Oryon

by T Cooper

  “Done,” she chirps.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Thank G,” I say, genuinely relieved.

  “I told you to trust me,” Tracy chides as I turn back around. She puts her hands on my shoulders, studies me closely, seeming more present than before. Her eyes get glassy. “This is going to be a big year for you,” she says, suddenly maternal.

  “Nah, it’s just . . .” I reach for the right words. “It’s just another year.”

  “You’ve already come so far,” Tracy adds, and I can sense her pride in me.

  I think back to last fall, when I stood here with her, wearing Mom’s frumpy khaki shorts, torturous jog bra, my crazy long hair all knotted up, flopping around in Ethan’s giant Vans—shout-out to Mom who had the presence of mind to hold onto them for me in case I turned into someone who could wear them this year (I stand in those very shoes now). Back then I was a terrified lemur, petrified of taking those last steps up the dirt path to school to begin my new life. I tear up, and I’m expecting to just start bawling, but . . . nothing. Just a little dampness pulling on my bottom lids.

  “When I was C2-D1 like you, it was about right now I had a strong sense Tracy was the one,” Tracy says, full of nostalgia and hope.

  “I know the story, I remember—”

  “No pressure if you don’t feel the same way now!”

  Of course, no pressure, never any pressure from Tracy, queen of all things pressurized, a walking, talking diamond sprung from her own overachieving butt.

  She dabs at a tear in the corner of her eye, continues, “I’m just saying, it’s an exciting year, and I want you to get everything you can out of it. Now, I know you’re an old pro, but I’m going to try to be here just as much as I was last year, and if there’s ever anything you need, literally anything comes up, I want you to come to me, and we’ll get through it. Together. Like last year.”

  “Okay,” I concede, because I don’t know what else to say. “Should we fist bump or—”

  She suddenly pulls me into a hug, and I’m stiff, don’t know where to put my arms, so I just sort of encircle her and let her do the hugging. She seems so small now.

  Tracy releases me, steps back, and takes a good look, the corners of her lips curling up. “You’re, what? Like a hipster this year or something?”

  “It’s only ’cause my clothes are tight,” I say.

  “Well, you’re definitely too cool for me, much less TV.”

  “Mom saved a few of my old . . . Ethan’s old, you know, my old things, I guess so I would have something to wear if I woke up as a boy this year.”

  “I love your mom. Thank goodness I remembered to give you back your skateboard last year, huh? You’re going to need that, just to carry around and look fly,” Tracy says, trying out a word she’s likely never employed outside of describing what birds, planes, and pigs do.

  “Do I look fly, Trace?”

  “Hella,” she says, laughing with me, then seems to remember something and checks her wristwatch. “Ooh, you have to get going, you need to get registered. Let me know if you want to meet up at ReRunz later.”

  But it doesn’t seem like it’s me who’s supposed to be somewhere. Tracy slings her purse over a shoulder and heads toward the door, the early-autumn sun filtering in through the marred plastic window behind her.

  “Hey!” I call after her, and Tracy stops. “Did you know I was going to be Oryon?”

  “I didn’t,” she replies somberly. “Nobody knows, really.”

  I nod like I agree, but I keep feeling there’s got to be somebody steering the ship, some massive design or pattern to why we Changers are who we are every year.

  “Maybe there’s no reason,” Tracy continues, obviously reading my mind. “What are you worried about?”

  “What am I not worried about?”

  Tracy, knowing better: “Tell me. Is it Audrey?”

  “I’m scared she won’t want me in her life,” I mumble, holding my arms out, like Look at me.

  “Maybe,” Tracy says. “But maybe not. Audrey’s a good person.”

  “But—”

  “And so are you,” she cuts me off.

  I’m quiet.

  “YOU are a good person,” she repeats with some serious emphasis. “And you’re the same person. Oryon, Drew, Ethan . . . you’re all good.”

  I shrug, even though I know she’s trying.

  “So then, I have to be somewhere to meet someone about a thing,” Tracy says awkwardly, not quite pulling it off. I cock my head at her, and one hot tear drops onto my left cheek just as she budges through the rain-swollen door.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, my throat thick, but I don’t think she hears me.

  * * *

  Okay. I should backtrack. First of all, I can’t believe how much I hated Chronicling a year ago this time, and how nowadays I’m all like, Dear Diary this . . . Dear Diary that . . . Ooh, poor me, it’s so hard to be a Changer. Like I can’t survive without blabbing on and on about my Changery adventures every second. I guess I’ve sort of gotten used to it, and it feels like something is missing if I don’t get stuff down.

  Over pizza dinner last night, Mom and Dad were all trying to have a “talk” with me about sex and the “added responsibility” that goes with suddenly being a young, bigger, and stronger person in the world.

  I was like, “Check out my legs: they’re limp soba noodles,” but Dad just directed me to where he keeps the condoms in the bathroom linen closet.

  I am going to assume he bought them solely for me in the event I became a guy for my second V, even though any talk or activity like that is strictly premature (not to forget “premarital,” ha ha!)—as well as frowned upon by the Changers Council, the place where all natural instincts go to suffocate and die. Never mind that any thought related to prophylactics and my dad, and why he would have them in the house he lives in with my mom, is something I’d rather not consider. Only now, ew, I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t. The more I try not to think about it, the more I think about it.

  GROSS.

  Okay, where was I? Right, back to this morning. I guess I'd finally fallen asleep despite all my efforts to stave it off, but the first thing I’m conscious of is Mom bursting through my door, with Dad right behind, and I jump up out of bed fire-drill style. I’m just wobbling there bleary-eyed, and Mom is there on tenterhooks, clutching the thick envelope from the Changers Council in her hand, and Dad appears behind her, a little out of breath, and then we’re all standing there staring at each other, like they do in old Westerns, right before the shooting starts. Snoopy casually sniffs toward the three of us and scratches his neck, the jingle of tags on his collar the only sound in the room.

  I’m looking back and forth between my parents’ eyes, barely coming to, desperately trying to discern who I am, what I am, just from studying their faces. But there’s nothing in them to tip me off. They are both giving “complete acceptance of your child no matter what she is or does” realness, tinged with maybe a dash of political correctness/condescension, like they do with the waitstaff when we go to the Indian all-you-can-eat buffet in Nashville and they leave a giant tip even though it’s a buffet and nobody waited on us at all. As I’m thinking about the duality of that, how it’s simultaneously sweet and patronizing, I suddenly realize my Hello Kitty underwear feels really tight and binding, as does the tank top I wore to bed the night before.

  “Good morning,” Mom and Dad say in unison tentatively, as their eyes can’t help but tumble down my body so that my hands instinctively, instantly cover my crotch and I go bounding into my bathroom and slam the door behind me so I can be alone with the mirror.

  I take a deep breath. Exhale. Here goes . . . I slowly turn to my reflection above the sink, but before I can get a look, I suddenly ascertain that I’m actually palming a handful down there. Hello Kitty indeed. How soon I forgot what it’s like to have so much going on “down there” in the mornings. I sneak a
glance in the mirror. I’m a little scrawny, but I look sort of, I don’t know, like an almost-man. So, instant puberty. That happened.

  Okay, maybe I’m not supposed to be wasting time Chronicling about what’s going on in my nethers, but honestly, I can’t really ignore it because I’m remembering all over again what it was like when I was Ethan. Wrangling girl parts was rough in so many ways, but at least I never had to deal with the “control issues” boys have around their anatomy, especially in the a.m.

  I notice my reflection in the mirror, slowly catching up to reality, and I’m . . . wait . . . What?

  That’s me?

  It’s so different than anything I imagined. I don’t know why I didn’t picture this, but I didn’t. I tilt my head. He tilts his head. Tongue in. Tongue out. Yep, it’s me all right.

  I know it shouldn’t be one of my first thoughts, but: I guess if I’m being honest—which is supposedly what we’re doing here—you could say my most immediate sentiment is, Phew, at least I’m okay-looking.

  In the mirror it looks like I have a black eye where a smudge of eyeliner was never completely cleaned from the glass surface. In a fit of despair about Audrey after I wasn’t allowed to spend time with her anymore, and after the whole horrific thing with Jason went down, but before I told my parents what he did to me, I’d dramatically scrawled in dark brown eyeliner on my mirror, Love is a four-letter word! It stayed up there for months; I guess Mom must’ve finally taken some Windex to it, because I never wiped it clean myself, and one day it just wasn’t there anymore.

  Audrey.

  What is Aud going to think of this dude who’s presently staring back at me in the mirror?

  The thought is interrupted by Mom frantically barking vitals through the door, “Oryon Small. Fifteen. Birthday: October 17. You are a foster child from Atlanta. Your biological parents died in a car crash on I-75 when you were really young, so you don’t remember much about them. Passed around various family members and temporary homes until you were placed in foster care with a family—well, us . . .”

  So that'll explain the lily-white parents. The Council, it seems, thinks of everything.

  I’m gazing at “Oryon” in the mirror. He looks like somebody I’d think was too hip to want to be friends with me. A hip nerd type. A kid who flipped the script and made his nerdiness the source of his hipness. I notice my pecs peeking out of my tank top and can’t help but smile. Whoa. I have some serious dimples too. And long, ropey muscles, like a professional runner or rock climber. I peel off the tank top, let it drop to the floor. I spin around admiring my bare chest. Now that’s a feeling I missed.

  “I have a shirt out here I think would work,” Dad is calling through the door. “And some boxers.”

  “And I saved your old Vans,” Mom adds nervously.

  “It’s cool. Just leave everything there. I need another minute alone,” I say, for the first time hearing his, my, voice. Which is, what? “Testing, testing. One, two, three, um, twelve?” I say quietly into the mirror, just to hear the voice again. It’s sort of raspy. A little breathy. Deeper than Ethan’s was. Not a trace of Drew.

  “And, uh, honey?” Mom warbles. “The Council also sent the, uh, the—”

  “What?” I shout through the door.

  “Your emblem?” she says apologetically. “Do you want me to do it again this time, or help you—”

  “I got it,” I say flatly. “Just leave it out there, please.”

  I listen at the door for a while. Then a little longer to make sure they’re gone. Finally, a minute alone, so I crack open the door and reach my hand out for the clothes they left on the floor, and the little lipstick tube of death that Mom assaulted me with last year when I bent over completely unawares that I had to be BRANDED with a Changers logo before I could be allowed to leave the house.

  I close the door, lock it. Double-check it’s locked. Pick up the tube, pop off the top, and there, like a cigarette lighter from an old car, is the cheesy Changers emblem I guess I’m supposed to sear onto one of my butt cheeks right now. I take a deep breath. Then another one. I eyeball the device a little bit closer. How does it get hot? How bad did it hurt again? Funny how you can forget something like that. We always think physical pain is what will stick with us, but it never does. Emotional pain—now that’s the stuff that gets branded on you for life.

  I prop my foot on the toilet, twist my torso and look at my butt, firmly grasp the tube in my fingers like a highlighting pen, which, it kinda is. I take another deep breath and press the tip into my flesh. At first I don’t register what’s happening because I’m the one doing it. But then the searing starts, plus a tiny puff of electrical-smelling smoke, and I have no control over the reflex to pull my hand away. I jerk and drop the offending weapon into the toilet bowl. Great.

  The emblem maker gives off a pssstt sound as it hits the water. I’ve obviously killed it. And, just as obviously, I’ll have to retrieve it, because the Council isn’t going to be down with their technology finding its way into some filtration system and getting discovered by the dude whose job it is to clean the waste-trapping grates at the sewage-treatment plant. I reach my hand into the bowl and splash around trying to grab the tube.

  “Everything okay in there, honey? You sick?”

  Fantastic. My mom thinks I have diarrhea.

  “I’m fine, Mom!”

  (I can’t believe I’m going to have to do this two more times in my life.)

  After I fish out the brander, I try to look at the brand itself. From what I can tell in the mirror, one of the feet is missing:

  I don’t care, I have to get this freak show on the road, so I start unfurling the clothes my parents left for me: big-ass blue-striped boxers and a plain white T-shirt. I have a moment where I think, Bra! but I don’t need one. Gracias, Changers Council.

  I quickly pull on the clothes, then dig around my closet for a plaid button-down that was left over from Ethan days. I shrug it on, and it feels like my shoulders are going to burst through the fabric, Teen Wolf style. Never mind. It’s late, and I don’t want to be calling additional attention to myself by sprinting into school so tardy that everybody has a chance to ogle me.

  I quickly brush my teeth, run a palm over my short hair. I splash some water on my face, and check myself in the mirror once again. Oryon. Damn, my butt burns. This is really happening.

  Okay, let’s do this.

  When I get out to the hallway, Mom assaults me with a giant hug. I’m now at the height where I can put my nose into her hair. It smells fruity like Drew’s shampoo. I hand her the dripping-wet branding tube. “Don’t ask.”

  Dad lopes over from their bedroom door and gives me a quick and awkward embrace as soon as Mom releases me.

  “I need pants,” I say to him.

  I scan Dad’s clothes on his side of the closet, but nothing jumps out at me as ideal. Then I spot some old-man green polyester golf pants. “Can I cut these?” I ask over a shoulder to neither of them in particular.

  “Of course not, what are you—”

  “Sure you can,” Mom cuts Dad off. “Those’ll be cute.”

  I turn around and look at her. “Cute” is not exactly what I’m going for, but they will definitely look better than they currently do if I cut them just above the knees and leave the hem ragged. I look to Dad, who’s wincing slightly.

  “Go ahead,” he relinquishes, and Mom gently rests a hand on his forearm.

  “Thanks,” I say, heading out to the kitchen to find a pair of scissors.

  My parents trail me back down the hallway, so I stop, swivel back toward them—and they both slam into me, then each other. It’s like a Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner chase up in here.

  “I got this,” I add, then keep going. I slip into the bathroom and shut the door behind me just in time to keep them out. I hold the nerdy green pants up to my waist in the mirror, consider for a minute, then pinch where I want to cut. I do one leg, then the other at approximately the same length, and once I
step into them and cinch them up with a preppy belt with lobsters on it (also courtesy of Dad), I stand in their full-length mirror like I did a year before (in tears), stare at myself for a few good seconds, and think, Yeah, much easier for a dude.

  I open the door and casually grab some blue-and-pink argyle socks from Dad’s top drawer, while Mom starts digging around on her side of the closet, and soon she pulls my old Vans from a top shelf and presents them to me. I take them and kiss her on the cheek before sitting on the ground and trying to jam my feet into them. They’re way too small, but when I crush down the backs, I can sort of make it work.

  Andre 3000 retro swag. Not the worst vibe to pop on my first day.

  * * *

  Of course I am late for registration at Central. In the office, ol’ Miss Jeannie is shutting down the ID line when I blow in, breathless after sprinting up the hill from my meeting with Tracy at the Q-hut. I didn’t notice a single other person on the way in; I just kept my head down and hurried through the hallways, taking the stairs two at a time.

  “You’re too late, son,” Miss Jeannie warbles, sweet as cobbler, soon as I make it to the front desk.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, surprised anew to hear this croaky voice emerging from my throat. “Is there any way you can fit me in? I got lost on the way here.”

  Miss Jeannie stares at me. Thinks about it for a few seconds. “Well, I was just going to turn off this computer until tomorrow, but I haven’t pushed the button just yet.”

  “Thank you so much,” I say, as she pokes at the same old console that looks like a television set from the ’70s, a Too Blessed to be Stressed button jangling from her floral blouse. “Oryon Small? Tenth grade?” I offer, lilting at the end. When I do, Miss Jeannie perks up her head like she’s sensing a disturbance in the force. Why am I doing that? Reflexively up-talking? Oh, right. Because girls do that. Because we, I mean they, are taught to intuitively doubt everything they say. Which is solid B.S., but not something I can remedy in this moment. I make a note to self not to do it anymore, and to concentrate on ending my sentences flat, man-style, like I don’t give a damn.