should take some Advil and ice what’s left of your head,” I say.
“Edibles wouldn’t hurt either,” Destiny jokes, shifting the car into gear and peeling out past Jason climbing into his folks’ black sedan, taking care to thrust her hand, middle finger extended loud and proud, out the window in his direction.
“Who even is that guy?” Andy whinges from the backseat.
“D-bag times a thousand,” Destiny says.
“Hair gel in human form,” I say.
“Walking abstinence advertisement.”
“Week-old clam chowder in a skin suit—”
“Okay, okay, got the picture,” Andy interrupts.
“Kim hit him once too,” Destiny volunteers, as I eye-check her to maybe stop with the oversharing. She ignores me. “Aaannd she had sex with his sister last year.”
“Andy doesn’t care about any of that,” I say loudly, trying to shut the Destiny chatter train down.
“The human hair gel’s sister is a lesbian?” Andy asks, suddenly feeling well enough to sit up in the backseat.
Destiny starts giggling, smiles her mega-wattage, I’m-too-fine-to-be-told-what-to-do smile, and launches into my entire three-year, sordid Changer history with Audrey, starting with the Drew year, as besties in love; to Oryon and the ill-fated sex-capade that landed me in an Abider prison cell (“Silver lining: that’s where we met!” Destiny footnotes); to Kim, the queer theater groupie who “is full-stop Audrey’s family’s worst nightmare! Fat, femme, and Asian!”
Destiny begins singing the Kim Chi song—“Every generation, Beyoncé, Madonna, got nothing on this triple threat, do the fat, femme, and Asian”—dissolving into hysterical laughter. But I notice Andy is quiet, hanging on every word, trying to follow my multiple-lives story with his Changer-traumatized Static brain.
“So who were you first?” he asks.
“Drew,” Destiny answers for me.
“No. I mean before.”
“Destiny, pull the car over,” I say.
“The hell, Kim?”
“Do it.”
And so, parked on the narrow shoulder of I-75, cars whizzing past, the drone of the freeway ringing in our ears, I tell Andy who I was “first.” Which is to say, right there in front of Destiny and not a small number of drivers 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
