by T Cooper
CHANGE 2–DAY 2
I guess I never noticed how much high school cafeterias are like federal prisons. When I was Ethan I went through an MSNBC Lockup stage. Well, feverishly watching any show related to incarceration, really. Documentaries, dramas. In all of them, there’s meaning behind which tables the inmates self-separate into after they come inside from their hour in the yard. (You know I know a lot about prison when I know it’s called “the yard.”)
Anyway, in prison there’s the white table. Which I’m mentioning first because until now I’ve been raised as one of these people who would mindlessly be sitting at the white table while never giving it a second thought.
After the plain white table, there’s the white supremacist table. Lots of face tattoos over there. The Latino table, the mixed table—and the black table. It’s always like that. Rarely are there exceptions. I mean, sometimes there’s some intersection and conflict among the white tables, as in, if you’re white, you’re either with us or against us, so you better be all white all the time, as in Master Race White—or you might as well sit with the blacks because you must love them so much if you don’t hate them. One white inmate at San Quentin said in an interview that he was now considered black “inside” because he would not admit to hating blacks, so the whites shunned him, and the blacks took him in and protected him from the white supremacists who were always trying to shank him for being a race traitor. (And I thought Changers’ lives were bewildering.)
While nobody’s getting eyelid and inner-lip tattoos of swastikas in high school (nobody at Central anyhow, except possibly Aud’s deranged brother Jason, in his dreams), and the “protection” offered by affiliating with a particular group is more emotional than physical, it was made crystal clear for me today at lunch how much people stick to their tribes. I don’t know why I didn’t notice before. Oh right, because I’m passively racist, and I had the luxury of not having to notice such things. Obviously a failing that I, as a “Changer of color,” am now supposed to learn from, and I’ve been given this V so I can spend the year figuring it out, instead of wasting all my time fretting about whether Audrey still likes me.
Last year, as an apparently empirically “cute” Caucasian freshman girl, I never found myself in the predicament I found myself in today: standing alone at the end of the food line clutching my beige fiberglass tray, looking left, then right, then left again for somewhere to sit, watching all the already-best-friends clustered together, cutting up, sharing tater tots, spewing chocolate milk at stories about stupid crap that happened over summer that’s nowhere near funny enough to inspire sprayed milk.
Last year it was like I had an instant soul mate in Audrey, and we sat together at lunch from the first day of school onward. But this year, while she certainly reached out to me after “Homeroom: the Remix,” it wasn’t like, Hey, there you are, standing awkwardly like a giant dufus in your dad’s green polyester cutoffs and yet another white undershirt, so stop looking so unfortunate and come over and sit with me and my girlfriends from JV cheerleading.
Aud did glance up at me with a flash of pity and gave a little pageant wave before transitioning that hand into pushing a strand of hair out of her eyebrow, but then she went right back to talking with Shuba and Em about who knows what. All the rollicking times she had at the restrictive, possibly Abiders-affiliated summer camp her parents forced her to go to with her psychotic brother? It was clear it would’ve been odd for me to plop down next to her and the girls I used to be on the squad with. Well, odd for them at least.
So I just craned my neck around, surfing the din and chaos of the cafeteria, eyes lighting on the various segregated sets and subsets of groups until I found a mostly empty table. I took a lonely seat and hunched over, shoveling in my gluey mac ’n’ cheese. Before I knew it, a few other kids (none of them white) started sitting around me, saying, “What’s up?” and, “Hey,” and not even bothering with, Yo, is it cool if I sit here? like it was simply where The Black Table was located today, and they’d obviously missed the memo.
I nodded back, spearing salty, soggy green beans with a spork, intermittently eyeballing Audrey who was sitting four tables up and one table down.
“Yo, Erkel,” I hear after a couple more soggy bites.
I look up.
“I heard you’re from the A-T-L.” It’s a guy about my height, though buffer, with glasses and a crooked snapback Braves cap, sitting right across from me. I guess word about the new kid travels fast.
I don’t recognize him from around school last year, but then I probably wouldn’t, given he wasn’t on the girl’s cheer squad. I nod, a little scared he’s going to start quizzing me on all things Atlanta, and I’m going to have to bluff or be outed as the guy who pretended to be from a city he wasn’t from, which is almost as sad as my heartrending dead-parents backstory. Mercifully, he doesn’t wait for an answer.
“I was born there,” he says. “We moved here when I was three.”
I still don’t say anything, just chew my runny, metallic beans.
“We go back once or twice a year to see my grandparents in Stone Mountain,” he adds. “It’s hot. I’m gonna go to Morehouse. Or GSU.”
I nod my head like, Oh, of course, GSU.
“You don’t talk much, huh?”
“No, I do,” I protest softly, still lilting up like a loser.
He furrows his brow, skeptical. I don’t really know what to say to this guy. Most of me can’t stop reflexively thinking he’s flirting with me—why else would he be so nice? I can’t help but operate like I’m still Drew. When will that stop? I wonder.
I try to think of something to ask, but I don’t really want to know anything. I just want to keep it simple, get my bearings, eat these beans, reconnect with Audrey, and then and only then maybe worry about other people.
I try, “So, uh, you like the Braves?” Weak.
“Yeah,” he says, swiveling around his cap so the A logo faces me. “I. Like. The. Braves.”
Now he’s making fun of me. I glance over toward Audrey, her table getting more crowded with a fresh round of girls juggling trays.
“What’s your name?”
“Oryon.”
“I’m DJ. Junior.” He sticks out a hand, I shake it quickly.
“DJ Junior,” I repeat.
“No, I am a junior,” he corrects.
“Oh. I’m a sophomore.”
“I know.” He frowns. And then after a second: “No offense, Oryon, but there’s like 20 percent of us at Central—and you’re sporting more of a D-Wade shade, so it’s not like you’re gonna slip under the radar like some high yellow. Do the math, that’s like, not a lot of black folks, so if you want to have some allies, and if you can manage to stop ogling that white girl over there for a few seconds, then maybe I can show you around a little if you want.”
My cheeks flare. I feel so busted. I make a theatrical disgusted face at him like, I am so not staring at any white girl. But it’s obvious I am. Luckily someone sits down next to DJ right then, blocking my view. “S’up, Deege?” I recognize the voice and instinctively light up. Then tamp it down.
“Hey girl,” DJ says, scooting over a little to make room for her tray. “This is Oryon. He’s new. Quiet. Maybe slow. Jury is out.”
“Hey you,” I say to Kenya, regretting the you as soon as it slips out of my mouth. Her braids are pulled back into a thick bunch resting on the back of her neck. She stares kind of through me, telegraphing instant not interested, unconscious of the fact that we were on the same track team last semester.
“Hey you?” she says coolly, unfolding her napkin on her lap, as DJ chuckles.
“How was training camp?” I pop out. Before I can help it. Again.
Her eyes narrow like, Excuse me?
“Excuse me?” Kenya actually says then, highly suspicious and a little peeved. I know she’s private about her life on account of what her family’s been through with losing her brother and all.
I frantically backp
edal, “Yeah, DJ was just looping me in on how you’re this huge track star, and how you’re getting a scholarship to Florida or somewhere, so I just—”
“Hold up,” Kenya interrupts, grave-faced. “Are we friends? Do I know you? Why are you talking about my future plans?” DJ is mugging next to her, making a crazy face, sucking in his cheeks and cocking his head at me. Kenya turns to him. “I thought you said he was quiet.”
DJ erupts with laughter, grabbing his belly for effect. “She’s killin’ you, man. DOA.”
I decide to change tack. “So, actually, DJ was going on and on about how you’re the hottest girl in school and how much he’s always been in love with you,” I say, turning the beat around, “but he knows he’ll never have a chance because you’re so focused on track and never have time for anything like a boyfriend, and besides, look at him. But he said he’d do anything if you’d go out on a pity date with him, just once.”
“We went out two years ago,” DJ snaps flatly, crossing his arms. “But by all means, keep spinning.”
I’m looking back and forth between them, and the tension is mounting, and mounting . . . and suddenly Kenya’s face breaks out in her infectious, welcoming smile, and she reaches across the table with a fist awaiting a tap.
“I’m just playing,” she says, giving a goofy wink. My heart is fluttering again, but I manage to pound it out with Kenya, and then DJ, and then I quickly pile my trash onto my tray and decide to get out of there while I still can and while everybody’s cutting up and forgetting how the hell I know stuff about Kenya no new kid should know.
I stand up and glance over at Audrey’s table one more time, but she’s already gone.
“You run track?” Kenya asks, bringing my attention back to our table.
“I used to,” I say. “One season. Hurdles.”
“We do some fall training if you want to come out, get your jump on.”
After getting close with Kenya from all of our hours practicing, competing, bouncing in the last rows of janky buses to and from track meets, I know that she would never say something she didn’t mean. And I am flattered that somebody—that two people—are being cool with this new me, without my even really trying.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’d be fab.”
“Fab,” DJ echoes.
“Rad,” I throw out, too late. “I was also thinking of maybe trying out for football,” I add. See? I’m a dude. A totally normal, football-playing man person.
“You play football, Erkel?” DJ asks, but not really asking at all. “That why you’re so jacked?” He strikes a bodybuilding pose.
Kenya takes a bite of salad, suddenly engrossed by it. Dang. I should have walked away ninety seconds ago. I’d forgotten how quickly the atmosphere shifts from hot to chilly in the high school ecosystem.
“I’ll see you guys around,” I say, slinging my backpack over a shoulder and heading toward the tray-drop area. Neither Kenya nor DJ says goodbye.
* * *
I knew I was going to need something to rock besides green cutoffs, white undershirts, and too-small Vans every freaking day. So after school I ran home, choked down a cup of all-natural soy-gurt. (Note to Mom: this body is a rental. Stop fretting about hormones and GMOs, and buy yogurt that doesn’t taste like medical waste. Also, a pizza-pocket wouldn’t kill me.) I grabbed a couple trash bags from under the sink and trolled the apartment, scooping up the entirety of my old Drew wardrobe and jamming the clothes inside. I took the bags down the elevator—one over-a-shoulder Santa-style, the other propped in the middle of my skateboard to let it bear some of the weight.
The doorman tracked me as my board ca-cook ca-cooked across the shiny marble tiles in the lobby. I smiled sheepishly, though he didn’t return the sentiment.
When I got to ReRunz, there was a long, deflated-looking line for selling, as usual. The listless, double-cheek-pierced attendant behind the counter robotically pawed through some poor girl’s formerly beloved ensembles, picking select skirts and blouses up by her fingertips as if they were radioactive, then dropping them to the floor like the garbage they now were. Every so often the girl selling would whine in a high-pitched voice, “But that was from Abercrombie,” and the attendant would laboriously turn the garment inside out, eyeball the label, and then drop the piece of clothing to the floor again in a gold-medal display of passive-aggressiveness.
Clearly this was going to take awhile, so I shoved my bags in a corner out of the way and sat down to wait to be called. Kurt Cobain growled from the tinny speaker over my head, “Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach. As I want you to be. As a trend, as a friend . . .”
“Next!” a guy behind the register shouted out after about fifteen minutes, nodding in my direction. Deep voice, thick eyebrows, stocky, like “The Rock,” pre-’roids, when he was still a touch doughy and wasn’t starring as ancient superheroes no one’s ever heard of in all those movies my long-lost buddy Andy always wanted to see on opening night.
I hefted the first bag onto the counter, just as it gave way and Drew’s clothes exploded through the rip in the seam, bras and lacy leggings on full display. Rock Junior eyed me suspiciously.
“This yours?” he asked, holding up a pink camisole with JUICY written on the front.
“No. Yes. I didn’t steal them or anything. They’re my sister’s things. She’s going in a new stylistic direction.”
“Whatever, man,” he shrugged, and began sorting through my old wardrobe with the pronounced disdain I was starting to suspect was a job requirement for the ReRunz staff. I watched as my entire past year flashed before me in this guy’s square hands: Drew’s first pair of cheetah-print jeggings; an (I thought) ironic vintage Choose Life oversized T-shirt from the ’80s; a white sweater with a giant pink heart on front; the retro purple ruffled shirt I wore to prom when Audrey kissed me and I saw a flash of her future; and then the gray Converses on which I’d scribbled The Bickersons’ band logo with a black Sharpie.
I was starting to get misty watching it all go when Baby Rock suddenly jerked up his head and snapped, “I can’t accept this,” pointing to the tuxedo shirt.
“Okay,” I said. You’re the boss, dude.
“Or this,” he said, tossing aside another T-shirt.
“Fine.” This jerk was full-on hostile. Maybe I was wrong about pre-’roids.
“Or this,” to a pair of jeans, “or this or this or this,” he went on, tearing through Drew’s wardrobe like the Tasmanian Devil, clothes flying everywhere.
“What’s your issue?” I asked, wincing as my whole freshman world fell into depressing, rejected piles around him.
“My issue is . . . these dingy kicks? No freaking way.” He sniffed at them, wrinkling up his nose theatrically, before flinging them at my chest. “Your sister? Is basic.”
I looked around to see if anybody was paying attention to how this idiot muscle-head was carrying on. I realize it’s very powerful to be the decider who tells people whether their clothes are “cool” or not, but this was freaking re-dic-ul-ous.
Mr. Adrenal started stuffing the clothes back into the ripped bag, and pushed it across the counter toward me. “We don’t buy from your kind here,” he hissed under his breath.
I almost shat my pants. Was he suggesting what I thought he was? How did he know? Maybe he was an Abider. Where was Tracy when I needed her? I thought ReRunz was supposed to be a down-low Changers establishment or something. The freak just kept hate-eyeing me, nostrils flaring, smelling what I got cooking.
And then, suddenly, he starts laughing his ass off like he’s goddamn Ashton Kutcher on Punk’d. I’m still cringing there, worrying he’s a Changer-hater who’s clocked me and wishes me and my entire lineage dead, when he unexpectedly launches half his substantial body over the counter and swoops me into a giant man-hug.
“It’s me,” he whispers into my ear while he has me in a headlock.
I am barely catching up to what just happened, and not a little alarmed by the fact that this guy, in his new
found affection for me, is collapsing my trachea like a pancake when it hits me: Chase.
“Oh my god, man, look at you!” he says, finally releasing his vice grip on my neck.
“Look at me? Look at you,” I counter, grasping for a shred of composure, all too aware that people are starting to stare.
“Man.” He’s taking me in, really gulping me down. It’s making me nervous. I try and check him out too, only less obviously.
“I guess the whole crystal-ritual identity McGyvering didn’t pan out,” I say, chuckling, then adding, “You are big. Like, Olympic dead-lift big. Like-you-could-rip-my-head-off-and-crap-in-my-neck big.”
Chase comes around the counter then, and we just stand there gawking at each other for what seems like a decade. He smiling. Me sort of smiling. This. Is. Weird.
“This is major-league awesome, right?” Chase says, karate-chopping the air between us.
“I guess,” I exhale. “I mean . . .”
I have so many questions. Where’s he living? Is he back in school? Is the Changers Council off his back? Did he really knock up some RaCha girl? Does he have a RaCha baby in a BabyBjörn somewhere? I don’t even know where to begin, and maybe I shouldn’t even bother, because we aren’t the same people anymore. Even if we hadn’t changed into new Vs, we’d be different. Older, changed. Summers do that. Experience does that.
I decide maybe the thing to do is to start as friends who just met. Pretend the past belongs to somebody (some body) else, even as we are publicly gazing into each other’s faces like long-lost lovers, the shards of our former intimacy on full display.
Chase embraces me again, less tightly this time. “What’s your name supposed to be now?” he asks, loud enough so I shrink, anxious somebody has heard him.
“Oryon,” I answer quietly. “You?”
“I’m keeping my name,” he announces proudly.