Oryon

by T Cooper

  Thankfully, DJ has agreed to be my chauffeur and cover for the night. “I gotcha,” he said when I asked if he minded helping me out. And that was it. No prolonged inquiry. I’m feeling DJ more and more these days. Male friendship, man. So much simpler than the byzantine web girls weave where you never know what’s a trap until you walk into it and that sticky stuff gets caught in your hair.

  * * *

  For my meet-the-’rents hour of power I wear nice black skate pants, a white button-down, and a bow tie, which, on second thought, I remove just in case Audrey’s folks mistake me for a member of some other religion that freaks their business out. I opt for a more traditional long tie, and knot it loosely at the top, leaving the first button undone.

  On the way over I pick up some tulips for her mom and a box of truffles for dessert, the kind with a glittery ribbon around the box and the writing in liquid gold. When I get back in the car, DJ gives me a once-over and snickers. “You proposing?”

  “Well, it is the South,” I joke.

  DJ laughs and says, “I hope you’ve got your running shoes on, case her brother objects at the ceremony.”

  “I was kind of hoping you’d come in with me—you know, as backup,” I say, half serious.

  “I think that might be two black people too many. But I’ll say a little prayer on your behalf. Not that you need it.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “Nah. That girl is all about Oryon. I haven’t seen a chick that happy since, well, since every chick I’ve ever gone out with, but you know what I’m saying.”

  I try to swallow my grin, saying nothing for the rest of the ride, which isn’t that hard as DJ launches into a monologue about his next spoken-word event and how he wants to reinvent the genre, really shake up the whole paradigm, wake people up to the reality of race. “We are NOT a post-race culture, and anyone who believes that B.S. is either white, stupid, or both.”

  I don’t disagree. If you learn anything as a Changer, it’s that all the supposedly bygone stereotypes and prejudices are far from bygone. But tonight my mind is fixated exclusively on Audrey, and impressing her parents, whom, sure, I’ve already met, but not as a boy, a boy who wants to, ahem, date their daughter.

  “Have fun storming the castle!” DJ yells as he drops me off, giving me the thumb/pinkie call me sign as he drives away.

  I stand alone in the doorway, breathing deep to calm my nerves, testing my breath in my palm. I’m sniffing the cupped hot air when suddenly the door opens and Audrey and her mother and father are all standing there, squashed together like a pack of Twizzlers. Her parents eye me with transparent uncertainty, neither saying a word until Audrey nudges her mom and she snaps to and says, “You must be Oreo-on.”

  “Oryon, yes, so nice to meet you,” I gently correct, extending the same hand I just blew my possibly stinky breath into. “These are for you.” I push the tulips and chocolates in her direction, and Audrey coos beside her like she’s just been handed a puppy.

  “My, aren’t you a thoughtful young man,” her mom says, embracing the flowers and truffles and finally moving aside to make a sliver of room for me to cross the threshold. Her father is still sizing me up, and I turn to shake his hand but he swivels at the last second and avoids it, pretending not to have seen my outstretched palm—a Jason move if ever I’ve seen one. I guess the bigot doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

  The dinner was about what I expected. Stilted and knotty, with a side order of WTF. I tried to talk football with her dad, but he wasn’t really interested in anything I had to say beyond my intentions with Audrey. It hit me halfway through the meal (which was delicious, by the way: creamed corn, fried catfish, tomato, cucumber, and onion salad—Abiders or not, Aud’s mama can cook) that I was her first official boyfriend. And as such, they were none too pleased to see a black kid walk through the door, let alone one that (supposedly) cost Central an undefeated season. Her mom did her best to be welcoming, but it was in that Southern way where I could tell every time she said, “Bless his heart,” what she really meant was, Why in tarnation of all the boys on God’s green earth did my baby girl have to pick this one?

  There was a moment as I was babbling on nervously about the Peregrine Review project and the meaning of love when Aud’s mom sucked in her cheeks, tilted her head to Audrey, and whispered, “He’s so articulate.” All I could think was, I cannot wait to tell this to DJ.

  Aside from that, the meal went as well as could be expected, at least until Jason burst onto the scene, just back from the gym, where I can only imagine his grunts of exertion could be heard in outerspace.

  “Are you kidding me?” he snapped as soon as he saw me at the table.

  “Jason, I believe you already know our guest,” his mother tried. “Would you like to join us for some peach cobbler?”

  “I just lost my appetite,” he snarled, probably quoting a line he’d heard in some action movie.

  “I should be going anyway,” I say, rising and taking care to fold my napkin and set it beside my plate.

  “Gots to catch the bus, right, brother?” Jason sneers. “Where do you live at again?”

  “I’ll walk him out!” Audrey squeals, leaping from her chair and rushing to the door. I nod to her father, shake her mother’s hand again, and thank them for a “truly delectable meal.” Aud’s mother flushes and smiles shyly, and I can see in her where Audrey’s sweetness must have sprung from before life and circumstance tamped it down into so much dust.

  “Five minutes!” Audrey’s father shouts behind us as we shut the front door.

  “You were amazing,” Aud gushes as soon as we’re alone. She leans in for a kiss.

  I back away. “Are you crazy? Not the time or the place. They’re probably spying through the peephole.”

  “I don’t care,” she says, breaking into a daffy soft-shoe on the welcome mat. “My mama liked you, I could tell.”

  “Well, there’s one for the plus column.”

  “Her opinion is the only one that matters. To me, anyhow. My dad is probably just relieved I’m not a lesbian.”

  “So a black boyfriend trumps a white girlfriend?”

  “Depends on the day.” She grins, leans in again, whispers thickly into my ear, “Come on, kiss me.”

  “Get a room!” It’s DJ, pulling up just in time after getting my earlier text from the john.

  “Against all odds, I had fun,” I tell Audrey, giving her a chaste peck on the cheek. She stays in the doorway until we drive out of sight, waving as her outline shrinks and shrinks the farther we go, until she dissolves into a colorful bouncy speck.

  “Well?” DJ asks. “You survive?”

  “I did.”

  “All the fish in the sea, you gotta hook the one whose brother literally tried to stomp a mud hole in you? You must really love that girl to put up with that house of crazy.”

  “Everyone’s house is crazy in some way.”

  “Not like that,” he counters, and we both bust out laughing.

  “Don’t worry, this story is gonna have a happy ending,” I say.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen it,” I say—though as I say it, I remember that a happy ending isn’t what I saw at all.

  CHANGE 2–DAY 140

  I’m shopping at ReRunz for bowling shirts, when Chase spies me and lumbers over, his arms full of denim vests.

  “What’s up, my man?” he says. “In the market for an eighties throwback acid-wash?” He tilts his head toward the top of his denim haul, a nearly white, frayed-edged vest with a Def Leppard patch sewn crookedly on the corner.

  “I’m looking for something with a little less gonorrhea,” I say, using a single finger to push the pile of grody denim away. “Got any bowling shirts?”

  “For?” Chase asks.

  “Got a date,” I say, unable to control the smile breaking across my face.

  “Ah. Le affair,” Chase mumbles with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  “I’m taking her to karao
ke night at the Bowl-Me-Over in Nashville on Friday,” I keep on, even though it is clear Chase can’t be bothered with the details. I make my way toward the rack of vintage button-downs. Bingo: I spot a row of old bowling shirts.

  “You know, we could really use some extra bodies down at RaChas HQ these days,” he starts in, as I flick through the shirts. “Don’t know if you’ve heard, but a kid from my old high school disappeared over the weekend—nobody’s seen him since. Benedict’s received some intelligence that he’s been abducted and taken to an Abider reprogramming facility somewhere south of here.”

  “That sucks,” I say, pulling out a dark blue short-sleeved shirt with Bud baroquely stitched in yellow over the heart, and AGRESTO'S STEAK HOUSE silk-screened on the back. It’s probably the softest fabric I’ve ever felt. “Maybe he ran away?”

  “Not likely. Dude, it’s getting so bad that Turner and the Council are even asking for some help intercepting communications. So we’ve got some recon missions planned this weekend, and we need man power.”

  I shrug on the shirt. “I’ve got plans, obviously,” I say, checking myself out in the mirror beside us. It fits me perfectly. Now I just have to find one for Audrey.

  “Really?” Chase chides, coming and standing directly behind me in the mirror, his body easily twice my size. “We’re planning a counterrevolution and all you’re worried about is bowling?”

  “I’m also worried about Skee-Ball,” I respond. But Chase isn’t laughing. I step away from the reflection, grab a maroon shirt, pull it out, see John embroidered on the pocket, put it back. “Dude, I thought you understood. Not that long ago, you were all up with my breaking the Changers rules, calling me a rebel.”

  “Rebel lite,” he corrects.

  I keep sorting through the rack in front of me, where I spy a hot-pink bowling shirt with the name Flo stitched on the front above a black poodle wearing red lipstick. It looks like it will fit Audrey perfectly. “I don’t know, man. I’m just not sure some trumped-up revolution is where I want to be spending my energy. I need to focus on positive elements in my life right now.”

  “What you need to focus on is the future. Your future, our future,” Chase says, “instead of getting in that girl’s panties.”

  “Screw you,” I shoot back, ripping the shirt off the rack. I suddenly want to punch him. Like, hard—and right in his smug face.

  He puffs up his chest a little, crosses his arms, squares up in front of me. “Screw me? Screw you.”

  Is he daring me to come at him or something? Because that’s clearly not what I’m going to do, especially not with bowling shirts draped over my arm like I’m the maître d’ of towels. I step back, take a deep breath. “Listen, no offense to you or your mission, but life’s finally good. I’m happy. Someone seems to love me. I might even love myself a little bit.” I pause before deciding to really go for it: “And as you know intimately, that’s not something that happens to me much.”

  Chase uncrosses his arms and sighs.

  “It might be nice to talk about stuff like we used to,” I say when he stays silent. “You know, stuff that doesn’t involve Abiders and RaChas and the breakdown of society and my presumed higher purpose.”

  Chase cocks his head exaggeratedly. “What’s more important than the fact that you’re being a traitor to your race?” he poses in what seems like all seriousness, but can’t actually be, can it? “You just enjoy your passing privilege. And let the rest of us worry about making the world safe for people like you to love yourself in the first place.” He practically spits on the word love. It feels like a knee to the groin.

  “What do you want from me?” I growl, feeling stupid now about the bowling, about my happiness, about everything that minutes ago seemed like it mattered. I struggle to catch a breath. “What do you freaking want, Chase?”

  “I want you to wake up,” he says with clear contempt. “There’s a war going on, Oryon. And you don’t even know you’re on the front line.”

  CHANGE 2–DAY 143

  Worst day as Oryon so far.

  Second worst day of my entire life.

  (Or maybe it’s tied with my worst day as Drew. Jury still out on this one.)

  Ethan? His worst day was probably dropping his swirly rainbow lollipop while riding a merry-go-round compared to this horror show.

  Date night last night, right? I cared about little else all week. Planned everything to the nth degree, packed my backpack: the two vintage bowling shirts (laundered to get the funk of fifty million years out of them), a bottle of bubbly apple cider with two fancy plastic champagne flutes, two gothic-looking candlesticks I scored at the Salvation Army, and brand-new tall white candles to go in them. I even stuck a stick of deodorant into the bag so I could freshen up and change before Audrey’s mom drove us into Nashville.

  Aud had to go to a yearbook meeting, so I killed some time skating with the usual suspects who hang out at the strip mall after school. Jerry was there, as well as DJ (who can’t shred but is writing some new poetry about the utopia of the drop or some shizz). There was also this hip fifties-looking throwback dude named Cal who’s been filming us for these sick skate films he makes in different cities around the country. He was in the area for a couple weeks visiting his cousins, and asked me and Jerry to sign a release, which felt very Hollywood.

  DJ and a couple friends were off to the side, him sitting on his board and them on bikes just shooting the bull or whatever, and Jerry and I kept attempting a grind off this high cinder-block wall and onto a handrail behind the Toot N Tote-um convenience store. I’d fallen about a dozen times, checking my watch between wipe-outs for five o’clock when I could meet up with Audrey.

  I tell Cal to start recording because I’m going to stick this next one . . . which I do. Spectacularly. DJ launches off his board, shrieks, “Sexxxyyy!” and comes hopping over, patting me on the top of my head in celebration.

  “Did you get it?” I shout to Cal, breathless, as he gets up and dusts off his stiff jeans and crisp white T-shirt, re-smoothing an errant strand of hair into his always on-point pompadour.

  He nods, like he knows exactly where that clip is going to go in his next film.

  Jerry comes over, slaps my hand too. “Sweet. I’m parched.” He nods toward the convenience store doors, where these three kids I vaguely recognize from our school just entered, rowdy in the way teenagers always seem to get on Friday afternoons.

  So Jerry, DJ, and I go inside the Toot N Tote-um, which is packed with about twenty kids from school, all running amok, some squirting fake runny cheese over stale corn chips, others serving themselves Coke and cherry Icees, others trying to convince older people to buy them cigarettes and chaw. I head for the cooler, grab an orange Gatorade for me, a blue one for Jerry, tossing it to him soon as he rounds the corner already munching from a bag of spicy Cheetos. DJ is scanning the electronics aisle for a charger for his cell.

  I gulp down half the bottle, and it splashes on the front of my T-shirt, but I’ve got a clean white undershirt and the bowling shirt to change into, so I just keep chugging. I’m reviewing everything in my head, checking if I have everything I need, and then it dawns on me that I forgot a lighter for the candles. So I head over to the checkout counter, sort through the lighters beside the register. There are red ones, blue ones, yellow ones, and of course the ever-popular around these parts camo-colored lighters, because a lighter is definitely something you want to have to search really hard for when you need it.

  “He’ll take this one,” DJ says, plucking a Confederate flag lighter from a different carton and adding it to my pile of items. He smirks at the cashier, his oversized Only Tupac Can Judge Me T-shirt on full display beneath his unzipped hoodie. The dudes from our school leave then, along with three girls who had been eating in the store. They make a giant racket, pushing one another, tossing food back and forth, generally being obnoxious. Even the girls. The clerk squints at them while beginning to ring me up.

  “You must be eighteen to
buy cigarettes,” he says in a thick Indian accent, but doesn’t even look at me.

  “I don’t want any cigarettes,” I say, puzzled.

  His eyes dart toward a different group of kids, Icees splattering on the linoleum tile beneath the machine. “Dennis!” he calls to the bored-looking kid in an apron who works in the store. “Mop in beverages!”

  I pay for all my things, including Jerry’s Gatorade (because I owe him one), and then stuff the lighter into my backpack, plus the Hershey’s bars I tossed into the pile at the last minute, in the event Audrey wanted a little chocolate with her “champagne.”

  Behind me DJ pays for his charger, tucks it into the pocket of his hoodie, and we walk out, Jerry trailing close behind, skipping his board on the ground with every other step, like a cane.

  “So what you got on tap tonight?” DJ asks knowingly, digging into Jerry’s Cheetos. “Or should I ask, who you gonna tap tonight?”

  “Suck it,” I say.

  “Bet you’d like to say that to her,” DJ counters.

  “I don’t know how you landed Audrey Stewart,” Jerry chimes in. “I thought she dug chicks.”

  “My milkshake brings all the girls to the yard,” I start singing, and DJ punches me hard in the shoulder. I check my watch. “I gotta split!”

  It is then that I spot over DJ’s shoulder the dude from the Toot N Tote-um running out of the store, yelling, “You stole! You stole!” He’s pointing at me and DJ.

  We start laughing.

  “What?” DJ asks, like, This has got to be a joke.