Oryon

by T Cooper

  Sigh.

  That face. I missed that face over the seemingly interminable winter break. We talked only what, two or three times during the entire vacation? And briefly at that. Her folks made her go to some family reunion thing in Ohio or Iowa or some other state comprised mostly of vowels. She was never alone.

  Blink blink. She looks so cute, slow-blinking at me, I can barely focus on what Mr. Crowell is saying about the many forms of love, which incidentally, I’m full up on, thank you very little. Audrey’s been almost all I can think about for weeks—okay, for more than a year. She seems different today, though I can’t nail down precisely how. She’s calm. Looser. We haven’t really talked much about what we “are” after this period of what do you call it, hanging out over the last couple months: just this amorphously though undeniably close boy-girl friendship with lots of attraction and feelings swirling around, plus kissing (when possible), heavy petting (as the adults call it), and ever so slowly making our way around the bases.

  Never kiss and tell, Nana always advised. Something I didn’t understand until now. Which is why there’s been little need or desire for Chronicling, lest every day be filled with the one word and one word alone that has been on my mind and likely embedded in my Chronicling chip all fall long: Audrey. Audrey, Audrey, Audrey, Audrey, Audrey.

  Audrey.

  And they called it puppy love. Oh I guess they’ll never know how a young heart really feels and why I love her so . . .

  Speaking of Nana’s adages and her favorite butterfly-collared, dreamy singer Donny Osmond, it was really rough visiting her down in Florida over break. We all jumped in the car as soon as school let out and drove the ten hours to her condo. There, we ate many dinners at Applebees in between doctors appointments, interviews with home-care givers, tours of assisted-living facilities, and whispery debates between Mom and Dad about “bringing her home” with us.

  There had been talk of maybe going down to Orlando for a day or two of roller coaster riding, but Nana wasn’t feeling up for it, so basically I spent two weeks watching vintage horror movies on Netflix, or skating alone around an abandoned strip mall until a security guard would inevitably show up, make the open-palm universal halt sign, and say, “There’s no skating here” (unknowingly quoting one of my favorite Lupe Fiasco songs).

  I also took a lot of long, solo evening walks on the beach with Snoopy, just like I did the year before when I was Drew, only this time nobody was grotesquely ogling my beach body or talking to me without my permission. It was just me and my dog and the murmur of the waves, as if I were shooting a pharmaceutical commercial for a drug that gave me the ability to go for hours without having to pee, or hike across the constantly caving sand free of joint pain.

  Anyway, it was a little disconcerting and heartrending that half the time I was at Nana’s she wasn’t sure she knew who the black kid lounging around her condo and getting lemonade out of the refrigerator was. Dad kept explaining to her loudly, “This is Ethan. He was Drew. Now he’s Oryon,” over and over like a “Changers for Dummies” seminar. I’d catch Nana looking at me funny, as though she couldn’t think of the right word for something and was searching deep in the recesses of her mind for it—and each time she did, I felt gutted.

  Every day there was mounting evidence she was slipping away. Sometimes it was something as minor as her dropping a spoon and all of us hearing it clatter to the floor, but then watching her search for it on the table a few seconds later. Or, her shakily holding the television remote control, bracelets tinkling, while simultaneously asking me, “Where’s that blasted remote?”

  I love Nana so much. I can’t deal with the thought of losing her. So I’m just putting it out of my mind. Mom and Dad kept insisting she’s “strong as an ox,” and “gonna be around bugging us for years to come,” though every time they said so, it sounded more like hope instead of fact. One day over break when Mom and Dad were out at a nursing home tour, Nana and I watched The Price Is Right together, which we always did when I was younger (arguing over numbers, which she was inevitably correct about because of course she knew from actual shopping experience how much a can of chunk light tuna or toilet bowl cleaner cost).

  “I wonder,” she said suddenly during a commercial break between Showcase Showdowns, while the volume was muted, “what life would’ve been like had I chosen Chase.”

  My head snapped around to where she was sitting on her green leather leisure chair. “As your Mono? As your Static partner?” I asked, frantic.

  Nothing.

  “Who’s Chase, Nana?” I prompted. “Were you Chase?”

  “But love makes you do funny things, Drew—I mean, sorry, Ethan,” she said, reaching for the remote control because her show was coming back on. “Ooooh! A red Ford Fiesta!”

  “Nana,” I shouted over the bespectacled host barking into the long, thin microphone, “what kind of funny things? Who did you love? What did you do?”

  But she didn’t say anything else besides, “I love you, sweetie!” and then laughed her old-lady laugh and nodded in the direction of the TV screen.

  * * *

  During the Peregrine meeting, Mr. Crowell handed me and Audrey the joint assignment that’s going to be the main feature anchoring the love-themed issue. We’re supposed to find and meet with about a dozen people “of all walks of life”—gay people, straight people, bisexual people, old people, young people, monogamous people, married people, unmarried people, people who have multiple relationships, people who’ve never even had one relationship—and ask them what love means to them. Get details from their lives, hopes for their future relationships, regrets about their pasts, just like Barbara Walters before she stopped being a journalist and started sitting around that table with all those shrieking women.

  We are meant to get all this interviewing done in the next few weeks, so we can start compiling, shaping, and editing the copy, not to mention taking Amanda around to photograph portraits of the people who end up being in our final submission. Which is a truckload of work and means, YES, more “official” time to spend with Audrey that her parents can’t cock-block, like they have been doing since the minute she laid eyes on me as Oryon. Thank you, Mr. Crowell! A box of chocolates is on the way.

  Mr. Crowell was the first person we asked to speak with for our story. He was sheepish, but he couldn’t exactly say no to letting us practice by answering a few of our questions, when the assignment was his bright idea in the first place.

  We met at Starbucks after school, Audrey with blank notebook and pen in hand, me with a preliminary set of questions that we had brainstormed during the rest of our lit mag activity while Chloe was frenetically scribbling lines for a set of twelve love sonnets she insisted she contribute to the issue.

  “What’s the first thing you ever loved?” I ask Mr. Crowell soon as he sets his herbal tea on the small round table between us. Audrey is at attention, pen hovering above her notebook, another pen cutely tucked behind her ear (in case what? the other pen runs away?).

  “That’s a great question! My mother, probably. But as a child, I remember loving my plastic Digger the Dog toy; it walked when you pulled a string.”

  “When was the last time you were in love?” I ask, while Aud flips to the next page of her notebook with a flourish. Mr. Crowell blanches. His tea bag, half-hanging over the rim of his cup, drip-drips pale green water on the glass surface beneath it, the liquid creeping its way toward his cell phone. “Well, uh, uh . . .” he stammers, absently poking a finger into the puddle.

  Am I supposed to keep asking, or just listen, or—

  “You could say somewhat recently,” he finally lands on, after about ten uncomfortable seconds.

  Audrey quickly jots down every word he says.

  “I think it’ll go better if you two use a tape recorder moving forward,” he eagerly redirects, pointing to Audrey’s notebook. “I’ll try to get a loaner from the music library, or we might have some funds to purchase one for the club.”

>   It feels like he knows that I know something that Audrey doesn’t. Like about Tracy. I could be reading into it, but maybe not. As if on cue, his cell phone buzzes; he looks at it, his face sort of softening before he silences the text and wrestles the phone into his front jeans pocket.

  “And?” I prompt.

  “Well, when you meet someone special,” he says, uncomfortably, “you just know.”

  Audrey finishes getting these momentous words down and looks up at me. We try not to betray our shared embarrassment, my face going hot.

  “I think we should perhaps focus more on prepping you for your other subjects,” Mr. Crowell suggests authoritatively, completely shaking the former business off. “My silly ramblings about love aren’t going to end up in the magazine, so let’s talk about the questions and techniques that are going to yield the best results for your story.”

  Note to self: call Tracy and tell her dude is IN LOVE with her.

  CHANGE 2–DAY 130

  Today Audrey and I met for our first interviews. We lined up four subjects for our love project, and after chai lattes and biscuits at the Dis’n’Dat Café, we made our way through town, meeting and questioning people about the most intimate details of their romantic lives, something that if you’d told Ethan he’d be doing with his only free day of the week, he would have assumed he’d lost a bet. And yet, here I was, gleefully living in my own Wilson Phillips music video.

  We started with Miss Jeannie, the registration lady, who as it turns out lives in a modest ranch house a few blocks from school. When we rang the bell it played a few bars of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Miss Jeannie answered right away, her hair teased high, perfume thick enough to smell through the door. She’d put on bright pink lipstick and was wearing slacks and a shiny turquoise blouse, clearly flattered to have been asked to participate in the journal and talk about her life; it made me feel bad about all the times I’d mentally written her off as a dumb hillbilly.

  “Come meet Red!” she gushed, waving us in like we were Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer.

  Red was in the basement, bent over a sawhorse table working on his model plane collection. He looked ex-military, which it turns out he is, as well as a former English teacher at Central prior to Mr. Crowell, until he started going deaf and was forced to retire.

  “You think we got something interesting to say, son?” he shouted, shaking my hand with a death grip.

  “I think everyone has an interesting story if you ask the right questions,” I answered as loudly as I could without being insulting, trying not to grimace as my knuckles compressed.

  “Well then, you best ask the right questions. Right, little lady?” He smiled now and turned his attention to Audrey, whose hands were trembling slightly, I noticed.

  We learned that Jeannie and Red had been married forty-two years. That her parents didn’t approve of Red because he was a bit older, but that Jeannie didn’t care “a hoot” what they thought, and the two ran off and eloped. Though they wanted children and tried for years to have them, “it wasn’t in God’s plan,” and they both took jobs in the school system so they could be around kids all day, every day.

  “I feel like I’ve gotten to watch hundreds of kids grow up,” Miss Jeannie said, trying not to sound sad. She dug around in her sideboard and fished out a photograph of her and Red on their honeymoon in Canada, fishing, him pretending to have caught her on his line. In the picture they are both glassy-eyed from laughing, so thin and young, almost as young as Audrey and me.

  We chatted nearly an hour, Miss Jeannie serving us a snack of homemade snickerdoodles and milk. Right before we left, Audrey gave Miss Jeannie a hug, and though it was against school policy, Miss Jeannie hugged her back.

  * * *

  “Wow,” Audrey exhaled as we walked away. “You think you know a person, and then you dig under one layer and a completely new person is revealed.” I nod vigorously, too vigorously perhaps. “Is it wrong that I now kind of love Miss Jeannie?”

  “So long as she isn’t the only person you love,” I joke, regretting it immediately.

  Audrey pretends she didn’t hear me, and we walk to our next interview, this one with a local lesbian folk singer named Annie Way—whom we read about on a flyer taped to the local coffee house bulletin board. We arranged to meet her in the park, and Audrey’s face falls as soon as she notices that Annie didn’t bring her guitar.

  “What’s up, beautiful people?” Annie hollers as we approach. “Pop a squat, and let’s get to know each other.”

  Annie is funny and kind and brash and political. She reminds me of Chase, without the anger and the bulging quadriceps. We talk about civil rights and why she believes everyone should have the right to marry, and how when her best friend died in a car crash, his partner was unable to be at his bedside when he passed away, because they weren’t legally wed.

  “Messed up, right?” she says, not really asking.

  I can tell Audrey is thinking about Aaron, and what would happen if Danny got sick or injured, and I can see her social-injustice wheels spinning like tops, wanting to make everything fair in a world that can never be. “Totally,” she says, jaw tight.

  “Well, you kids can be the change you want to see in the world,” Annie suggests, giving me a playful punch on the shoulder. “Speak your truth, and you can’t go wrong.”

  It’s not that simple, Annie, I think.

  Audrey and Annie exchange e-mail addresses as we get up to leave, Audrey eager to join her at the next rally for marriage equality, something I’m certain Jason and her folks will never allow her to attend if they get wind of it. But it moves me that she still tries, that she still reaches for the world outside of the bubble they keep her in, even if she can’t break free just yet.

  “I have a great idea!” Audrey says as Annie waves goodbye and disappears over a grassy knoll.

  “You want to do a fundraising concert for Annie’s best friend’s partner?”

  “What? No. But that is an awesome plan. What I was actually thinking is that we should interview each other’s parents!” She beams. “We’re learning so much about all these different people. Wouldn’t it be cool to uncover the same depth in our own families? To put aside what we think we know and allow ourselves to be surprised? To actually change our minds about someone?”

  “It is a killer idea . . .” I begin, knowing I need to dissuade her from this line of thinking without seeming like I’m crapping all over her plan. “But we already have our schedule set today.”

  “So we’ll do it the next round. It’ll be awesome!”

  There are so many things about it that would not be awesome that I can’t even slow my brain down enough to count them all. I wrinkle my nose, searching, searching, searching for a way to derail this train. Audrey takes in my wary expression.

  “Oh my god. You don’t want me to meet your foster parents,” she blurts, looking like she’s been slapped in the face.

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then what is it?” she presses, roughly wiping away what look like tears.

  “My folks aren’t super social.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s complicated. But it has nothing to do with you, I promise.” This, like most everything I tell Audrey, is not strictly the truth. But I can’t exactly say, My parents suspect you and your family of being part of a cult that wants to exterminate people like me and, also, your thug brother tried to rape me last year.

  “Forget it. It was a dumb idea anyway.” She turns so I can’t see her face. “Let’s just go talk to the dry cleaner like we planned.”

  “Audrey . . .”

  “They’re recent immigrants. That will be cool to learn about.”

  “Audrey, stop.”

  “I get it, Oryon. You’re ashamed of me. I would be too. I mean . . . my family, they aren’t sophisticated like yours probably is. My brother is a nightmare. And I know how you feel about my church. We’re just not the right sort of people. It’s fine. Mo
ving on.”

  I grab her hand and pull her close to me. I wrap both arms around her midsection and squeeze her tight to my chest. “Audrey. You are exactly the right sort of person for me.”

  Her body slackens, she presses her forehead into my shoulder.

  “You just have to trust me when I tell you this has nothing to do with you,” I continue. “And maybe someday, when things are different, I’ll be able to tell you everything. But for now, I just can’t. And I’m sorry. But know this: shame is the opposite of how I feel about you. If you’d let me, I’d tell the entire world that you were my girl.”

  Audrey sniffles, then rears back her head.

  “Let’s not get crazy,” she says, her blotchy-cry face breaking into a weak grin.

  On the way to the dry cleaner’s, I tell her I’m taking her on an extra-special Friday-night date. She agrees, with the condition that I meet her parents first, something they’re insisting on if I am going to spend time with their baby girl. After what just went down, I can’t really decline, so I say, “Sure thing,” and we plan a midweek dinner at Chez Alleged Abider, a place I’ve been to before, but never like this. I feel like the proverbial Trojan horse. Also, nervous as hell.

  CHANGE 2–DAY 138

  Though it’s hard, I’m sticking with my plan to keep my relationship with Audrey on the DL from my parental units. It’s our own secret affair, nobody’s business but hers and mine, certainly not Tracy’s or my folks’, who’d only worry that I was putting myself into a dangerous situation and breaking Changer rules. More to the point, why should I have to spill all the gory details about my private romance? Audrey has only ever been guilty by association, she’s never been anything but amazing to me and everybody else, and I’m sick of people speculating about her loyalties because her brother is a tyrant and her parents are possibly, maybe Abider sympathizers. Audrey is my business. I have this under control. And if that necessitates some mild duplicity on my part, well, welcome to Teenage Drama Island. All kids lie. At least I’m lying for a good reason.