Changers Book Four

by T Cooper

  “Well, there’s ten days left,” Mr. Crowell spelled out. “You need to be here for nine of them to graduate. And finals count.”

  “Yep. Thank you. I mean it.” And I did. Because Mr. Crowell had always been there for me, even when I wasn’t. The very definition of a good father.

  “Oh, we never got a chance to tell you we settled on a baby name,” he said right before I left.

  I turned back around. “Oh yeah, what is it?”

  “Ethan.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t until school let out and I was traveling to Audrey’s rehab that the impact of Tracy naming her child Ethan washed over me. It made me tear up (which was happening a lot lately, despite how much harder—I can say definitively—it is to cry as Oryon and Kyle, as opposed to Drew and Kim). Tracy is a dark horse. Always busting out the love when I least expect it. I really need to make things right with her before this is all over. For both Ethans’ sakes.

  I made it across town in twenty minutes. Audrey was in occupational therapy when I knocked on the door of the activities room. She rolled her eyes at me as soon as I walked in, like being asked to put a can of peas on a shelf ten times in a row is the dumbest thing in the world. Which it kind of is—for her. But she’s one of the fortunate ones, as evidenced by a quick glance around the unit at the other regulars recovering from far more severe traumatic brain injuries than Audrey.

  We sat down at one of the round tables, and I relayed what the teachers said about her assignments. What can be ignored or put off, which are required to get credit. Which teachers are letting her submit alternate work in lieu of sitting for finals. (Which in typical Audrey fashion she probably can and definitely wants to do, though her doctors and parents are strongly suggesting she doesn’t, to give her brain and body some more time to recover.)

  “How did I get so lucky?” Audrey asks in the middle of a makeup math quiz.

  “Trust me, I’m the lucky one,” I say.

  “God, you’re cute. He’s really good-looking, right?” she says to her rehab liaison Hillary.

  “He’s a cutie pie,” Hillary responds, used to it by now. “Let’s do some strength training, and then you two lovebirds can get out of here.”

  I watch as Hillary straps Audrey into the leg curl machine on her stomach, and Aud starts pumping away, while reading Their Eyes Were Watching God. Our English teacher is letting her submit a paper about swapping traditional gender roles in the book as a final project in place of a final exam. (I can definitely help her with that.)

  Everybody keeps saying how lucky she is to have bounced back from such a violent accident, which caused so much trauma to her brain. Her parents have even relented and allowed me to be around. Mostly because the first morning she was conscious, and her dad came in and noticed I was still there, it was Audrey who from her bed shouted, “NO!” loud as she could in her scratchy post-trache voice, when her dad demanded that I leave. Much is forgiven when you’ve been given a life back. And Audrey is the golden girl of rehab, the patient who will be walking out of here in a week or so, to go on and live an essentially unhindered life, this accident soon to be reduced to one of many bumps in the road.

  Which unfortunately can’t be said for most of the other folks working equally hard around her.

  There’s sixteen-year-old Zach on the tilt table, who suffered a right subdural hematoma in a football game; half of his skull was removed in surgery, so there’s essentially brain covered with just scalp on one side, and he has to wear a helmet all the time, unless he’s strapped into bed with no danger of falling out. His arms are completely numb and limp, he can move his legs slightly and with enormous effort, but can’t talk—although his mother insists he understands everything going on around him.

  Jaime was a semipro motocross rider who crashed in a race in North Georgia. He’s learning the letters of the alphabet all over again with the help of colored magnets on a refrigerator.

  Then there’s Madison, suspended in a sling between a set of bars over a mat. She was also in a car accident, hit head-on by a drunk driver a few months back. She can walk some, with the help of leg braces and parallel bars. Her speech is slurred, half of her face inert.

  Observing these kids fighting to pick up a spoon or say their own names is a constant reminder of how trivial my problems are. Fretting over who I’m going to be in a couple weeks. What a privilege it is even to consider such a thing. To have four healthy lives to choose from, much less one.

  All I really care about anymore is that Audrey is okay, and I am doing everything in my power to make sure her life is disrupted as little as possible, now that she has a second chance at it. I’m going to make sure she graduates on time. That she can get out of here and away from her family and go to college like she planned. She’d officially accepted admission to Barnard in New York the day before the accident; I watched her drop the acceptance letter in a mailbox myself.

  Audrey moves on to bicep curls while Hillary makes notations about progress on a clipboard. Madison mumbles something loudly from the other side of the room, pivots her head around, and then crooked-smiles at me real big and cute. She insists on writing something on a dry-erase board, won’t relent until her nurse agrees, holding the board flat while Madison slowly scribbles against it. The nurse giggles, then brings the board over to show me what the girl has written: If Audrey dumps you, here’s my number.

  “Deal!” I say, flashing a thumbs-up.

  “What a sweetheart!” the nurse gushes.

  But in reality I don’t feel so sweet.

  There’s a wrinkle, you see. Always a wrinkle with me.

  After Audrey came to, the doctor explained that it’s unlikely she will ever recall anything from the day of the crash. Nor does she have much long-term memory. Her whole high school experience wiped clean. (Lucky.) Most TBI patients don’t remember their accidents, she added. In time, parts of Aud’s long-term memory should eventually return, even if all the parts don’t always fit together. Which is basically the definition of our lives together—a bunch of parts that make sense when taken alone in segments, but don’t necessarily add up when you combine them.

  This prognosis was confirmed tonight, when I finally brought Audrey the charm bracelet, which had been sitting on the table next to my bed since she took it off and left it there that tragic day. I was too scared to touch it the whole time she was in the hospital, afraid it would jinx her recovery in some way. I stared at it like a poisonous talisman, remnants of a curse.

  But today, with her health on such good footing, I grabbed the bracelet, jamming it in my pocket for later. Audrey and I haven’t talked about anything. I mean, we never have to if she doesn’t want to. Or if it doesn’t come up. The facts lost at sea forever. For the time being, I am content to be what she believes I am: her handsome, devoted boyfriend of many years. And in some ways, the ways that matter, she’s right. What good could come of unpacking all that other mess? Especially now.

  After rehab, I take Audrey to Pho Sure, the Vietnamese restaurant I first brought her to sophomore year. I put my hand on her back to steady her as we walk in (her gait is evening out, but she has a single arm crutch with a wrist brace because her steps are slower and more unsteady than before).

  “This place is great,” she says when we reach the table and I pull a chair out for her. “How’d you find it?”

  Same question she asked me two years ago. As soon as she sits down and I push her chair in, I lean her crutch up against the wall like I leaned Oryon’s crutches up against the wall after Jason and Baron intentionally busted my ankle in football practice. I can’t tell if it’s time for a “the more things change, the more they say the same” chestnut, or maybe it’s more of a “full-circle” moment. Or perhaps “what comes around goes around” is most befitting.

  Right after the veggie spring rolls with peanut sauce arrive, I tell Audrey to close her eyes and hold out her palm. She smiles, then complies. After a few seconds of watching her motionless face
, I place the bracelet in her palm. “Okay, open,” I tell her.

  “Oh my god!” she says, picking it up between two fingers, studying all of the charms hooked at various places on the chain: the airplane, drum kit, paddleboat—and the four letters.

  After a few seconds of the bracelet dangling in the space between us, she asks, “Are these things from our life together?”

  “Kind of,” I say.

  She examines it even more closely, and it honestly seems like things might be flooding back to her for a second. But then: “What do the D and O stand for?”

  “I’ll tell you some other time. Do you like it?”

  “I love it,” she says. “Help me put it on.”

  Change 4–Day 255

  Tracy texted from outside the house. She needed help getting Ethan inside with all his accoutrements. Stroller, BabyBjörn, diaper bag, breast pump, pacifier on a lanyard, extra clothes in case Ethan craps himself. (God, America sucks sometimes.) When I went out to the curb, she just held Ethan in front of me and said, “Here, take this.”

  I had never held a baby. Tracy wasn’t about caring. Surveying him dangling in the air between us, I got spooked that I was going to drop him or break him or somehow smush the soft part in the back of his head that everybody seems paranoid about around babies. It’s crazy to be handed a whole life like that.

  You got this, Kyle; it’s only a little baby, I thought to myself, and reached my hands out, hooking them under his tiny armpits, and floated him toward me, carefully transitioning him into the cradle of my arms with his neck being supported by a bicep. He was so tiny and delicate. But kind of cute, now that I was really taking a good peep at him.

  “Let’s get him out of the sun, I forgot to bring a hat,” Tracy said, various quilted, flower-patterned bags swinging off her body while she yanked the car seat out of the car and kicked the door closed behind her in one deft motion.

  I walked gingerly into the house with baby Ethan, Mom more than happy to grab him the minute we passed over the threshold. I didn’t really want to give him up, but Tracy and I needed to talk. I knew what was in one of those flowered bags: my Chronicles from the last four years. My entire soap opera of high school life conveniently bound in four thick notebooks.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Tracy asks Mom, who’s cooing into Ethan’s face.

  “Of course we’re okay. Aren’t we okay?” Mom goo-goo-ga-gas.

  In my room Tracy slides out the notebooks and drops them on my desk with a thud. “I couldn’t help but notice Y-4 was a little thinner than the other three,” she says. “Ahem.”

  “Yeah, I meant to mention that. I need to come clean about something.”

  “Oh, I already know,” Tracy says.

  “You read them?”

  “No, we don’t read them! These are for you guys alone. Why does everyone assume we read them? Like I have no life of my own?” she mutters, sitting down. “There was a note on file that Chronicling had gone dark for about four months, and I did the math.”

  “I’m sorry, I was desperate.”

  “I don’t love you snooping through my things.”

  I flood with shame. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Teachable moment, no?”

  “Beyond.”

  “That’s good to hear. The truth is, there was nothing I could’ve told you that would’ve changed what happened. That vision was going to play out, period. No matter what you thought you could do about it. I didn’t know how to tell you that. It’s simply something you kind of have to learn for yourself. All of us do.”

  I guess. But I’ll forever feel horrified by my role in what Audrey went through. I pick up the Y-4 notebook and rub a finger over the Changers emblem embossed on the cover.

  “So, this is going to be quite the journey, reflecting back,” Tracy says. “I never thought we’d get here, and yet we are. It feels like it happened so fast. I guess all parents says that. You know, you were my first.”

  “Your first Changer?” I ask.

  “Yes. But that’s not what I mean, silly billy. My first kid. That’s how it feels anyhow.”

  I’m not prepared for the emotion welling in my chest and throat, so I divert my attention, crack the Y-4 notebook and look through mindlessly, the air fanning up on my face from the heavy pages flipping by. My thumb stops on the last page with writing, where, HOLY SHIT, these words I’m thinking and Chronicling right here are being recorded and appearing before my eyes.

  Wow. That is some crazy magic shizz.

  “I guess I’ve got a lot of processing to do. I feel so pressed for time. How am I supposed to digest all of these in two weeks?” I drop the open notebook on top of the other three.

  “Once you get started, it’ll fly by. It’s like you’re watching the movie of your life,” Tracy says.

  “A horror film, no doubt.”

  “Hardly,” she says. “You should hear the stories I hear at Changers Central. Some real doozies. But anyway, do you have any hunch who you’re going to declare?”

  I grimace. “I really don’t.”

  It’s unnerving not knowing who you’re going to be in a couple weeks’ time. Although, as I learned from Audrey’s accident, none of us really know. Life changes in an instant. Whether you’re preparing for it or not.

  “You’ll make the right choice for you,” Tracy says.

  “You already knew by now, right? You knew the minute you woke up as Tracy.”

  “I did. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about my other options.”

  “And you still picked Tracy?” I tease.

  “You’re not too big to punish, Kyle. Don’t make me snatch you bald-headed.”

  I feel my heart break a tad, thinking about losing Tracy as my Touchstone, her attention needed at home, with the baby. I took her for granted most of the time. She never bailed on my delinquent butt. Never wavered. Little Ethan doesn’t know how lucky he is.

  “Here’s the thing: there are no redundant pieces of the universe,” she chirps. “Think of it like a giant machine that keeps life happening. Every single part of that machine plays a role in the process, every piece fits somewhere and does its job. Some are pumps, some are belts, some are nuts or bolts that hold everything together. Some are the fuel that runs through the system to make all those pieces function. You have four different parts you’ve played in the bigger picture at different times, all of them contributing something vital. You need to choose which part you felt most comfortable playing. Which job suited you best, what part you can see yourself playing for the rest of your life.”

  “No biggie,” I say, walloped anew by the enormity of the decision before me.

  “I have a gift for you.” She roots around in her bag and presents a box wrapped in green (gender neutral!) paper. “Open it up!”

  I do. It’s a mug.

  “What other people think of me is none of my business,” I read off the side of the ceramic.

  “Word!” Tracy shouts, making a fist to bump mine. “Am I right?”

  We bump fists the way only two white people can.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry I was a jerk so much of the time,” I say.

  “You gave me these wrinkles, child.” She points at her forehead. “But I’m not even a little worried about you doing the right thing. You know why?”

  “No.”

  “Because there is no right thing. There’s just the thing itself.”

  (If I had to bet, she saw that on a mug too.)

  Change 4–Day 259

  Dad came home in a mood.

  He’d been at Changers Central all afternoon, getting indoctrinated—I mean, brought up to speed at the annual State of the Changers Union Council retreat. When he returned, he stormed through the kitchen yelling about where was his iPad, and why was the house always such a sty.

  Mom corralled him into the bedroom and after thirty minutes of angry whispering, Dad went back to the kitchen, poured himself a tumbler of Scotch, and aske
d me to sit down with him. Apparently, we needed to talk.

  I was sure it was about Audrey, or about me being a crap Changer, or some other more mundane way I was letting him and our family down. But when I joined him at the table, I could tell from his expression that he was less angry than really, really forlorn.

  “Take a seat, son,” he began. “I have something you need to hear.”

  Oh boy.

  “In my debriefing today, I was made privy to some information. When I joined the Council, I took an oath to keep any and all information private. What I am about to do will break that oath, and will likely mean my immediate dismissal from the Council leadership.”

  “But Dad, you worked for that position for years,” I said.

  He nodded and swallowed a gulp of Scotch. “After consulting with your mother, I have made the determination that I don’t give a shit.”

  Then he laid it on me: RaChas HQ was not burned down by the Abiders, and it wasn’t a random accident; the fire was set by the Council. They’d discovered that Benedict was outing every Changer he knew, posting their photos and particulars on his blog, and the Council decided the only way to stop him was to destroy his resources and frighten him out of town.

  Freaking Benedict.

  “When I heard,” Dad said, “my first thought was that you lived there once. You could have been in that building. My kid could have died.”

  “Nobody died, Dad.”

  “That’s not the point. I’ve strayed so far from who I thought I was. These past few years, all I could see was the mission, the chance for you to be braver, better than I was. I pressured you to make up for my failings. That’s why I’ve embraced Kyle so much. Because Kyle is, well, Kyle. He’d be an incredible Changer soldier. Or so I imagined.”