Читать книгу Changers Book Four - T Cooper - Страница 11

Kim

Change 3–Day 207

“Ethan didn’t care about outfits, dude,” Andy says from my bed, where he’s playing vintage GTA like we used to.

“No, seriously, which one?” I ask, holding up two shirts in front of my chest.

“The one on the left,” he mumbles.

“You’re not even looking!” I whine, throwing the white Ramones T-shirt on the floor and opting to go with a plain black one.

“Do you think Destiny would go out with me?” Andy asks for the 147th time since meeting her.

“She’s with DJ,” I remind him for the 147th time.

“So?”

“Have you seen DJ? The two of them are so blindingly perfect together it’s like they were made in a lab. They’re like those photos that come in the Just Married frames when you buy them from Target.”

“Gross.”

“But #truth,” I note.

I step into the bathroom and close the door behind me, peel off my stale top, throw on the clean black one. I check myself in the mirror, wet my hair and massage some putty into it, slicking back the long part on top. I look like an Asian Lea DeLaria. Not the worst. I slap on some pale-pink lip gloss, a swipe of electric-blue eyeliner which I stretch in the corners, cat’s-eye style. When I come out of the bathroom, Andy glances up.

“Hey there, David Bowie.”

“Ha.” I pop my tee at the waist, adjust a loose bra strap.

“You seem nervous,” Andy says, pressing pause on his game.

“That obvious?”

“Kinda.”

“Does this shirt make it seem like I’ve given up?” I ask.

“On what?”

“I look like a roadie for a cover band, right?”

“No.”

“Is it too boxy?”

“What even is that? Like a boxer? Or . . . ?”

“What if she doesn’t believe me?” I blurt, simultaneously realizing that 1) Andy’s probably the worst person to ask, but 2) nobody else is aware that I’m spilling everything to Audrey tonight, so he’s kind of the only game in town.

“She might not,” Andy says, pulling no punches and clearly still smarting from the sting of the Changer-related dramas in his own life, one of them right in front of him, asking him for advice. “It’s pretty messed up, like Twilight Zone shit. You’re basically a comic book mutant, minus the lab accident.”

“Gee, thanks,” I say, scanning the room for my wallet.

“You need to give her a break. As hard as this is for you, it’s going to blow her mind. You may want to wear a Hannibal plastic kill-suit to protect yourself from splattering brain matter.”

“What do you know about brain matter?”

Andy flips me the bird. “Listen, if you love this girl, you need to allow her whatever she needs to get her head around this situation. I don’t think you have any idea how it feels when a person you love vanishes from your life.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I say peevishly, memories of Chase flooding in, memories of my past lives and the people who knew me, and how all of that got sandblasted into oblivion every year. “My whole teenage life is about being ghosted. I mean, if you want to get technical about it, I AM a fucking ghost.”

“Whatever.” Andy’s not buying it.

“Do you think she’s going to hate me?”

“No idea.”

“Andy, please.”

He sighs. “Well, I don’t.”

It’s then I notice the bracelet on my desk. I instinctively grab it, a concrete talisman that Audrey can touch and hold whenever what I’m trying to explain to her seems like a drug trip gone extra wrong.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Andy asks.

“Wellll, the Changers Council can forcibly extricate me from my home and throw me in a compulsory compliance-

training program for the rest of my Cycle—OH, HEY, DAD!”

“What about compliance training?” my dad asks, popping his head into my room.

“Excuse me?” I bluff.

Andy smiles and waves, “Good afternoon, Mr. Miller.”

Dad steps in, glances back and forth between Andy and me, clearly suspicious, then relents. “I’m making a run to Costco for the Council’s regional party, you guys come and help me load, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Andy says.

“I’ve actually got plans,” I say sheepishly.

“Like?”

“Tracy stuff,” I lie.

Dad seems onto me—if not specifically, then generally—but also like he’s not going to get into it in front of Andy, whom he would prefer weren’t even here since it is Bad! Changer! Policy! But Mom worked her psychiatry-guilt mojo on him, making it seem if we turned Andy out he’d become a sad runaway statistic Dad would have to live with for the rest of his Changer days (plus might spill about Changers in a more public way), which was not high on Dad’s to-do list.

“Leaving in five,” he says, yanking the door shut behind him.

“He’s going to grill you in the car,” I whisper.

“I got you,” Andy says, flashing a cheesy thumbs-up. “Now go get that girl.”

* * *

Audrey is outwardly skittish, her voice warbling when she suggests we go for a walk by the water instead of sitting at Starbucks to talk about the incredibly intimate, uh, stuff that’s happened between us.

The Cumberland River is low and dark, the air still, only a handful of mosquitoes buzzing around our faces and nipping the fleshy inside of our elbows.

“It’s nice here,” Audrey says as we tentatively make our way down the bank of the river on the well-worn path, side-stepping roots and slick patches of red clay. “I don’t come here often enough.”

“Oh snap, that was my next line: Do you come here often?”

Audrey gives a weak smile.

“So,” I say after a few more steps.

“So.”

“Soooo,” I say again. “I suppose I should start at the beginning.”

“A very fine place to start,” Audrey sings, then stops, her gaze casting down at the bracelet on my arm. “I’ll never get used to seeing that on your wrist.”

She reaches into her back pocket, pulls out a folded-up piece of paper, starts opening it, the creases weathered and soft from folding and unfolding. Before the paper is flattened all the way, I know what it is: the e-mail I sent. The vomiting-up of Changer chunks I wrote that night I was stoned. Uncensored gibberish I never intended to send, but Benedict sent on my behalf, without my knowledge, because Benedict lives in a Victorian comedy of errors where high jinks and heartbreak only mean everything works out in the end.

“I was high when I wrote that!” I exclaim.

“So you’ve said. But is it true?” Audrey asks.

I try to remember exactly what I typed out. “Essentially. I think. Probably.”

“I thought it was some sort of sick prank,” she says. “Cruel and mean.”

“I didn’t send it, a friend did. You can tell—I mean, it’s obvious how it wasn’t finished at the end, right? I mean, you were never meant to see . . .” I start blathering, but it doesn’t matter. It feels like I’m caught in a lie about a lie about a lie about a lie.

Audrey gestures toward a bench facing the river. We walk over, take a seat, sit hip to hip. She hands me the note. “I don’t want to decipher this anymore. I don’t want to be in the dark, feeling stupid and lost. Tell me what this is all about.”

I take the paper from her hand, breathing in so deep it shocks my lungs. I glance over the letter while I try to think about what I’m going to say to her right now.

Dear Audrey,

I know this is going to sound crazy. Wow, how long have I wanted to say that to you? Anyway, so, this is Kim. Kim Cruz, from school. I hope you got home okay last night. That dance kind of went off the rails, huh?

Anyway, I don’t know how else to say this, but, it felt like we had a connection last night. Like we’ve known each other for lifetimes. (Do you believe in that stuff?) I’ve never felt that about anybody before, which I figure is really rare, so why not just nut up and tell you?

The thing is, we kind of have known each other for lifetimes. Maybe not lifetimes. Well, for me they are.

If you’re still reading this, which I would understand if you’re not, but bear with me, because here’s the thing: I’ve been at Central longer than just this year. In fact, I have been in your life over the last two and a half years. I’ve seen you through a lot of ups and downs, a close friendship with a girl who moved away, and then a relationship with a guy who also left school, suddenly, last spring. I know all about Romeo & Juliet. (Boy do I.) Cheerleading. Your brother. Your mother’s cooking.

For two years I feel sort of like I’ve been your invisible protector. (From this guy named Kyle, which is a whole other story.) Anyway, I’ve loved you every step of the way.

I know you didn’t ask for this. It’s just, there are things in the universe we can’t explain. Actual magic that brings people into each other’s lives for a reason. Like I’ve been brought into yours.

Again, I understand if you want nothing to do with me after reading this. It is admittedly cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. But what do I have to lose at this point? I can’t help but feel that you felt this THING last night between us. You sensed that history too.

So if you did, can you let me know? Maybe we could spend some time together. Trust me, it wouldn’t be the strangest thing that ever happened.

&(^^%%!%$#*(&**&#$^$%#&)*)*(&)*^&^>???!?!?!!!!?

What am I doing why am I writing this I must be freaking insane in the membrane. She is going to think I’m bonkers and never want to talk to me again don’t press send don’t press send don’t press sendddddddd.

“Well, this is a real shit sandwich,” I acknowledge, stating the obvious. The fun, freeing part of outing myself to Audrey ending; the terrifying, messed-up one about to begin. “I’m really sorry about all this.”

“But what exactly is this?” she demands, loud enough that a couple of runners look our way as they pass behind us on the path. “I feel like I’m in a live version of The Manchurian Candidate.”

I take a controlled breath. Me too, girl. “Forget the mind-splintering oddity for a minute. The most important thing, the thing that’s never not been true, is that I’ve loved you since the minute I spotted you in homeroom freshman year.”

“When you were Drew?”

“I’ll never forget that morning, when you made me feel like a human again after Chloe fashion-shamed my hair and clothes. And then when class ended, you pointed me toward the girls’ bathroom, when I was about to go into the boys’.”

“Yeah. What was that about?” Audrey asks, her eyebrows knit tightly like she’s solving a riddle.

I decide to come out with it: “Before I was Drew, I was a guy named Ethan.”

“Wait, what? Meaning, you transitioned?” Audrey leans back on the bench, her head swiveling back and forth, bewildered and unable to do the math, which, who could, really? “More than once?”

“Yes and no.” I sigh. “Bear with me. This gets real convoluted, real quick.”

“You could say that.”

I watch Audrey’s face as she turns toward the river, my skin growing hot, self-loathing lighting me up from inside.

“So Oryon?” she prods.

“I’m Oryon.”

“I thought you were Drew.”

“I’m Drew too. Also.”

Audrey exhales, steals another glance at the bracelet she gave Drew on the last day of freshman year. “Tell me something only Drew would know.”

“Uh, okay,” I begin, not certain where this might end up. “Well, okay. Our kiss at the school dance—”

“As I recall, Drew—uh, you—weren’t so into that,” Audrey says, blushing.

“Are you kidding?”

“I guess it was a pretty public first kiss,” she adds.

“Yes, yes, it was,” I agree, laughing. “Our big rom-com finale.” Was she flirting with me a little? Focus, Kim. “Well, actually, here’s something nobody but you and I would know. We were ABOUT to kiss two times before that. In Mr. Crowell’s class when we performed that scene from Romeo and Juliet, and then in your bedroom that night I slept over, when you wanted to practice—”

“But Jason burst in on us,” she interrupts. “Acting like Cujo on two legs. And you, I mean Drew, stood up to him. Kim, I mean you, do that too.” Audrey shyly drops her chin toward her feet.

“You can just say you. Don’t worry about all the versions. They’re all me.”

“God, I feel like my brain is made of cottage cheese.”

“Did you have a crush on me then? As Drew?” I ask, not completely sure I want the answer.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she says, blushing.

Man, I really want to kiss her.

But I don’t.

We fall into an uncomfortable silence. I catch myself thinking of the night we slept together, how she seemed so into Oryon, so trusting and calm in my arms. I swallow a million questions I am dying to ask. Like, who did she care for most? Who was she most attracted to? Which version of me captured her heart? These are selfish questions, and I know it. This isn’t about her making me feel better. It’s about me making her feel less insane. And more safe.

A boat motors by with a large caramel-colored poodle on the bow, barking into the wind. Audrey suggests we resume walking then, but before we get up, I turn and put a hand on her shoulder, and ask her to swear never to tell anybody about the information I’m giving her. That there are potential life-and-death consequences, that people have been killed as a result of what I’m sharing, and it isn’t pretty, and it hurts, and it could change things irrevocably, and so it is to be taken seriously.

“You’re scaring me,” she whispers.

“I trust you,” I say. Then I open the floodgates. About the new V each year of high school. About my Touchstone Tracy, and how every Changer gets a mentor like that, someone who is also a Changer. How the Council arranges everything logistically with schools and housing. Rules about parents coming to campus, the feints we are given to explain where kids disappear to after each year of school. I can see her eyes widen with each revelation.

“And at the end of the Cycle, we pick one of our four V’s to live as forever; there’s even a special ceremony right after graduation,” I finish.

“So you’re going to be a whole new person next year?”

I nod my head slowly.

“Who?”

“No freaking idea,” I admit, and I can tell she doesn’t necessarily love that part either.

“Can you go back to Ethan?”

“No.”

“Wow. Never?”

“Never,” I say.

“Why not?”

“We can never go back to who we were before the changes.”

Audrey falls silent for a few moments. Then says, “That must be so terrible for your mom.”

If there was ever a Static who doesn’t need empathy lessons, it’s Audrey.

“I think she’s o-okay,” I stammer. “For the most part. How about you? Are you okay?”

She nods, half-smiles. “For the most part.”

Encouraged, I continue, deciding to take Audrey even deeper through the labyrinth of Changers rules. She listens quietly, nodding her head, sometimes cocking it to the left in that cute way she does when things seem particularly confounding.

“Why can’t Changers get with other Changers?” she asks.

“Counter to the mission. I guess it’s kind of like dating someone in your own family.”

“What ever happened to that Chase guy from your Bickersons band?” she asks randomly, like she just remembered him. “The one who beat Jason to a pulp after he tried to . . .”

And like that, a switch flips, and the tears pour down my face. I try, but I can’t say anything else, cannot get words out. And if I could, what words would they be? That Chase died so I could live?

Audrey leans in, embraces me for longer than I ever thought would be possible again. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

“It’s not your fault,” I manage, loving the way her arms feel around me.

We fall silent again.

“Can I ask if your mom or dad is the Changer?” Audrey eventually asks.

“My dad.”

“How did your mom find out?”

“I don’t really know,” I realize, hardly believing I’ve never asked them the details of their courtship, or the big reveal of when Dad told Mom he was a Changer, what she said, how she reacted. Maybe if I had, I would be doing this better. Though Audrey seems to be handling it well enough.

* * *

The setting sun throws a veil of pink across the river’s glassy surface as Audrey and I finally start walking back. I sense something in her has softened. After a few steps, I take her hand in mine. At first she flinches, but she doesn’t pull away entirely. So I squeeze a little harder, and she lets me thread my fingers between hers.

We walk like that in silence until we get to the bridge. And it is there that I decide there’s one last disclosure I need to make. I have to tell her about Oryon. What happened to him that night. Why I abandoned her. Only, I need to do it in a way that leaves her brother out of it. I can’t be the one who makes him potentially complicit in my kidnapping or in Chase’s beating and the death that came from it, especially since the Council has no hard evidence that Jason was even in the gang that jumped me. Not yet, anyway.

Jason is a monster in a thousand ways, but if I’m going to have any chance of keeping Audrey on team Changer/Kim, I can’t force her to choose between her family and me. Above all, I need to make it clear Oryon’s abduction had nothing to do with her, or anything she did. Because Audrey would never forgive herself.

“But why?” Audrey asks for maybe the tenth time. “Why did they want to hurt you?”

“It wasn’t me, specifically. There’s this group of people out there who suspect they know about Changers and are scared of us, I guess,” I try to explain.

Audrey seems like she’s deep in thought, about her church maybe. Or her brother.

“It was terrible timing. After what we shared that night—I swear, the best night of my life, all my lives, hands down.” (Audrey smiles a little at that.) “And then the bracelet. I was going to tell you everything when I saw you, but I never got a chance because they picked me up the next day when I was out walking Snoopy.”

“But how did they find you?” she persists, something niggling at her, even if she isn’t putting two and two together yet.

“No idea,” I say, shutting her inquiry down. “So anyway, I was withdrawn from school, recovering at Changers Central through the end of the year, no phone, no Internet, explicit restrictions on all non-Changers communications so as to make sure those Abiders weren’t able to find me or any of the others again.”

“It’s so horrible,” Audrey says. “I can’t imagine what it was like in that basement, not sure you’d survive.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” I sigh. But it kind of was.

“If only I hadn’t run out of the apartment like a crazy person,” Audrey says, anger and guilt in her voice now, “and called my brother to give me a ride home. Maybe we would have been walking your dog together that morning, or . . .”

“Look at me.” I gently take Audrey’s chin in my hand. “You are the bravest, kindest, most accepting person I know. Thank you for letting me share all of this with you. Anybody else would have melted down and bailed.”

“But I’m the reason you got abducted.”

“I got abducted because of who I am, and what people in this world fear about who I am. That has nothing to do with you.” And then, because she seems so inconsolably sad, I add one last thing: “No matter what happens from here on out, I’ll never keep anything from you again.”

“You swear?” she responds, apparently relieved for the moment. “You’ll tell me the truth, always?”

“I swear,” I say. And I mean it.