Oryon

by T Cooper

  “It is so not cool with Kenya.”

  “We just talked.”

  He laughs.

  “What?”

  “You’re kind of clueless.”

  “So I keep hearing,” I say, starting to get a little done with the whole drama.

  “You don’t know what a great girl she is.”

  “I actually do.”

  He shakes his head. “I gotta get going. You good for a ride?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and we slap hands twice and half-hug it out like we do, even though we’re obviously not particularly feeling each other that minute.

  * * *

  I’m under my blankets now, but I can’t get to sleep because I’m trying to go back to that night, review what happened, unravel the how and why Kenya and I ended up locking lips at that party. Maybe there is no reason. Maybe that was the whole point.

  And maybe that makes me an opportunist. Like I led her on or something. But it was just fun, not really sexual or anything, just like, friends dancing and having a good time. I mean, what’s the big deal?

  And yet, it’s obviously a big deal. How quickly I forgot after being Drew that to a teenage girl everything is a big deal. I should know better. I should care more. But I don’t. I just want things to be easy again. Is that so wrong?

  CHANGE 2–DAY 41

  Lucky, lucky me. I’m getting dressed for the Changers Mixer, which I would do anything to avoid, when an IM pops up on the Drew account I’ve left open in hopes of catching Aud on there.

  Audrey: Hey, you there?

  Me/Drew: Yaaaasssss! What’s shakin, bacon?

  Audrey: I went on a “date” with him.

  Oh . . .

  My . . .

  Freaking bloody hell.

  It was me.

  Me/Drew: The guy who likes you?

  Audrey: Y

  Me/Drew: OMG, how was it?

  Audrey: It wasn’t a date-date, more like a friend-date.

  Me/Drew: Why not a date-date?

  She’s dot-dot-dot typing while I wait, staring at the screen, my eyes starting to water, my palms all moist and warm. The conversation feels sketchy. But I really have to know.

  Me/Drew: Hello?

  Audrey: Sorry, the hosebeast was just knocking on my door looking for his Kenny Chesney T-shirt. Wait, what were we talking about?

  Me/Drew: Your not-date?

  Audrey: I don’t know. Fun, I guess. It’s not like I want to kiss him or anything.

  Okay, maybe that I didn’t have to know.

  Me/Drew: Why not?

  Audrey: I don’t know. Why are you being so pro some dude you don’t know?? He could be a serial killer who wants to wear my skin.

  Me/Drew: No one could be scarier than your brother.

  Audrey: Touché.

  Me/Drew: IDK, just think it’s exciting. If you like him and he seems like a good person. Does he seem like a good person?

  Audrey: I think so.

  Me/Drew: Is he cute?

  Audrey: wtf????!!!!

  Me/Drew: Just curious.

  Audrey: This is weird talking to you about it.

  Me/Drew: I know. But I want you to be happy. Who knows when (if?) we’re going to be in the same town again. You know?

  Audrey: I guess.

  One side of my brain is so happy she’s being loyal to Drew, but the other side is scheming madly to figure out a way to push Audrey into Oryon’s/my arms.

  Me/Drew: I don’t mean to be a downer. It’s just rare that you trust someone, so if you actually feel comfortable with him, then I want you to do your thing.

  Audrey: I guess I thought you’d be a little hurt or something.

  This is killing me. Plus, I’m going to be late for the mixer.

  Me/Drew: I still love you, Aud. More than ever. But real love means letting go.

  Audrey: Sorry, can’t type, too busy vomiting.

  Me/Drew: Hilarious. Crap, I have to bolt. Will you be on later?

  Audrey: Prolly. Have fun. Whatever you’re doing.

  Me/Drew: It’s nothing fun, trust me. Aud, I miss you. Sorry if this is weird. I know it’ll all work out. I don’t know why, but I do.

  Audrey: Bye.

  Me/Drew: Bye bye bye.

  Audrey: NSYNC!

  Me/Drew: You remembered!!!

  Audrey: Always.

  Me/Drew: Bye

  Audrey: Bye (bye bye)

  It feels dirty. I know it’s probably immoral. But I don’t know what else to do. I’m trying to be true to both people—well, more like four people (Ethan, Drew, Oryon . . . and Audrey). But it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep the Rubik’s Cube colors on their respective sides.

  Buzzzzzz. My phone vibrates off the desk, falling onto my pillow. It’s Audrey. Calling ME now.

  “Hello?” I answer quickly as possible.

  “Hey,” she says. “How are you feeling?”

  “Good now.”

  “So . . .” she says.

  “So?”

  “You have any interest in seeing that Miyazaki revival?”

  CHANGE 2–DAY 41, PART TWO

  Just got back from the Changers (Re)Mixer. During the break-out sessions, the Council facilitators said that it’s recently come to their attention that some of us are not Chronicling every day like we’re supposed to. How they knew this, they neglected to mention. They told us they understood how it can feel impossible to set aside time, but that it is major league critical to transmit at least some daily impression, recollection, or realization so we have the “full story of our lives” when it comes time to select our forever Mono. Like high school is really going to determine the full story of our lives. I fracking hope not.

  Whatever. I choose to table the whole Mono conversation until my last V. Worry about it then. I mean, what’s the use of getting all excited about being who I am now, when I could wake up next year as Thor, for example. One thing’s for sure: this mixer was markedly different from last year’s, when I was in awe of all the older Changers, basically trying to appear unfazed by this whole new life I’d started living, but inside I was Jell-O. I remember being so excited to meet others like me after a month of feeling like the only blue person on a planet full of reds. And then there was Chase. My forbidden Changer crush. Leonardo DiCaprio on the Titanic. King of the Changer World!

  Chase was there this year too. I figured he’d be all rogue and out front demonstrating like the rest of the RaChas, but his parents made him toe the line. Homeschooling and adhering to the Changers Council minimum requirements were conditions he had to comply with in order to be allowed to stay in his house, which he didn’t hesitate to tell me while he bitterly complained about every aspect of the mixer. I mean, he whined so much I started to defend the whole thing, even though I agreed with a lot of what he was saying. That seems to be where our dynamic has settled. Reflexively oppositional, like an old married couple.

  In a seminar called “V2: The Sophomore Slump,” Chase was channeling his inner Jason, conspicuously sighing and sucking his teeth and taking up as much space as possible by splaying his beeftastic arms across three seat backs with his legs draped over the chair in front of him. Everybody’s chitter-chattering like it’s a family reunion, only no one resembles the person they did before, it’s like we’ve all joined the Secret Service and undergone complete facial reassignment surgery.

  The side door to the stage pops open and Turner, the Lives Coach, glides in wearing some sort of loose white swami getup with a lotus flower appliqué on the front, and strands of wooden beads around his neck, wrists, and ankles. Somewhere even Gandhi is like, Dude, tone it down. He’s followed by a handful of Council members: Charlie “Mr. Cool” exec from last year, some people I don’t recognize, and Tracy, wearing full business drag, a fitted dark blue suit and skirt, like Special Agent Dana Scully on The X-Files, her hair all slicked back, not a pastel or flower in sight.

  Chase does a spit take when he spots Trace. “Look who’s giving executive ball-breaker realnes
s. Guess she’s really angling for that promotion, huh?”

  His snarking makes me feel protective of her, because even though I might not love the whole Up-with-Changers mandate she’s made her raison d’être, she’s still my Touchstone, and a good person who truly believes she’s improving the world for everyone. I mean, what are Chase and Benedict and the rest of the RaChas actually doing, besides not bathing and being really loud? I don’t see them building any wells in the desert.

  “A warm embrace of the soul to all Y-2s!” Turner meaningfully intones into his headset mic, adjusting the front to his lower lip. There is an enormous swell of applause, spurred on by the Council members and the Touchstones onstage behind him who wave and jump around warming up the crowd, even Tracy who pogos up and down in her pumps. “Thank you all so much for joining us,” Turner says, “not that you had a choice!” He laughs to himself, but it doesn’t come off right.

  “He should stick to mind-numbing earnestness,” Chase snits, rolling his eyes.

  I do my best to ignore him, because I don’t need any more Council attention drawn my way, especially not from Turner, who was inches from separating me from Audrey forever last year. I’m all about staying off his new-age radar for as long as possible.

  “Conducere,” Turner says. “As you know, it means to bring together.” And then it is thirty minutes straight of mission talk. Change, impermanence, dimensions, purpose-driven lives, cultural medicine, integrity, denial of the self, not abusing our power. Thou shalt not reveal yourself as a Changer to those who are not Changers. Chase pretends to fall asleep.

  “You may be inhabiting a sophomore slump, making you resistant, reactive. Don’t fall prey to your lowest instincts. Rise above. But keep your feet on the ground.” Turner falls silent for a moment, bows his oddly tiny head. “At this point I know you’re sitting there wishing you hadn’t even come to this mixer.” There are a couple sniffles and coughs before he continues, “I bet some of you even tried to get out of it by asking your parents or Touchstones if you could sit this one out. Were some of you perhaps feeling a little under the weather this morning? Needing a personal day?”

  Turner tilts his chin toward a bunch of us as he speaks, including me. He’s trying to connect, but reads more creepy.

  “Understand this. It’s completely normal to feel like two separate people at this point in your life. Or perhaps one person split into two, or even three. We expect you to struggle with these dynamics. Struggle is life.” He sighs, seemingly exhausted from his zeal, then gathers himself up. “We are all everybody, even we who have chosen our Monos.”

  I shoot Chase a look, because that is essentially the same message he was spewing at me last week.

  “Now, I want to turn our attention to a touchy subject, one that I’m fairly positive every one of you,” he jabs a limp thumb at us to punctuate his words, “is processing right this very moment in your lives. Continuity.”

  Dead silence.

  The Touchstones onstage look grave, including Tracy, who is pulling her respectful “serious” face, which I’ve seen on more than a few occasions.

  “How do we, as people who change, continue in relationships with those who may not?”

  Thoughts of Audrey flood my head, as somebody raises a hand behind me, a jet black–haired girl with straight, short bangs and thick glasses.

  “It’s not a question,” Turner says, as the girl slowly lowers her hand and sinks into her seat. “Of course everybody—even Statics—changes all the time, though there are those intractable pockets on this planet, like the Abiders, who want to believe otherwise. But this paradox is certainly more pronounced in our Changer existence. How does love survive all the forms a person takes over our lifetimes? It is one of the universe’s fundamental mysteries.”

  Where is Michelle Hu when I need her? I think.

  “In the end, the question,” Turner sums up, his reflexive self-satisfaction now in full bloom, “is irrelevant. It is the fact that we ask the question that matters.”

  “What the eff is he even talking about?” Chase whispers, but I barely hear him because onstage, Turner is leading a charge of, “In the many, we are one!”

  “In the many, we are one!” all onstage, and some of us in the audience, repeat practically involuntarily. Turner gives a tight bow and steps aside faux-humbly, beads swinging. Everybody claps. For a long time. Like Turner is Beyoncé and we’re trying to lure her back onstage for an encore.

  Charlie steps up, all slick in a tight designer suit. “Hey man, hey, what’s up, yo.” He nods at different people he sees in the audience and apparently recognizes.

  Turner and the other few members of the Council discretely file out the door they came in, leaving Tracy and five other Touchstones onstage behind Charlie.

  “Welcome! How great was that?” Charlie hollers. More clapping. “Okay. Okay. Whew. So I’m here to lay some new info on you that’s vital to Y-2 of your Cycles. Everybody pumped? Can I get a Heck yeah!”

  A smattering of “Heck yeahs” fills the room, including one from Chase, except his sounded more like, Eff this!

  People are anxious, including me, since the last time dude spoke to us, he basically informed us that we’d see flashes of Statics’ futures when we kiss them. Now what? Are we getting X-ray vision? Because that is a superpower I’ve always thought was overrated. Like, so what, you see people naked or something? Who wants that? It’s just embarrassing. It’s not “hot,” it’s not anything but too-much-information, and if you’re not James Bond or Jason Bourne, how many times are you really going to need to see what’s inside a locked safe, or behind a closed door? Also, I just realized, if you really had X-ray vision, wouldn’t you see through people’s skin, through their flesh and muscles and organs, basically dead-ending on their SKELETON? Who wants that? Radiologists want that. Nobody else.

  “So, we’ve made a few amendments to the rules,” Charlie goes on, which snaps me out of my X-ray-vision reverie. “On the heels of what Turner has shared about past relationships you’ve had during Y-1, we’ve come to the conclusion that it is in the best interests of all parties if you only attach romantically with a given Static as a single V.”

  He looks around. I’m not quite sure what he means. Nor is anybody else.

  “The lines are already necessarily blurred. And to avoid any misuse of power, as has been happening, unfortunately, we’d like you to keep the boundaries as clear as possible.” Charlie looks around the room again. A few hands pop up, but he ignores them. “By all means, stay friends with the same Statics over all your Vs if you want. It is revealing and critical to see how you are treated and interpreted by the same people when you look so different externally. Those are messages we want you to absorb. However, if you become intimately involved with a Static, that needs to be a one-off thing.”

  He smiles all toothy, like anything he just said makes sense. People are whispering, frowning; one guy in the front row looks from the way his shoulders are bouncing like he’s starting to cry.

  Chase leans toward me, grouses (louder than I’d like), “See? More of their big brother bullshit.”

  “Are there any questions? . . . Yes, on the aisle,” Charlie says, chipper, pointing to a redheaded girl in green Doc Martens.

  “What if you liked someone and they seemed to really like you back, but nothing actually happened?”

  “Did you kiss this person?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re good to go. Good luck,” Charlie says, like he’s answered these questions a million times. “Next?”

  “What if you’ve kissed someone once, but nothing happened after that?” from an Asian guy in a football jersey.

  “Did you see a vision?” Charlie asks.

  “Yeah, he was riding the Matterhorn on his honeymoon.”

  “No, you can’t become romantic with him this year,” Charlie says, pointing to the next person.

  “B
ut what if you’ve kissed, but only . . .”

  And on and on till the break of dawn. Basically, everything pivoting around whether or not you’ve had the kiss that spawns the vision. So I’m not supposed to be with Audrey. Again. Which: good luck keeping me from her.

  Next thing I know, we’re released from the session, and told that the official part of our mixer is over, and it’s time to party. Charlie actually says, “Time to party!” And Tracy eagerly claps her hands together in a way that nearly crushes me.

  Chase and I sit outside in the courtyard, me listening to his RaChas propaganda, basically a less manipulative version of the doctrine presented by Benedict, who we can still sort of hear chanting from the other side of the bushes by the entrance to Changers HQ, where he and about a dozen RaChas are carrying on their quest to out Changers among the Static population.

  “It is going to go down,” Chase says, even more jittery than usual.

  “What?” I barely muster, glancing across the lawn where the BBQ hoedown is getting underway.

  “Benedict has zeroed in on a potential nest,” Chase says, shrugging out of his jean jacket to reveal a too-tight white T-shirt with, wait, are those cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve? “Smoke?”

  “Who are you, Joe Camel?”

  Chase looks for somewhere private to light up. “We hear there are a couple churches doubling as Abider camps.” He starts walking over to a closed stairwell, the very stairwell we emerged from last year after our Y-1 sessions let out. When I was following him around like a lost puppy. “Come on,” he says, and yanks on the door. It doesn’t open. He pulls harder. It gives with a loud, echoey screech. He holds it ajar for me. Against my better instincts, I go in.

  I settle a few stairs above him. Chase lights up, takes a long drag, then offers the cigarette to me while he exhales. “You’re getting a new body in eleven months.”

  “It’s gross,” I say. “And a little obvious.”

  “Calms the nerves. So much waiting.”

  “For what?” I ask, irritated that I’m being sucked in.

  “For Benedict to decide it’s time,” he says mysteriously.

  I try to change the subject: “Remember last year when we saw those cynical burners hanging out here?” I stand up, trying to fan the smoke away. “Now we’re essentially them.”