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 around on the blazing-hot asphalt, tiny rocks embedding into their elbows and knees while Destiny kicks at Jason’s thighs, egging Andy on.
The few police officers who had been monitoring the march charge in, unsheathing their batons as they do. At this, Benedict extracts himself, wanting no part of the wrong side of the law (been there, done that). He bolts, expertly threading through the crowd and out of sight. The officers turn their batons on Jason and Andy, who refuse to stop fighting, the cracks of wood on bone echoing throughout the gathered crowd. After a few swings of the baton, both Andy and Jason relent, Jason yowling and grabbing his right knee in agony.
“Get up!” the cop yells at him, but Jason collapses when he tries to place any weight on his kneecap. “We don’t tolerate anarchists around here.”
“I’m not one of them!” Jason screams, as he and Andy are secured with plastic zip-tie handcuffs. “I have a football scholarship!”
I try to find Audrey in the chaos, finally spotting her off to one side, stunned. I jump up and down waving my arms. She sees me, starts pushing through the throng in my direction. We wade toward each other, arms outstretched. Before we connect, her mother cuts her off, snatching her by the collar of her shirt.
“Promise you’ll let me explain in person!” I yell, as she is dragged backward, stumbling over bystanders. “If you never want to talk to me again after that, I’ll leave you alone, I swear!”
Audrey nods her head, trying to maintain eye contact with me as her mother wrenches her farther and farther away, until I can’t see her face anymore between the mass of bodies undulating in the chaos.
Beside me Destiny is hopping on the balls of her feet like a boxer who just won a bout. The few remaining RaChas disperse as Jason’s head is pushed into the backseat of a police car.
Andy is shoved into a different cruiser, and it hits me that I’m going to need to find a way to bail him out, with no one in town even aware of who he is, and our fearless leader Benedict bolting gods know where.
“Well, that’s a sight you don’t see every day,” Destiny says, nodding toward the two white dudes being driven to the police station, sirens blaring. “I say we celebrate this small victory!”
I smile, but I’m distracted, unmoored. I want to celebrate my own small victory. I came out. And while it got messy AF, my world didn’t end. On the contrary. It feels like it’s finally beginning.
* * *
Here’s the thing about coming clean: once you start, it’s kind of hard to stop.
After I revealed myself to Audrey, I realized I had a whole long list of people I wanted to let in on my secret. This is—duh—verboten for Changers. The first rule of Changers being you don’t talk about Changers. I’m sure my touchstone Tracy would want to strangle me with a canary-yellow Tory Burch belt if she found out I betrayed Changer nation. But . . . I kinda don’t care anymore.
I mean, Benedict already put us all on blast. The clip of Destiny sucker-punching Jason is going viral on social media. People even started putting music to it, my favorite being the one that timed the punch to when the drums kick in on Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.” Watching that punch land on Jason’s thick head is some schadenfreude deliciousness right there. (He most def did not “feel it coming in the air,” ahem.)
I’m sure the Council can’t be happy about any of the exposure. Powerful as they may be, even they can’t staunch the wildfire spread of Snapchat and Instagram and YouTube. There’s no chapter in The Changers Bible about secret-keeping in the age of social media. Maybe Tracy can make an addendum with charts and graphs about how to manage the unmanageable. Charts and graphs are her reason for breathing.
Not that the exposure has amounted to that much so far. Everyone in the world is so self-obsessed these days, it barely caused a ripple in the social fabric for more than a hot second. Either people don’t grasp what Changers are (likely, as Benedict intentionally encouraged vagueness in our slogans and chants), or they don’t give a rat’s furry butt (more likely) unless it directly interferes with or affects their own lives in some tangible way. Which brings me to Andy.
Poor, pitiful Andy. He has really gotten the booty end of the Changers stick. Falling for a Changer who left him behind, currently mooning over Destiny, as if Destiny would ever go for a guy like Andy who, let’s face it, lacks swag, and not in the adorable Jon Cryer–Duckie nerdscape way. Never mind that he lost his best friend to the Changer grind too. And he had no idea. Until now.
Yeah, that’s right. (See above, the part about coming clean.)
It happened after Andy and the Alt-Wrong menace that is Jason were released from jail. They were sprung mere hours after being arrested, let go with a warning about disturbing the peace. (A courtesy you can bet would never have been extended to Oryon, DJ, or Destiny, I can say from experience, and because I have, like, eyes.)
Jason’s parents were already at the station, making a ruckus about his injured knee and threatening to sue the city for lost future income if he can’t play football, when Destiny and I rolled up to fetch Andy. (No sign of Audrey, who was probably at home furiously googling shape-shifters and genetic mutants in hopes of figuring out what the eff Drew, Oryon, and Kim even are.)
“Looking good there, Conor McGregor,” Destiny teases Andy through the open window when we spy him on the steps of the police station, spirit deflated. “I think you have some road kill on your face.”
“Is that your Yubaba cosplay mask?” I add, wincing at the sight.
“Screw you both,” Andy mumbles, gingerly climbing into the backseat
