Oryon

by T Cooper

  “Next issue maybe,” Audrey says, and goes back to reading the short story she’s in the middle of.

  Aaron pulls out another submission from the pile. I notice the name: Michelle Hu.

  “Oh, she’s a great girl,” I say to Aaron almost like a reflex, and Audrey lifts her head, curious. “Michelle Hu, you know her?”

  Audrey nods and Aaron sort of nods too, but it’s clear he doesn’t actually know Michelle.

  “You know who else is a great girl?” Aud asks suddenly, eyeing Aaron like they have some giant inside joke.

  I glance back and forth between them.

  “You?” I exclaim after a couple beats, totally serious.

  Audrey half-smiles. “That’s not who I was thinking, but . . .” She trails off.

  We all go back to perusing our submissions for a few seconds. I take a deep breath. Exhale. Ready, set, go: “I was sort of hoping to do this privately, but since you two Wonder Twins seem to have no secrets . . . I would like to ask if you would accompany me to a movie and dinner this weekend. What do you think?”

  “Me?” Audrey spits, then starts cracking up in her endearing way.

  “Uh, of course you . . . What? Did I not ask right?”

  “No, that was fairly smooth-under-the-guise-of-being-humble. It’s just, my answer is no.”

  “Ouch,” Aaron says.

  “You have a girlfriend,” Audrey adds then, flatly.

  At first I don’t know what she’s talking about, because I have never had a girlfriend, unless you count Audrey herself, but that was last year, when I was an entirely different person and can’t possibly be the reason Audrey has essentially shut me down from even a harmless movie and dinner out.

  “I don’t have a girlfriend,” I finally say.

  “Not what I heard,” Aud practically sings, shooting a glance at Aaron, who shrugs like, Don’t ask me, which makes it abundantly clear that he is in fact the source of her information.

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I say, feeling a little creeped out that anybody has said anything about me to anyone. Not as creeped out as last year when Jason was spreading rumors about “that slut Drew” around school, but something along those lines.

  “You’re not seeing the track star?” Aud asks.

  What the hell? My brain is grinding gears trying to figure out exactly how we got here, how one person knew, and now it seems like everybody knows.

  “Kenya? No. She’s a good friend, but we’re not going out or anything.” As the words come out I’m realizing how pointless they are. Audrey thinks what she thinks, Aaron thinks what he thinks, heard what he heard from Dashawn, from DJ, from the GD homeroom announcements over the PA this morning. Good morning, Central Falcons! Lunch today is pulled pork and beans. The Books and Blues fundraiser is coming up in two weeks, and, oh yes, Oryon and Kenya are totally a thing!

  Audrey seems to sense she’s struck a nerve. “She seems really nice.” She’s trying to be cool, but it only serves to make me feel even more misunderstood than before. If that’s even possible for a Changer.

  “She is,” I say. “But we’re not going out.”

  Audrey just raises her eyebrows at me—like, what was that supposed to telegraph, that she still doesn’t believe me?—and then Mr. Crowell calls our attention to the front of the room where Chloe and Amanda are presenting some poems (mostly Chloe’s) for us for consider, so the matter is put to bed. For now.

  * * *

  When I got home, my folks asked if I wanted to go out for Indian after I finished my homework. Sure, why not. I couldn’t really ponder anything except Audrey, and her misconception about me and Kenya. I can’t believe all of the issues that arise from one random moment at a party. It’s making me crazy that Audrey thinks something that’s not true, and Kenya obviously thinks something else that’s not true, and there’s nothing I can do about any of it.

  Chicks, man.

  Yeah. I said it.

  Before I checked my Chem homework online, I made a little deal with myself to log on to my secret e-mail account, or Drew’s e-mail account, for just thirty seconds, to see whether Audrey had written me/Drew back. She hadn’t. But I did, however, notice Aud was also logged in at that very moment. My hand and heart trumped my head and gut.

  I opened an instant message and wrote: OMG. I’ve been looking to see when you’d be on here. You really there?

  Audrey: Drewwwww!

  Me/Drew: Yes it’s meeeee.

  Audrey: How’s your new school? Central is sort of blowing, but there are a couple rays of light.

  Me/Drew: It sucks. Completely. Without you.

  Audrey: Have you made any friends?

  Me/Drew: One or two. Not really. You?

  Audrey: When I’m not cheering and he’s not playing football (which is almost never) I mostly hang w/Aaron. He’s so sad and lonely without Danny Boy.

  Me/Drew: How are they doing?

  Audrey: Good. They’re attempting an “open” relationship while Danny’s in Hotlanta. We’ll see how long that works out.

  Me/Drew: Lol! Do you like anybody?

  Audrey: Like-like?

  Me/Drew: Yes, like-like.

  There was a long gap in messaging, but I could see she was typing the whole time. Dot-dot-dot. I was prepping for a long response, but then finally:

  Audrey: Kind of. Maybe. I’m not sure.

  Holy shit. Who does she like-like? Maybe by some miracle or chasm in the universe, it’s me. Oh my god. But if it’s not me, even more Oh my god. Who is it? I have to know.

  “Baby!” my dad is suddenly calling from the hall. Wow, I hate when he calls me that, a little habit he started last year when I was Drew and hasn’t really dropped since Oryon showed up. I mean, it’s a little disturbing for a dad to call his fifteen-year-old son baby. “Let’s go!”

  “One sec!” I yell back at him through the door. Dang.

  Me/Drew: What do you mean you’re not sure?

  Audrey: [again after a long pause that practically kills me] I don’t know. It’s just weird, you know, with you, and us and stuff. I mean, it’s probably nothing. Just someone seems to sort of like me.

  Me/Drew: Who is it? A guy? Or a girl?

  “O!” Mom is now shouting from the hallway. How the heck am I supposed to care about naan and samosas when my own personal Bollywood soap opera is unfolding on a thirteen-inch screen right before me?

  Audrey: Guy.

  Me/Drew: What’s his name?

  Audrey: Come on! I said it’s not even a thing. Tell me something about you.

  Me/Drew: Who is this guy? I want all the details.

  Audrey: Another time. Srsly, I want to talk about you. I miss you.

  Me/Drew: I miss you too.

  Audrey: So what are we going to do about that?

  Me/Drew: I don’t know.

  Audrey: Le sigh.

  Me/Drew: Le sigh.

  Audrey: I wish you were still at Central. Better yet, I wish I were a boarding student at your school so I didn’t have to live with my family.

  Knock-knock-open: “Really? This is why you’re holding up the train?” Mom asks, as I slam the laptop shut for fear she sees Drew’s name and I get a spontaneous mini-lecture about honesty and authenticity and then reported to the Council for being normal.

  “Sorry, just getting a homework assignment from a friend,” I try lamely.

  “I completely believe that. Let’s go.”

  “Be out in a sec,” I say, willing her to shut the door. Which she does after a meaningful stare that says something like, I’m pretty sure you’re lying to me, but I really don’t feel like getting into it now because I want to have a nice night and we’ve been getting along pretty well lately, so why ruin it with a giant discussion about some tiny issue that I hope my crazed teenager is going to do the right thing about anyway, so I’ll let him win this time and then kick myself later for letting it go when it comes back to bite all of us in the ass.

  And she would probab
ly be right if she were thinking that.

  Regardless, I go back to typing:

  Me/Drew: Sorry, Mom just burst in. GTG, but you’re telling me about this guy some other time. At least what he looks like.

  Audrey: Why do you care what he looks like?

  Me/Drew: I don’t. But. Is he hot?

  I quit out of e-mail, cleared my history for good measure, then ran out to join my folks in the hallway, where they were waiting for me, right at the point before their annoyance tipped over into anger.

  “What are y’all waiting for?” I shout, flashing Mom a smile and punching Dad on the shoulder before blowing by them toward the elevator. “Let’s keep calm and curry on!”

  CHANGE 2–DAY 25

  Today after practice I pretended to be digging for something in my backpack while loitering in front of the gym until Audrey emerged from the locker room, post-cheerleading.

  “Okay, I’m only going to ask you this, like, ninety-seven more times,” I announced, taking her by surprise.

  She looked momentarily startled, but then smiled back when she saw me working the dimples. “The answer’s still no,” she said sweetly.

  “You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” I said, hefting my backpack onto one shoulder while popping my board up into the other hand.

  She gave me her best silent Really?

  “I was going to ask why,” I began, “if vampires can’t see their reflections, is their hair always so freaking perfect?”

  “Nice,” she said, chuckling in her har-har way, and starting to stroll toward the parking lot. I got the vibe she both wanted and didn’t want me to follow along. I erred on the side of following.

  I walked beside her for a few paces. “I’m not seeing Kenya,” I said.

  “Okay,” Audrey answered, seeming to half-believe me for the first time. “But it’s still a no.”

  And with that, the giant ennui cloud moved in. My spirit drooped. Audrey noticed.

  “Listen, it’s not you or anything,” she said, eyes nervously scanning the parking lot. “I mean, you seem nice and it’d be cool to get to know you.”

  Nice? To GET to know me?

  “But I—”

  The scream of tires on asphalt cut her off. Jason. The color drained from Aud’s face like the complexion of one of the aforementioned vampires. She clutched her binder and books tighter to her chest as her brother pulled up to the curb in his convertible and, yes, honked.

  “Your chariot awaits,” I said unenthusiastically, trying not to engage with Jason, who was blasting Insane Clown Posse from his gigantic speakers.

  Audrey put her hand on my back, where it was squarely out of Jason’s view. She looked repentant—which was killing me because she had no need to feel responsible for anything.

  “It’s just not that simple,” she said quietly, retracting her hand as quickly as she’d placed it there. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She smiled anemically then got in the car. Jason started pulling out before she’d even had a chance to shut the door, his eyes fixed on me the whole time he was driving away—to the point where Coach Lois in her squatty blue Prius had to beep three times to get him to notice where he was going. He narrowly missed sideswiping a parked yellow school bus with the cross-country team climbing out.

  The longer part of Audrey’s hair flipped around in the wind as they drove off, Jason’s wide racing tires wailing and taking up way more road than they should. Which is kind of the theme of his whole repugnant existence, now that I’m thinking about it.

  Seeing her with him, my body tensed. Temples throbbing, a vice grip in my neck—I felt as if I’d just geared up for some giant thing that didn’t come to pass. I was enraged. Irate. Furious, seething, fuming, apoplectic, incensed, indignant. Pass the thesaurus, because I need to look up more words for “overcome with anger.” I’ve been pissed off before, but holy crap, this was new. It was like my every cell was overstuffed with physical rage, and if I didn’t do something to get it out, I might actually implode.

  Chase, I thought. This must be how he felt last year, when he beat Jason to a pulp after catching him trying to assault me. I get it now. There is anger, and then there is the Hulk shit.

  I just stood there, unable to move. Then, out of nowhere, I hauled off and kicked a half-empty Snapple bottle that was sitting on the curb next to me. It felt exhilarating on impact, but the bottle shattered into a thousand pieces and the next sensation I felt was rancid juice splashing on me, and a shard of glass slicing into my shin after ricocheting off a brick wall. Genius.

  I remember reading in Health class about testosterone, where it said that besides making you hungry and pimply, it can make you quick to anger. At the time I thought, yeah right, another excuse for dudes who act like boneheads. But damn if it wasn’t (at least for me in that moment after Jason took Audrey away, scared, and I couldn’t do anything about it) completely, biologically true.

  * * *

  I feel like a baby back at home letting my mommy tend to my wound, which she insisted on because I was still bleeding all over my shoe, sock, and the floor when I came in the door.

  “You’re lucky you kids heal quicker than normal during your Cycles,” she says, stinging my flesh with hydrogen peroxide. I watch as the foam turns from white to cream to pink to red, with little leg hairs sticking out the center of it. “How’d this happen?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “I was overcome.”

  “With?”

  What could I say?

  “Oh, sweetie,” Mom says, wiping away the bubbles with a damp cotton ball.

  “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “I get it, I get it,” she says, dabbing the cut with some Neosporin while deftly putting on her Shrinking Cap. “Was it something to do with Audrey?”

  I struggle with a Band-Aid wrapper. “Sheets and blankets, why do they make these so hard to open?”

  Mom calmly takes the adhesive from me and peels the wrapper away to reveal the large perforated bandage inside. “I want you to feel like you have friends at school this year, but that brother of hers is a world of trouble. Turner, the Lives Coach, recommends it’s best to distance a bit from her family, if we can.”

  “We? You mean me.”

  She doesn’t take the bait, just sticks the “flesh-colored” (i.e. Caucasian) bandage carefully around the cut, rubs the sides down so they’re nice and snug. “Audrey is a good girl. But you are my only child. And I will do anything in my power to protect you from harm. Maybe this year you could make some new friends?” She narrows her eyes in faux menace. At least I think it’s faux. “Capisce?”

  Oh, I capisce, I think. I capisce that when it comes to Audrey, the less everyone else knows about us, the better.

  * * *

  I was just about to go to sleep when my Skype beeped with a familiar tone, even if the face on the other side of the screen wasn’t. Chase V2.

  “Hey girl,” he says as soon as his image pops up on my screen. He’s chewing gum and wearing a way-too-tight WEARECHANGERS.ORG T-shirt, which his pecs and biceps are pretty much busting out of like overcooked sausages. “What’s the latest?”

  “I’m fried,” I announce, moving my laptop from my desk to beside my pillow, where I lay my head.

  “Remember when we used to do this for hours?” Chase asks right off, pulling his laptop into bed with him too. At that, I realize how intimate it is, Skyping in the sheets.

  “That feels like a thousand years ago,” I say.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing really,” I sigh, hoping to avoid a heated head-to-head for once.

  “Something’s obviously up, dude,” he prompts. Which makes me remember when he’d call me dude when I was a girl crushing hard on him, and it would basically level me because I thought it meant that he didn’t want me as anything more than a friend.

  “I don’t really want to go into it, man,” I say. “But I’m starting to catch your political dr
ift a bit more these days.”

  “Ah yes, my brother,” he says, smiling all too eagerly. “The angry black man can’t help but open his eyes to this unjust world around him, huh?”

  “That’s not it at all.” But it kind of is. I just don’t think I’ve really earned it or anything. What real right do I have to be mad? I feel like a faker or—

  “You know I’m right. Embrace your rage,” he says, essentially reading my mind. Which really pisses me off.

  “No.”

  “It’s okay. You are a black man, or someone who could become a black man,” he starts. “That’s the point. Like Benedict says, We are all imposters. And the black man’s struggle is the gay man’s struggle is the Muslim man’s struggle is the transgender man’s struggle is the homeless man’s struggle, is your struggle, is my struggle—”

  “Dude, stop,” I interrupt his RaCha rant. “Before you become my struggle.”

  “The sooner our culture grasps this, the sooner we’ll all be free of the -isms,” he rambles on, immune to humor.

  “Yeah, well, I notice there were no women in your struggle-a-thon,” I say.

  “You understand where I was going with it.”

  “I really don’t feel like doing this right now. Why did you call, anyway?”

  “I miss you,” he says matter-of-factly, though a wisp of sadness floats over his eyes. “I’ve been thinking a lot about last year. How things ended.”

  “Chase, it’s cool. Really.” I swallow hard. “I understand better now.”

  Neither of us knows what to say next. We stare silently into each other’s pixilated faces, and it feels both comforting and lonely, like cello music or wandering around the shopping mall.

  “Well, I guess I’m outie,” I say finally. “Deuces.” I hold up two fingers in front of the embedded camera.

  “Okay,” he says, resigned, returning my peace sign. He smiles at me as I click the Hang Up button and Chase V2 disappears; all that’s left in the naked screen is the blur of my own reflection.

  CHANGE 2–DAY 31

  Well, here’s a first. And what I hope is a last. I’m Chronicling from my hospital room, one bed and blue curtain over from a middle-aged Hells Angels wannabe who won’t stop screaming, “I know people who know people!” at the top of his lungs. The cop stationed outside our room has not cared all night, and doesn’t seem like he will start caring anytime soon. Nevertheless the guy keeps screaming. And not because of the double compound radius and ulna fractures he collected when he (allegedly) drunk-drove his motorcycle off the side of the freeway exit and onto a parked car below.