by T Cooper
FIG. 3. RACHAS EMBLEM
STATIC. A non-Changer (i.e., the vast majority of the world’s population). Particularly sympathetic Statics are ideal mates for Changers later in life. Once a Changer has completed his or her Cycle (see Cycle, above), s/he will be fully prepared to assess various Statics’ openness and acceptance of difference. When a Changer feels certain that s/he has found an ideal potential Static mate, s/he may, with permission of the Council (see Changers Council, above), reveal her/himself to the Static. [Nota bene: This revelation can occur only after a Changer’s full Cycle is complete, and s/he has declared his or her Mono (see Mono, above).]
TOUCHSTONE. A Changer’s official mentor, assigned immediately upon a Changer’s transformation into her/his first V (see V, below). The same Touchstone is assigned for a Changer’s entire Cycle (see Cycle, above).
V. Any one of a Changer’s four versions of her/himself into which s/he changes during each of the four years of high school. Changers walk in the shoes of one V for each year of school (between the approximate ages of fourteen and eighteen).
Changers Book One: Drew
Please enjoy these opening pages
from the first installment in the Changers Series
Before he became the one he was meant to be, before he lived through those four years called high school, those four years where everything he ever knew evaporated into air, where the ground dropped away, and he fell in love, and he saw people die terrible pointless deaths, and he saved lives without even knowing how, and he did everything wrong until he got a few important things right, before he understood that he wasn’t any more chosen than anyone else (even though they told him otherwise), and harnessed his power, the power he never wanted, never believed he could comprehend, before any of that and a hundred other awful, wondrous, ruinous, magical things happened, he was just a kid in Tennessee named Ethan.
PROLOGUE
ETHAN
“Goodnight,” I say, and then “Geesh,” under my breath. It’s about the twentieth time Mom and Dad have come into my bedroom and wished me goodnight. Like they don’t want me go to sleep or something. It’s not like I’m enlisting, or getting married; it’s just high school. Every kid has a first day of high school. I know, I know, except for the ones who have to spend their days carrying water on their heads for twenty miles roundtrip to their families for survival, so they aren’t afforded the luxury of education. I just mean most regular American kids like me.
“We want you to know—” Dad starts, but then Mom interrupts.
“We love you, Ethan,” she blurts. There are tears in her eyes. Again. “You’ve been so great about this move, and your father and I . . . I guess we just want you to know how much we appreciate who you are.”
I hug and pat her (I admit, a little condescendingly) on the back. Hit the light switch over her shoulder. Then my dad gets in on the hugging, and now we’re man-hugging with me standing in nothing but my skull-and-crossbones boxers, and it’s getting a little too Lifetime Original Movies up in here, and suddenly I can’t remember whether I washed my favorite jeans or not, the skinny ones with the rip in the left knee from when I busted on my skateboard, attempting a simple kickflip off some stairs the day before we moved to Genesis, Arkantuckasee. Okay. It’s Genesis, Tennessee, but what’s the diff, really? There’s no art house theater here. No skate park. No cereal bar. It may as well be the moon. The moon with about a thousand fried chicken restaurants on it. Not that I have anything against chickens. Or frying them. But would it kill anyone to, I don’t know, open a decent taco joint?
They close the door, finally, and I jump into bed, pushing over our pit bull Snoopy, who stands and circles, then curls up at my feet, letting out a giant doggy-sigh, like I’ve really put him out by making him move over three whole inches. It’s only my second night in this room; I don’t even know the patterns the light plays against the walls yet. (I’d had it memorized in my old room in New York, where headlights moving left to right on my closet doors meant they were actually going right to left on the street.) The stitches in my knee are itching like mad. As in, I know I’m not supposed to scratch them, but not doing so is quite possibly going to send me to the loony bin. Come to think of it, I wonder where I’m going to get the stitches taken out, now that I can’t go to Dr. Reese anymore. “I delivered you into this world,” he says every time I’m in his office, “so don’t forget I can take you right out of it if you give your folks trouble.” (And then he sticks me with a needle.)
There are tons of boxes that still need unpacking—my drum kit all broken down and stored in the building’s basement. Weird how my entire old life is literally contained within four or five stacks of beat-up cardboard. My soccer participation trophies, my first broken board, even Lamby-cakes (the stuffed animal who apparently accompanied me home from the hospital the day I was born). Something makes me want to leave the boxes packed and just start over. You can, you know, I’m thinking to myself, lying on my back in the dark, cradling my head in my palms. Damn, my pits stink. I guess sex ed was no joke: Unsettling changes that are nonetheless completely natural. Nothing “natural” about the swamp funk swathing my entire body. Not enough deodorant in the world. I’ll shower in the morning.
Maybe I could just wake up tomorrow and be the dude I always wanted to be: confident, funny, tall (grew two inches over summer!). Got game with the ladies. Nobody here has to know that I’ve never gotten to second base, or that I sucked my thumb until fourth (okay, fifth) grade—or anything about me, really. Mom hasn’t even started putting up embarrassing family photos in the apartment yet, which is peculiar now that I’m thinking about it, because for as long as I can remember, our houses have always been filled with pictures of me staring back at myself through every year of my life. Sooo many bad haircuts.
I keep lying here, watching the occasional light dart in random directions across the walls, no rhyme or reason to it. Each flash startles me. Crazy to be living in some bland apartment complex outside a city I’ve never visited before. Crazy not to be able to skate down the block to Andy’s house and get an Orangina out of his fridge in the garage. Crazy I can’t sleep—I usually crash as soon as my head hits the pillow. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for giving me insomnia with your interminable “Goodbye and Goodnight” marathon.
I flip and flop, flip again. Flop one more time for good measure. It’s hot. And humid, even with the A/C on. This isn’t my normal pillow. This pillow sucks. I decide to make a list in my head of all the things I want to accomplish during freshman year:
1) Get a girlfriend. Like a real one. Not a girl who is a friend who calls to tell me all about the dude she’s crushing on who doesn’t even know she’s crushing on him and, by the way, should she get bangs?
2) Get really good at algebra. Kidding! I don’t give a donkey about algebra—except knowing enough of it that my parents don’t ride me about grades this year.
3) Complete a laser flip.
4) Make it onto a team. Don’t care which, so long as it’s athletic and not the debate team or robot-building club, or marching band, or something terminally Glee like that.
5) Lift weights/get muscles. Low-key muscles. Not too roided out or anything. I’m not an animal.
6) Get a girlfriend. Wait, I already listed that one.
That’s about it. And . . . ? I’m still not tired. What the hell is my problem? The stitches keep bugging me, and I’m trying desperately not to claw them out with my fingernails. I slap the wound with the flat of my hand. Doesn’t work—in fact, makes it itch even more. My stomach hurts. Not really hurts, more queasy. And I’m clammy. I better not be getting sick. Not for my first day. I toss off the sheets and go into the bathroom, pop on the light, and look at myself in the mirror. My cheeks are red. But my hair finally looks fly. Thank jaysus I got to a dope barbershop before we left New York.
I splash some water on my face. Stare at my reflection, check for any whiskers on my chin. Is that a little reddish one, glinting in the light on
the left next to the cluster of three freckles? Nope. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.
I guess my stomach feels a little better now. I go back into my room, dig Lamby-cakes out of a box. He needs a wash. He’s still kind of cute. But I will not bring him to bed with me. I’m three years too old for that. I put him on the desk where I can see him from bed.
Dang, I hate this pillow. Where’s my old pillow? I grab my iPod, cram the buds in my ears, and flop back into bed. I press shuffle. Another few lights shoot into the room, dart from wall to wall. I close my eyes, try to do that relaxing breathing thing I saw on Oprah when Mom was watching. Four-seven-eight. Or is it seven-four-eight? I breathe in for seven seconds, hold it for four, then exhale for eight. No, that can’t be right. Breathe in for four, hold it for seven, then exhale for eight seconds. Yeah, that’s it, that feels nice . . .
* * *
I can hear my mom and dad skulking around on the other side of my bedroom door. What’s going on with them? Is this their midlife crisis? Is Mom going to beg for another baby and Dad going to trade in his wagon for a (fingers crossed!) Z4 roadster convertible? I squint at the digital clock: 6:57. I have eighteen minutes of bliss left, and they’re ruining it.
I can hear Mom whisper, “Do you think he’s up yet?” but Dad doesn’t answer. I yank the sheet over my head just as the door opens. Silence. I know they’re watching me. I can almost hear them breathing. It’s getting humid under the sheet from my own dragon breath. When did my parents become stalkers? The door shuts. I listen a few more seconds to make sure I’m alone, then pull the sheet back down. I notice Snoopy’s not at the foot of my bed, where he is pretty much every morning I’ve woken up since we rescued him when I was seven. 6:58.
Next thing I know my alarm is stabbing into my brain, and for a split second, like it does every morning that a shrieking noise wakes me, the world feels like a horrible place, and living in it seems entirely impossible. I pull the crappy pillow off my face and paw at my end table until I land a finger on the clock, silencing it. 7:15. Yay, time to enroll in a giant, unfamiliar school and be the anonymous new loser in town. Getting lost on the way to classes, enjoying solo lunches in a corner of the cafeteria, fighting with impossible-to-open lockers, changing for gym class in front of dudes who look like NFL running backs. You know—general awesomeness.
I sit up, reach down for the black vintage Slayer shirt I’d left out on the floor the night before. Pull it over my head while stumbling toward the bathroom. My eyes are barely slitted as my head pops through the neckhole, and I catch a flicker of somebody in the full-length mirror behind the door—WHAT THE? Someone else is in the room with me. I manage to pry both eyes open. Hel-lo there. I pull my shirt all the way down and step a little closer to the mirror. She’s wearing the identical Slayer shirt, faded, with holes in exactly the same places. That blows; it was supposed to be one of a kind.
Wait, is this what my parents were fussing about? Some long-lost cousin or something? Some hillbilly relative come to live with us and enrich our lives with her down-home truisms and smoking hot, Daisy Dukes–wearing friends? Her name is probably “Brittney” or “Sunflower” or something innocent and dirty at the same time. This could be sweet.
I raise a hand, attempt a wave. She does the same. I rub my eyes like they do in cartoons, and look again. Cousin Brittney is kind of a babe, if I can say that in reference to a cousin without being too incesty about it. Long, straight, white-blond hair—the kind that doesn’t come in a bottle—and wide, wild green eyes, a nice body. A little shorter than me. She’s also . . . wearing my skull-and-crossbones boxers. That’s weird.
Enough Cirque du Soleil mime routine. I swing around to open with something like, “Hey, I’m . . .” But nobody’s there. I turn back to the mirror: Brittney’s still in it, looking at me. I step closer. She steps closer. I feel a whoosh in my stomach, like I could cough up a lung.
Okay, I get it. This is a dream, the weirdest freaking dream I’ve ever had. And it’s still going on. Duh, of course, because I was obsessing over getting a girlfriend before I fell asleep, now I’ve conjured myself an imaginary dream girl. Pathetic, sure. But hey, I’ll go with it. I reach out to touch her, and she reaches out to touch me. We get closer. My eyes float down to her chest. My fingertips touch her fingertips in the mirror, and then for some reason my hands do a U-turn and land on my own chest. I look down, start lifting up my collar to peek inside.
Holy . . .
“MOOOOM!!” I scream in a high voice that startles me.
My mom is in my room in seconds, takes one look at me, and commences jumping up and down like a three-year-old at a birthday party. She squeals over her shoulder to Dad, “It’s a girl!”
She starts hugging me and crying. In the mirror, I can see her hugging this girl, but I’m nowhere in the picture. I’m watching a movie with actors playing the parts. My knees buckle. My dad comes in, tears in his eyes too. It’s like I’ve come home from war. Everyone is so thrilled to see me—even the dog has poked his head into my room to see what all the commotion is about. I pull back.
“I’m not dreaming, am I?”
My mom shakes her head. I’ve never seen her weep so openly. “We didn’t know for sure you were going to change . . . ” she blubbers.
“So we didn’t tell you,” my dad finishes.
“Tell me what?”
They look at one another, and my mom sits down on the bed, gesturing for me to join her. I prefer to stand, cross my arms (soft flesh grazes my forearms, WTF?!), and lean against the wall. My dad wheels over the desk chair.
“Well, Eth—” my mom starts, but abruptly stops herself. “We hoped this would happen, but—”
“I’m Ethan!” I interrupt her, again in the squeaky voice I can’t control. “Why won’t you call me Ethan?” I sound like a Teletubby.
“But you never know if you’ll be chosen for sure,” Mom just keeps going.
“Chosen? Chosen for what? What are you talking about?” I ask, looking back and forth between them.
“Sit down,” Dad says, and I don’t want to, but I feel like I might face-plant if I don’t. “You’re a Changer.”
“A what?” I say, finally sitting. I notice Snoopy won’t come into the room.
“A Changer, sweetie,” Mom repeats.
“No, I’m an Ethan.”
They look at me pathetically.
“Changers are an ancient race of humans,” Dad says. “You are here for a purpose. To make the world better.”
“You’re crazy,” I say. “Are you punking me? Is this an elaborate practical joke? Because it’s not funny. It’s not funny at all.”
“I’m a Changer too,” Dad continues, speaking slowly and deliberately in the voice he usually reserves for our ninety-eight-year-old great-uncle. “Your mom’s a Static, and one day you’ll partner with a Static like her, and hopefully your child will be a Changer too.”
My head feels like it’s about to implode.
“You’re going to help make the world a better place!” Mom echoes rhapsodically, clearly having drunk the Kool-Aid.
I look into her glistening eyes, her sensible bob curling at the ends, just above her I Hiked the Grand Canyon! T-shirt. Which she never actually did. She said she bought it for the color. But it’s a lie. The shirt. Just like this must be.
“I don’t give a crap about the rest of the world. I just want to go to high school.”
“You will!” she blurts enthusiastically, like this is the best thing that’s ever happened in her entire life. “And on the first day of every school year, you’ll wake up a different person, and then live as that person for that whole year.”
“Wait, you mean this, this . . . thing is going to happen to me three more times?”
“Yes, and after graduation, you’ll choose who you want to be forever,” Dad adds, as though what he is saying doesn’t sound completely and certifiably crazy.
“Oh good, so after this trip into the bizarro world of unknown horrors,
I can go back to being me,” I say, relieved at the tiny light at the end of a four-year tunnel.
“No. You cannot choose to be the person you were before the changes started,” Dad says, shrugging a little, as if to say, I don’t make the rules. He sighs, pats down his hair, which he hasn’t brushed. It stays stuck in the air. A miniature teepee.
“This is bullshit!” I can tell I’m starting to piss Dad off. Mom tries to hug me again, but I dodge her.
“I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but this is an incredible gift you’ve been given,” she says. “You get to take a journey few are able to. Who hasn’t fantasized about being someone else?”
“Sure. Like Jay-Z. Or Tom Brady. Not a girl. A blond girl . . .” I can’t finish.
“Think of all the insight you’ll gain!” Mom says.
“Have you met any fourteen-year-olds, Mom? All those kids at the mall? Not shopping for insight!”
