Kim Read online

  Erggh. Mom just came in to tell me Tracy and Mr. Crowell are here.

  * * *

  Well damn, those two have reinvented the “honeymoon stage.” The minute I saw her in the hallway, Tracy was practically floating a few inches above the ground, beaming so much I thought her head might split horizontally and unhinge at her jaw like a Muppet.

  “You look soooo goood,” she exclaims, letting go of Mr. Crowell’s hand (for two seconds) to give me a hug.

  I notice at once how she smells like cotton candy.

  “You always look good, of course,” she coos. “Not that looks mean anything. I’m just saying, you know, you look rested. Better than the last time I saw you.”

  “When I was bedridden? Good to hear.”

  Tracy continues to ogle me appraisingly as I shake Mr. Crowell’s outstretched hand. He smiles his crooked smile. “How you doing, buddy?”

  “Better, thanks,” I say quickly and quietly, looking down at his suede bucks beside Tracy’s pink espadrilles on the hardwood floor as she climbs up on her tippy-toes and nuzzles Mr. Crowell’s neck.

  “Do you kids want some tea?” Mom calls in from the kitchen.

  “Nah, I should probably—” I start, while at the same time Tracy chirps, “Yes, Connie, that’d be lovely.”

  We stand there awkwardly in the hallway as Mom hollers, “Well, which is it?”

  My neck flushes hot. I try, but I can’t bring myself to make eye contact with Mr. Crowell. It’s like I’m embarrassed by him knowing definitively what I am now. Every time he looks at me I can see him doing the math. What part was Drewy? What part was Oryony?

  Ha, Oryony! How am I just now thinking of that? If Oryon were writing an autobiography, that would definitely be the title: The Oryony of It All.

  The Oryony here being Mr. Crowell is, like, “normal,” and didn’t know this giant thing about me for the first almost two years of teaching me, and now he’s suddenly been let in on the whole situation—and while it’s rainbows and kittens that Tracy has found her Static mate, and Mr. Crowell is all cool with everything, I guess now I’ll always feel sort of “less than” in his eyes ever since I was outed. Like I’ve been diminished in some way because he knows this “secret” about me, about my past lives. That I’m never truly who I seem to be.

  I know it’s probably psychological residue from the Tribulations, but it still feels wrong to have been unmasked in front of Mr. Crowell, who yeah, has been Changers Council–trained and vetted and approved before marrying Tracy, but is nevertheless, through no fault of his own, going to be new to all this alternate universe body-swapping chaos for a while. I mean, it’s got to blow his mind on occasion. It still blows mine, and it’s my everyday reality.

  And while in theory I should be comforted by his knowing—the truth should set me free!—I’m not. Instead, I feel like an impostor. Or a freak. Or some cruel deceiver. With him I’ll always be the other. I’ll never just be the person(s) he knew before.

  “What’s the verdict, buddy?” he asks. About the tea, presumably.

  Please. Stop. With. The. Buddy. Buddy.

  Tracy catches my expression, which likely reads as terrified with a hint of rage. She exchanges one of those couples’ predecided looks with Mr. Crowell, then drags me into the living room for a private chat, somehow managing to cleave herself from her new husband and be alone with me for a minute. (I swear I heard a suctioning sound when they separated.)

  “How are you, really?” she pries, soon as we plop on the couch, her knee touching mine.

  “Fine. Totally fine. Mostly.”

  “I want to believe that,” she says, tilting her head like a dog hearing a distant whistle.

  “You should,” I reply, pulling my knee away, faking an itch that needed to be scratched under my thigh.

  “Don’t underestimate the level of trauma you experienced,” she intones, dead serious. “I’ve spoken with Turner and a couple of the counselors, and if you feel like you need a little more time to recover, we can always do the homeschool thing until you’re—”

  “NO!” I shout.

  Tracy flinches, her spine jacking straight.

  “I mean, no,” I say, “no thank you,” making sure to sound calm and totally not hysterical. “Getting into a routine is probably the best thing for me.”

  I stare into Tracy’s eyes, trying to be flat and emotionless so she doesn’t smell my desperation. She does the dog-whistle head tilt again. Maybe she’s receiving signals from outer space. Maybe the Council has her wearing a wire and she’s double-agenting me as we speak, getting feedback through some invisible earpiece on what to say, like a hostage negotiator trying to convince some desperate schmuck with a shotgun to release more victims from the bank vault. I practice relaxing my face muscles. See? Not crazy. Not a killer.

  “What?” I ask, super-duper chill.

  “What, what?” she counters, eyes squinting now.

  “I feel strongly that it’ll be good to be back out in the world again,” I say matter-of-factly. “The Council counselors told me that reengagement with others can be a huge aid to healing.”

  “It can also be avoidance behavior. A way to bury and distract from the pain instead of moving through it.”

  And? I think. Is that so wrong? Whole empires have been built on the sturdy back of mass cultural denial. In fact, one might argue “burying it” is a necessity for progress. You stop and consider anything for too long and you’ll never want to leave the couch again.

  “Trace, I’m going to make it,” I say, smiling and praying I don’t look like a cornered ferret.

  For a moment, Tracy turns her chin toward the kitchen, where Mr. Crowell has obviously said something witty and charming to make my mom laugh really hard. Turning back to me, she is softer: “I was just . . . well . . . I really couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you again.” She starts to tear up, reaching inside a pocket for a pink monogrammed handkerchief.

  “It’ll be okay,” I say, patting her shoulder as she blots her eyes, taking care not to smudge her perfect liquid line.

  “I should be telling you that,” she snuffles, wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, recomposing herself. “I am here for you. Know that. As your Touchstone. And your friend.”

  “I know that, Trace. You’re a bad bitch when you need to be.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “It’s everything.”

  Soon enough it’s quick hugs and kisses all around. Mr. Crowell pulls me into an awkward half-handshake/man-hug and mumbles, “Uh, guess I’ll be seeing, uh, you in the a.m. . . .” and trails off into a nervous cough-cough. Tracy makes a plan with Mom to come and do the whole Y-3 initiation thing at our house the next morning, and I leave to return to my bedroom as Oryon for the last night.

  I hear them chitchatting about me as I slink down the hall, but I don’t really care what they’re saying. I’ve had it up to my eyelashes with all the concerned, hushed whispers about my well-being. Bring back the contemptuous, free-floating neglect of high school already!

  After deliberately skipping brushing my teeth—I mean, I’m getting a new body in the morning, why bother?—I log into Skype to see if I can catch Elyse before she goes to bed. It rings for a while before she picks up.

  “You ready for this?” she asks, as soon as our video chat connects, busting out an old-school hip-hop move with her shoulders. She’s wearing her PJs, the same flannels with punk rock fish on them that she wore when we roomed at the retreat.

  “One thousand percent.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  “Well, that’s settled,” I pronounce.

  “I like Elyse,” she sighs.

  “Well, you can always pick her at your Forever Ceremony when the day comes.”

  “I most likely will.”

  “I wish we were in the same school,” I say. It’s probably the hundredth time I’ve had that thought. I like Elyse too.

  “Can’t have too many of us in on
e place. Be, like, an infestation.”

  “In the many we are . . . problematic,” I snark. Elyse laughs, and it makes me feel good inside for a second.

  “My mom’s sweating me,” she says quietly. “Can we catch up tomorrow after school?”

  “Totes,” I say, the finality of the moment clocking me like a line drive to the skull. This will be the last time we’ll see each other as Elyse and Oryon. Externally anyhow.

  “Good luck with the whole Audrey thing,” Elyse adds, being supportive, if not totally approving.

  “Yeah, we’ll see how that turns out.”

  “If she’s as great as you say she is, then it’ll be cool.”

  “I guess,” I reply, wondering if anyone on any planet could be that cool.

  “And if she’s not, whatever. You are too awesome for drama. Remember that.”

  “I’m full up on drama for a long time,” I sigh.

  “Word to your mother.”

  Then a click, and she is gone. Forever.

  Me too, come to think of it.

  KIM

  Change 3–Day 1

  Yeah, so.

  Uhhhhmmmn . . .

  Is this supposed to be some sort of morbid joke, Changers Council? I guess I sort of thought that since I just went through the Tribulations, had to be sequestered at Changers Central for the remainder of my sophomore year and on through summer . . . you know, that you might’ve considered taking pity on me and given me an “easier” V this year of school. Make me a Hemsworth. Or even one of the lesser Wahlbergs.

  But no. I am not a Hemsworth. Or a Wahlberg.

  Nor am I a Latino goth girl with heavy eyeliner, in faux-dalmatian-fur creepers. Or a Southeast Asian–looking athletic girl with French braids and lululemon capris. Or a white guy with big tanned muscles and a loose, striped surfer tank top. Or a black girl with tiny ankles, in a giant sweatshirt she’s wearing as a dress. Or a lanky, pale white dude with acne and red hair that matches his checked flannel shirt.

  These are just the first five people who come to mind.

  Why? Oh, only because they are just the first five people I ran into today. No, I mean actually RAN INTO, as in collided with in the hallways at school—and this was before I even made it to homeroom. Why did I run into five people before the first bell? Because gravity. More precisely, because my center of gravity is so different from Oryon’s, from Drew’s, from Ethan’s, from anything I’ve ever known, that I actually lost my balance and/or tripped five different times while rushing through the hallways trying to make it to class on time, like a rogue bowling ball with shoes. That are tied together at the laces. And made of solid lead.

  I’ll just come out with it: I’m fat.

  I know you’re not supposed to say that sort of thing. Microaggressions! Body shaming! Even the word fat is verboten. And sure, it should be when you’re talking about other people. But I’m talking to myself, about myself, so I can say whatever the hell I want to say about my fatness. Which is not inconsiderable. I’m beyond chubby or big-boned or husky. I’m a full-on plus-sized, ample, rotund, zaftig lady. Gravitationally challenged. My thighs touch when I walk. Their whole surface. I suppose they would chafe if I were able to walk long enough without toppling like a stoned toddler. Something to look forward to.

  I know as a Y-3 Changer I’m ostensibly meant to have evolved beyond all superficial thoughts and temporal concerns, but nobody else around me seems to have, so why should I? That’s the thing about being fat. People feel like they have the right—the moral imperative—to remind you of your fatness. As if you’d forget. (If this is my Y-3 lesson, I knew it already, Council. Every kid knows it.) At any rate, my fatness is all I can seem to think about right now, on the afternoon of my first day of being Kim Cruz. The five-foot-two, 170-pound Filipino-looking girl with the “pretty eyes” and “sweet smile,” as determined by Miss Jeannie while snapping my photo for my student ID this morning.

  “Now be a doll and say cheese for the camera,” she cajoled in response to what had to be a “suck-it” frown sprawled defiantly across my face during registration. “Show me your sweet smile.”

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “Come on, you gotta work what ya got,” Miss Jeannie prompts (subtle fat-shaming dig number 1), tapping the old eyeball camera atop her computer with a long fake nail with an American flag painted on the tip.

  I shake my head. (Even shaking my head feels different now, like I could feel it in the rest of my body, an echo or something.) A few beads of nervous sweat creep down my spine as I press my back closer against the white backdrop.

  “Awww, so pretty in the face.” (Subtle fat-shaming dig number 2.)

  I yank my sweatshirt down over my chest and stomach (for the twentieth time already that morning) and stand there, working no expression at all. What I want to say is, May want to check your own scale at home, lady, but I somehow manage to bite my tongue, mostly out of grudging respect for her, knowing that it wasn’t Miss Jeannie’s fault that I’ve hated every single thing about myself from the second I opened my eyes this morning. Plus, I wasn’t about to add to the fat-ism in our culture.

  “Posture, dear, a straighter spine gives a thinner line.” (And there’s the hat trick!)

  I grit my teeth and smile, my eyes shooting daggers into her soft, folded neck.

  “You going to join the Mathletes, sweetie?”

  Really? Really?

  And that was the best part of the school day.

  The worst was Audrey. More precisely, my invisibility to her. Which. How could you miss me, right?

  Even though I sat right next to her in Honors English (filled with relief that, yay! she’s still here) and made a point of saying a super-welcoming hello to her in the second floor girls’ bathroom, and then again as I cruised by her table at lunch giving Can I join you? energy to her and Em, who also didn’t even look up at me. They were both absorbed in the usual post-summer catch-up, feverishly talking over each other, and it was abundantly clear that I had no place joining that conversation, nor even a place at the table, at least not by their thinking.

  They weren’t cruel or anything. They didn’t make snide remarks or even roll their eyes. They just ignored me. I was a plastic straw wrapper, a swiveling office chair turned into a corner, dirty popcorn under a theater seat. I was the detritus of peripheral vision. I didn’t register. Which was a whole new kind of horrible. Also, possibly, now that I’m reflecting on it, worse than hearing pig noises when you walk past.

  I thought Audrey was different. The kind of person who would never write somebody off because of her size or looks or whatever. The kind of person who was tuned into everyone and everything, who celebrated difference. I mean, she had a crush on a girl, Drew! She slept with a black boy, Oryon! How bigoted could she be? But Drew was pretty and part of her clique, and Oryon was confident and good-looking, even if he was a little nerdy. He had swag, and Kim, by any measure, taken in any universe, does not.

  Crap, never mind Audrey. If I’m honest, I’m not the person I thought I was either. Because I’m more than happy to take part in shunning myself.

  I can tell you RIGHT NOW who I’m NOT going to pick as my Mono after graduation. Wanna guess? Kimberly Cruz. Yes, even though I’ve been her less than twenty-four hours, I know deep in my “big” bones that this is not the life I intend to choose for myself. Why would I? The world is cruel enough. I’m going to pick a Mono that basically turns me into a walking Kick me! sign for all eternity? A short, minority female who struggles with her weight? Oh yeah, sign me up. Why not give me a stutter and a limp while you’re at it?

  Not that there’s anything wrong with being “of size.” Of course not. But I mean, my breasts are ginormous. Heavy. In the freaking way. And, after a few hours in Mom’s joke of a bra, painful. Like two sacks of flour stitched to my pectoral skin. Talk about too much of a good thing. There is no way I’m surviving 364 more days of bearing the weight and weirdness of these things. I can’t believe millions of lad
ies spend hard-earned coin to get surgery to make their boobs as big as these. Willingly. Why? So dudes will look at you? Here’s a tip ladies: dudes look anyway. Been on both sides of the mammary lens, and I can vouch for that essential truth.

  Dang, my spine is killing me . . .

  What else? Okay, back to this morning. Oryon’s boxers were practically cutting off my circulation the moment I came to. I had to sprint into the bathroom to tear them off me, but on the way I guess I lost my balance (preview of coming humiliations) and smashed into the doorframe, jamming my middle finger knuckle, which popped loudly and is now purple and swollen. So everywhere I went today, I was subtly giving people the finger (preview of coming worldview?) because I couldn’t fully bend it down into a relaxed position.

  Right after the finger pop, Mom and Dad raced into my bedroom, Mom trilling, “Let’s see you!” I could hear Snoopy’s jingling collar in all the hysteria and crazy energy going on around him.

  “No!” I screamed through the bathroom door.

  “Okay, in a minute then.”

  “Go away!”

  “Kimberly Cruz. Sixteen years old—ooh, that’s right! You can get your driver’s license this year!” Mom read through the door from the Changers Council packet.

  “Kim Cruz?” I whined, looking at her, at myself, in the mirror.

  “Come on,” Dad said agitatedly, “I’ve got to get out of here, and I want to meet this new V.”

  “I’ll just see you after school,” I tried.

  “Well, I can tell you’re a girl,” he said. “So, that’s—”

  I burst through the bathroom door with a bath towel wrapped under my arms, covering most of my body.

  “Whoa, hello there,” Dad said, masking shock.

  “I know,” I said, and collapsed onto the bed, where Mom immediately crossed to me, draped her arms around my neck, and squeezed tight.

  “You’re beautiful,” Dad soothed, but I could tell even he was alarmed by what had developed overnight under his roof.