Changers Book Four. T Cooper
Abridged Glossary of Terms (Excerpted from the Changers Bible)
A Look Back: Changers Book One: Drew
Also Available: Changers Book Two: Oryon
Also Available: Changers Book Three: Kim
About Black Sheep and Akashic Books
For Mary Gonzalez
1933–2016
Before he became the one he was meant to be, before he lived through those four years called high school, those four years where everything he ever knew evaporated into air, where the ground dropped away, and he fell in love, and he lived through hate and violence and the loss of his best friend, and saved lives without even knowing how, and was rescued by a girl and a boy and words and music, and he did everything wrong until he got a few important things right, before he questioned what it meant to be special, what it meant to be anything, and harnessed his power, the power he didn’t believe he had, the power others tried to take, before that and a hundred other awful, wondrous, ruinous, magical things, he was just a girl in Tennessee named Kim.
Kim
Change 3–Day 201
I lit the match today.
I lit the match and I held the flame to the dynamite and I watched the fuse burn into dust and I stood very still when the explosion went off and blew everything in my life wide open in a blinding light.
It was glorious.
Do you have any idea how amazing it feels to show people who you are?
It’s like watching those Planet Earth nature specials, where every creature, every insect, every leaf, every droplet of water is so full of beauty and essential goodness that your heart buoys and your endorphins flood their happy juices, and you believe anew that the world, filled with garbage and garbage people though it may be, is still a ceaseless miracle.
That’s what telling the truth about yourself feels like. Especially when you’ve spent years holding in a giant secret about who you are. It’s like nothing so much as being born, released from darkness, exploding like a GD Katy Perry firework across the sky.
This afternoon, I was a firework. And I know there will be fallout. Debris. Cleanup. But I’m too tired to think about that. Right now I want to bask in my shine.
Kim
Change 3–Day 202
Okay, so.
Audrey knows.
Everything.
Well, not everything. But she knows about me. About all the me’s. Or at least that there are multiple me’s. But that they are all the same me. More or less. She’ll figure the rest out. I’ll help her. I’ll explain, and she’ll understand, and the puzzle pieces will fall into alignment, and the whole grand picture will reveal itself in all its satisfying completion. I have faith. At long last, I’m a believer!
Yesterday’s RaChas visibility march devolved into a crap show of the highest order after Audrey spotted me wearing the one-of-a-kind bracelet she’d given me—well, given Drew, freshman year. The same bracelet she found in Oryon’s bedroom sophomore year after we had sex. I could see the recognition click in, snap like a seat belt right as she whispered, “Drew?” in a voice both frightened and relieved. (I may be projecting the relieved part.)
I can’t remember if I nodded or smiled or shrugged or all three, but I do know that for a full minute her eyes never left mine, and it felt, finally, like old times, when we were best friends who counted on each other more than anyone else in the world.
Audrey began to shake, and I felt the urge to embrace her, but of course, before I could, I spotted her brother tramping toward us, his puka choker straining against the engorged veins lining his neck. Jason was not having any part of the “Change is not strange!” message we were proclaiming in the streets, much less his sister rubbing elbows with any of the alterna-weirdos holding signs and screaming slogans in support of our right to be different than his version of “normal.”
At his heels was Destiny (ever my protector in Chase’s absence), who had stopped marching and was beelining to my side to head off Jason before he could detonate the sulfur bomb of his toxic white male privilege in my face.
As I watched Jason and Destiny both barreling our way, Audrey grabbed my forearm, flipped it over, and hooked a finger under the bracelet, getting a real good look at it. Yep, same one she gave Drew. Same one Oryon somehow had. And now Kim. She lifted her face to mine again, tears welling, as Jason and Destiny arrived at our respective sides, sandwiching Audrey and me.
“Of course, if a freak flag is waving within a hundred-mile radius, this heifer is going to show up for it,” Jason barks in my direction.
“Fascist say what?” Destiny seethes, shoulder-checking Jason surprisingly hard, spinning him around.
Jason quickly recovers his balance, then laughs in Destiny’s face. “You people sure are feisty,” he says, licking his lips.
At that Destiny does what Destiny is going to do: she winds up and punches Jason square in the jaw so hard he falls on his ass. Audrey gasps. I glance around and notice several people filming the whole incident with their phones. I tug at Destiny’s hip, pull her back.
“Walk away,” I whisper. “This could get ugly.”
“It already is ugly,” she says, glaring at Jason, who is eyeballing her from the pavement with palpable rage.
By this time the whole Radical Changers crowd has stopped marching and chanting. Benedict has fallen oddly silent, cutting short his lecture to the TV reporter, the camera having moved on to the simmering brouhaha between Jason and Destiny. Meanwhile, Audrey is still clinging to my arm, her fingers tight around my wrist.
“Aud, I wanted to tell you,” I start to mumble. “I’ve never not wanted to tell you—”
Without warning, Jason leaps up, shoving Audrey aside, launching her into the crowd as he surges toward Destiny. He reaches for Destiny’s face, his hand smooshing her nose and chin like he’s blocking a tackle. Behind him, Andy bursts into the melee, screaming, “Don’t lay a finger on her!” and jumping onto Jason’s back, the two spinning a full rotation before dropping to the ground where they begin frantically rolling and punching each other in the side of the head, the news camera trained on them the whole time.
Benedict sprints over, horrified his carefully choreographed message in support of peace and embracing difference has devolved into a bloody street brawl. “You’re not even supposed to be here!” he yells at Andy, trying to break them up, but getting dragged into the fight himself.
Now it’s the three of them—Benedict the king of the RaChas, Andy the rogue RaChas ally, and Jason the fledgling Abider—wrestling