Changers Book Four

by T Cooper

  I picked up the thingamabob, and it beeped twice, then flashed blue. I glanced around to make sure nobody heard the beeping. And that’s when the idea popped into my head. Maybe from watching too many intricately orchestrated heist movies, where some nerd with a personality disorder always had to devise a way to jam a signal temporarily so that the vaguely psychopathic but good-at-their-job crooks can breach some sort of security laser beam between them and their intended target.

  Why not try that on myself? Redirect the future. Turn it off while I’m Kyle, get it back up and running soon as the danger’s past.

  So I stuck my thumb over the tip of the fob like I’d seen Tracy do four times before; it beeped again, flashed red a few times, and then I held it over the skin on the back of my neck where my Chronicling chip is implanted.

  Exactly like those mornings of C1–D1, C2–D1, C3–D1, and C4–D1, it beeped once more, and then I felt a slight click and a whirr at the base of my skull, and then whoosh. Something was immediately different. Maybe not different, more like back to normal again, as in back when I was Ethan (and didn’t have a rice-sized electronic chip implanted in the flesh at base of my neck!). So I tried thinking something to Chronicle, but after waving that fob over the chip, it didn’t happen. Like that muscle stopped working or something.

  I was offline. It felt free.

  Thinking back, I vaguely remember Benedict talking about something like this, a hack on our Chronicling chips that some of the RaChas who went AWOL from their families would do, hoping to avoid Chronicling, but also to gum up the processes going on inside our bodies when gearing up for the next change, to try to stave it off. I never heard of it working, but Benedict did say that he knew one Changer a few years ago who managed to remove his chip himself. Sounds gruesome, sure, but at that point I understood the impulse. I would try anything to be able to unplug and live under the radar and basically not be a Changer who’s beholden to Changers rules and life processes for the rest of Y-4, so I could be with Audrey and not have to worry about a vision that was part of Changers world, and not the real one.

  Then I heard what I thought was somebody coming down the hall into the bedroom, so I quickly tucked the fob back into the little box, closed the lid, and shoved my hands in my pockets like I was admiring the new master bedroom with en suite bath—right in time for Mr. Crowell to pop his head in and say, “Hey, buddy, we’re doing the cake,” a little confused as to why I might be creeping around his bedroom solo.

  “This is a dope house,” I chirped, “love that vintage tile in the shower.”

  “Cool, thanks,” he replied, jovial and floppy-haired as ever, as we went back down the hall and cut the Congratulations cake with the rest of the party.

  And then I went home. Things felt a shade different. I can’t describe how. But I wanted to test myself, beyond the not-Chronicling thing. I know it sounds crazy, and rather drastic, and anybody monitoring this might call the mental health authorities, but this was how desperately I wanted to escape the reality of who I was in that moment. I took my Swiss Army Knife, rubbed some alcohol on the blade, and cut into the skin on my thigh—to see how long the incision would take to heal: the usual one to two weeks it takes for Statics to heal from a cut like this, or the two to three days it takes a Changer. I figured once my Changer-ness was sort of jammed by my chip being turned off, then maybe my other Changer properties—like healing from injuries and illness quicker than Statics—would also get deactivated.

  It was surprisingly easy to do, dragging that blade across the top of my thigh (I did it so my boxer briefs would cover the wound, so that my mom or Andy or anyone else wouldn’t ask about it). Watching the first line of blood emerge, my whole body involuntarily shivered, so I ended up cutting a slightly longer line than I’d planned, maybe it was two inches total. Not that deep. Nothing horror film worthy.

  I went into the bathroom and pressed some gauze onto the cut, and when it stopped bleeding, I smushed a little antibiotic ointment inside and covered the wound with a couple Band-Aids.

  Satisfied that my secret science experiment was underway, I called Audrey and made another date with her. And another and another and another.

  From then on, the months were perfect and blissful and radiant, like we were falling in love all over again, only this time in the pages of a J.Crew catalog. We spent every free second with each other, went to hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Nashville, walked by the river where, unbeknownst to Audrey, we’d already had sex (Kim), and even started hanging out a little with Michelle and Kris. Building a “normal” high school life together as a couple.

  One weekend Aud, Kris, and I all went to Dolly Parton Drag night at the Carousel (this being Tennessee, one might argue that every night is Dolly Parton Drag night at the Carousel). We danced naughtily with drag queens, drag kings, boys, girls, and every amazing place in between.

  I kept all this from Tracy and my folks, of course. Tracy was in pregnancy zone, which for her meant enrolling in every prenatal class ever invented, keeping her preoccupied and out of my hair. My mom and dad (Dad mostly) seemed so fracking over the moon about big-man-on-campus Kyle that they gave me more rope than ever.

  As Kyle I projected authority, or rather it was projected on me. People expected I was handling my business, because that’s what good-looking white guys do, right? It was peculiar, all this unwarranted benefit of the doubt, but I wasn’t about to turn it away. I soaked in that privilege like a sponge. What was the alternative? Lock myself in a box and seal the lid shut?

  It wasn’t like I was becoming Jason, (the soggy piece of toast you can’t wash down the drain). Yes, I had power now. I was the top of the social food chain. But I knew power came with responsibilities. I’ve seen Spider-Man. I wasn’t throwing my dick around. Not even literally. Like, I wasn’t pushing Audrey to have sex with me. After the whole roofie incident with April and Jenny, and Audrey getting dragged into cleaning up Jason’s mess with me, sex was pretty much the last thing I wanted to bring into the mix. Plus, I’d had sex with her before, so that constant urge toward discovering somebody in that way had been satisfied (at least on my side). There were major make-out sessions. (I’m not a monk. Nor is Audrey.)

  It turned out my cut took a good week to heal (kind of in between the Static and Changer healing rates, in my scientific conclusion about the experiment), so I posited that jamming my chip did in fact succeed in causing something to be “off” with my overall Changer-ness, and everything was so good between me and Audrey and life as Kyle in general that I used that one-week healing time to convince myself that I was practically a Static, inoculated against anything that could ever happen in Changerworld.

  As if I needed more convincing, I took a hit in the second quarter of the championship football game a few weeks after Audrey and I started seeing one another. It wasn’t too monster of a hit, but when my helmet slammed onto the grass beneath two heavy defensive linemen, I immediately heard a pop, then ringing in my ears, and then the coaches reluctantly (honestly, their faces looked like they were at their grandpappy’s funeral or something) made me sit out the rest of the game because they thought I had a concussion.

  I was so high on Audrey, and she was so high on me, that I didn’t even really care that we lost the championship game after I got benched, because my backup QB Darryl couldn’t pull off the win. There were some crushed faces in the stadium that night; Jason’s was probably the most devastated of all of them, like his dreams had been dashed anew, but through me. Sorry. Not sorry. Yeah, it sucked to lose after working all season long toward this one massive collective dream that didn’t get fulfilled. But it was not going to be the highlight of my life, and I knew it. I had bigger fish to fry.

  On the way back to Genesis from the stadium in Knoxville where the championship game was played, Audrey and I held hands in the rear of Kris’s car. I rested my concussed head on Audrey’s shoulder as the lights flashed by on the highway. My head throbbed, in addition to the ringing. The on-site doc
tor said I needed to go see my regular doctor on Monday, because some signs of concussion don’t appear for up to a couple of days after an injury, though I’d decided I wasn’t going to tell my parents what happened unless it got worse. And every sign that I was hurting like a Static proved my stupid hypothesis that pulling out of Changerworld would prevent the inevitable from actually happening.

  I could see a rectangle of light on Kris’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he drove. He kept switching back and forth between us and the road ahead. Then he turned down the eighties new wave mix he was playing on the stereo.

  “Calling all you basic bitches, I have an announcement,” he said out of nowhere.

  “You have a new boyfriend?” Audrey shot back.

  “Girl, no. Bigger.”

  “Bigger than booing up?” she said.

  “I’m transitioning.”

  “Oh my god!” Audrey screamed, bolting up beside me. “Yaaaaaasss!”

  “Soon as I graduate and turn eighteen, I can get an appointment to see about hormones,” Kris explained.

  “This is amazing, I’m so happy for you,” Audrey squealed, launching between the front seats and hugging Kris, making us swerve onto the shoulder of the road.

  “That’s so cool,” I added, trying to tamp down the rush of feeling that raced through my heart for Kris. I was, of course, filled with pride because I knew he’d been struggling with this particular question and battling with his parents over it for a long time. But I was trying not let it show too blatantly. Because, of course, Kyle didn’t know any of this.

  “Should we start using she now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kris said, sort of thrown by the question. Or maybe not by the question, but by the questioner.

  “Well, we’ve got your back—in the bathroom, on the streets, whatever you want. Say the word,” I offered, as Audrey settled back into me and I put my arm around her.

  After another mile or so of driving in the dark, Kris said, “Okay, we figured me out. Let’s figure you out.”

  “Who, me?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you.”

  “What’s to figure out?” Audrey said, pecking my sweaty cheek. “Mmm, salty.”

  “Why are you, cis poster child Aryan dream, driving back from the pinnacle of your high school career with a lifelong homo-soon-to-be-transgirl, and going out with a rumored lesbo?” he asked, smiling.

  “Yeah, he really turned me into a hasbian, didn’t he?” Audrey joked.

  “I’m serious,” Kris said. “Doesn’t this wig you out at all?”

  “What?” I said.

  “This. Me, the drag bar, all the queeny stuff.”

  “Why would it wig me out?” I asked, knowing exactly why, if I’d been Kyle forever.

  “Do you know any trans people?” Kris asked.

  “He’s from Seattle,” Audrey interjected.

  I understood Kris’s doubts and suspicions, his apprehension about me. I mean, guys who look like Kyle have essentially made his life hell since the minute he was a conscious person in the world.

  “So none of this makes you uncomfortable?” Kris continued. “Just asking.”

  “Well, you don’t have to be such a bitch while doing it,” Audrey said.

  I liked her getting a little protective of me.

  “Why would somebody being who they are make me uncomfortable?” I asked. “Cis white silence equals violence, right?”

  Audrey beamed like a spotlight. At that, Kris shut up. I caught a glimpse of the corner of his mouth curling up in the rearview mirror, and then Audrey leaned close to my ear and whispered so only I could hear, “I love you.”

  * * *

  An orderly just stopped by to restock a drawer of electrode pads for the EKG machine. He smiled feebly the way you do at friends and family of a coma patient, and then ducked back out of the room pushing his little cart with the wobbly left-rear wheel.

  Change 4–Day 241, Part Three

  Flash forward a few months, and my mom and dad inform me that Andy and I were going to be on our own the following weekend. Dad’s headed to a Changers Council retreat, where he will no doubt be regaling them with tales of Kyle’s glory and how we can all anticipate me picking Kyle as my Mono so I can #saveusall if and when the Abider Armageddon comes. Mom’s attending an Evolution of Psychotherapy conference in Atlanta.

  All of which added up to me telling Andy he needed to take Snoopy and find a place for them to crash so Audrey and I could have the place to ourselves on Saturday night. I didn’t care if it was a Motel 6, I told him. I’d pay.

  * * *

  So Audrey and I are hanging out at the coffee shop after school on the Wednesday before the weekend when I say, “So, uh, I was wondering whether you had any plans on Saturday night.”

  “Only to be with you,” she says.

  “I mean like all of Saturday night. My folks are going to be out of town . . .” I trail off in a way that I hope doesn’t sound like I’m assuming anything.

  “And . . .”

  “And . . . I guess I was wondering whether you might like to stay over at my place that evening. With me.”

  “Bold. I like it.” She cocks her head, as though considering me anew. Is she remembering when I asked her to sleep over at my place when my parents were out of town before? When it was at the old apartment, and I was of course Oryon, and instead of doing it in person, I wrote her a note, promising I would even sleep on the couch so as to seem nonthreatening, and that I only wanted to watch old movies and eat buttery popcorn on the couch with her all night long? We know where that led . . .

  As if on cue, she abruptly asks, “Have you heard about this, like, new type of people called Changers?”

  At this I spew coffee all across my lap.

  Audrey jumps up to help me with a wad of napkins. She blots at my stomach, my pants, dangerously close to my crotch.

  “It’s okay, I’m good, I’m good, it was just too hot,” I say, freaking the hell out inside but trying not to show it. Why is she bringing this up now? She must’ve been flashing back to the night with Oryon too.

  “Yeah, so anyway, I was reading this, uh, guy’s blog online, and there was a story about this community of people who are starting to live more openly. It’s really actually incredible. They live as different people during each year of high school.”

  “Nope, never heard of them,” I say. “Like, they wear costumes?”

  “No. They become other people. It’s a genetic mutation or something. I get it sounds crazy.”

  “Not as crazy as you think. I watch Orphan Black,” I say.

  “There aren’t a lot of them,” she continues, “but they had a march last spring in downtown Nashville.”

  “Cool.” Was this a test? Was I passing?

  “And yes, by the way,” she then adds.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, I’ll sleep over with you on Saturday night.”

  And that is another line I saw before me, toed, considered crossing—but this time decided NOT to. Which was another fateful decision. The decision that ended us up here in this ICU suite at Vanderbilt Medical Center. Because of course she was picking up on something, and that prompted me to think once more about coming clean and spilling all, telling Audrey I was Kim (Oryon, Drew), and the reason I never told you was because I had a vision from your future where Kyle makes you so angry that you get into a seemingly fatal car accident.

  I should’ve dumped the information on her right then and there. Given her the power to decide whether or not to keep seeing me, whether she wanted to take the risk of the vision coming true. And then the two of us could have been on the lookout for circumstances that would bring about a fight like that. Two of us could’ve been ready to slam on the brakes and avoid the deer.

  But no. I wanted to have this weekend with her. I knew that telling her would mess it up, so I put it off. Told myself I’d do it another time. Not realizing that there might not be another time.

  * * *r />
  Of course the night was perfect. (I’m not going to record details here, because it feels further messed up to do so while Audrey lies unconscious in the hospital bed next to me.) Before we drifted off to sleep sometime in the wee hours of the morning, Audrey gazed at me with such trust and complete recognition, even if all the pieces weren’t visibly there before her. It was that Aristotle quote come to life: Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. Or, ah, five.

  In the morning, I rolled out of bed to go to pee while I thought Audrey was still asleep, so I didn’t bother covering up my Changer brand like I did when I was Oryon two years ago, hurriedly pulling on my boxers when I went to get us drinks (before she found the charm bracelet that tipped her off and blew up the rest of our year together). I guess I was lulled into a comfort zone, because this time around, Audrey’s charm bracelet was piled safely and in the open on my bedside table, next to her watch and other jewelry. There was nothing to discover.

  When I come back to the room, though, she’s sitting up against the wall. “What’s that mark on your butt?” she asks casually, as I slip back into bed under the blanket with her.

  “What?” I dodge.

  “That scar on your left butt cheek.”

  “Which?” I stall. “Oh yeah, that’s from when I used to play baseball and I slid into home one time and my pants ripped on some rocks. Skinned off half my cheek!” This can’t be happening. This is not happening. I am in control here.

  “You used to play baseball?”

  “Yep, but then I decided to focus on football. For the chicks. Ha ha.”

  She pulls a peculiar expression.

  Quick, distract: “Let’s go to Waffle House for breakfast and then come back and get into bed.”