by T Cooper
Kris raised his eyebrows theatrically, like, Really, bitch? but I could tell he wasn’t about to get into it in front of the rest of the zoo animals, who don’t even know they live in a zoo.
Kris and I found empty seats, which turned out to be next to each other in the back row. As we passed Chloe, she couldn’t resist shaking her head disgustedly, and her minions giggled a little, as they do.
“Girl’s eyebrow game needs some surreous werrrk,” Kris whispered to me as we sat down, nodding in Chloe’s direction. He wasn’t wrong. She looked like she’d overplucked them, then drawn a thin line back in with black pencil. She resembled a spooky puppet from a horror movie, the kind that sits up by itself once the lights go dim and cranks its neck to glower at its next victim, which, not for nothing, was exactly what Chloe and the Chloettes were giving me in that instant: horror-clown death-stare realness. Like their very proximity to somebody like me might damage their popularity stock—not to mention their sexy Q rating.
Audrey wasn’t glaring, of course. But she had changed. She’d let her edgy short hair grow out into a bob, and she had highlighted blond streaks throughout. She was wearing a version of what all the Chloettes were dressed in—tight jeans, a boxy top that managed to be oversized and still show slices of midriff, and pricey sneakers or Tims. I remembered DJ last year making fun of rich white girls who wore Tims to “be street.” The Audrey I’d known would never have cared about fitting in with Chloe, let alone dressing like her, but then again, the Audrey I’d known was probably so irrevocably damaged by her “Miss Independent” experiments with Oryon/Drew that she’d started to see the upside in conformity.
She still looked pretty.
At lunch I ended up sitting with Kris. Well, he sat with me. Which I guess if I’m being truthful, I wasn’t thrilled about at first. Not because Kris wasn’t potentially awesome. But because the last thing Kim Cruz needs is the outest pal in the history of gay. If I was trying to skate by in the shadows for my junior year, having Kris shine his blinding Yaaas, queen light in my direction wasn’t much going to help my plan.
“The band break up?” he asked, as he slid next to me and began meticulously unwrapping his meal of Greek yogurt and a starlight mint.
“Pardon?”
He tilted a shoulder toward my black ensemble. “The mourning attire.”
“Ah. Yeah. No. I’m in mourning for different reasons.”
“No doubt. Like, this whole life, right?” Kris waved his hands as if presenting the entire cafeteria on a platter. “Please welcome to the stage . . . the worst of humanity.”
Just then a disquieting cackle emanated from Chloe’s table, and I reflexively turned in their direction . . . And, WTF? Audrey was sitting with them, the whole gaggle shrilly erupting at G knows what. I didn’t see that one coming.
“The best part of homeschooling?” Kris started, cutting his eyes toward the Chloettes. “No bitch squad.”
I laughed, but felt a knee-jerk reflex to defend Audrey. “They can’t all be bad,” I said weakly, to which Kris responded by cocking his head and making googly eyes.
“Stay tuned,” he warned. “This ain’t no Quaker-honor-your-feelings school. Those girls are sharks. And you, my dear, are the seal. Hope you’re a fast swimmer.” Kris took two spoonfuls of his yogurt, then wrapped it back up, shoving it deep into his lunch bag and tossing the whole wad into the trash. He stood up, fixed his hair, and popped the mint in his mouth, cracking it between his back teeth. “See you around, K.”
“Yeah, you too, K.”
“Ha! One more K and we got ourselves a reality show.”
“Or an abominable racist social club,” I deadpanned.
“Or both!” Kris added, laughing as he walked away, stomping so the buckles on his sneakers jangled loudly enough for people to notice. I watched him as he passed my lunch table from last year. You know, the unofficial a.k.a. official “black table.”
DJ was at the head, cutting up with some of the guys, looking handsome and confident as ever. Maybe a little more muscular, an inch taller. I repressed the urge to wave hello to him, though knowing him, he’d probably just wave back if he’d actually caught the awkward new girl waving at him like old friends.
“Fly wheels,” DJ said over a shoulder to Kris as he sashayed by. Without even a trace of sarcasm or animosity in his tone.
* * *
Later, at home on Skype, I ask Destiny if I’m the seal.
“The what?”
“The seal. The sad, pathetic creature whose fate is to be bait for more majestic animals with better skin and tighter abs and rows and rows of razor-sharp white teefs.”
“Oh that. Definitely,” she snarks. “Where is this coming from?”
“The mirror.”
“Girl, enough. I can’t do a whole year of you hating yourself because you don’t look like one of Taylor Swift’s ponytail posse.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re breathtaking.”
“Okay. Maybe. But then what?”
“Who cares?”
“Kim, you know better than that. Besides, being hot can be a liability too,” she says, sitting back on a fluffy pillow. “Everybody wants my attention, but they don’t really want much else. I’ve become one-dimensional. A conduit for them to feel something about themselves, not about me.”
“High-class problems,” I say.
“I’m serious.”
“You’ve determined all this in a mere forty-eight hours?”
“I’m a good little Changer, with one more V under my belt than you, not for nothing. And yes. It ain’t that complex math.”
“Well, here on the other side of the equal symbol, it doesn’t feel so simple.”
“I know, it sucks. But it could be so much worse. I mean, we almost didn’t make it—”
“Okay okay!” I interrupt, not wanting to be reminded of the Tribulations, and Chase, and Alex, and those less fortunate than us. All of which I’ve managed to replace with the new Tribulations, a.k.a. being Kim Cruz.
“Oh, and another thing: my teachers assume I’m dumb,” she says.
“There is no way you read as dumb. You’re one of the smartest people I know.”
“Trust me. When even adults are thrown by the way you look, it leads to all kinds of compensatory behaviors.”
“That’s grody.”
“To the max.”
“Still beats being the seal.”
At that, Destiny claps her hands together like flippers and honks, her mouth yawning open and shut as if catching sardines.
“You even look sexy doing that,” I grouse.
“It’s my seal of approval,” she says, laughing and honking.
We make a plan to get coffee together on Sunday, at the end of Hell Week One. Just fifty-one more to bear—well, for me at least.
Change 3–Day 3
Three days as Kim Cruz, and I have to say, I’m getting the knack for maintaining a low profile. In class, I am the big black-clad blob that hovers in the back row, hunching over my desk and praying for the TARDIS to appear and whisk me away to another time. Amazingly, everyone seems happy to let me do this. Ain’t nobody got time for drawing out the shy weirdo. Which is fine by me. I am viewing this year as a prison sentence, and I will serve my time, quietly and without ruckus. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving.
Mr. Crowell is the one pesky fly in the ointment. He seems to think he’s an extension of Tracy, and as such, I am somehow his charge. He keeps giving me the curious-puppy-dog eyes in homeroom, and asking me way more than my fair share of questions, which if he had any memory of his teenage experience in homeroom, he would know only makes my existence more of a misery. I need to somehow communicate to Tracy (and thus him) that this isn’t a case where if I just “put myself out there,” the gang is going to discover how amazeballs I am and shower me with respect and acceptance. This is high school. Not the Special Olympics.
After homeroom, I try again to connect with Audrey. I can’t help it. To me s
he is worth the risk. I figure the old her has to be buried underneath her cutesy hair and glitter lip plumper. She can’t have been subsumed completely by the bitch squad.
“Hey!” I say with . . . not much of a plan past that.
“Hey?” she answers back, checking me out for about two seconds before finding something to fiddle with in her backpack.
“You look f-familiar to me,” I stammer. Stupid.
“Oh. Well. I mean, I look like a lot of people.”
“No you don’t,” I reply too quickly.
Audrey lifts her chin from her bag and takes me in again, intensely this time. I stare back into her eyes, willing her in my head to see who I really am.
I’m Oryon! I’m Oryon! You loved me. You said so. You know me! How can you not know you know me?
“I’m sorry. Who are you again?” she says finally, seeming annoyed now.
“I’m Kim. From homeroom. Kim Cruz.” (And your best friend Drew, and your first love Oryon, but whatever.)
“Kim. Good to meet you.” She extends a hand to shake mine, looking over my head as she does, as if searching for exit doors. “I’m Audrey. Anyway. I really need to get to class . . .”
“Me too, same,” I say, but she has already begun walking away. And unlike when I was Oryon, she doesn’t stop and take one last look over a shoulder to see if I’m watching her go.
Change 3–Day 5
Oh splendor and wonder. Light of all lights, joy of all joys.
Today was Central’s first football game, which brought with it a heavy case of PTSD. From my aborted, futile stint as a cheerleader when I was Drew, to the psychotic bullying by Jason when I was Oryon on the JV squad. Never mind when I was public enemy number one, pelted with corn dogs and slushies after being nearly choked out by Jason and Baron, his partner in idiocy/latent attraction. Yeah, I said it.
Just seeing the players in their jerseys (like I had been) and the girls in their cheerleading minis (still baffling how that survived the fifties) in the hallways and at the mandatory pep rally made me feel queasy and angry and fundamentally other in a way I really didn’t need.
“God, sports are dumb,” Kris said at lunch when he plunked down his Greek yogurt cup across the table from me. “On the plus side, they allow you to see just who the morons are. It’s like a douche filter. Not that I mind the uniforms. Those can stay.”
I considered telling Kris I had been a cheerleader once, but figured that would invite a lot of questioning I neither had the stomach nor will for, so instead I asked what he was into, since it clearly wasn’t athletics.
“Theater, baby!” he answered in a long trill. “Not to be a total gay cliché. But it’s kind of why I wanted to go to a regular school. You auditioning for the play this year?”
“Uh, no.”
“Shy?”
“Talentless.”
“I doubt that. You look like a woman with hidden depths to me. I bet there are lots of things you rock at.”
I smirked at the depths part. Then, for some reason, I decided to confide in him. “I do play the drums. A little. I was in a band once.”
“Gurrl, I knew it! My punk rock goddess. You have to be in the play with me. You can be part of the stage band! Total hotness!”
I considered the thought. Briefly. “How do you know for sure you’ll get a role in the play?”
Kris bugged out his eyes like I’d suggested tomorrow had been cancelled.
“My mistake,” I said, just as Michelle Hu rolled up on our table.
“Mind if I join?” she asked, politely smiling at me in a way I recognized from last year as Oryon. The “we’re vaguely in the same tribe” smile. The “join us, or suffer a long, cold social winter on your own” smile.
“Pop a squat, cuteness,” Kris said, before I could answer.
“I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly,” Michelle responded, completely stone-faced, stepping over the bench seat beside Kris.
“Respect,” he murmured approvingly, scooching over to make room.
Introductions all around (well, reintroductions for me and Michelle, not that she knew it), and then Michelle proceeded to be as cool as ever. Funny, crazy smart. The type of exceptional weirdo who genuinely doesn’t care about the lizard-brain concerns everyone else in high school seems fixated on. If I hadn’t seen her two years in a row at school, I might’ve assumed Michelle was a highly evolved Changer, one who had it all figured out immediately after changing into her first V. I found myself wondering, again, why I didn’t spend more time with her last year. And then I remembered: Audrey.
When you’re in love, everything else falls to the wayside. Which I’m seeing now may have been a mistake. Because really, what did that singular pursuit net me? Depression. Exhaustion. A near-death experience, and not the groovy kind with the flashing white lights and long-lost relatives beckoning you home. My relationship with Audrey cost me a lot. Maybe even a best friend. Who tried to warn me before he died. Not about her, per se. But about my selfishness around her. I couldn’t see the Changer forest for the Audrey tree.
It is a lovely tree . . .
While Kris and Michelle chitter-chatter, I glance over at Chloe’s table, all of them in their cheerleading ensembles, high ponytails teased just perfectly in the back, swinging like pendulums as their heads swivel along to the conversation. Audrey turns my way and accidentally—I swear I don’t mean to—my eyes lock with hers, and suddenly I’m right back to where it all began, our first lunch sitting across from each other as Drew and Audrey, at that very table, two years ago. How singular she was. And yet from the outside, this chick I’m looking at right now? Her I don’t recognize.
Audrey’s eyes dart away from mine, and she’s back in the midst of whatever inanity is being discussed in that circle. Okay, I don’t want to assume, because that’s not what I’m here for, right? But I’m pretty certain they’re not talking about climate change and the quest to maintain biodiversity in such a rapidly changing world.
My heart still pangs for her. But it’s starting to feel more like regret than desire.
“So what do you say?” I hear Michelle asking me.
“About what?” I answer, clearly having missed out on whatever she’d asked during my trip down memory pain.
“Joining the Asian Cultural Club?” she repeats, cheery as hell.
“Is there a GAYsian Cultural Club?” Kris pipes in.
Michelle laughs. “I know, I know. It sounds unnecessarily self-separating, but the truth is, it’s just an excuse to hang out and eat a lot of awesome food together. We’re having our first club dinner at Pho Sure next weekend.”
Great. The place Oryon took Audrey on their—our—first date. God, the world’s small. And getting smaller and smaller, it seems, every day. “Nah, I don’t think so,” I say, trying not to sound like the complete and utter downer I am.
“Why not? It’s always a hot time!” she returns, purposely goofy.
“Maybe the next one,” I try, not really meaning it. I just want to get my bearings, you know? Don’t want to hop on any identity bandwagon just yet.
“I get it,” Michelle says, ever upbeat. But she seems slightly dejected nonetheless. “Well, if you want more info on any other clubs here—”
“I think my extracurricular abilities are pretty much tied exclusively to the food realm,” I interrupt, before realizing it sounds like I’m making a fat joke at my own expense. Mercifully, neither Michelle nor Kris bothers to comment, though I can sense they noticed. I guess they were tacitly agreeing not to reinforce my self-hatred, which is kind of a departure among girlfriends at this age. So, two for the plus column.
* * *
The rest of the day was what I’m finding to be typical for Kim Cruz. Waddling through the halls, head down, trying not to trip or bump into people. Other students either passing me wordlessly or sniggering just a touch, in case it managed to slip my mind for a millisecond that I am less than they are. Because I’m so much more than they are.
>
At one point between classes, Jason brushed by me, and I felt the heat of his body against mine, before he pressed forward into the masses, many WHOOT-ing and giving him the thumbs-up before today’s game. I wondered if he sensed any familiarity at all. If a single cell in his skin registered that I was the girl he once tried to force himself on; that I was the boy he smeared across the football field. I know my skin did. It froze cold the second we touched, as if I’d passed by the devil himself.
“Tell me more about that,” Tracy says when I mention Jason, as she aggressively suctions a thick strawberry shake through a red-striped straw at the Freezo, where we went to celebrate my surviving a whole week as Kim.
“It was just a vibe. A demon vibe,” I say.
“Oh, so the usual then,” she says, picking at a rogue strawberry seed between her two front teeth. “Was it helpful to have my boo in your corner?”
“No you didn’t.”
“What? Is that wrong usage?”
I laugh. If nothing else, at least Tracy is always good for that. “Boo works. Only, I’m not sure I want to think of Mr. Crowell as your . . . anything,” I explain. Then I take a bite of my fat-free frozen yogurt sundae. As I do, I catch a couple of tween-age girls snickering in my direction. “It’s fat-free, you jerks!” I yell, before hurling the entire container at their smug faces.
No, I don’t do that. In fact, I don’t do anything except eyeball my treat like it’s nuclear waste, the joy of eating it well and truly gone. Kim Cruz lesson number 53: When heavyset people eat in public they get food-shamed. Even if it’s a salad.
“You know, the first Changers Mixer is in three weeks. I think it will be very healing for you to go back now, after this time away.”
“Time away? I feel like I just left,” I shoot back, contemplating what excuse might be good enough to get me out of attending the mixer at all, though with Dad taking up semipermanent residence inside the Council’s collective butt, avoiding the mixer seems improbable.