Oryon

by T Cooper

  “World religions could benefit from a little more Changer philosophy, IMHO,” she continues, pulling farther ahead. “But that’s perhaps a discussion for a later time.”

  “Awesome. Can’t wait.”

  Tracy stiffens at the sarcasm. This probably isn’t her best day either. Not that I care. Because I totally don’t.

  “Soon you’ll realize that you’ve been put here to serve a much higher purpose,” she says, taking a few more steps before adding, “I know this is scary. I was scared too. But if you just trust me and give it a little time, everything will make sense in a way it never has before.” Her eyes dart around in every direction. “We need to find a private place.” She starts walking even faster.

  “Listen,” I say, trailing, “it’s just, it feels like I’ve landed in the middle of Siberia, and everybody’s shouting at me in angry Russian.” As I talk, my eyes well up again. I try to concentrate on the ground and keeping my idiotic floppy shoes on.

  “I know,” Tracy sighs, making what seems like a conscious decision to share something personal in return, like it probably says to do in the Touchstone Handbook companion to The Changers Bible. “I remember thinking my parents were acting so strange. My mom, especially, was a robot. She’s the Changer, my dad’s a Static.”

  “My dad’s the Changer,” I offer somberly, then quickly add, “apparently,” because I don’t know what’s real anymore.

  For the first time since I met her, Tracy lets some silence blossom in the air between us, and I start feeling like I should be a little nicer. Having determined which way we’re headed, she leads me past the Speed Queen Laundromat, a KenJo gas station, and a convenience mart. We cross the parking lot where I’d skated two days before while we were waiting for the moving van to show up. I can feel moisture building up beneath my jog bra, which is starting to itch.

  “You’ll want to know about this place,” Tracy says, pointing out ReRunz, a used clothing store at the far corner of the plaza. “You can buy and sell there at the beginning and end of each year, and they always have current fashions for like, less than half of what you’d pay new.”

  The two window displays on either side of the door are decorated in a back-to-school theme, and I spot a really nice, worked-in pair of brown Carhartts on the boys’ side of the display. But, I remember with dread, that is not the side of the display I’m supposed to be looking at anymore. There is nothing on the girls’ side that interests me, not a single stitch of clothing, not a belt, a shirt, nothing—except maybe the purple pair of Vans the broken mannequin is sporting. I didn’t even know they made girls’ Vans.

  Tracy gets closer, whispers, “A couple of Changers in this region work there after school, it’s kind of an unofficial outfitter, if you will. Anyway, at your first mixer next month, you’ll see who’s there and then you’ll recognize each other from the meeting, and I bet they’ll hook you up with a discount.”

  We continue around behind the building, a seemingly popular shortcut to school because there is a well-worn dirt trail snaking through the weeds and strewn with broken glass, crushed and faded Red Bull cans, splintered pens and pencils, a few cigarette butts.

  “Over here,” she says, walking with purpose. “Do you have any questions you want to ask me before we get there?”

  Any questions doesn’t cover it. “Uh, are you going to be in school with me?” I ask weakly.

  “No. I graduated from Central two years ago—valedictorian!” she chirps.

  No kidding.

  “I could have gone to Yale, but I elected to stay on as a Touchstone. I work for the Council now,” she babbles on.

  “Sounds fun.”

  “I find it supremely rewarding. So you know, I changed into Tracy in the tenth grade, and let me tell you, the minute I opened my eyes on Change 2–Day 1, I knew she was going to be The One.”

  “You mean the you that you’re supposed to pick after graduation?”

  “Yeah, my Mono, which is the V you’re going to live as forever, after you’ve experienced all four,” she instructs. “I’ve heard other Changers say they felt something like that too, almost like a tingle along your spine or something. But don’t worry if you don’t feel it now, or ever—you’ll figure out your Mono when it’s time.”

  I try to take in what she’s saying, but the out-of-control flutter in my chest is somewhat distracting. “So, to recap: you’re telling me I’m actually going to be this Drew person for just a year, and I can’t tell anybody, and can’t make any real friends because I can only know them for a year anyway—well, as far as they know. And then I’m just going to disappear and come back next year as some other random person, and essentially I have no choice in the matter? I’m just stuck here at the corner of Life and Sucks?”

  The queasy, gonna-yak feeling in my stomach surges back.

  “I guess you could see it that way,” Tracy answers, calmly. “But it’d be great if you in fact did make friends and embrace life to the fullest. Time is relative. You are only just entering the possibility of being.”

  “And that means . . . ?”

  “Don’t stress so hard. High school is tough for everyone. Just be yourself.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to be myself if I don’t even know who myself is?”

  “Release the story you are telling yourself,” she insists, sounding like the cult member she keeps insisting she’s not. “You know who you are.”

  “No, I don’t,” I argue, stopping in my tracks just as the façade of the high school appears behind an abandoned Quonset hut with a crooked sign on it: Lube, Flush, A/C, Oil Change.

  “You need to get enrolled, and you don’t want to be late,” she says, adjusting her tone and the subject. We hear a couple kids coming up the path behind us. “And there’s one last item we need to take care of before I let you go.” She glances toward the Quonset hut, then takes off toward it. When I don’t follow, she turns around and rapid-flaps her hand at me.

  “For a fairy godmother, you’re bordering on lame,” I say, my voice cracking on the last word.

  The kids pass behind me, and after an appropriate pause which I’m hoping makes a point, I plod toward Tracy, who’s just entering the hut. Once inside, it’s obvious from the vintage rusted car parts sitting around, the old garage hasn’t been used since the Bee Gees were getting laid.

  Tracy removes her backpack and takes out a frilly looking handkerchief, carefully spreading it atop a dirty work bench. She proceeds to remove a few silver medical-looking instruments from her backpack, arranging them on the fabric. “Shut the door behind you.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just shut it,” she repeats, and now she’s snapping a rubber glove onto her left hand.

  Before I nudge the broken door shut, I peek out and glimpse a few more kids mindlessly heading up the path that leads to school. Their biggest worries are finding the right classrooms and generally not making fools of themselves. I squeeze my eyes tight and wish I could go back to being one of them.

  When I open my eyes, Tracy is straightening the instruments and checking her inventory, referring to a page of a small pamphlet.

  “Okay, I don’t know what weirdness you’re doing,” I say, “but I have to get to class, so I guess I’ll just be seeing you around?” I put my hand on the door.

  “The Council has one more requirement before you are allowed to proceed with this V.” She is sounding like an android now, and quite frankly, not that I couldn’t take her, because I totally could, but . . . she’s kind of scaring me.

  Tracy picks up a small, high-tech pillbox-looking doo-hickey, presses the thumb of her right ungloved hand on the top of it, and it seems to scan her print, then beeps. The top flips open.

  “I don’t want to be this . . . whatever it is!” I shout. My voice echoes in the cavernous shop.

  She snaps on a second rubber glove, carefully extracts from the box a tiny piece of metal the size and shape of a grain of rice. She holds it aloft, pinched
between thumb and forefinger, studies it closely. “Change happens to everyone, Drew. You might as well embrace it.”

  “But I didn’t ask for this. It’s not fair!”

  “Drew . . .” Tracy’s shoulders rise and fall as she inhales deeply and exhales slowly. “You’ve been chosen. Ours is not to wonder why, but to embrace the opportunity.” She picks up a large stainless-steel-syringe type of contraption and loads the rice grain into the top of it, inspects the tip, and looks squarely at me.

  I’m not Drew is all that’s going through my head. I’m not Drew, I’m not Drew, I’m not Drew. I consider bolting, making a break for home, but I have a feeling my folks—not to mention “The Council”—would have a few things to say about my not accepting this important mission I’ve been blessed with. Why couldn’t this have been something simple, like being bitten by a radioactive spider that suddenly transforms me into a human-arachnid hybrid that can catch criminals and make chicks fall in love with me?

  “Drew, as I’m trying to tell you, there’s one more key component of Change 1–Day 1.”

  “Yes?”

  “The Chronicles,” she says, screwing a capped needle onto the end of the syringe. My eyes must be popping, because Tracy adds, “You’ll barely feel it.”

  “Uh-uh,” I say, backing away. “No ma’am.”

  “All Changers are required to keep a journal through the course of every Change. At the end of your cycle, after graduation but before your Forever Ceremony, you’ll be given the Chronicles containing the entries you wrote during the four years of your lives—so you’ll be better informed before declaring your Mono.”

  I back toward the wall, keeping my eyes on the needle.

  “Chronicling is a crucial aspect of the process,” she rambles on. “It’s an essential human tendency to forget who we were on the way to becoming who we’re going to be.”

  “Do you even hear yourself?” I’m sweating more now, wondering if I ran how soon my sneakers would fly off, and whether I could make it home anyway.

  “Trust me, you’re going to want to remember every single thing you went through as your four V’s. Picking your Mono is the most important decision of your life. Well—” she stops, blushes.

  “What?”

  “I was just going to say, picking your Mono is the most important decision you’ll make—until it comes time to pick your Static mate,” she explains, and it’s clear she wants me to ask her about it. Which I will not do. “I’ve got my eye on someone kind of special—”

  “I’m not good at keeping a diary,” I interrupt. “In seventh grade we had to write about our feelings for Human Development, and I forgot every week.”

  “Well, the best part about Chronicling is that you don’t have to do anything but think,” she says, carefully unsheathing the needle. Which. Is. Enormous. Thick as a porcupine quill. I suddenly realize the rice grain is supposed to get pushed through that needle.

  “You’re not sticking me with that thing,” I say.

  “The technology is amazing,” she continues, ignoring my protests. “All you do is think what you want to say, and it gets recorded into your file and securely stored in the mainframe. Hold up your hair.”

  I shake my head.

  “Come on, Drew, stop being such a baby. Turn around.”

  I slowly begin gathering my hair, but the strands are so weblike and wild, it feels like I’ll never be able to contain it all. I’m Medusa. If only, so I could turn this girl to stone and bail. Tracy nudges me with an elbow, and I slowly give her my back.

  “The more relaxed you are, the less you’ll feel this,” she mumbles, ripping open something between her teeth and the fingers not wielding the giant syringe. I feel cool moisture at the base of my neck, where Tracy is rubbing really hard, scrubbing me raw with alcohol like I’m some dirty gutter punk. It smells like Dr. Reese’s office. “Just breathe. In and out, big deep breaths.”

  I inhale and exhale for a few cycles while she futzes behind me, flips through the pamphlet some more. I’m getting light-headed.

  “It can take as little as five minutes a day,” she says, placing a hand on my head. “Or it can take as long as you want. But every day, at some point, you need to put some time into thinking about who you are and what’s happening to you—just focus your attention on it and you’ll know when you’re recording. Lean your head forward a little.”

  “Will it come out, like, complete sentences, or just thoughts, or fragments or—”

  “Just think of it as recounting what happens to a really close friend, someone you don’t hide anything from. Or if it helps at first, imagine you’re capturing the story of this new person’s life, like a character. But the person is you. Okay, here goes. Really deep breath . . .”

  After a few more seconds I feel the beginnings of what seems like a scalpel carving an incision into the base of my neck—this goes way beyond a “prick”—and soon after, the oddest sensation comes over me, almost like gears churning at the base of my brain. I can feel Tracy start to push the plunger in—it takes two thumbs for her to get it in there, and as she does, she whispers, “In the many, we are one,” and I’m holding my head up against her, and the pain is like nothing I’ve felt before. It’s not even pain, it’s something way past pain, and my head is whirring and feels like it will explode, but then I feel a click, the needle is out, and off in the distance, somewhere from a galaxy far, far away, I hear Tracy’s muffled voice trailing off.

  There, that wasn’t so bad, was it . . . ?

  END OF EXCERPT

  ___________________

  Changers is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our print books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. The digital edition is available wherever e-books are sold.

  "Changers should appeal to a broad demographic. Teenagers, after all, are the world’s leading experts on trying on, and then promptly discarding, new identities."—New York Times Book Review

  "'Selfie' backlash has begun: The Unselfie project wants to help people quit clogging social media with pictures of themselves and start capturing the intriguing world around them."—O, the Oprah Magazine on the We Are Changers Unselfie project

  Included in School Library Journal's What's Hot in YA" Roundup

  "This is more than just a 'message' book about how we all need to be more understanding of each other. The imaginative premise is wrapped around a moving story about gender, identity, friendship, bravery, rebellion vs. conformity, and thinking outside the box."—School Library Journal

  "A thought-provoking exploration of identity, gender, and sexuality . . . an excellent read for any teens questioning their sense of self or gender." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  "A fresh and charmingly narrated look at teens and gender." —Kirkus Reviews

  "Everyone should read this, regardless of age. The book discusses important topics about growing into your skin (literally and physically), and gender identity . . . Go get a copy of this right now." —Huffington Post

  "Changing bodies, developing personalities, forays into adult activities—where was this book circa the early 2000s when I needed it? But something tells me my adult self will learn a thing or to from it as well." —Barnes & Noble Blog/Indie Books Roundup

  "The Coopers have a strong ear for teenager-isms, and the exploration of Drew’s ups and downs is eminently believable . . . the slow build of a strong character—with the lure of something totally new coming up next—will leave readers ready for the next Change in this line-up." —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  "A perfect read for a young adult: warm and humorous without being superficial or saccharine, engaging real issues of teenage life with ease and natural grace, and offering an element of fantasy accurately reflecting the wonder and terror of growing up." —The Knoxville News Sentinel

  "An excellent look at gender and identity and the teenage experience." —Tor.com

  "A must read for e
very teen." —I'd So Rather Be Reading

  "Changers Book One really stole my heart." —Bookcharmed

  "Love it. Love it, love it, love it. Seriously. Read this." >—The Best Books Ever

  "4 huge stars. Maybe even 4.5. I really enjoyed this book, and can't wait to read the rest of the series!" —The Overstuffed Bookcase

  “I was thrilled to discover a book that deals with issues of identity and belonging with so much heart and, more importantly, humor . . . Changers Book One: Drew changed the way I think.” —Clay Aiken, singer/UNICEF ambassador

  “Change. It's the one universal thing that everyone goes through, especially in high school. Changers Book One: Drew ratchets that up a notch and kicks open the door, with both humor and panache. Big questions and equally big highs (laughs) and lows (cries). And you thought high school was awkward before!” —Kimberly Pauley, author of Sucks to Be Me

  “Humor makes Changers a joy to read, and Drew the kind of character you’d want to be friends with in real life. I loved this book.” —Arin Greenwood, author of Save the Enemy

  Changers Book One: Drew opens on the eve of Ethan Miller's freshman year of high school in a brand-new town. He's finally sporting a haircut he doesn’t hate, has grown two inches since middle school, and can't wait to try out for the soccer team. At last, everything is looking up in life.

  Until the next morning. When Ethan awakens as a girl.

  Ethan is a Changer, a little-known, ancient race of humans who live out each of their four years of high school as a different person. After graduation, Changers choose which version of themselves they will be forever—and no, they cannot go back to who they were before the changes began.

  Ethan must now live as Drew Bohner—a petite blonde with an unfortunate last name—and navigate the treacherous waters of freshman year while also following the rules: Never tell anyone what you are. Never disobey the Changers Council. And never, ever fall in love with another Changer. Oh, and Drew also has to battle a creepy underground syndicate called “Abiders” (as well as the sadistic school queen bee, Chloe). And she can't even confide in her best friend Audrey, who can never know the real her, without risking both of their lives.