by T Cooper
Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap . . .
“What are you even doing? That’s my stuff,” I stammered, noticing the top of the ceramic coil pot I’d made in sixth grade to keep my treasures was lifted.
“Where did you get this?” she pressed.
“My grandma, my—you know—I—”
I could tell some serious math was computing in Audrey’s head, with no apparent solutions, no matter how many times she went over the problem. She looked at once scared, angry, confused, betrayed, embarrassed; you name the emotion, it was on her face. I set the sweating glasses atop my dresser, carefully walked over to her, tried to pull her into a hug. She stepped back, balling up the chain in her hand.
“If this is some kind of sick joke . . .” she started, but didn’t finish, opening her hand again and taking another look at the now-knotted bracelet in her palm.
“Aud, please,” I tried, keeping my voice low and calming. “Can we just sit down and talk for a minute?”
“About what? I can’t even imagine. I don’t want to imagine.” She looked completely rattled. Then, as if she suddenly realized something, she flung the bracelet onto the bed behind her and started stooping to collect her things, throwing on a sweatshirt and stomping into her low-top Cons with the heels crushed down, one of which was sticking out from under my comforter. “I need to get out of here,” she said, frantic. “I need to get out of here NOW.”
“Audrey wait,” I pleaded with her, but by then she was dressed and shoving the rest of her things into her backpack.
“Where’s my phone?” she screeched.
I looked around, saw it peeking out the top of her jeans pocket. I pointed at it. She looked down, pulled it out, and immediately started typing furiously into the screen.
“Please,” I said, trying to figure out whom she might be texting. Aaron? A girl from the squad? “I promise this’ll all make sense if you just give me a minute to explain.”
“Explain what?” she replied, hefting her backpack over a shoulder. “How do you know her?”
“Who?” I said, a reflex.
Her face darkened further.
I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t want her to leave. I knew it was a false promise; no matter what I did, it would not in fact “all make sense.” I couldn’t tell her. But I couldn’t not tell her. So I just stood there frozen, half naked, my mouth hanging open like a monster.
She blew a long breath through her teeth, then turned and left. By the time I realized what was happening, I could already hear the apartment door slamming.
I quickly scrambled to throw something on, but all I could find was a pair of cut-off, ripped sweat shorts and a stinky skate tank top, which I pulled over my head while launching after Audrey through the kitchen. I got out to the hallway as the elevator doors closed and beeped, so I blew down the stairs barefoot, bursting into the side lobby just as Audrey was stepping through the revolving door and out into the night.
“Audrey!” I yelled after her, but she didn’t turn around. Hank, our night doorman, looked at me askance, as if to let me know he was watching me. Audrey ran to the curb; I followed close behind.
“Please? Please, just stop,” I begged her.
“Get away from me,” she hissed, and the tears were pouring now. She checked left and right for traffic, then sprinted to the median of Ninth Avenue between a car and a motorcycle that had to slam the brakes to avoid clipping her. I waited, then dashed to her, grabbing her wrist to prevent her from running across another lane of traffic.
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, loud enough so a dude putting air in his tires at the gas station across the street looked up to see what was going on.
She twisted her arm away from me and ran toward him. After another couple cars passed, I trailed behind. Fine if she didn’t want to talk, fine if she wanted to leave, but there was no way I was letting her wander the streets distressed and alone in the middle of the night.
“At least let me call you a taxi.”
“I said leave me ALONE!”
“Dude,” the guy called out, then stepped toward us. He was white with a scruffy beard, about thirty, wearing construction boots caked in mud.
I knew I had to back down. I knew what this looked like. In fact, I knew from both sides of the equation.
“Is there a problem, miss?” the guy asked Audrey, planting himself between us. The bill of his CAT tractor hat was curled tighter than a paper towel roll above his forehead, a wad of dip tucked deep into his left cheek. He had six inches on me, and at least sixty pounds.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said, wiping her eyes. Humiliated.
The guy gave me a once-over. Noted my bare feet, my shredded hobo shorts.
“We just had a little misunderstanding,” I said, slouching nonthreateningly.
Audrey huffed.
“Well, I’m right over there if you need anything, miss,” he said to her, but gave me the I don’t have gun racks in my pickup for nothing look, as he turned and plodded back to his truck.
Audrey stood there, her back to me. I walked around her other side, and she pivoted again.
“Are you not going to let me explain?”
Silence.
“I’m not leaving you alone,” I said. “It’s unsafe.”
“I don’t care what you do.” She finally swiveled to me and glared straight into my eyes. “I truly don’t.”
She meant it. That’s it. It was time to come out.
“I need to tell you something, something crazy, but it’s the complete truth,” I started, but just as I did, I heard a familiar engine approaching from down the block. I had to strain to see past the blinding headlights, but yep, there he was, rolling up in his ’stang convertible, creeping slowly like a patrol car looking for a fugitive.
“I’d get out of here if I were you,” Aud said in a flat voice, and stepped into the street, holding up her hand to flag him down.
I ran over to a row of shrubs, jumped behind them, then turned back around to peer between two bushes as Audrey threw her bag in the back and silently climbed into the passenger seat beside her brother. Jason’s head was swiveling around everywhere, scouting the scene. I could hear him ask, “What happened?” but Audrey didn’t answer.
“What the hell happened?” he repeated, even louder. “Who is it?”
Audrey stayed silent. She slumped in her seat, and it looked like she was starting to cry again as they pulled off.
I ducked. But I’m pretty sure Jason spotted me before screeching away.
* * *
So now I’m back in my empty apartment, lying in bed next to Snoopy, with nothing but the scent of Tahitian Vanilla body mist and a little indentation in the pillow to remind me where Audrey had been not half an hour before. I can’t text, I can’t call. I tried her parents’ phone line but there was no answer. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I might go crazy. Certifiably 5150 shave-your-head-and-check-into-the-nut-house crazy.
Should I call Chase? But I don’t want to tell him what happened; it feels like a betrayal of Audrey and weird anyway, with our history and his attitude.
What about Tracy? I have a feeling she’s not going to understand this one. Not unless I can convince her that the way I feel about Audrey is the way she feels about Mr. Crowell. That she is my “one,” the way he is hers. The Static who I know I’m meant to share the real me with.
The Council forbids Changers from choosing Static mates until after our Cycles are complete. But what if I KNOW? There have to be exceptions when Changers’ lives crash into people as lovely and wonderful as Audrey.
I’ll just find a way to tell Audrey everything, and then promise her I’ll choose Oryon as my Mono, if she can just bear to live with whomever I’ll become over the next two years. Sound reasonable? Sure it does. If you’re on your third-day acid trip at Burning Man.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
This feels horrible. The worst I’ve ever f
elt. So much worse than the previous worst. It’s torture not to know what she’s thinking. Torture that I suspect I do know. That she hates me. That I’ve lost her.
CHANGE 2–DAY 222
—
I don’t know if this is even Chronicling. My head hurts, I’m so dopey.
Woozy and tired.
Where am I?
My eyelids feel heavy and droopy, all I see in my brain is Audrey’s lovely face; but where is she, what happened?—
. . . hello? Is anybody hearing . . .
. . . this?
CHANGE 2–DAY 223
Hello? Please—somebody.
Is my damn chip even working? I’m really hoping the Council is tapping our Chronicles. Because I really need them right now. Really need YOU right now. Please, if you’re listening, we need help. Quick.
I’ve been abducted. Kidnapped, I guess.
I don’t know where I am, don’t remember anything, but I do know that there’s another Changer here with me—can’t tell whether that’s a coincidence or what. But there are definitely two of us. One is, well, me, Oryon Small, and the other is this kid named Alex who I saw in the locker room that day when he tried to hide his butt cheek after PE. He’s a freshman, and it seems like he might’ve gotten hit in the head or something. He doesn’t remember what happened to him either. He’s been weeping pretty much nonstop since I woke up here a few hours ago. Alex says he regained consciousness about twelve hours before they brought me in.
I know we’re downstairs in a basement because Alex said he spotted a short hallway leading to a narrow staircase when they opened the door and brought me in and dumped me on the floor. It’s damp and cold. And there are no windows, little light, just some ambient glow from the cracks around the metal door that’s penning us in. I tried slamming into it, pulling the handle, pushing it a few times. It won’t budge—seems like a padlock’s secured on the other side.
I don’t know what else I can tell you by way of details. The floor is cement and cracked in thirds diagonally across the space, which is about, what, fifteen by twenty feet. It feels like a standard rectangular basement type of room, the ceiling above is about seven feet high, and there are cinder-block walls on all sides, a few low wooden benches, some plastic buckets—for toilets, I guess—and a handful of wadded towels and trash scattered about. It smells like bleach and propane.
Somebody tossed down some granola bars and two bottles of water earlier. Alex said they gave him a peanut butter sandwich the day before. He also said I slept restlessly for ten or so hours before waking up one last time and remaining conscious, which is when he just flat-out asked if I knew what a V was, if I know who the Council is. Which is when we figured out we’re both Changers.
Wait, somebody’s coming down the steps . . .
CHANGE 2–DAY 223, PART TWO
Two guys just came in, one in a black hood with eyeholes cut out, the other with a black bandanna covering half his face, both clad in black long-sleeved shirts and pants. Brown work boots. They carried in an unconscious girl and deposited her limp body on a towel in the corner, while Alex and I shrank from the light that suddenly flooded in from the hallway.
I considered rushing them, but realized I’d have no chance, feeling as weak as I do. I need to gather my strength. Take notes. Man, I wish someone would hear this.
The creepy dudes exited as quickly as they came, slamming the door shut and padlocking it on the other side. They left two sandwiches and a half-empty bottle of water on one of the benches.
“Hello, hey?” I try in the girl’s direction after I can no longer hear footsteps on the other side of the door, but she is out cold. She’s nail thin, looks to be about seventeen, with wavy light-brown hair with a streak of purple in it and pale skin. She has a red scratch on her left cheekbone, with tiny dots of dried blood running the length of it.
I get closer and nudge her shoulder. Nothing. Nudge it a little harder. Still nothing. I try to feel for a pulse, poke around her soft neck beneath her jaw. It takes me awhile to feel it: slow and steady pumping. Phew, at least she’s alive.
“They’re going to kill us,” Alex says, and starts sobbing again, balling himself up in the opposite corner.
“They wouldn’t give us food if they were planning on killing us,” I respond authoritatively, tossing him a sandwich, which he catches against his chest. “We aren’t Hansel and Gretel.”
I’m not sure I believe it myself, but it seems like the right thing to say. Unwrapping the bread from the cellophane calms him down some.
We eat silently and quickly, chewing like cows blinking into the darkness in the general direction of the girl. After we finish eating and split the little bit of water, we start hearing a distant but loud, repetitive banging noise coming from upstairs, followed by more silence.
“What do you remember?” I ask softly after probably another fifteen minutes.
“I don’t know exactly,” Alex starts, coughing twice. “I was waiting for my mom to pick me up from swim practice behind the Y. Next thing I know, I woke up here with a massive headache.”
“Did you see anybody?”
“Not really,” he says fuzzily, his speech slightly slurred, as if he’s tipsy from downing a couple beers at a keg party. “What do you remember?”
“Less than zero,” I say, but then I’m unexpectedly flooded with images. “Wait, I, I was walking my dog in the morning . . . the morning after I—”
Oh my god, Audrey. What must she be thinking?
“I was walking Snoopy, that’s my dog, toward the park, first thing in the morning,” I slowly continue, reaching for every word, doubting every one even as I manage to grab hold of it. “A couple trucks screeched up on either side of us . . .”
And Snoopy, what happened to Snoopy?
“Some guys jumped out, and, and—”
“You don’t remember after that,” Alex finishes for me.
“I guess I don’t,” I concede, recalling then that my plan had been to take Snoopy for a quick walk before skating over to Audrey’s to try and force her to talk to me in person.
Alex and I both fall silent again, seized by our own thoughts and memories, all of which are suddenly suspect, constructions and imaginings, trauma-tainted. I realize I don’t know what time it is, or what day, or how long I’ve been here. I am petrified that Snoopy was hurt or taken by the same psychos, or maybe he ran away when those guys jumped me. But if he gets picked up by Animal Control and taken to the pound, he’s not going to last long, since they don’t keep pit bulls alive much more than twenty-four hours if nobody comes to claim them.
I think Mom or Dad was supposed to be back by Sunday—is it Sunday?
How will they know what happened? What will they find that might tip them off? Even if they find something like the locket by the bed or the condoms I hid at the bottom of the trash or, I don’t know, my collection of letters from Audrey—how would that lead them to me here? Wherever here is.
Did anybody on the street see what happened? Did the daytime doorman see me and Snoopy leave and not come back? Could he have notified the police? Could the police even help?
Now I’m the one crying. But I cheat to the side so Alex can’t tell. It’s dark enough to hide.
CHANGE 2–DAY 224
The girl started stirring a few hours ago. It seemed like she might be waking up on a few separate occasions, and each time her eyes opened, Alex and I went over to try to be there to comfort her, but out she went again for another spell. It wasn’t until the fourth time that she actually woke up, and grew instantly terrified that there were two strange guys at her side. She crawled as far away as she could in the cramped space, pressing her back up against the wall, fists balled tight.
It took some convincing before she accepted that we were not her captors. And man, even under duress, this girl was a good Changer, not betraying that she was one until it was completely undeniable that Alex and I had too much insider Changers info not to be Changers ourselves.
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Her name is Lynn, and she’s a junior at a high school in Nashville. She had been at a graffiti-art gallery show and all-night party in 12 South with her girlfriend when some guys suddenly rushed her as she was having a quick cigarette in the alley out back, and then she woke up here, similarly unable to remember anything after that moment.
She was confident, brassy, and, even in this crappy situation, funny every once in a while. She was raised a boy, and had been a boy for her previous two Vs—but insisted fervently she would be picking a girl for her Mono, regardless of who she turned into next. She’d been having the best year of her life—even though she said she despised her name and every instance that she heard people calling her by it.
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s neither here nor there, sounds like a menopausal, Midwestern, thick-around-the-midsection church lady,” she said, finishing off one of the protein bars that were tossed through the cracked door into our basement before Lynn awoke.
“I think we’re supposed to wait until our Cycles are complete before picking,” Alex said earnestly.
“Oh, Lynn, we’ve run out of frozen cookie dough for the youth group fundraiser,” she ignored Alex and continued, droning on in the voice of precisely the type of lady whom she was just describing. “Lynn, meet you at three at Lucille Roberts for Zumba class. Gotta tone those glutes!”
“So change your name,” I said, chuckling.
“Yeah,” Alex agreed.
“To what?” she replied, as though it was the first time she’d ever considered such a thing. Which is hard to believe. This girl seemed like she did pretty much whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and didn’t worry too much about what anybody thought about it.
“What’s a name you like?” I asked.
“My best friend’s middle name,” she said, and then seemed instantly sad. “Elyse. I always thought it was a really pretty name . . .”
Alex and I stayed quiet.
“She died,” Lynn (Elyse) added.