Game Changer, page 16
There are a great many things I don’t understand. I’m sure it’s the same for you. No matter how smart we think we are, we simply can’t know all there is to know—and if you spend all your time thinking about those things, it will drive you crazy.
Mostly, we’re okay with the things we don’t get. We shrug our shoulders, accept the mystery, and move on.
But not everyone’s like that. There are people who are so threatened by things they don’t understand that they feel a need to stomp them out. They have to crush them so that each thing killed is one less thing to tax their brain. It’s the force behind war, behind genocide, behind the worst things that human beings are capable of.
It’s also the cause of the small injustices we come across every single day.
My dad once told me a story about his father. How, when his dad was little, he would naturally pick up crayons with his left hand. But then he had an old-school teacher in first grade, and I mean “old-school” in the true sense. When she caught him putting a crayon in his left hand, she would smack it painfully with a ruler and make him switch to his right hand. Left-handedness was shameful and wrong. Conformity was the solution.
But you know what? He still played sports left-handed. His sport was baseball, and as a baseball player, being a lefty was a highly valued trait. But his handwriting was the worst, and he developed a stutter the same year he was forced to switch hands in school. Don’t tell me that those things aren’t related.
Did you know that in the Dark Ages, people who used their left hand were considered evil and even satanic? The word “sinister” is Latin for left, the devil is portrayed as left-handed, and in the Dark Ages, southpaws were accused of witchcraft and put to death. Can you imagine a world so ignorant?
Yeah, sadly, you can—because even though the particulars change, ignorance is a cockroach you can’t kill no matter how hard you try. It hides in dark, fetid places, then darts out into the open.
Which brings me to the situation I now found myself in.
Intellectually, I thought I knew what being gay meant. Same-sex attraction. Simple, right? It’s part of who you are, like your handedness, or the color of your eyes. But I wasn’t seeing the whole picture—the whole person—because for so many, it’s not a part of who you are, it’s right there at the core, defining who you are. How much more horrifying, then, when someone rejects you at your very core?
And so you end up with two choices. Either you embrace it and demand that people accept you for who you truly are . . . or you live your life in silent desperation, hiding it from the light, or even denying it to yourself. Not a way anyone should have to live. But there are still plenty of witch-burners out there—and some of them are in our own heads.
Back in my old world—my original one—I always considered myself a tolerant person and tried to distance myself from those who weren’t—although sometimes I would rationalize the intolerance of friends and look the other way. You know how when a friend says a joke that maybe shouldn’t have been said? Rather than calling them out on it, you let it go. Pretend it doesn’t matter.
But it does matter. And you know it.
I will admit—and shamefully so—that I would ignore it when a friend smirked about one of the openly gay kids at school, or said something like “That’s so gay.” I didn’t join in, but I didn’t discourage it either. I just let it go. And as my memories of this new world flooded me, I realized that I’d done the same thing here—but for a different reason. Here, I was afraid that speaking up would out me. Which meant that in this world, I was one of those people living in silent desperation.
And then there was Katie. How did Katie figure into all of this? My new memories told me that she did figure, but not the way she used to. In this world, we also had that secret conversation beneath the bleachers, but here, I didn’t kiss her. Our history in this world was similar, but none of it was sexually charged. I thought of Leo, whose reality was still as screwed up as it was yesterday. Would I somehow relate to him differently now? I would have to feel my way through the nuances of this place piece by piece, person by person.
In the morning I paid a visit to the Edwards. As I said, there was a fourth one now. We’ll call him Eduardo.
“I guess our secret’s out,” Eduardo said. “We’re not actually brothers.”
“So then what the hell are you?” I asked, although I was beginning to suspect the answer.
“We’re the same person,” Ed told me. “Just from four different space-time continuums.”
Apparently, each shift produced a new Edward, with his own skateboard that wasn’t a skateboard, and his own attitude, too, since they all bickered and disagreed on a regular basis.
Eduardo, who knew everything about this world, had been up all night with Eddy, comparing notes, trying to determine how this world was different from the previous one, because it seemed identical. They had no clue until I showed up to tell them. They were tickled by the news.
“Wow! So you absorbed the entire change yourself?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“And it affected the nature of your sexuality?”
“More than affected it.”
“That’s incredible!”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
The Edwards were entirely nonsexual beings, so they had limited empathy for my current situation.
“Six of one, half dozen of another,” they said. “No big deal.”
Eddy and Eduardo went to the QuIRT, and, in light of the new information, did some fresh calculations.
“This is an amazing thing you’ve done,” Eduardo said. “Entirely different from your previous shifts. This time you took complete control!”
The others agreed—even Edd, who said, “I will admit this wasn’t an entire disaster.”
“It’s a major step in the right direction,” Ed said. “If you had allowed it to pass around you, rather than into you, there’s a good chance the sexual orientation of all humanity would have flipped.”
“That would’ve been interesting,” Eddy said.
Edd furrowed his brow. “It’s normal for up to ten percent of an evolved population to have primary same-sex attraction—if it wasn’t a natural thing, it wouldn’t exist—but flip that, and you have only ten percent or less of the population attracted to the opposite sex. Major ramifications there.”
“Life always finds a way,” Eduardo pointed out.
“True,” said Edd, “but it would be a very different social dynamic.”
“Well,” said Eddy, “I would’ve liked to have seen it.”
I was losing patience quickly. “Maybe another lifetime,” I told them. “But right now, let’s focus on the reason why we’re all here: getting everything back to the way it was. Including me.”
Eduardo took a long look at me. “Personal changes are hard to undo,” he said. “If you were able to get the world back to the way it started, but you remained this way, would that be acceptable to you?”
Part of me screamed yes, part of me screamed no, so I sidestepped the question. “What matters most is that everything else gets undone.”
“That’s very noble of you,” said Ed. “Putting the needs of the world before your own.”
I didn’t feel all that noble. I just felt lost. “I . . . I don’t know how to navigate this world,” I confided. “The thought of going back to school on Monday . . . I can’t even imagine what it will be like.”
Ed put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Hey, don’t forget that you have all the memories of this world, Ash. You just need to integrate who you are now into who you were. But in the end, you’re still you.”
“You’ve just had a makeover,” suggested Eduardo.
“More like a make-under,” Eddy said.
“Don’t hide from it,” said Ed. “Experience it. Experiencing your lives is the most important thing you can do.”
14
Here’s the Thing . . .
“Did it happen? I’ve been texting you since last night.”
Katie called just as I was driving away from the Edwards’. It wasn’t that I was avoiding talking to her, it’s just that I was avoiding talking to her.
“I had my phone off,” I told her, which was true. It was off because I knew she’d be trying to reach me.
“So something did happen!”
“Sort of.”
She took that as a yes. “Okay—meet me at the public library at noon.”
“Why there?”
“Because it’s the one place in town where I know I won’t run into Layton.”
The library had a nonsegregation policy. Anyone could sit anywhere they wanted. Unfortunately people tended to bring their predispositions with them, so tables often seemed to divide by race, regardless of policy. Something that often happened in my world, too. When I got there, I was surprised to see that it wasn’t just Katie. Leo was also there. Katie had managed to find him on her own.
“Sit down, Ash,” said Katie.
I sat across from them. Some old guy at another table gave us a glance from behind his newspaper. I couldn’t tell whether the glance was judgmental or just a glance. A moment later, he left. I couldn’t tell if he left because he didn’t approve of the three of us together, or if he just felt it was time to go. That’s the maddening thing about racism. Sometimes you just don’t know.
“Leo and I have been having a good talk,” she said. “About Angela . . . about everything.”
“She helped me remember stuff,” said Leo. “Like being on the team with you. Playing football with the football star’s son.”
“Yeah, well my dad wasn’t a football star where I come from.”
“Too bad,” said Leo.
“Not really.”
The fact that they had been talking about this without me present was a good thing. Three heads were better than one, and with both of them on board, I didn’t feel so alone.
“So how did the world change?” said Katie. “Out with it.”
Interesting choice of words. “The world didn’t exactly change,” I told them.
“Bro, it’s a yes or no question,” Leo said. “Either it did or it didn’t.”
“Okay, yes. Yes, there was a change.”
“And?” prompted Katie.
I took a moment to look at each of them and realized there was just no way around this. So I just told them.
“I’m gay.”
Katie continued to look at me, as if there’d be more. “And?”
“There is no ‘and.’ That’s it.”
“Ash,” she said, with an impish grin, “that’s not really a surprise . . .”
Leo, who didn’t know me at all in this world, had the wisdom to stay quiet and just let this play out between me and Katie.
“Wait—you already knew?” I asked her.
“I suspected.”
I scrolled back through my memories of this world. I thought I had done a pretty good job keeping it on the down-low. “How’d you know?”
“Well . . . maybe because you only dated ‘safe’ girls. And how, at parties, the way you’d always strike up conversations with good-looking guys.”
“I was just being social!” I insisted.
“Right. Anyway, if you’re worried about being outed, don’t,” said Katie. “I’m probably the only one who noticed. Most people are too much into themselves to see things like that.”
And then something occurred to me. The reason why Katie was aware, when others weren’t. “You noticed because . . . you were interested in me?”
“Maybe,” she said. “But that’s moot now, isn’t it?”
I took a deep breath. “In the other worlds it wouldn’t have been moot.” And then I told her. “In the last world we kissed.”
She took a moment. Maybe she remembered something of that kiss, maybe not, but after thinking about it, she said, “I’m sure that created a whole lot of problems that I’m glad we don’t have to deal with right now.” And she was absolutely right.
Through all of this, Leo sat back, absorbing. Finally he shook his head and laughed. “So let me get this straight: the big jock football lineman, whose famous father is T-ville’s favorite son . . . is gay.”
“Yeah,” I said, getting defensive. “You got a problem with that?”
Leo put up his hands. “Hell no, I got no problem. I just wanna be at a safe distance, but with a good view, when you come out—because those’ll be some kick-ass fireworks.”
Which brought Katie to her next question. “Do your parents know?”
“My parents here are very self-absorbed, like those other kids you were talking about. They don’t notice much of anything when it comes to me and my brother. Totally oblivious.” And it occurred to me that I was one of those oblivious people, too—or at least I had been before the world started changing.
“Parents are rarely as clueless as they seem,” Katie advised. It made me a little uncomfortable to think that she might be right.
“Yeah,” seconded Leo, “and when it comes to shit about you, they mostly worry A) Are you okay? and B) How does it affect them? But not necessarily in that order.”
For the next few days, I took the Edwards’ advice, and let myself fearlessly experience the make-under.
It started with going to Paul’s house on Sunday to work on math. I couldn’t deny the excitement I felt simply arriving at his door, but kept it all inside. Although maybe I rang the bell one too many times.
“Hey,” he said as he answered the door, much sweatier than I expected him to be. “Tennis with my dad. Just got back.”
“Hi, Ash,” his dad said from back in the kitchen. He looked much worse than Paul, as he guzzled a glass of ice water.
“Hi, Mr. Fisher. Looks like Paul ran you all over the court,” I commented.
“That he did.”
Then Paul, taking a step toward the stairs, said, as casually as can be, “Gotta hit the shower. Wanna come with?”
And it’s like I imploded. I felt my ears and nose going red hot. “No. Uh . . . No,” I stammered. “I’ll just . . . uh . . . wait down here.” I looked toward the kitchen. Mr. Fisher was no longer in view when Paul said it, but was he in earshot? What about his mom? I hadn’t seen her yet. Either of them might have heard it.
Seeing my reaction, Paul stopped and turned around with a long-suffering smirk. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “It was a joke.”
And even more quietly, I said, “It’s not a joke if you secretly mean it.”
“But it is a joke,” he argued, “because you know that I know that there’s no universe in which you’d come upstairs with my whole family here.”
I didn’t even realize I had another nerve to hit. “Universe? What do you mean, universe?”
He chuckled, and I realized it was just an innocent figure of speech. “Ash, you are very weird,” he said. “And I like it.”
And he was gone to take his shower.
The thing is, Paul would often joke like this—in such an offhand way that nobody but me would ever give it a second thought. He liked to see me squirm—but only because he knew I kinda liked squirming a little. Yet as tempted as I was by that dangerous edge, I didn’t do well looking over it.
I looked around one more time. No one there. I could hear his father on the phone somewhere else in the house. Paul hadn’t come out to his parents, but he was pretty sure they knew. Did that mean they knew about me, too? Indirectly, like the way Katie knew? And if they did, and were okay with it, shouldn’t I be okay with them being okay? Still, just thinking about it made me tense.
“It’s like you’re always on the field, toeing the line, waiting for the snap,” Paul once told me. Then he had hooked his finger on my shorts and snapped the waistband. Right in the school hallway. And I squirmed and got mad and kind of liked it.
Man, these memories! I caught myself grinning, then cringing, then grinning again, as I sat in the living room waiting for Paul to come back down. I was letting in more and more bits and pieces of this world, allowing them to ricochet around my brain. Not just stuff with Paul, but of my whole life here. How it was mostly the same, and yet entirely different. I could remember the same life events, the same parties, but recalled other things about them. All those things that struck me enough to lodge in my long-term memory. A conversation. A look. And I understood how, through everything, I kept myself so protected. That core of who I was. I held it close like a quarterback, terrified I’d fumble. Like fragile china in layers of bubble wrap. No one got to see it, so no one could break it. And Paul? He was the mischievous hand popping those layers one bubble at a time. I wondered what would happen when they were all gone.
This is how the old me and the even older me came to know the new me. While the Edwards kept dividing and separating, I had to do the opposite, and try to blend multiple selves into a singular “I.” There were parts that had to be subdued. Quelled. I’m talking about the parts that dealt drugs and treated people like shit. But this part—this queer part—I didn’t want to silence at all. I mean, I didn’t want to go skipping on rainbows with it either, but getting to know it—getting to know him—wasn’t a bad thing. I was learning to be okay in my own skin. That’s more than I could say about the original me.
When Paul came down, we worked on math—and I got it, because Paul was a much better teacher than my actual teacher. Or maybe it was just that everything he said always made sense, regardless of the subject. Afterwards we hung out watching a game with his dad. Whenever we watched a game together, we did this thing where we bumped hands in the chip bowl. First time it was an accident, but now it was like the fist bump. Something we shared that no one could come between.
Later, when his parents went out for dinner, we got closer on the sofa, leaning into each other. And that was it. Just quiet closeness—because between Paul and me, it wasn’t just about the obvious stuff you might be thinking in your dirty little mind. More than any of that, it was about connection. It was about being close to someone you wanted to be with.
