Changers Book Four

by T Cooper

  With or without me, I know you are going to find your way and make the right decision. You are an incredibly special person, and I’m proud to have known you through a handful of your lives. I could not have asked for more from a grandchild.

  The reason I’m writing you this letter is because I wanted to share something important with you. Your father didn’t want me to tell you, but I’m too old for statutes and protocol, and besides, I am still his mother and he is not in charge, much as he’d like to think he is.

  What I hope to do is offer you some comfort. Which is more important than rules any day. I couldn’t help but notice how sad you’ve been since your friend Chase passed. It was a terrible thing that happened, and I can see you tearing yourself up with guilt. That, however, is a useless emotion, a giant waste of time and energy. Guilt serves no one and changes nothing. If you don’t take my word for it, I’m confident you’ll discover that on your own someday.

  Guilt is especially useless in your case, because your friend Chase isn’t truly gone forever.

  I suppose they don’t want you to know this because it might change how you act during your Cycle, or influence your decision about your Mono, but in actuality there is a system, a method to all this madness.

  Your Chase was a recycled version of many other Chases throughout the centuries. If you take a look at the enclosed photo, you will see that I was the Chase V for a year during my Cycle. And when I didn’t choose Chase as my Mono, he was released back into the universe, free to be inhabited by a new Changer just beginning his or her Cycle at some point after me.

  Which means that Chase, as an identity, will return. That identity will go on and on, until somebody selects it as their Mono, and completes a lifetime as that V.

  I’m sure this is confusing, my love. And more than a little unnerving. I’m still debating whether I should tell you even as I’m sitting here writing. But it’s no accident you felt so drawn to this boy, and likely no accident that he protected you the way he did. And it is no wonder you feel his loss so keenly. But you don’t have to. Chase will live on. Somewhere. Somehow.

  And one day, eventually, we will all know what it’s like to be somebody else. To live as another, feel their pain, their joy, make their mistakes, celebrate their triumphs. It really is a gift we’ve been given to see and experience so much. A gift we must share. Because it does matter, Kim.

  What you do matters.

  Imagine how different the world is going to be once we reach that place. When there is no difference left to fear. No outsiders. No “other.”

  I’m not afraid of leaving because I have so much hope for that future—your future.

  So, I’ll leave you to it, Angel.

  I wiped a tear, folded the letter, and laid it gently back in the box, Nana’s counsel echoing in my ears along with all the rest . . .

  The fun is just getting started.

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

  You need to decide which you you love the most.

  What other people think of me is none of my business.

  My V’s swirled together in my head like those spiral art kits I used to do in kindergarten. You drop the paint on the spinning wheel and it fans out, takes over the whole paper. Use too much paint and the sheet goes completely gray.

  I closed the box, returned it to its spot in the closet, putting the past away.

  My future is starting tomorrow.

  And I know what I need to do.

  Change 4–Day 269

  I texted Audrey to meet me at the river first thing this morning, before my folks and I had to leave for the Forever Ceremony at Changers Central.

  Our river.

  She pulls up in her mother’s sedan a few minutes after I arrive, parking next to me.

  “Hey, sailor,” she says through the window. “You looking for a good time?”

  “Why yes, ma’am. Any idea where I can find one?”

  “About twelve miles down the road at the Beaver Hut,” she says, rolling up the window and cracking herself up.

  I come around to her door, help her out of the car. She’d tied a black-and-white Happy Graduation! ribbon around her cane.

  “Want to find a bench by the water?” I ask.

  “Long as it’s in within hobbling distance,” she says.

  And off we go. The sun has freshly risen, and the frogs are already awake and singing, filling the warm air with their delirious music. We move at Audrey’s pace, slow and cautious, so different from before when we would scramble and race ahead like puppies freed from a pen. You take so much for granted in this world, I’m thinking as we make our way to a free bench between the packs of runners and bikers. Even something as simple as jumping a stone.

  “How’s this?” I ask, brushing a bench clean with my handkerchief, then folding it back into my pants pocket.

  “You always were a gentleman.”

  “Were?”

  Audrey pats the bench for me to sit beside her. “Let me make this easy for you. We should break up.”

  I’m gobsmacked. “What makes you think that’s what’s happening?”

  “Isn’t it?” Audrey smiles warmly, no hint of anger.

  “I don’t want to,” I say, my voice cracking.

  “But?”

  I start to turn my body from hers, though she won’t let me. She grabs my hands, both of them, holds them tight on her lap.

  “It’s okay, I understand,” she whispers.

  She doesn’t, of course. Or maybe she does. Audrey has always been so ahead of me, aware of my desires and fears before I’ve had the wherewithal to articulate them.

  “We’re both headed to college,” she begins. “We’ll be far away from each other. Leading separate lives. You’ll be throwing footballs at meatheads; I’ll be sitting around talking about intersectional feminist theory. Our paths diverging.”

  “I love you, Audrey.”

  “I love you too. So much.”

  It feels like I am ripping out my heart and tossing it down five sets of stairs.

  It feels like death.

  “If only this were a different time, a different world,” I try, just in case there’s a sliver of doubt in that beautiful brain of Audrey’s, the one I’m so happy has pretty much completely returned to its rightful owner.

  “But it isn’t,” she says softly. “This is our now. We can’t make that different. And we shouldn’t try to.”

  I want to kiss her, but I fear I won’t survive it.

  “I wish I hadn’t lost so many memories of us,” she says then, teary for the first time in the conversation. “But I know they are in my brain somewhere, waiting to come out. Maybe that’s a good thing. They’ll be unexpected gifts, sweet surprises, reminders of you when I need them most.”

  “You were the beginning of my everything, Audrey. I want you to know . . .” But I can’t finish.

  Because I know what has to happen. To become who I am meant to be, I need to cleave myself from the person who makes me feel most like myself. I need to stand alone.

  It just never occurred to me that the same would be true for Audrey.

  “If almost dying has taught me anything, it’s that this moment is the only moment that counts,” she says.

  At that, Audrey rises, takes her cane, steadies herself, then leans into me, our lips touching soft as moth wings.

  As she does this, I have a vision. Not a fatalistic Changers one. But one from my future. I’m in a field of yellow flowers, the sun bright above me. I am laughing. Dogs romping at my feet. I am not alone. I can feel someone there who knows me like she does. And I am happy.

  “I’m going to go, and you’re going to stay here and watch me,” she says, straightening, then pulling away. “But you better stay in touch. Don’t you forget about me.”

  “I’m not the one with the questionable memory,” I say.

  “Ha ha! Dummy,” she laughs.

  And then I watch as the woman I’ve loved for fo
ur years slowly, haltingly fades from my sight.

  Change 4–Day 269, Part Two

  This is it.

  Time to declare who I am and will be from here on out.

  Will the real me please stand up?

  Mom and Dad are here in the audience. Tracy and Mr. Crowell, with baby Ethan too. Elyse. (Not Andy; no Statics who aren’t in Changers families are allowed at Forever Ceremonies.)

  Videos play, members of the Council speak, and it is much like Destiny/Elyse’s ceremony I witnessed a year ago. Turner the Lives Coach comes onstage out of the darkness, robes billowing, pacing in the spotlight while speaking into his little flesh-colored headset: “In the many we are one!”

  Normally I’d laugh at his cult-babble. But today it lands somewhere else, the full meaning of those words washing over me, and it is the most freeing sensation I have ever experienced. To know that everything before was part of this moment right here. And it’s okay to let it all go.

  Every touchdown.

  Every kiss.

  Every drumbeat.

  Every fight.

  Every choice.

  Every death, big and small.

  They all brought me here, integral parts of the machine Tracy talked about. The machine that got me where I am about to go.

  The lights dim, Mom squeezes my arm, and I am called up, the spotlight following me all the way as I walk from my seat to the podium.

  “I know an alternate world is possible because I am a part of it,” I say, as I begin my prepared speech, sharing in the simplest terms I can manage about how it felt to revisit my four choices, to reflect on my growth, to see starkly how much growing I still have to do. “And after all is said and done, I am moving ahead in the V where I felt, not so much myself, but the best version of myself.” I’m fighting back tears. “I am picking the person I was when I woke up to what life could be. The person whose story I want to finish.”

  Right then, all of my V’s flash up on the screen behind me (and I can see them on the smaller screen hidden in the podium before me). First Drew, then Oryon, Kim, and finally Kyle. I stare at them together in a tight little grid. It’s almost as if they’re in conversation with one another. (Or in a really hip band.)

  I push the first button, and Kyle disappears from the screens.

  I can hear a tight gasp from a woman somewhere in the front rows, even if I can’t completely see her face.

  Bye, Kyle.

  And then there were three.

  I press another button.

  Then another.

  And the auditorium fades to black.

  And I turn around to face the crowd.

  Mono–Day 92

  Where is the freaking coffee shop?

  The map on the phone says it should be on this block, and I’ve searched and searched, but I can’t seem to spot it in this crushing sea of humanity streaming up and down both sides of Broadway. This glorious, diverse, epic, heaving, miraculous sea of humanity that is New York City, my new home for the next four years (after swinging admittance to Columbia with the help of the Changers Council).

  “Ouch!” Some guy has just run over my shoe with his bike tire.

  “Watch where you’re going, loser!” the biker shouts over his shoulder.

  Ah yes, New York. Where the streets are lined with simmering hostility.

  It kind of feels good to be back in Ethan’s birth state, embarking on the next big thing. College, yo!

  Now, my first class: “Intro to Film and Media Studies” in the Dodge building. I flip open the handy laminated campus map they gave us at orientation and locate the building, right on the northeast corner of Broadway and 116th. Easy. I have twelve minutes to get to class. Enough time for a quick coffee—if I can find one.

  I squint down the block, ducking around people as they filter around me.

  Bingo! I can just make out the ubiquitous green Starbucks logo through the trees in the median, underneath construction scaffolding, and beside an eminently ancient church, so I run across the street with the walk signal and dip inside.

  Shit. There’s a line, but it seems to be moving fast, so I place my order, pay, and step aside to wait.

  Come on, folks. Let’s get these orders rolling. My future is now.

  “Soy latte?” the bearded barista shouts over the din.

  I peek over to see who’s picking up the familiar (yet also completely ordinary) order . . .

  And there she is.

  Wait, it’s her, right?

  Or do I just want it to be her?

  The girl’s hair looks a little longer, her frame a bit thicker, and there’s no cane hanging from her wrist . . .

  But it’s AUDREY. My Audrey.

  And now she’s headed to the condiment bar to plunk the usual two sugars into her cup.

  The barista calls my name, so I scoop up my iced coffee, pop off the cap, and rush over before Audrey can finish stirring and slip out the door. When I sidle up to the bar, nervous, I accidentally bump her arm, and a little coffee splashes on her sleeve.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I say, grabbing a few square napkins to clean up.

  “It’s no big deal, really,” Audrey laughs. Not a tinge of annoyance in her voice.

  “Cute top,” I say, blotting her arm with the paper napkin. Heart pounding.

  “It’s mad chaos in here,” she says, seeming a little jittery too. “Like they’re actually shilling good coffee or something.”

  We laugh. Eyes lock. And we stay that way, speechless, for far longer than any two complete strangers would usually hold one another’s gaze.

  “First day?” Audrey asks finally.

  “Uh, yeah,” I stammer. “Columbia. You?”

  “Across the street, Barnard.”

  I know.

  “Your face is familiar,” Audrey says, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Have we met?”

  Before I can say anything, she hoists her coffee cup to eye level, points at the writing: Audrie. “As you can see, I’m Audrey. Only it’s Audrey with an E-Y.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Audrey with an E-Y,” I say.

  “And you are . . . ?” she asks, while simultaneously reaching over and twisting my cup around so she can read the name scribbled messily on the side.

  Our fingers touch around the backside of the cup.

  It feels something like the sun.

  She reads from the cup.

  “It’s really nice to meet you,” she pauses, “Drew.”

  THE BEGINNING

  Abridged Glossary of terms

  (Excerpted from the Changers Bible)

  Abider. A non-Changer (see Static, below) belonging to an underground syndicate of anti-Changers, whose ultimate goal is the extermination of the Changer race. The Abider philosophy is characterized by a steadfast desire for genetic purity, for human blood to remain unmingled with Changer blood. Abider leaders operate by instilling fear in humans, for when people fear one another, they are easier to control. Abiders sometimes have an identifying tattoo depicting an ancient symbol of a Roman numeral I (Figure 1), the emblem symbolizing homogeneity and the single identity Abiders desire each human to inhabit.

  Changer. A member of an ancient race of humans imbued with the gift of changing into a different person four times between the ages of approximately fourteen and eighteen. (In more modern times, one change occurs at the commencement of each of the four years of high school; see Cycle, below.) Changers may not reveal themselves to non-Changers (see Static, below). After living as all four versions of themselves (see V, below), Changers must choose one version in which to live out the rest of their lives (see Mono, below). Changer doctrine holds that the Changer race is the last hope for the human race on the whole to reverse the moral devolution that has overcome it. Changers believe more Changers equals more empathy on planet Earth. And that only through empathy will the human race survive. After their Cycles (see Cycle, below), Changers eventually partner with Statics. When approved by the Council (
see Changers Council, below), Changer-Static unions produce a single Changer offspring.

  Changers Council. The official Changer authority. The Changers Council is divided into regional units spread out across the globe. Each Council is responsible for all basic decisions regarding the population of Changers in its specific region.

  Changers Emblem. A variation on Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man drawing, dating to approximately 1490 CE (Figure 2). The Changers Emblem contains four bodies superimposed in motion, instead of two (as portrayed in da Vinci’s composition), and appears to the eye as both four bodies and one body at the same time—though all sharing one head and heart. An emblem of the Changer mantra: In the many we are one.

  Changers Mixer. Required events for all Changers to attend, during each of the four years of high school. Council rules and regulations are emphasized at mixers (see Changers Council, above). Mixers sometimes require classwork and formal discussions, but mixers are primarily designed to offer more informal camaraderie and problem-solving techniques, both of which help Changers address some of the difficulties that frequently arise during their Cycles (see Cycle, below).

  Cycle. The four-year period of different iterations, or versions (see V, below) that a Changer goes through between the approximate ages of fourteen and eighteen. One V per each of the four years of high school.

  Feints. The story a Changer family tells the non-Changers (see Static, below) in their lives, to explain each V’s (see V, below) absence during the following year of school. The specific details for Feints are provided by the Council (see Changers Council, above), unless a Changer and her/his parents submit a formal request for an alternative Feint, which is necessary under certain circumstances (i.e., when Statics are especially integrated into a particular V’s life, or when a particular Feint will better protect the identity of the Changer and her/his family).

  Forever Ceremony. Regional “graduation” events held on the day after high school graduation for every Changer within a designated region. A joyous though private (from Statics—except parental Statics; see Static, below) occasion, as each year of ceremonies initiates more and more Changers to migrate into the world and eventually find a Static mate, with whom they will start a family and raise Changer offspring of their own. At the Forever Ceremony, Changers are introduced one by one, and each speaks a little about each of her/his V’s (see V, below) before declaring in front of both the Council (see Changers Council, above) and their community whom they will live as for the rest of their lives (see Mono, below).