by T Cooper
“You’re not being very nice,” she says.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t seem sorry.”
“Whatever.”
Tracy just stares me down while the microwave fan blows hot air at my face.
“Is this because I’m with Mr. Crowell?”
I stifle a cruel laugh.
“I can see how it might look like I abandoned you. But I haven’t. I’m here,” she adds.
“Oh, you’re here alright.”
Tracy sighs, regroups. “How can we help you when you won’t let us?” she asks, completely sincere. She seems genuinely upset, helpless even. I can relate.
“It’s not you. It’s me.”
“Do you want me to make you an appointment with Turner?” she suggests.
This time I laugh out loud. “Ah. No.”
“Please, Kim. I want to do something. I need to do something. Geez, I’m your Touchstone. It’s my job to help you navigate all this.”
For a second I feel for her. She really got the booty end of the Changer stick with me. I’m sure she thought that at some point during my V’s we’d be braiding each other’s hair or making handmade soaps in the garage, and instead she’s dealing with a Changer who was abducted, then plunged into a one-two punch of grief, not to mention one who isn’t going to win any congeniality contests any time soon.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine,” I lie.
Beeeep, the microwave is done.
“Jumbo pop?” I ask, pushing the steaming bag in her direction. “I changed my mind.”
Tracy comes over to give me a hug, but I dodge her, dump the popcorn in the trash, and slink back down the hall, feeling my horribleness bubble up inside me in a whole new way.
* * *
It’s getting late, but I can still hear the four of them chitter-chattering in the TV room. According to the digital clock on my desk, it’s three minutes to midnight. It’s dark in my room, but I’ve left my blinds open. After a bit, I can hear Mom outside my door, lightly tapping.
“It’s almost time. Happy New Year, Kim,” she says softly. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I manage, praying she doesn’t come in.
I listen. She goes back to the TV room. Two minutes to midnight. I scooch up on my pillows, stare out the window into the blackness. And wait.
One minute.
Waiting, waiting, waiting, watching the clock. And . . . another year clicks past. As another has begun. Just like that.
Not that Static years mean that much to me. Lord knows I’m eagerly counting down the days until C4–D1. Two hundred and fifty-seven days to go, to be precise. I’m keeping track on the calendar on my desk; every check is one day less I have to be Kim Cruz in this world.
BAP, BAP. The noise makes me jump. Gunshots.
BAP, BAP, BAP. A few more shots fire. I have a PTSD moment where I’m sure the Abiders are outside my window, coming to slaughter my family and drag me back to their Changer torture chamber. Then I realize it’s just some partiers shooting into the sky to celebrate the new year. What idiots. Don’t they know those bullets are going to come plummeting back down to earth even faster than when they were shot? They aren’t going to vanish into thin air. They have to land somewhere.
Change 3–Day 110
For some reason I felt like going outside today. No idea why. It just happened.
So I walked out of my room and went to the foyer, pulled some boots on, leashed up Snoopy, yelled, “I’ll be back soon!” and opened the front door.
Mom came rushing out, Dad behind her. They were looking at me like Victor Frankenstein when his monster first reanimated.
“So great to see you up!” Mom says, overly cheerful.
“Where you off to?” Dad asks at the same time, trying to be nonchalant, for fear of scaring me back into my cave.
“Don’t forget this,” Mom says, handing me a lavender-scented plastic poop bag.
Ah yes, a tote for the crap of life. I’ll take two.
Snoopy tugs me out the door, and the minute the cold pricks the skin on my cheeks, I reconsider my big outdoor plan. Winter is the worst. Still, Snoopy has business to do, so I press on down the block, letting him stop and sniff hedges, signposts, curbs, crumpled cans, way more frequently than I usually allow. He lifts his leg on a mailbox. Then a bush. Then he circles, squats, but . . . false alarm. We cross the street, and he suddenly cops a squat and poops, I pick it up, tie a knot, and hold the bag as far away from my body as possible on our way back to the house.
The sky is ice blue, cloudless. It looks frozen. Like those plastic cooler packs filled with chemicals. My eyes ache from the midday sun. And from the cold. A kid who looks like Ethan is skating in his driveway on a homemade ramp. I nod as I walk by. He doesn’t nod back. Brat. I consider throwing Snoopy’s poop bag at him.
Back home, I instead toss the poop in our trash bin, open the front door, unhook Snoopy and hang his leash on the coat rack, then slink back down to my bedroom, hoping not to be noticed.
“SOMETIMES I JUST WISH I MARRIED SOMEONE NORMAL!” I hear from the TV room. It’s so loud and startling and foreign, I think it’s got to be the television. I stop in the hallway, still and quiet, and listen for more . . .
It’s not the TV. It’s Mom.
I hear crying. Two types of crying. One I’ve heard before (Mom); the other decidedly less familiar (Dad). I tiptoe back to the foyer, loudly open the front door again, and yell, “We’re back!” then SLAM the door shut behind me. I practically run straight to my bedroom, in no way wanting to see whatever horror show is unfolding between the two of them.
I sit on the bed. Nothing. Nobody’s coming. Nobody’s hollering. And then I realize.
I’m not normal.
Oh God. I’m making her life worse. More complicated. She deserves to have it easier than Dad and me. Obviously she regrets marrying a freak and now regrets having to raise his freak offspring. Can’t say I blame her. If I could choose normal at this point, I sure as shinola would.
Now I notice my chest has started fluttering, and my heartbeat is ramping up and heading out of control. There’s nothing I can do to slow it, let alone stop the racing. I try deep breathing, but I can’t catch even one breath, much less take a long, controlled one.
I stand up and walk back and forth in my room. Listen for a few seconds. Pace again. Suddenly I have the idea to dive under my bed and fish out my big canvas duffel bag (with ETHAN stitched onto the side). I unzip it and put it on the mattress. It’s staring at me, like a gaping whale mouth, when I start mindlessly grabbing clothes from my closet and stuffing them in. Pants, T-shirts, underwear, socks, sweatshirts, sweaters, my PF Flyers. Enough clothes for the better part of a week.
Then I scan the room for other essentials. The things you don’t realize you need until you don’t have them. A book, alarm clock, phone charger, laptop charger, my favorite pillow. My puffer jacket, knit gloves, a hat. Then I go into the bathroom, shove some toiletries into my backpack, with my schoolbooks already in it. What else? Laptop. Phone. Wallet. Bus pass. That’s about it.
For what though?
I don’t really know. I just know I need to get out of here. Now. I zip up the duffel, then the backpack, and quietly open my door, checking both ways down the hall. Nobody. Listen for a few more seconds. Nothing. It sounds like one of them is in the bedroom and the other is still in the TV room at this point.
I realize it’s too risky to hump all this stuff down the hall and out the front door, so I get the brilliant (if I don’t say so myself) after-school-special-inspired idea to lower my bags out the window and go around and get them once I’m outside. That way, if Mom or Dad does spot me, they’ll think I’m just headed out for a walk again, cured at last of my depression.
I open the window, stuff my duffel through. Then carefully lower my backpack behind the bushes below. I look back toward my door and realize Snoopy has been sitting there staring at me the whole time I’ve been creeping aro
und. I know it’s impossible, but something in his eyes makes me think he knows what I’m doing.
I give him some cuddles, and he just gazes up at me with that sweet unconditional love. It breaks my heart, and I almost reconsider leaving, but then I hear Mom’s voice again, the word normal ringing in my ears like an alarm. I decide to climb out the window too.
Before I leave, I find a piece of scrap paper in the waste bin, and quickly scribble:
Mom and Dad,
I’m sorry, but I had to get out of here.
Don’t worry, I’ll just be at a friend’s house for a few days until school starts.
I’ll call you to touch base soon. Seriously, don’t worry. I have my phone. I just need some space.
Best,
Me
It’s only after I’ve been sitting on a downtown N14 bus for fifteen minutes that I figure out where I’m going: RaChas Central. I don’t know if they’re in the same location anymore. I don’t even know if I can find that place. I do know that I’d caught a bus to Lower Broadway the afternoon I met Chase at the Country Music Hall of Fame and he took me to meet the RaChas for the first time.
I can tell I’m getting closer as the buildings appear older and more tightly packed. I take out my phone and check it to see if Mom or Dad has texted. They haven’t. They must not have gone into my room yet. I guess that’s good.
When the bus stops, I recognize the honky-tonk bar where I’d asked the bouncer to point me in the direction of the Hall of Fame. My bags feel especially heavy as I navigate through all the tourists and head into the warehouse district. I walk by some dudes working on cars in the street, then pass an old brick storefront where a line has formed outside. Seems like people waiting for free food or something. After fifteen more minutes, I sense I’m at last on the correct block. I drop my duffel to rest for a minute, and really give the buildings a once-over.
THERE, I see it, the old converted warehouse with the rusted iron façade. The joint looks abandoned. Kind of the point, I guess. Safety in obscurity. I pick up my bag and run over, the duffel bouncing against my hip.
I knock on the iron door. Wait. Nothing.
Knock again, louder. Wait. Nothing.
How can this not be it? Or maybe everybody’s out? Or maybe they moved. It wasn’t exactly the kind of living arrangement that seemed to come with a lease.
I feel like I’m about to lose it, and slide down the iron door and onto my duffel, where I decide, NO, you wimp, you’re not going to cry. That’s too easy, too basic. Enough with the tears already. I tilt my head back against the door, close my eyes, and press my scalp hard against the cold metal.
Then I hear footsteps, loud heavy boots on concrete. A punky girl in a rabbit-fur cape appears, blocking the sun so I can see her. She looks at me, then proceeds to let herself in through the iron gate.
“Is this—” I start to say, but remember at the last second to cut myself off so as not to give anything away that I’m not supposed to. “Uh, does Benedict live here?”
She looks at me for a second, up and down. Checks out my bag with Ethan embroidered on it. My backpack. My shoes. Then seems satisfied. She nods at me to follow her in.
* * *
“Bienvenido! Willkommen! Namaste!” Benedict shouted, hugging me the moment I entered the main loft space and dropped my bags on the floor.
The embrace was not a symbolic one. He recognized me from my meltdown performance at the last Changers Mixer. Said he understood everything, whatever it was, tell him or don’t tell him, deal with it or don’t, but a Changer who doesn’t wish to cling to the orthodox Changers path is always welcome at RaChas Central. I could stay for as long or as little as I needed.
He gave me the tour: the kitchen (“We job-share food acquisition, prep, cooking, service, and cleaning”); the bathrooms (“If you’re looking for gender-segregated toilets, you’ve come to the wrong place”); the sleeping area (“I think Judy’s going to be in Myanmar for another month, so feel free to bunk here”); and finally the work space.
“Some of the crew is—like you—still in school, so quiet time is between five and seven, and you can sign up for tutor help Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. We don’t give a flying rat’s ass whether or not you Chronicle while you’re here, but graduation’s not the worst objective.There’s no Internet, but there’s a Starbucks a few blocks east, and we set up a tent on their roof where you can borrow a connection when you need it.”
It was all a bit overwhelming. Okay, a lot overwhelming. A life so different from any I’d lived or even really known. I spun around, trying to absorb the scene. It was then that I spied the framed photograph leaning up against the brick wall in the corner, melted wax all around it, a couple candles still burning. There was also a glass of water, a bunch of coins, a bowl of noodles with a couple flies buzzing. A plate of chocolate cookies.
It was a photo of Chase, as his second V, the one I last saw him as in that basement when Elyse and I yanked off his hood. I couldn’t help but gasp. I felt like I’d been kicked in the ribs.
“One last thing,” Benedict said. “We don’t have any rules around here. I mean, you know how we feel about rules. But there is one tenet we all try to live by, and it is inspired by the writing of one of the most revered Radical Changers of all time, the legendary and inspiring Kate Bornstein. And that rule is: don’t be mean. Got it? Just don’t be mean.” Benedict bored his eyes into mine.
“I can do that,” I said.
“Good. Oh, wait, there’s one more thing. Not a rule. A suggestion. Don’t bring in found furniture from the street. At least nothing with fabric. We’ve been battling a bed bug problem.”
“Got it, no prob.”
“Everybody!?” Benedict shouted suddenly, and about half a dozen RaChas came out into the main room for the announcement. “This is—wait, what do you want to be called?”
“Uh, Kim is fine,” I said, regretting it as soon as it came out. “For now.”
“This is Kim!” Benedict called out. “Make Kim feel welcome!”
“Welcome!” they all shouted.
And oddly, it actually felt like I was.
* * *
When I finally checked my phone later that night there were, as predicted, about ten messages from Mom and Dad, beginning angry, then softening as they progressed unanswered. The last one read, I’m not mad, I swear. I just need to know you’re safe. —Mom
I typed back, I’m safe. All good. Love you.
Two of three parts were true.
Change 3–Day 113
The bus ride from Chez RaChas to school felt like it took a hundred years. I guess every journey on a bus that lasts longer than five minutes feels like a hundred years, but with the added miles, plus all the stops on the local, and the complete lack of suspension jiggling my boobs like a drink in a cocktail shaker, my new commute was particularly brutalizing. On the plus side, the distance gave me ample time to think, and because no one ever expects you to be in a good mood on a city bus, my depressive tendencies went completely unnoticed. I imagine it’s what living in New York City must feel like.
So far, bunking away from home has been mostly awesome. It is unnerving occupying the same physical space as Chase once did. Literally walking on the same floor, lounging on the same couches. I feel his energy in every corner, and that has been good and bad. I feel closer to him than I have in months, but I can’t seem to shake the guilt Nana told me to get rid of. It may be a useless reflex, but it’s one that sticks to your heart like tar to feathers, so I expect guilt and me will be partners in mutual abuse for a long while.
Speaking of Nana, knowing that she too was some sort of version of Chase in a former V has exploded my brain, the way talking with Michelle Hu about astrophysics does. I wish I could tell Michelle about us, about the whole alternate universe of Changers. I don’t doubt she could handle it. Damn, she probably already intuitively understands more about it than I do. Michelle seems intellectually and emotionally unflappable. I guess t
hat’s a quality you want in your future great scientists, which she intends to be.
During one of our nightly chats over dinner, Benedict reemphasized (likely for my benefit) that we should feel free to tell like-minded, trusted folks about who and what we are. That by hiding our truth in the shadows, we condemn ourselves to marginalization. Only, when it comes down to it, he hasn’t told anybody either, not directly. Chase getting killed rattled him too. I think he’s afraid if he comes out, the Abiders will swoop into RaChas HQ and release a poison gas that chokes us all out. Not to mention, uh, that when somebody found out who me, Elyse/Destiny, and Alex/Theo were last year, we ended up locked in a basement.
“Of course, denial is its own poison gas,” Benedict added ruefully. (After which several other RaChas shouted, “Secrets kill!”)
Which brings me to my parents. I told them after one night exactly where I was staying. With the Tribulations, they’ve suffered enough fear about my well-being. It was a really hard conversation, but I made them promise to give me the distance and boundaries I need to work through my issues, language Mom instinctively understood and respected. As long as I was eating well and being looked after and cared for by my peers (and staying in school!), she was down for the new experiment in apron string–cutting.
Dad was . . . Dad. Angry. Punitive. He blamed Mom. He blamed me. He blamed the Tribulations.
“Who he really blames is himself,” Mom tried to explain over the phone. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”
Mom had already apologized about the argument I’d overheard before bolting through my bedroom window. She guessed, correctly, that her “normal” comment was the final blow that toppled my neurotic house of cards. I told her I knew she didn’t mean it. It’s what she needed to hear, even if I still wasn’t sure I believed what she was selling.
“I don’t even subscribe to the concept of normal,” she explained, beyond sincerely. “I was just so frustrated with your father, with his, well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to trouble you with that. I guess I just snapped. I never meant to hurt you, or even him. Maybe him. I don’t know. Marriage is complicated.”