life really sounds like, and I hate it. But it is one of the only things keeping Audrey with us.

  She just lies there. Doesn’t feel anything, not when they periodically scrape the bottom of her feet or rub their knuckles across her breast bone. A part of her head is shaved, and there is a pressure monitor sticking through a hole in her skull into her brain. She has five other tubes coming in and out of her. Maybe it’s four. Or six. A feeding tube, catheter, IV, some other things I can’t even identify. Tight stockings to prevent blood clots. Her legs so thin and wiry under the institutional white sheet.

  It seems dire, like she could slip away at any time, but Eylse’s nurse friend assures me it’s better for her to be in this coma for the time being, and everything’s completely normal in light of what Audrey’s brain went through in the car wreck. After what I put her brain through, I’m thinking as the nurse talks in a hushed tone, in case Audrey can hear. Which it’s hard to believe she can, but they keep telling me to talk to her as much as possible, even though it seems like she can’t hear anything. So I do.

  I read articles from her favorite magazines to her. I narrate the plots of her favorite John Hughes movies: The Breakfast Club. Pretty in Pink. Some Kind of Wonderful. I bring in books of poetry and try to get through each one without crying at the beauty some writers are able to capture in a single line.

  I tell her about all the things we’ve done together over the years. Cheerleading, bowling, karaoke, acting out the scene from Romeo and Juliet, working on the project about love for the Peregrine Review lit mag. Our first kiss.

  The nurse tells me Audrey’s ICP (intracranial pressure) is dropping ever so slightly. Another small gift. So I just keep reading her stories.

  * * *

  How has she ended up lying here in this bed like this? How could I have allowed it to happen? I was so selfish, full of hubris. I chose to risk her life rather than be apart from her for a year—one measly year in the grand scheme of things. I was too arrogant to think I would fail. I couldn’t let her life play out without me. And now we’re here.

  I might as well confess it all, with this Chronicling chip turned back on. If I don’t get some of this stuff out somewhere, I might explode. Or head back to the bridge I thought about hurling myself off on C4–D1. I feel so helpless sitting aside while Audrey’s lungs mechanically rise and fall in syncopation with the beeps from a monitor. Might as well Chronicle. It’s my only therapy. And I should always have this record and thus never be allowed to forget what my ego allowed to happen to the person I love most.

  I thought it would work, but obviously it didn’t, and it sounds even stupider thinking about it now. But I guess I thought that dropping out of Changers life would somehow help me stay under the radar moving forward. Would muddle up what was “supposed” to happen. Would make me less a Changer, somehow. As Kyle, it was already so easy. My other V’s had been such struggles. But as Kyle, I never had to do anything I didn’t want to. (Except avoid Audrey.)

  So, right after Audrey and my first official date—my first official date with Audrey when I was Kyle—Mom, Dad, and I were invited over to see Tracy and Mr. Crowell’s new house, and to celebrate the impending birth with an intimate baby shower. Gifts, snacks, nonalcoholic champagne, and what seemed like a thousand helium balloons that Tracy explicitly forbade us from inhaling. Because “this isn’t that kind of party.”

  While there, all I could think about was Audrey and when I could see her next, now that we were back on like Donkey Kong. I tried to join in the baby shower activities; listened to the teary toasts from Mr. Crowell’s parents, even gave a lame one myself; ate some shrimp cocktail, drank a pink lemonade spritzer. There were even baby-inspired creative activities, where I found myself being art-directed by Tracy, who was trying to control what all of us were putting on the white cotton
onesies that were laid out on the dining room table for guests to draw designs on with permanent markers. I drew a ’roided-out body on mine, in skimpy red bikini underwear, like a bodybuilding muscle-head, which Mr. Crowell chuckled at, but of course it positively horrified Tracy as being “vulgar.”

  While everybody finished their onesies, I subtly peeled off to take a tour around the new digs. I couldn’t help my mind wandering to whether there was ever going to be a time when Audrey and I were moving in together, Static and Changer, with a baby on the way. Maybe that was premature—I mean, duh, of course it was, but I couldn’t imagine ever being with anybody else . . .

  * * *

  The nurse just tottered in and hung a fresh IV bag.

  Change 4–Day 241, Part Two

  So, except for the kitchen and living room, which were set up impeccably for the party, Mr. Crowell and Tracy were still only half moved in to the rest of the house, boxes and suitcases everywhere, piles of clothes on hangers slung over chairs, newspaper and bubble wrap strewn about. (Mr. Crowell’s stuff, I’m certain. Tracy does not abide disorder.) In the bedroom, I spotted a flicker of light off a mirrored jewel box on the dresser, and upon closer examination, I saw that it had the Changers emblem etched into the glass on top. For some reason, I felt drawn to peek inside. I know, not cool, and Tracy would freak the eff out if she knew I was messing with her private things, but that’s what I did. (She might want to get used to no privacy if she’s about to have a child, but whatever.)

  I flipped open the top of the box and looked inside. At first it seemed to be filled with a bunch of pins that the Council had given Tracy for various levels of service to the Changers cause, almost like Girl Scout badges or something, but then I saw it: that Barbie-sized little flashlight-y doodad. The fob that Tracy used each year to reboot and initialize my Chronicling chip on the morning of each new V—which triggers the Chronicling for the new year.