Changers Book Four. T Cooper
speeding off to wherever drivers speed off to, I tell him I am his long-lost friend Ethan, the guy who trick-or-treated with him in matching Batman costumes, the guy who learned to ollie at his side, the guy who used to have farting contests with him on his parents’ leather couch, the guy he trusted to always be there for him, to have his back, the brother from another mother who abruptly moved away before freshman year and ghosted him entirely shortly after that.
When it seems like he doesn’t believe me, I say again clearly that I was Ethan, and that I never meant to hurt him, that there are rules, and I followed them back then, but I am done following them, and I hope he can understand, and even if he can’t, I hope he can forgive.
Andy says nothing the whole time I’m rambling on. He avoids my gaze, while Destiny vapes out the window, pretending she isn’t listening.
Andy gives me nothing but deafening silence after I trail off, me whipping out the old “You wouldn’t understand” chestnut, which is the last thing anyone wants to hear, ever.
After another full minute or two (which doesn’t sound like long, but trust me, it’s excruciatingly long when you are marinating in a pool of confessional flop sweat on the side of a busy interstate): “I came to Tennessee trying to find you,” Andy admits quietly. “Well, Ethan.”
“I know,” I say.
Andy chews on his puffy lip. Shrugs. “Mission accomplished, I guess.”
“Yay?” I crack sarcastically, fully aware Kim is nothing like the person Andy was searching for. “Ethan is still here.”
“Yeah, where?” Andy shoots back, even more wrecked than when we first picked him up.
“Can we get going?” Destiny breaks in. “I’m getting high on gasoline fumes and not in a good way.”
I nod. Then Andy and I ride in silence until we reach RaCha’s HQ. Before Destiny cuts the engine, I try to turn around and tell Andy I’m sorry again, but he heaves himself from the car and heads up the sidewalk to the warehouse without a word or even a glance behind.
“Farting contests?” Destiny says, lifting an eyebrow. “Bet you won every time.”
“You want to have one right now?” I ask, watching Andy through the windshield.
“Girl, you know I don’t fart in this V. I’m pure perfection.”
“You’re pure something.”
“What are you going to do about him?” she asks, serious.
“I don’t know,” I say, and I don’t.
“He’ll come around. Maybe.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“You’ll be someone else in a few months,” she reminds me.
And there it was—how had I forgotten? All this coming-
clean, coming-out, see-me-love-me stuff wasn’t going to mean anything if I didn’t do it all over again when I changed into my final V.
My final V.
This was all going to end soon. And I would at last have the power to choose who I want to be forever. The realization was both thrilling and paralyzing. It felt a bit like that game people play: If you could only eat one meal the rest of your life, what would it be? There’s no right answer. Even the best meal of your life gets old after eating it a couple dozen times. You think you want pizza, then you eat pizza ten times in a row, and pizza officially becomes a form of torture.
What if I transform into someone horrible? What if my last year is the worst of all, and I don’t want Audrey to know who I am? What if the Council feels the need to school me next year for my sins, and assigns me a “challenging” V? What if? What if? What if?
“Hey! Anxiety junkie, you’re home,” Destiny says, giving me a light flick on the ear.
“Sorry, I . . .” Spaced out.
Destiny puts the car in park, leans in, hugs me tight. “It’s all going to be okay,” she whispers, holding up her bruised fist for me to bump. “Damn, I punched a neo-Nazi. I’m the black Indiana Jones!” Then: “To Nazi punching.”
“To Nazi punching,” I answer back, tapping her knuckles to mine.
“Ouch,” she winces.
“I love you, Destiny.”
“I love you too, loser. Now get your stank butt out of my damn car.”
Kim
Change 3–Day 203
“What the Charles Dickens were you thinking?” Touchstone Tracy, cooking up a bitter broth of panic and judgment, per her usual. “Protesting? Outing yourself? Outing US? Have you lost your mind?”
Tracy is pacing my room, paying me a home visit, courtesy of Turner the Lives Coach, who the minute he got wind of the RaChas action, dispatched every local Touchstone to dress down their designated Changer, before a dozen mini rebellions could ignite from a single protest, even if the initial action so far had little measurable consequence beyond the viral video of Destiny coldcocking Jason.
“Have you even thought about what this could mean for our kind?” Tracy whisper-talks, like we’re exchanging spy secrets in a dark parking garage.
“Yes. That’s why I did it,” I say. “Hiding in the shadows is bullshit.”
“You sound like that no-good Benedict Arnold,” she spits.
“It’s fine if you like being closeted, but I don’t.”
“We’re not hiding. We’re making calculated choices,” she says sharply, prompting Snoopy to jump off my bed.
“For whom?” I ask snottily.
“For everyone. For mankind. Mercy, Kim. Have you lost the plot entirely? I thought you’d grown more than this.”
I silently watch Snoopy nose the door ajar and slink out, not enjoying the tense energy swirling in the room between me and Tracy.
She presses on as if reading from an official statement: “Our very reason for being is to spread empathy and tolerance, to better ourselves so we can be examples, find Static partners, and make more Changers, so eventually there will be no one left to fear. Changers bleed all souls together, while preserving and honoring all of our differences. We are here to eliminate the concept of otherness.”
“Love and light, right?” I snap sarcastically.
“Don’t belittle the mission. You’re smarter than that.”
“Trace? Do you really believe the only way to make change is by flying under the radar? Going along to get along? Tricking people into discovering their better natures? I don’t know if you’ve looked around lately, but the world isn’t exactly brimming with better natures. Abiders are on the rise, becoming more violent, more brazen than ever. They’re networking, metastasizing.”
“Kim, when power is threatened, those in power act out. For our safety, we need to stick to the plan. Stay together. In the many we are one.”
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
At that Tracy’s eyes snap shut like she’s going to her happy place, a.k.a. a world without me in it. “Oh, for Christmas sake,” she says after a beat, eyes jerking back open.
I feel bad for her. In coming here she was trying to do her job, execute orders she believed were right. Tracy is a good soldier, for sure, but she is also a good person. And I am once again making her life a unique hell.
“I know you want the best for me,” I start, but she cuts me off.
“For three long years I have done everything I can