by T Cooper
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 g
oing 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!”
She just stands there, arms folded over herself, staring at me approvingly. Dad puts his hands on her shoulders from behind.
Then it hits me: “You mean you guys have known this could happen to me all along and chose not to tell me?”
My parents look at each other for a beat, before Mom says, “You’re meant to have as normal a life as possible.”
“Normal? Really?” I look at Cousin Brittney, I mean myself, in the mirror again.
“And,” she continues, “there’s always the possibility a Changer-Static union won’t be permitted Changer offspring.”
“I don’t know, seems like something you might want to share, you know, like, Your dad’s a FUll-ON MUTATING FREAK. And you might be one too!”
I run to the bathroom and slam the door behind me. Look at myself in the mirror. Everything I do, this damn girl does. Raising an eyebrow, blinking alternating eyes, making kissy-fish face, sticking out my tongue. I’m the girl in the Slayer shirt. No way around it. I feel dizzy. I pull up my long hair and let it drop over my ears. I yank my toothbrush out of its holder and squeeze some toothpaste on it. I jam the brush into my mouth, looking at this girl, at myself? I listen at the door, but my folks aren’t saying anything. I finish up, spit, rinse. Swish some Listerine. Spit again.
“I didn’t mean to call you a freak,” I say to my dad as soon as I crack the door.
“We know how weird this is,” Dad says, “and it’s going to be hard at first, but trust me, you’ll get the hang of it.”
“I just wish somebody had told me.”
“They don’t like us to say anything until we’re certain,” Dad says.
“They? Who are they?” I ask.
“The Changers Council,” he replies, as Mom picks up a thick envelope.
“The what?”
“The Council moderates and governs the Changer race. They guide and protect us. Without them it would be chaos,” Dad explains.
“This just arrived by courier.” Mom hands over the package, and I open it. Inside: The Changers Bible, a thick book with densely packed, opaque white pages and a symbol on the front, like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, but with four bodies instead of two. Also a birth certificate, which I pull out immediately.
“Drew Bohner?”
“It’ll be your name for the year,” Mom says.
“Really. Drew Boner? Great.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll rise to the occasion,” Dad tries. I’m not laughing.
In the package are middle school and elementary transcripts, medical records, a Social Security card, birth certificate, passport—all in Drew Bohner’s name. Old photographs of this made-up girl, of me, at different stages of life over the last fourteen years. Mom and Dad are droning on about how the Council has pre-enrolled me in school, how I’ll eventually, when it’s safe, get to meet other Changer kids like me, how I should spend the first few days studying The Changers Bible, and things will start making sense. That they’re always there for support and to answer questions, blah blah blah.
I’m just flipping through the photos of this little girl: tap dancing in a red top hat and leotard, winning a bronze medal in the freestyle swimming relay, standing in the first row, second from the left in Mrs. Johnson’s fourth grade class picture. Who the hell is Mrs. Johnson?
“So I have no say in any of this? Like, what if I don’t want to be a girl?” I ask.
“I think you’ll find that what you are transcends gender,” Mom says.
Barf.
“And Drew,” Dad adds. I don’t know who he’s talking to. “Ethan!” he says louder, and I snap to. “That’s the last time I’ll call you that, by the way. Listen to me: you cannot tell anybody who or what you are.”
But I don’t even know what I am, I think. Dad’s tone is serious as nut cancer. So I don’t say anything.
“This is why we moved so suddenly, left everything behind,” he goes on. “Later we’ll receive alibis for your future V’s—those are the four different versions of yourself—but for now, we’re new enough here that Ethan never existed. You just moved to town with your folks from outside New York City for your dad’s new job in Nashville. Got it?”
“I guess.” But I am leveled by a rush of sadness like when Pappy died as we all held him in the hospice; except it’s me, Eth
an, who’s gone, and I never even got to squeeze a hand or say goodbye.
* * *
Minutes later in Mom’s closet, my mind is racing, totally unfocused, but she keeps pulling out clothes, expecting me to make some sort of decision. I can’t envision myself in anything she suggests. A silky green blouse (“It’ll complement your eyes”). A blue cotton tank top (“High in the mid-nineties today”). Something called a “romper.” I am paralyzed. As she closes the closet door, I notice the full-length mirror on the back of it. She stands there looking at me in it. Again with the tears. The woman is going to convert to dust if she keeps losing liquid at this rate.
“Maybe those,” I say, pointing to some stained khaki shorts she does yard work in.
“Honey, it’s your first day.”
“And?” I stare at her.
She exhales, hands me the shorts, which feel so wrong I can barely stomach touching the fabric. I unbutton them (they even button the wrong way) and step in. They are pleated and bulgy, while at the same time entirely too tight. And they ride too high up on my waist. Nothing about any of this fits. And then . . . “I’m so sorry, but,” Mom begins shakily, “it wouldn’t be right to send you out of the house without—”
“What?” I cut my eyes at her as she starts fishing through her top drawer. My heart is pounding. After a few seconds she pulls it out . . . a bra. A white silky strappy thing that looks like two yarmulkes sewn together.
“No,” I say. “Nuh-uh, not doing it.” I shake my head.
“It’s part of the deal, sweetie. Let me show you,” she says, trying to lift up my Slayer shirt. “It’s easy once you get it adjusted right.”