Changers Book Four. T Cooper
never thought I’d say this, but Chase was right about you.”
“Keep his name out of your mouth!” I scream, surprised by the break in my voice.
“You don’t give a single hoot about anything but your own desires in the moment,” she continues.
“Enough.”
“You’re right, Kim. Enough. I’ve failed. You want to tell the world about us, put everyone and everything we stand for at risk, that’s on you. But I won’t be a part of it.”
And with that, Tracy marched out, chin forward, back rod-straight. I could practically smell her indignation as she passed by me.
* * *
I should be more invested, but in what’s becoming something of a theme in my life—I’m kind of not. I didn’t ask for any of this. Why is it my job to teach idiots that they should care about other people? News flash: dolts like Jason will never, ever care about freaks like me. Certain people will always hate “the gays” and “the blacks” and “the Jews” and “the Muslims” and “the foreigners” and “the feminists” and “the poor” and “the differently abled” and any other group that seems to pose a threat to their fragile house of dominance cards. Jason and his Abider-leaning goons are not going to wake up one day and realize they’ve been stunted zealots their whole lives and start driving for Meals on Wheels or working shifts on the LGBTQ suicide hotline.
If my year as Kim has shown me anything, it’s that the appetite for cruelty among certain people is never sated. Queen beyotch Chloe could never get past the way I appear. My size alone was enough for her to assign me to a box and duct-tape the lid shut. Okay, sure, being Kim helped me. I grew. (Ha ha, did I.) But so what? Was I such a jerk before? According to Tracy, I’m a bigger jerk today. So maybe, hear me out, this whole Changer thing is an epic, outdated fail, especially in these times. And if it is, then why in the hell would I stick with the program?
I don’t care if the Council is monitoring these Chronicles. I’m going rogue. Full stop. And the best part of that is that I am going to meet up with Audrey, and I am going to walk her through the whole twisted shebang, and I know—I know—she is going to finally see how she is my person.
What else could possibly happen?
Kim
Change 3–Day 205
I heard about the fire from Andy first. He showed up at the door of my house, duffel bag in hand, trying to act like he was still pissed at me, but so obviously scared and lost he couldn’t hold his bitch face.
“It’s gone,” he said.
“What?”
“The whole place, RaChas HQ. Torched to ash. Apocalypse-level stuff.”
“What? How?”
“Abiders, probably. Maybe they were tipped off after the coming-out march,” he said.
“Jesus. Was anybody hurt?” I asked, flashing on Benedict and some of my other RaChas roommates from when I lived at HQ during my depression.
“No. Benedict had pretty much cleared everybody out while he was ‘reestablishing healthy boundaries’ and ‘reinstituting his self-care regime.’”
Of course he was.
“Most of the RaChas were squatting with friends or in shelters, except me and Zeke and Layla. Layla was actually sleeping when the fire started, and she tried to grab some equipment, but as it was, she barely got out of there herself.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was helping Benedict load up his car for what he called his ‘journey to me’ road trip.”
“Sounds like a book my mother would recommend to her single-mom clients,” I said.
“We’d gone to get the tires pumped when we heard the sirens. By the time we made it back, the whole building was in flames.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Come in. We’ll figure something out.”
I had no idea what I was going to say to my parents. Bringing in a Static from your pre-Changer past was well outside of protocol. I knew my dad would crap a Changer brick, especially with his ever-increasing role at Changers Central. But this was Andy. My first friend.
I figured I could count on Mom to see past the rules to the person. Andy was a refugee who needed harboring. He had no place left to go. And he figured out the Changers thing all by himself, more or less. Benedict leaked the deets. Not me. I would NEVER break Changer Rule Number One.
At least that’s how I spun it to Mom, after I swear I saw sparks shoot from her brain through her ears when Andy walked in and dropped his bag on the carpet.
She kept it together as well as she could, rushing over and smothering him in a full mom-style hug, peppering him with a million questions about where he’s been, how he found us, when his voice grew so deep, and of course if he wanted a chicken-and-chili-cheese burrito.
Andy seemed grateful, if a bit embarrassed. After a few minutes he excused himself to go to the bathroom, and that’s when Mom turned to me and made the gritted-teeth emoticon face.
“Your father is going to freak,” she says flatly, soon as Andy’s out of earshot.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do,” I reply. “His dad kicked him out.”
“I’ll handle Dad,” she whispers.
I practically leap into her arms. “Thanks, Mom. I swear I didn’t plan on this—he showed up unannounced at RaChas HQ.”
“We can talk about all that later. But bottom line is, we can’t turn him out on the streets. I suspect your father and I will want to tell his parents he’s alive.”
“I’m not sure they care,” I say.
“Of course they do.”
I drop the argument, for now. The important thing is Andy has a temporary home. And I have a chance to make it right with him again.
“I can’t believe they burned down HQ. What if you were still living there?” Mom asks then, shoulders giving a small shiver.
“There are some really messed-up people in this world, Mom. People who want us dead and gone. People who’d rather us burn alive than open their hearts to something different.”
“I know that, sweet pea. History is rife with cruelty.”
It seems like she could cry. I sense a part of her is as skeptical as I am of the Changer mission’s ability to right the wrongs of the past. If anyone understands the limits of human growth, it’s a shrink.
“Change never comes as fast as we want it to,” she acknowledges. “But the arc of progress bends toward the light.”
“Okay, Turner Lives Coach.”
“I’m serious,” she persists, ignoring my sass. “And the brighter that light gets, the harder the dark forces try to extinguish it. In some ways, the rise of the Abiders, the escalation of their violence, proves that Changers are winning the war. The Abiders are scared. They feel their obsolescence coming like a hard, cleansing rain.”
“You sound like an end-times movie preview,” I joke, assuming the deep baritone of the omnipresent film-trailer narrator: “In a world filled with pain and hate, an unlikely hero emerges . . .”
“. . . A hero like none other, one the forces of evil did not see coming,” Mom chimes in, in the same cheesy deep voice.
“A girl! Of size! Who likes other girls! Can you believe that shit?” I intone, doing the last bit in my best Aziz Ansari voice.
We both fall out laughing. Mom kisses me on the cheek, tells me in the movie voice