of ego. I am feeling just a tick pleased with myself. Warmed slightly by the irresistible cocktail of my cleverness and bitterness, and I absentmindedly decide I’ll call Chase because he would laugh harder than anyone at my school supply riff, would nod his head and say he knew exactly what I was getting at, then probably ruin the moment by lecturing that I was finally “getting it” re: the hypocrisy of the Changer movement and the need for all of us to be out and proud and united and part of the fabric of daily life if we ever want to be completely 100 percent accepted and integrated into society, blah blah. The whole conversation plays out in my head in a matter of seconds, the way conversations with close friends always do. And it takes a beat before I’m reminded of the saddest thing of all. That from here on out, all my conversations with Chase will be in my head.
“Whatever school supplies are fine, Mom,” I say.
Oryon
Change 2–Day 360
This must be what death row is like. Actually knowing the day you’re going to cease to exist. You sit there as every minute, every second, every breath siphons away, aware this is the last time you will eat frozen chicken nuggets, a slice of terrible pizza, canned pear cubes in syrup; the last time you will do fifty push-ups; the last time you will have a headache; the last time you will dream about being a child at the park and holding your father’s hand.
I know I shouldn’t be so scream-queen dramatic, because unlike guys on death row (and they are like 99.9 percent guys—not exactly a ringing endorsement for the male persuasion), I get to have another life after this one ends. And then another one after that. And then I get back one of the four I’ve had over the previous four years. Some Changers and Touchstones I’ve met (Tracy!) are hella psyched about this whole process. #Blessed. What a unique life opportunity to embrace! Sorry, lives opportunities. “In the many we are one.” Blurgh.
When I was Ethan, I didn’t know I was a Changer yet, that in a matter of years, Ethan would be basically DOA. There was no goodbye. No processing. Maybe that was easier. Rip that identity off like the Band-Aid it was. Bye, Oryon/Drew/Ethan.
Wow, this is the first time I’ve thought about Ethan in like, I don’t know exactly. I nipped that in the nuts, didn’t I? I mean, why think about him, about ever seeing him again, if I can never be him? At least on the outside.
Everybody—Tracy, my parents, my incarceration buddy Elyse—keeps telling me Ethan will always be with me, will always be a part of me. Is me. But I just feel further and further away from him and his life. He’s a phantom. A guy I used to know. Maybe every kid feels this way. You get older, you see some stuff, and the person you used to be washes away like writing in the sand. Audrey probably doesn’t feel like the same girl she was two years ago either. Likely I had something to do with that, for better and worse.
I’m realizing this is also the first time I’ve really thought about choosing my Mono. Probably because now there’s a tangible choice, two different V’s to choose between. I’m so sick of thinking and obsessing and being weighed down by my feelings, and yet I can’t seem to stop thinking, obsessing, and plotting the if-thens ahead of me. Life just makes me do that. Which I guess is the point. But sometimes I wish I were a single-celled organism or something, with nothing to do or consider or decide or learn. A basic fungus, hanging out among all other fungi, every one of our cells exactly the same. In the one I am done.
Drew? That multicellular, multilayered V? I suppose I grew to love being her. Didn’t want to change from her, now that I’m remembering. But I can sort of maybe see myself picking Oryon as my Mono. Wouldn’t be the worst. Hey, perhaps when we’re all grown up and graduated, I’ll declare Oryon, and then go find Audrey—wherever she attends college, or on some crazy mission in South America that her family makes her do—so we can live happily ever after together. If she once had love for me, for Oryon, then maybe there could be love again.
If I really think about it, this love I have for Aud is really just an extension of the love I first felt for her as Drew. And it’s probably the same for her too, whether or not she’s conscious of it. She’s got to sense it—like, a soul-connection or something. I mean, think about the greatest love stories of all time, when two people feel like they’ve known each other in previous lives. That’s exactly what it feels like with me and Audrey. Only of course with me there actually are different lives at play. Even though Audrey doesn’t recognize it.
But you know what? One day I’m going tell her, and everything will suddenly snap into place and make perfect sense to both of us. Right?
Meanwhile, tick-tock, tick-tock, I just keep checking the time on my phone, as every last second slips away on this death march toward Change 3. T minus 144 hours to execution day. No reprieve is coming for me from the governor, that I know for sure. May as well eat this overstuffed enchilada. The last one Oryon will ever enjoy. Extra guacamole, please!
What else? I have all my school supplies. They’re just sitting there on my desk, taunting me by looking far more optimistic (even in all-business black) than I am about the start of the school year.
Scratch scratch at the door. It’s Snoopy. Who, in truth, has been a little standoffish toward me since I got home from RRR. It’s almost as though he doesn’t remember who I am. Or more likely, as if he knows exactly who I am and how my stupidity is what almost got him his own seat on death row.
He’s padding over to my bed, sniffing my comforter, eyeing me warily. I make the quintessential open-face, eagerly pat the bed, but Snoop doesn’t want to jump up. Instead, he mopes back over to an open cardboard box, sticks his head in and noses around, then wanders back out my bedroom door.
Thank G for the little chip between his shoulder blades. Like the one in the base of my neck, come to think of it. Only his was a lifeline that brought my parents back from Nana’s when the pound called and said they had Snoopy in custody, and that it’s lucky he was microchipped, because as a pit bull, he wouldn’t last more than forty-eight hours before being put down. “As sweet as he is,” the animal-control officer had told Mom and Dad, “we just can’t keep them around, for obvious reasons.”
Them. For obvious reasons. A year as Oryon sure tuned me in more than ever to the ways bigotry blares from the spaces in between, the way crabgrass busts through the asphalt. I know now how narrow the margin of error is for anyone (or any canine) of difference. How once people decide something—pit bulls = bad—no amount of actual fact seems to scrub that prejudice away. Changers are right about one thing: the power of an idea is stronger than just about anything. The power of an idea can save a nation. Or kill a dog.
When I look at Snoopy now, I am filled with guilt and regret that I’m the reason he was within a few hours of being put down. My carelessness, my selfishness. The series of BS choices that nearly added up to total catastrophe. Sometimes, okay, often I get stuck in this obsessive mental loop. If this, then that. If not this, then not that. With Snoopy. With Chase. With Audrey.
Like, what if Drew had been put in a different homeroom than Audrey freshmen year? We might never have met. At least not like that. She never would’ve pointed me to the “right” (girls’) bathroom in the hallway, never would’ve joked with me about Chloe’s wretchedness, nor would I ever have ironically tried out for cheerleading, which is where we got so close. Us against the world.
And what if Mom and Dad hadn’t changed the contact number for Snoopy’s microchip when we left New York for Tennessee, and the shelter couldn’t get in touch with my parents to let them know he had been picked up by the side of the highway, sans leash or collar? What if Mom got a flat tire, or was in an accident on the way home from Florida,
