by T Cooper
“Those are some soft lips, captain!” Aaron shouts over the din, saluting, inspiring even more laughter. Audrey is beaming, and I’m a little high myself, so proud of Aaron for finally caring more about who he is than what everyone else wants him to be.
By now, the teachers have heard the drama and are pouring onto the scene, pushing kids aside and trying to get everyone to calm the heck down. Before they can reach us, though, Jason clambers over the table, Peregrine Reviews flying left and right, and punches Aaron so hard in the teeth that he flies back and thuds against a row of lockers like a giant sack of flour.
Aaron slides to the floor and Audrey races over, dropping to the ground beside him, as a giant, unlikely grin spreads across his bloody face.
“Oh my god. Are you okay?” Audrey moans.
“Totally worth it,” he mumbles through cracked and red lips.
* * *
After school, Audrey and I went to the Freezo to celebrate. Our award, yes, but also her brother’s at-long-last suspension from school for the rest of the week. And Aaron’s de facto coming out. And each other.
I won’t lie. I did think for a minute about last year around this time, sitting in the same booth at Freezo across from Chase. It seemed so long ago. Lifetimes. I was lost in the memory when I heard Audrey’s voice bringing me back.
“Did you hear me?”
“What?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Of course,” I lie.
“What was it?” She wipes the corners of her lips, licks her dip-cone.
“Ice cream is awesome?”
“No.”
“Well, it is,” I say, leaning in for a kiss.
It is just as I am pulling back that she says it. “I think I might love you,” she murmurs, unable to look me in the eye.
I am so flooded that even right now as I’m trying to recall them, I can’t be sure those were the exact words she used. But I am choosing to believe they were.
CHANGE 2–DAY 220
Nana fell in the bathroom of her condo this morning.
She fractured her left wrist and cracked her head on the side of the tub, sitting there for an hour before she could make her way to a phone to call for help. An ambulance finally came and took her to the hospital. She needed three stitches on her head, but luckily they could just set and cast her wrist without having to perform surgery. It turned out to be just a concussion—no internal bleeding inside her brain—but her doctor wanted to keep her in the ER so they could keep an eye on a “small spot” that came up in her CAT scan.
What a “small spot” is, I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound great. Spots rarely are.
The thought of her lying there bleeding on the bathroom floor for a whole hour confused, scared, more alone than perhaps any other time in her life, it makes my chest ache. I feel my own helplessness about it, realizing I’m impotent to do anything about her falling, getting older, suffering, dying. I just have to sit back and watch what happens.
Sometimes I wonder how any of us walk around without fixating on the inevitabilities of life. It’s a miracle we manage to shove all that reality under the mat and worry about tank tops and touchdowns and haircuts and homeroom and other pointless crap instead. At least we do until something like this happens, and it cracks a hole in the wall, and the light floods in and it’s like, oh yeah, I see it now, there’s the stuff that counts, the stuff we can’t do eff-all about.
Mom and Dad just left to be with Nana; they’re driving all night. It was all a chaotic blur as soon as the phone rang from the hospital, but while they were throwing bags together, I overheard them talking seriously about trying to bring her back with them. She doesn’t want to go into a nursing home, or an “assisted care facility,” as Dad keeps calling it. She also doesn’t want to leave her apartment complex—and certainly not Florida, because all of her friends are there. And Burt Reynolds, or so she thinks.
It’s all up in the air now though, because first things first: she needs to get well and out of the hospital. I wish Changers had the magical quick-to-heal thing going for their whole Mono lives, and not just during their Cycles. Because Nana could really use that power now. She’d be up and playing canasta with her blue-haired buddies in a couple weeks instead of, well, I guess we don’t know. Thinking about that makes it feel like a giant lump of clay is stuck at the base of my throat and I can’t cough it up or swallow it down.
“I’m really going to need you to step up to the plate,” Dad said right before he and Mom took off.
They left me home alone because the Peregrine Review newspaper interview is tomorrow during school, and both were so proud when they heard about the award, the last thing they wanted was for me to miss the opportunity to celebrate my hard work. (They were slightly less thrilled that Audrey was my partner on the project, but they understood that it was an “official school activity” that we of course couldn’t have assigned to ourselves. I told them to blame Unckie Crowell.)
“I’m counting on you to do the right thing,” said Dad, really working his parental clichés.
“I will,” I promised, trying to wriggle out of his vice grip on my shoulders.
“No, I’m serious,” he said. “This is the first time you’ll be on your own like this, and we need you to take care of Snoopy and the apartment, and handle your business.” (I was going to make a dirty joke about that last bit, but I could see in his eyes how uneasy he was about Nana and that this wasn’t the time or place for masturbatory humor.)
“Tracy’s here if you need her,” Mom piped in, a squeaky wheelie bag rolling behind her. She collected her date book and laptop from the kitchen table, adding, “And Dad and I will be back this weekend to get you, or maybe only one of us will be back. I don’t know, we have to see what the situation is and, well, you get it, right?” I could sense she too felt anxious and also guilty for leaving me behind.
“Got it,” I said, hugging Mom and then taking her bag from her and rolling it out to the hallway.
“Don’t forget to take out the trash,” Dad added, scrunching up his nose, purportedly about the reek of the trash, but his tone made it seem more like I’d done something wrong before I’d even had the chance to prove myself worthy of all this new responsibility.
“And bathe,” Mom said. “I don’t want you smelling like a goat when I get home. There’s forty bucks on the table. Be good. Eat something besides frozen pizza, an apple, something . . .” she continued rattling off as Dad picked up his briefcase and duffel, glancing around the kitchen as though he was saying goodbye for a long time.
A moment that, to tell the truth, chilled me. I felt sixteen years young in that second. I mean, I’d stayed home when they’d been out to dinner here and there, or even spent whole solo weekend days in our old house when I was Ethan and every neighbor in a five-mile radius was on a first-name basis with my mother, but this was the first time they’d left me overnight and gone so far away.
“I love you,” Mom said when she joined me in the hall. “You okay?”
“Sure,” I fibbed. “I’m just worried about Nana.”
Dad pulled the door behind him, nudging Snoopy’s nose back into the apartment so he could shut it all the way. “We all are.”
“Call me and tell me how she is?” I asked.
“Of course,” Mom said. “Keep your phone on you. If I call or text and you don’t answer, the National Guard is going to be banging down this door—and trust me, you don’t want any part of that.”
CHANGE 2–DAY 221
“And do you two know from personal experience,” the reporter asked, “what true love is?” She quickly glanced down to make sure her recorder was indeed taping for what she seemed to hope would be the juiciest part of her Nashville Times interview with us in Principal Redwine’s office.
Audrey and I made eye contact for a split-second before both looking away.
“Uh,” Aud groaned.
“Uh,” I grunted at precisely the same time.
>
Then the three of us—Audrey, me, and the nice reporter with the long (fake) eyelashes and meticulous bob—all laughed nervously together for way too long.
“Well?” she prompted us again, not letting it go. “Do I take that as a yes?”
“Off the record?” I thought to ask, voice warbly.
“Well, that’s not my preference,” she replied, and I could feel Audrey’s eyes boring a shame hole into the side of my face.
“Yes, go on, by all means,” Aud finally said, making a point of kicking back in the principal’s cozy leather recliner and knitting her fingers together behind her head.
“Off the record . . .” I started, but just couldn’t seem to finish.
And mercifully, after a few more uncomfortable wordless seconds of Audrey and I squirming and giggling and being worse interview subjects than Justin Bieber, the reporter moved on to some other topic, something bland and generic and way easier to blab about than our FEELINGS FOR EACH OTHER. That’s why the greeting card industry exists, lady. Geez.
Later we were excused from class so a photographer could pose us awkwardly in various staged settings: Aud pointing at a list of literary terms on the chalkboard and me sitting on a desk in front of her clutching a clipboard and pen; us walking up the front steps of school, me toting my skateboard, Aud with a backpack slung over her shoulder acting like I’d just uttered the funniest quip in all of high school-dom; and finally, the two of us juggling giant stacks of the Spring edition of Peregrine—passing out issues in the hallway to a handful of preselected kids supposedly living for it. (A bit of a departure, obviously, from the less family-friendly reality of what went down when we actually distributed copies of the magazine in the hallway a few days earlier. On that note, with Jason banished from campus for his suspension, it was as though a foreboding, Axe body spray–scented fog had completely lifted from Central High, and both Audrey and I could breathe completely unencumbered for the first time all year. Maybe ever, at least on campus. Man, that felt good.)
* * *
But none of that is what I want to be Chronicling about right now. Maybe I’m trying to get it down and out of the way because it’s concrete, it actually happened. I saw the shots on the photographer’s digital camera, and the reporter confirmed that her story would indeed appear in next Sunday’s Education supplement of the newspaper.
While what’s happening NOW, as I’m thinking this, as I’m Chronicling this, is completely UNREAL and abstract, even though I’m awake living and breathing it, lying here trying to be completely still while holding her so close to me, hearing the ever-so-slight whistle of air rushing in and out of Audrey’s adorable nose which is currently hovering over the general vicinity of my right pectoral muscle. I’m trying not to twitch or stir or even look down so as not to wake this perfect angel who is sleeping so peacefully with her cheek against my bare skin.
Hold up, back up, rewind, right?
Let me try to unpack the whole wonder of it all. Deep breath. And . . . here . . . we . . . go!
Basically: Dad called and said Nana was out of the hospital and resting comfortably in her condo. She told them she “didn’t want to croak anywhere but my own bed,” which, while dramatic, definitely shut down the assisted-living conversation. I assured Dad I’d be fine staying alone through the weekend. Mom got on the line and equivocated, worrying that I’d be bored, scared, or possibly feel abandoned. I insisted none of these things were the case, that I was fine, was really enjoying some time alone, Snoopy was watered and fed, I’d eaten two bananas, all was under control and would remain so. If I felt lonesome I’d have dinner with Tracy and Mr. Crowell. (There was no way the latter was happening, but saying it seemed to make Mom feel better.)
They promised one of them would be back by Sunday night, Monday at the latest. So I was going to be on my own until then. Or was I?
Feeling high after Audrey’s and my Central High literary victory tour earlier today, I scribbled a quick, reckless note and passed it to her after school when we were saying goodbye:
My parents are gone this weekend. I’m all alone. [Sad face] Can you make an excuse to sleep out tonight? Not assuming anything (I’ll stay on the couch!), just want to cuddle up with you and my dog and about a hundred bags of mildly burned microwave popcorn with the fake butter and watch the shizz out of some old-time movies. Whatdya say, little lady? [Hopeful face]
She scanned the note quickly in front of me, both of us by habit keeping watch around us for fear of Jason or his crew popping up and running their redneck interference. But nobody seemed to pay us any mind during the rush of the Friday-afternoon jailbreak, and then, to my incalculable surprise, as soon as Audrey finished the note, she folded it up and stuck it back in her pocket and said quietly, “Okay.”
Just like that.
And, just like that, I was on the verge of breaching yet another Changer tenet, and this one’s a doozie: Don’t bring anybody to your place of residence, because that may be your home for all four years of high school, and you need to be on the DL, since four different people can’t be living in the same house or apartment now, can they? (That’s my paraphrase of the tenet, anyway.)
Oh well, I quickly made a deal with myself, I’ll just not bring her home any other year. Who even knows if she’ll want to be friends with me as my future Vs, and to be honest, who the heck cares? We could all slip in the bathroom and have brain aneurysms or get hit by the proverbial bus and there I would be, skipping the dessert cart for no good reason. There was no way I was going to consider anything but the present, and how Audrey’s face betrayed just the hint of a mischievous smile when she whispered, “Give me a couple hours to figure it out. Meet you at Starbucks at seven.”
Which is how I’ve ended up where I am right this second, with Audrey pressed up against me in my bed, the room completely quiet, still, and dark—but for the occasional passing headlight I can spot through the slits in the blinds. Snoopy’s curled at our feet, snoring, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world for Audrey to be sharing the bed with us like this.
Please note: I shall be following Nana’s afore-Chronicled gentlemanly rule to the word here.
But . . .
OH MY FRACKING GOD, it felt good. To be so completely and utterly—so undeniably—close to Audrey. Nobody, nothing between us.
Sure, neither of us knew what in Yeezus’s name we were doing, but once we admitted that to one another and starting laughing our butts off instead of trying to take every little maneuver and moment so seriously like they do in the movies, simply put: Audrey and I fit perfectly. Like I knew we would from the second Drew set eyes on her in homeroom last year. Together we made a new color. And that transcended who I happen to be right now, a guy who was a girl who was really a guy who was in love with a girl.
It’s getting downright Shakespearean in here, but my point is that love is not about gender or sex, or whatever you want to call it. As in, Mom was kind of right, Tracy was kind of right, and I’m sure The Changers Bible, in its way, is right, though they probably wouldn’t exactly approve of how I’m learning the lesson.
It’s almost eerie: I’m not Oryon or Drew or even Ethan as I’m with Audrey right now, and she isn’t really Audrey either. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she is Audrey, which makes me feel all manner of things I never knew imaginable in one body, much less three, but I guess what I’m saying is, what I’m thinking as I’m lying here next to her with my arm hooked around her like this, is—
Wait, what am I thinking?
What am I doing thinking at all? I’m just feeling. Feeling the most satisfied I’ve ever felt in my life.
Who cares whether I feel like Drew or Oryon or freaking Ryan Gosling holding Audrey?
Oh man. She’s stirring now. What do I do? She jerks, as though awakening from a nightmare, then rolls to face me.
“Are you thirsty?” I ask super quietly, like I’m green-side at a golf tournament.
“A little, I guess,” she whispers bac
k, her voice scratchy.
I gently pull my arm out from under her neck and she rolls in the opposite direction so I can get out of bed and scramble to yank on my crumpled boxers.
“Shy,” she says.
I stand up and look back down at her, just her face on the pillow visible beneath the covers she’d yanked up after me.
“You are the most beautiful perfect thing I’ve ever seen or known of in this world,” I say.
“Shut up!” she chides, and for a second I am crushed, but then she’s laughing again, and I’m laughing again, and bounding off toward the kitchen to fetch her a nice, tall drink of water.
“What happened to your butt?” she shouts when I reach the door.
Oh shite. My Changers emblem.
“I bit it skating the other day,” I recover. “You know, ripped my shorts.”
God, I hate lying to her—especially after . . .
“Be right back.”
“I’ll be here,” Audrey answers, turning over to make kissy-face noises at Snoopy, who wags his tail while commando-creeping to the warm spot I just vacated beside her. I certainly can’t blame him.
CHANGE 2–DAY 221, PART TWO
“What the hell is this?” I heard, shrieky and terrifying, the second I walked into the room holding a glass of juice and a glass of water. Snoopy leapt off the bed and skittered out the door. For a second I thought there had to be a mouse or cockroach or something, or that Audrey was messing with me; I couldn’t imagine what she could be talking about.
But then I saw it: looped through her fingers was the silver bracelet with a drum-kit charm on it, the one she’d given me at the end of last school year when I was Drew.
