spend more time with her last year. And then I remembered: Audrey.
When you’re in love, everything else falls to the wayside. Which I’m seeing now may have been a mistake. Because really, what did that singular pursuit net me? Depression. Exhaustion. A near-death experience, and not the groovy kind with the flashing white lights and long-lost relatives beckoning you home. My relationship with Audrey cost me a lot. Maybe even a best friend. Who tried to warn me before he died. Not about her, per se. But about my selfishness around her. I couldn’t see the Changer forest for the Audrey tree.
It is a lovely tree . . .
While Kris and Michelle chitter-chatter, I glance over at Chloe’s table, all of them in their cheerleading ensembles, high ponytails teased just perfectly in the back, swinging like pendulums as their heads swivel along to the conversation. Audrey turns my way and accidentally—I swear I don’t mean to—my eyes lock with hers, and suddenly I’m right back to where it all began, our first lunch sitting across from each other as Drew and Audrey, at that very table, two years ago. How singular she was. And yet from the outside, this chick I’m looking at right now? Her I don’t recognize.
Audrey’s eyes dart away from mine, and she’s back in the midst of whatever inanity is being discussed in that circle. Okay, I don’t want to assume, because that’s not what I’m here for, right? But I’m pretty certain they’re not talking about climate change and the quest to maintain biodiversity in such a rapidly changing world.
My heart still pangs for her. But it’s starting to feel more like regret than desire.
“So what do you say?” I hear Michelle asking me.
“About what?” I answer, clearly having missed out on whatever she’d asked during my trip down memory pain.
“Joining the Asian Cultural Club?” she repeats, cheery as hell.
“Is there a GAYsian Cultural Club?” Kris pipes in.
Michelle laughs. “I know, I know. It sounds unnecessarily self-separating, but the truth is, it’s just an excuse to hang out and eat a lot of awesome food together. We’re having our first club dinner at Pho Sure next weekend.”
Great. The place Oryon took Audrey on their—our—first date. God, the world’s small. And getting smaller and smaller, it seems, every day. “Nah, I don’t think so,” I say, trying not to sound like the complete and utter downer I am.
“Why not? It’s always a hot time!” she returns, purposely goofy.
“Maybe the next one,” I try, not really meaning it. I just want to get my bearings, you know? Don’t want to hop on any identity bandwagon just yet.
“I get it,” Michelle says, ever upbeat. But she seems slightly dejected nonetheless. “Well, if you want more info on any other clubs here—”
“I think my extracurricular abilities are pretty much tied exclusively to the food realm,” I interrupt, before realizing it sounds like I’m making a fat joke at my own expense. Mercifully, neither Michelle nor Kris bothers to comment, though I can sense they noticed. I guess they were tacitly agreeing not to reinforce my self-hatred, which is kind of a departure among girlfriends at this age. So, two for the plus column.
* * *
The rest of the day was what I’m finding to be typical for Kim Cruz. Waddling through the halls, head down, trying not to trip or bump into people. Other students either passing me wordlessly or sniggering just a touch, in case it managed to slip my mind for a millisecond that I am less than they are. Because I’m so much more than they are.
At one point between classes, Jason brushed by me, and I felt the heat of his body against mine, before he pressed forward into the masses, many WHOOT-ing and giving him the thumbs-up before today’s game. I wondered if he sensed any familiarity at all. If a single cell in his skin registered that I was the girl he once tried to force himself on; that I was the boy he smeared across the football field. I know my skin did. It froze cold the second we touched, as if I’d passed by the devil himself.
“Tell me more about that,” Tracy says when I mention Jason, as she aggressively suctions a thick strawberry shake through a red-striped straw at the Freezo, where we went to celebrate my surviving a whole week as Kim.
“It was just a vibe. A demon vibe,” I say.
“Oh, so the usual then,” she says, picking at a rogue strawberry seed between her two front teeth. “Was it helpful to have my boo in your corner?”
“No you didn’t.”
“What? Is that wrong usage?”
I laugh. If nothing else, at least Tracy is always good for that. “Boo works. Only, I’m not sure I want to think of Mr. Crowell as your . . . anything,” I explain. Then I take a bite of my fat-free frozen yogurt sundae. As I do, I catch a couple of tween-age girls snickering in my direction. “It’s fat-free, you jerks!” I yell, before hurling the entire container at their smug faces.
No, I don’t do that. In fact, I don’t do anything except eyeball my treat like it’s nuclear waste, the joy of eating it well and truly gone. Kim Cruz lesson number 53: When heavyset people eat in public they get food-shamed. Even if it’s a salad.
“You know, the first Changers Mixer is in three weeks. I think it will be very healing for you to go back now, after this time away.”
“Time away? I feel like I just left,” I shoot back, contemplating what excuse might be good enough to get me out of attending the mixer at all, though with Dad taking up semipermanent residence inside the Council’s collective butt, avoiding the mixer seems improbable.
“Well, either way, it’s mandatory, so . . .” Tracy takes another deep gulp of her shake.
Mandatory why? I wonder.
“I know you weren’t pleased when you received this iteration of your selves,” she goes on, easily downshifting into Touchstone-speak. “But I think you’re going to fall in love with Kim. And I’d venture once you do, other people will too.”
“If you say so.” I push my maraschino cherry into its whipped cream dome.
“It’s what’s inside that counts,” Tracy adds.
I make a fake vomit noise. “I don’t see you occupying a V that is marginalized and shunned by 99 percent of the population,” I challenge.
“Because I knew Tracy was my best me! The outside that matched the inside. I mean, can you really see this personality in a six-foot-two Ukrainian-looking basketball player? Or a petite Latina?”
She has a point.
“Were you a six-two Ukrainian? Please say yes,” I ask hopefully.
“No. But I was many other things that felt . . . wrong. And this felt right. Even more right than the me I was born with. And when your insides line up with your outsides, there is no better feeling in the world.”
As I let that sink in, my eyes drift around the Freezo. I land on the booth I was in that day with Chase, as Drew, remembering how we were arguing even then. And I think, maybe for the first time, that I’m starting to maybe know
