Changers Book Four. T Cooper
like me, and Kris, and Michelle Hu, and even Audrey for that matter, will not have to grow up afraid of having to live in some oppressive Handmaid’s Tale nightmare, but from what I can see, from what I have lived in all my lives so far, that sounds like the stuff of fantasy. The Jasons of the world don’t seem scared to me. They don’t suffer. They don’t have to look over their shoulder when they walk down the street. They seem more brazen and confident in their beliefs than ever.
Andy knocks at the door, interrupting my doom spiral. “Cool if I come in?”
“Duh, dummy.”
He enters slowly, eyes darting around like he’s searching for something specific. Evidence of Ethan, I guess.
“Nice space,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“This is as awkward as a plane fart.” He grimaces.
“Yeah. But it doesn’t have to suck.” I’m trying to see Kim through his POV. Wondering what he thinks of her. What he would think of her if he didn’t know it was me.
“It doesn’t?” he asks.
“Would you rather I was Destiny?” I give him a seductive shimmy.
“Oh, man. Don’t do that.”
“Don’t you think I’m sexxxy? I’m too sexy for my cat, too sexy for my blouse, too sexy for my car,” I start singing.
“Dude, those are not the words.”
“Too sexy for my sandwich, too sexy for my jeans—”
“I’m begging you to stop!” Andy lets out a goofy moan of despair. It feels a little like old times, me and Andy acting like idiots.
I stand up, dance the robot. “I’m too sexy for my external hard drive, for my animatronic limbs.”
Andy hops up, starts dancing too, both of us executing the lamest pop-and-lock-routine on record.
“Too sexy for my empty, cavernous soul, too sexy for Sylvia Plath, too sexy for Kid Rock, I mean Robert Ritchie,” I sing, Andy laughing louder and harder until we both tire out, collapsing, breathing heavy, side by side on my bed.
I turn my head, stare right into his eyes, get a thought but hold it in—because Andy will think it’s weird. But then I can’t help it and it just blurts out: “I’ve kind of missed you. It’s been hard, doing this on my own, when nobody knows me like you do.”
Andy jerks his chin toward the ceiling, breaking my gaze, but I press on: “I get that this is bonkers, that it feels like a sick joke. But I didn’t ask for it. And I never wanted to leave you behind. I needed you.”
“Sure you did,” Andy chokes out, swiveling his head even farther away from mine.
“I did. I always did. Because Ethan doesn’t exist without you.”
Andy sits up, heads toward the door like he’s leaving, then freezes. “Well, the Ethan I knew,” he starts stiffly, still facing away, as I feel my skin prick with tension, “was a terrible, terrible . . . singer.”
“Suck it,” I say.
“And an even worse dancer. So it seems to me like he is more or less still in the picture.”
In an instant, I feel years of shame dissolve. I try and keep it together so as not to spoil the moment. “Like you’re Travis freaking Wall.”
“Who the hell is Travis Wall?” he asks. “Is that a chick thing?”
“Piss off. And, totally.”
“You want a Coke, spazmatron?” he asks.
“I’m too sexy for a Coke, too sexy for a clichéd version of sexxxxxy,” I shoot back, as Andy spins around and moonwalks down the hall toward the kitchen.
* * *
The rest of the night we didn’t talk about anything but graphic novel Harley Quinn versus movie Harley Quinn, and whether men’s soccer is better than women’s soccer (it isn’t), and how we’d both 1,000 percent have sex with Jennifer Lopez even though she’s older than our moms. Then we watched serial killer documentaries on Netflix, ate nachos and cinnamon toast, and used Twizzlers as straws in our Cokes.
We said nothing about anything that mattered. (Something that mattered more to me than I can say.)
Kim
Change 3–Day 207
“Ethan didn’t care about outfits, dude,” Andy says from my bed, where he’s playing vintage GTA like we used to.
“No, seriously, which one?” I ask, holding up two shirts in front of my chest.
“The one on the left,” he mumbles.
“You’re not even looking!” I whine, throwing the white Ramones T-shirt on the floor and opting to go with a plain black one.
“Do you think Destiny would go out with me?” Andy asks for the 147th time since meeting her.
“She’s with DJ,” I remind him for the 147th time.
“So?”
“Have you seen DJ? The two of them are so blindingly perfect together it’s like they were made in a lab. They’re like those photos that come in the Just Married frames when you buy them from Target.”
“Gross.”
“But #truth,” I note.
I step into the bathroom and close the door behind me, peel off my stale top, throw on the clean black one. I check myself in the mirror, wet my hair and massage some putty into it, slicking back the long part on top. I look like an Asian Lea DeLaria. Not the worst. I slap on some pale-pink lip gloss, a swipe of electric-blue eyeliner which I stretch in the corners, cat’s-eye style. When I come out of the bathroom, Andy glances up.
“Hey there, David Bowie.”
“Ha.” I pop my tee at the waist, adjust a loose bra strap.
“You seem nervous,” Andy says, pressing pause on his game.
“That obvious?”
“Kinda.”
“Does this shirt make it seem like I’ve given up?” I ask.
“On what?”
“I look like a roadie for a cover band, right?”
“No.”
“Is it too boxy?”
“What even is that? Like a boxer? Or . . . ?”
“What if she doesn’t believe me?” I blurt, simultaneously realizing that 1) Andy’s probably the worst person to ask, but 2) nobody else is aware that I’m spilling everything to Audrey tonight, so he’s kind of the only game in town.
“She might not,” Andy says, pulling no punches and clearly still smarting from the sting of the Changer-related dramas in his own life, one of them right in front of him, asking him for advice. “It’s pretty messed up, like Twilight Zone shit. You’re basically a comic book mutant, minus the lab accident.”
“Gee, thanks,” I say, scanning the room for my wallet.
“You need to give her a break. As hard as this is for you, it’s going to blow her mind. You may want to wear a Hannibal plastic kill-suit to protect yourself from splattering brain matter.”
“What do you know about brain matter?”
Andy flips me the bird. “Listen, if you love this girl, you need to allow her whatever she needs to get her head around this situation. I don’t think you have any idea how it feels when a person you love vanishes from your life.”