image [https://i.postimg.cc/RFb7BK7f/06.png]
The dissonant creeaak of Mr. Williams’ office chair as he stood drew me out of my reverie with an involuntary shiver down my spine. “I suppose that’s just about all then, Mrs. Scrivens, Ervin.”
“Thank you so much for your time,” Mom said as she stood as well, accepting his offered handshake. “Having this all happen so suddenly, and right on the cusp of school starting! I appreciate all your hard work.”
I hadn’t meant to get lost in my thoughts, but it was hard not to be. All day long, I’d been staring at the code Roslyn had given me, slowly deciphering its complexity into something I understood using what little I had read on the topic last night before going to bed and the notes Roslyn herself had left in the code before each section.
It was mostly recognizable as CSS, and I took a measure of solace in knowing I had at least been on the right track before, but where my code had been three lines, one of which only had a closing brace, Roslyn’s code was expansive. Several dozen sections, changing varying numbers of properties, some of which I never would have thought of myself. Everything had notes about what things I may want to tweak, and some sections even had properties enclosed with /* */ like Roslyn’s notes were, accompanied by additional notes about why I might or might not want to change them.
Things like hair could be changed in so many ways I never would have thought of! Not just length and color, but luminosity, density, curl type, water reten—
“Ervin.” Mom’s sharp invocation of my name pulled me back into reality again, and I sheepishly waved to show I was paying attention again. “Mr. Williams was asking you a question, young man. Did you hear it?”
I winced but shook my head.
If Mr. Williams was bothered, he covered it up well with a boisterous chuckle that strained the confines of his too closely fitted waistcoat. “That’s alright, it’s a lot to take in, isn’t it, son? Starting high school is already quite the journey, and any handicap, much less one as sudden as yours, makes it that much tougher. But if you put in the work, I’m sure you’ll conquer your impairment in no time!”
He clearly meant well, but I shrank in on myself at being called handicapped and impaired. I think Mom noticed, her hand on my shoulder gripping me just a bit tighter, but Mr. Williams didn’t seem to, instead repeating what must have been his earlier question.
“Mrs. Smith said she would be willing to start your tutoring sessions as soon as tomorrow morning, if you don’t think that would be too overwhelming, Ervin?”
It took me a second to remember Mrs. Smith was the ASL teacher, whose class I had switched to that very morning. I dimly recalled some mention while I was examining the code that she would be giving me private lessons to help me make quicker progress.
I changed my tablet over to the notepad app and typed, [I’ll be okay.]
“You’ll be okay, sir,” Mom drawled, giving me an unimpressed look.
I winced again, meekly pointing at her while looking at Mr. Williams, as if to say, What she said.
That drew another chuckle from the portly gentleman, and soon we were leaving the office with the promise of half hour tutoring sessions before classes started each morning. The walk to Mom’s car wasn’t a long one, but the lecture I got along the way certainly made it feel like it.
“I cannot believe you were daydreaming! After he took time out of his busy day to make arrangements for your handicap! You’re lucky he’s so good-natured, Ervin. You have to pay attention in moments like that. You are to be on your best behavior with Mrs. Smith, do you understand? She is being unbelievably generous, giving you that much time and unexpectedly as well.”
She huffed, her old Forester chirping as she pressed the button on her remote to unlock it. We both climbed in, and after a moment, she tacked on, “Am I understood, young man?”
I opened the TTS app and typed up a new message. I had a feeling I would be repeating this one more than I liked. “I’m disabled,” my tablet said on my behalf, “not handicapped.”
That gave her pause, but it didn’t take the wind from her sails altogether. “Yes, you’re right, honey. I’m sorry. I still need a proper answer. A lot of people are giving a lot of effort on your behalf, and I need to know you understand that.”
Another bit of typing, then the tablet responded, “I understand.” I could have just written that one out in the notepad, since we weren’t driving yet, but I could see that one being a regular response. The TTS app did have a folders feature for sorting, so I figured I could afford to get a bit into the weeds with preprogramming responses as long as I maintained decent organization.
Mom sighed but let the matter drop, the car waking with a rumble as she turned the key. Unlike Roslyn, who’s clunker was nearly overflowing with garbage, Mom kept her SUV relatively tidy. The only part I might describe as messy was the glove box, where Mom had an assortment of paper napkins salvaged from occasions when we got takeout.
Mom made a considering hmm as she fiddled with the radio. “I should probably speak with Jason and offer to give Dani a ride to the school. It’d be silly not to, when they live right behind us…”
I had been about to bring back up the code from Roslyn to look over it more, but the suggestion of bringing Dani with us in the mornings gave me pause. Not because of Dani—I was happy to have her along—but because Haven might be interested in a ride as well. I hesitated, unsure whether to mention it. He was just a face and a name; I didn’t know him, not really. Up until that day, he and I hadn’t ever really interacted. The Thachers didn’t really interact with anyone, and nobody interacted with them either.
And maybe it was because that thought made me a little sad, or maybe it was because I wanted to repay him somehow for standing up for me on the bus that morning, but I found myself typing out a message in TTS. “Haven Atteberry was at the bus stop this morning. I think maybe his family moved?”
The app didn’t quite get the ‘Atteberry’ right, saying ‘At-tee-berry’ instead of ‘At-tuh-berry,” but the accuracy of its pronunciation wasn’t exactly what had my attention right then. It was Mom’s grip suddenly tight grip on the steering wheel. “Haven… Was that ‘Atteberry’?”
I did not like the way she asked that question. With the reluctance of someone with a gun to their head, I pressed the, “Yes,” button in the TTS app.
Mom sighed, the sound long and bitter, reeking of not wanting to have this conversation. “Haven’s family didn’t move, honey… They died.”
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The problem with living off the sofa was there wasn’t really anywhere to hide things I did not want to be found. And while I had carefully secured my shoebox in my school locker, I had not left everything in it when I did.
A shiny, faux gold hair clip and a small tube of raspberry lip gloss. Spoils from the more careless of my classmates, sunk to the hallway floor beneath the tides of students moving from class to class. Rescued and feared.
When Mom parked and we climbed out, I took the chance to discreetly move the couple pieces of contraband from my book bag to my front pocket. I had heard some of my classmates mention before that their parents did occasional bag checks, and while Mom hadn’t done one that I was aware of, I was not going to chance it. But where to stash it in the house? My room was right out, not while Dad was still in there. What I had brought home was small enough to store under the couch itself, but the stove had a direct line of sight to my end of the couch. All it would take is Mom turning to look at me, and I would be caught red handed. I briefly debated using the clutter under the bathroom sink to my advantage, but I had no idea when or how often the rest of the family might go hunting through the mounds of old, out-of-date toiletries for something, and that was a risk I refused to take. The weather forecast was clear when I looked it up on my tablet, so I could them put it up on the roof, but I usually avoided going up there during the day because I didn’t want to chance Mr. Skeates noticing me across their back yard and reporting my escapades to my parents.
That left the garage in the suitcase. I could make my way out there when the time was right, just tell Mom I was picking out clothes for tomorrow if asked. It wouldn’t be hard to slip the clip and gloss under the stack of pants. No, between the bottom-most pair and the ones above them, that way if Mom happened to look there would be less chance of her finding them.
I debated making a beeline for the garage, but hesitated, worried it would be suspicious. Normally I didn’t pick out clothes until right before bed, if not the morning of. Instead, with neither Booker nor Dad were home and no homework (despite half expecting Roslyn to assign some, given her track record), I would focus on the other items I wanted to get done while the evening was mine alone.
First, I wanted more details about Haven’s situation. Mom had given me the basics, but she had clearly avoided going into details. Repeated use of the search engine was making it a bit less daunting to use, but I still did my best to avoid looking at how many search results I had turned up. Atteberry wasn’t exactly a common last name, so a search for ‘atteberry meckleville overdose’ quickly produced the Atteberry’s obituaries and from there the article Mom had read in the Herald-Mail.
It was not pretty. Everyone in town knew about the heroin epidemic. How could they not? Billboards were everywhere, speakers came to give ‘drugs are bad’ school assemblies once or twice a year, and a casual drive through Hagerstown often meant passing right by someone tweaking out on the sidewalk. Meckleville was smaller and therefore had a comparatively smaller problem, but it was still there. The curse of proximity to I-81 meant drug trafficking was an inevitability, and the Atteberry family had paid for it with their lives back in May when they and a dozen other people had used a strain that had been cut with the sorts of things the human body was not meant to have inside of it.
Haven’s entire life had been upended not even three months ago… and he stood up to a bully for me? The boy I had always thought of as a religious weirdo…?
I had wanted to look over the code from Roslyn more before dinner, but I was too lost in my spiraling thoughts to muster any real focus. Before I knew it, Booker arrived home, and Dad was only about ten minutes behind him. I distractedly used the, “Welcome home!” greeting I had programmed into the TTS app to wildly differing reactions.
Booker had heard me use the app to speak yesterday, and while the time loop had worked its magic on him, enough of the experience bled over that he was only mildly surprised. “Thanks, man. Is that…? What’s it called? TTS?”
“Yes,” my tablet said.
“Huh. Right on, cool stuff.” And that was it. Basic stuff. He moved on to asking Mom about dinner without missing a beat before retreating to his room until it was time for dinner.
Dad, on the other hand… “What the hell is that?”
The sharp and suspicious response startled me enough I almost fumbled my tablet. Seeing Dad at the house that morning had tricked me into forgetting he had never made it home yesterday. Even aware of the loop like I was, the repetition was horribly disorienting!
While I recovered, Mom beat me to the punch, explaining, “It’s a school-issued tablet for his computers class. The teacher gave them time to research topics related to the class earlier, and our smart little man thought to look into whether there are programs for reading out what he writes down! Isn’t that amazing, Morgan?”
“Huh. Interesting,” he grunted as he crossed over to my room, tugging off his boots and dropping them inside the door with a heavy thunk. “Is that the only voice it has, kiddo? Change it if you can, you sound like some prissy chick.”
I paled. Chick. He had looked in my box, I thought. Why else would he use that exact word unless he had looked in my box, or— or— or, he got copies of the emails sent to my student email! I don’t know how, but he knew!
Mom swore and stalked out of the kitchen, each footfall the strike of a judge’s gavel, each word the thunder of God himself speaking. “Morgan Kemp Scrivens, have you lost your mind?! How dare you?! Our child lost the ability to speak, and when he shows you how he’s trying to overcome that, you insult him?!”
“Don’t you twist my words like that, Lynn! I’m just saying the boy already looks like a girl half the time with you letting him keep his hair that long! People will get the wrong idea!”
I was already out the door before I realized I was running. Barefoot and in tears, I tore around the house like the devil himself was on my heels, and I didn’t stop until I was on the roof. Someone was shouting my name. Were they yelling for me? At me? I couldn’t tell, couldn’t breathe. Dad had dropped his boots on me, pinned me to the roof like an insect. He knew. He knew he knew he knew he knew he kn—
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Erv…?”
I jerked away from the sound, shingles scraping my back. Eyes were watching me over the lip of the roof. Dani. Even through her glasses, and even with her eyes not quite on mine, I felt exposed. Raw. I rolled on my side away from her and sniffed, the sound and sensation of snot slurping up my swollen nose disgusting and horribly embarrassing.
“Wait one second, please!” Dani declared behind me, the trellis creaking as she retreated. I sniffed again, confused and no less gross than before. Bleary eyed and heaving breaths, I rolled back over to see Dani scurrying across our collective back yards and through her patio door, glass left wide open. She reappeared a minute later with something in her arms, and it wasn’t until she had closed the door, rushed across the yards, and clambered back up to the roof that I could actually make it out.
Bewildered, I forgot to hide my shame as she settled the roof a short distance away and held out the stuffed triceratops in her arms. “You look like you could use a hug right now, and Mr. Cry-Tri gives the best hugs.”
When I reached for the triceratops but hesitated short of taking him, Dani gently pressed him into my hands. The green fabric was so soft, a plush velvet that made my fingers sing as I stared at the strangely heavy bundle. More on autopilot than anything, I settled him on my chest, the weight present without making breathing more difficult. If anything, the pressure made breathing easier as I wrapped one arm tight around the cloth creature while fumbling for my tablet with the other.
I didn’t think I could manage typing with both hands, much less hunting and pecking using one, so I settled on pressing the, “Hello, Dani,” greeting I had intended for use in the mornings.
Dani smiled, bright and earnest, eyes soft and fixed on where I was hugging the triceratops. I don’t remember how long we sat there, her hands fidgeting and me 100% crying into the downy dinosaur. But I remember with excruciating clarity what she eventually said to me.
“Is this yours?”
Dani leaned forward to pluck something off the roof, and when she came back up, I almost died on the spot, consumed in the fiery grave of spontaneous human combustion. The stick of lip gloss had fallen out of my pocket.
I wanted to smack it from her hand. I wanted to grab it and run. I wanted to lie, claim someone dropped it and I never got the chance to return it. I wanted to scream in horror, denial, or both. But more than any of that… I wanted to use my tablet to loop time again and wipe the day clean again, to undo the fight downstairs and leave all my treasures in the box at school. And I’m ashamed to say I switched to The Coder and opened the loop I had yet to delete. I nearly wound back time all over again… because I was too afraid to admit the simple reason I had ever picked it up.
And Dani Skeates? Bless her. She saw why. She saw the truth and cut straight through my web of lies before I had even spun it without an ounce of hesitation. “This color would look so good on you.”
I froze, my finger poised over the button to start the loop once more. Suspended at the edge with only a touch between me and leaping over it. We shared a look, just for a moment, but whatever she saw in my eyes made her nod.
“Stop me if you don’t want this,” she whispered, eyes shifting to my lips as she leaned forward, unscrewing the cap. “But I’d like to see this on you, and I think… I think you would too.”
The sensation of her spreading the gloss over my lips was intoxicating, freeing in a way I had never known. But it wasn’t just the makeup. It also was the girl holding it, tongue slipping out the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on carefully tracing my lips. It was her smile, shining with honest joy when she leaned back and looked upon her work.
“Yes,” she said with a nod of satisfaction. “It does look good on you.”
Fingers numb, it took me a couple tries to successfully return the tablet to its home screen and pull up the camera app, then a few seconds more until I figured out how to use the camera facing me from above its screen. I did not look good. My face was a swollen, flushed mess with tears still freely carving their way down my cheeks.
But the deep, scarlet shade that made my lips gleam in the setting sun? That looked good.
“I told you!” Dani said, leaning in to point at the screen. “I don’t do this stuff too much, but I think it looks awfully pretty with your red hair. It even gives the gray in your eyes a bit of a tint, see?”
Eyes glued to the me on the screen, I blindly pressed at the home button and mistakenly hit the button to snap a picture before finding my way to my destination. It only took me a second to open the notepad, but the message itself took some time, my fingers still stupefied by everything happening.
[You really mean that?]
Dani pulled back enough to give me a perplexed look, eyes scrunched behind her glasses. “Well of course. You think I’m lying?”
I took a shuddering breath as I pieced together a reply. [Most people would think a boy wearing lip gloss is a freak.]
“That’s not a nice word,” she said with a frown, eyes scrunching up even more. Her hand, which had stopped flapping long enough for her to put the gloss on, resumed its earlier jittery pattern returning. “That… that’s a word mean people use when they’re scared. I’m not a f-freak, and neither are you.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. She didn’t seem to know what to say either. The sun finished its descent behind the crest of mountains on the horizon, and as the last of its light began to give way to the moon overhead, it finally dawned on me that I was overthinking it. She knew what to say, and so did I.
I switched to the TTS app. I could have just typed in the notepad… but I wanted her to hear me. “I’m not a freak, and neither are you.”
Dani leaned over and bumped shoulders with me, smiling. “Dad’s always telling me, ‘Anyone can be whoever they want to be,’ so I should be who I want to be. If you wanna be a person who wears gloss, then I think that’s pretty cool.”
I had every intention of abusing the Mandela effect and whatever magic I needed to for the sake of being who I wanted to be. I would happily lie and bend the truth until I could wear a painted smile instead of a painted on one—until I could finally look myself in the mirror. But right then? Even if it was only for one person… I didn’t want to have to lie.
I switched to the notepad. [If you can keep a secret… I’ll show you who I really want to be.]
“Of course!” Dani whispered, puffing her chest and jabbing her thumb back into herself. “Your secret is safe with me!”
[Swear it,] I stressed.
“I swear on Mr. Cry-Tri!”
That was not reassuring. But she evidently thought it was, and that would be enough.
I changed apps one more time… and opened the code from Roslyn.
Run.
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When the following morning came around, I woke up at 7:00 on the nose to the sound of the alarm I had set on my tablet, still on the coffee table where I’d left it to charge. Meckleville had caught up with the rest of the world.
Hand to chest, I half laughed, half cried with relief. I had felt the loop end, and Roslyn had confirmed it, but waking up with my tablet still here made it finally feel real. It took me a while before I regained enough composure to start meandering towards the bathroom, in desperate need of a shower to properly rouse me. I heard Mom still getting ready in her room as I padded past, no longer up early for a special breakfast, the sound compounding my relief as I opened the bathroom door and closed it behind me.
Flipping on the lights, I skeptically eyed the boy in the mirror. I had a lifetime of memories seeing him there, and had half convinced myself he was me. Funny how a single session as the real me had made him nothing more than a stranger passing by.
I set my tablet on the counter, opened The Coder, and ran the code from Roslyn, peeling away the mask that had been glued in place for so long. The end result was deceptively simple, despite the myriad adjustments dictated in line after line. Earlier that summer, my chin had begun to grow hard and boxy like Dad and Booker, much to my distress. Now it was soft and round again, more delicate in some way I couldn’t put words to. The few wiry hairs that had begun to make my lip scratchy were gone as well, and… that was about it. I still had the same hair, a faint strawberry blond mixture from Mom and Dad, the length just long enough for my wavy curls to trace the edges of my jaw, the bangs nearly in my eyes. Dad had been trying to convince Mom I needed a haircut for ages, yesterday just the latest in a string of failures.
My cheeks hurt from smiling so much that I had to tear myself away from the mirror. I really did need a shower, and the biggest changes—the sorts of things I hadn’t had a chance to really examine last night—were things that couldn’t be seen with my clothes on. I started towards the shower to turn on the hot water, peeling my shirt off as I went.
That was, naturally, the moment Mom opened the door I had forgotten to lock, a single eye half-cracked open and mouth split wide by a yawn. My tablet? Right where I’d left it on the counter.
“Oh!” Mom said with a start, blinking away the sandman’s gifts, “I’m sorry, I did… n’t…?”
I instinctively tried to blurt, ‘It isn’t what it looks like!’ but only managed a bright ‘aaah!’ sound that did little to salvage the situation but at least served to remind me that I needed to get to my tablet—immediately.
“Er—? Ch-Chanel?” Mom said, visibly disoriented as I scrambled forward to snatch my tablet. “What—? O-Oh!”
Mom’s hands caught mine before I could grab the tablet, and my frantic, worried whine got lost in the joyous laugh that bubbled up out of her. Her excitement—pure, unadulterated excitement—caught me so thoroughly off guard that I failed to resist as she turned me around to face her fully.
“Oh, Chanel!” What…? There were tears in her eyes, I realized. Why were there tears in her eyes?! And who was Chanel?? “Oh, why didn’t you tell me? Goodness, how did I not see?”
Completely and utterly baffled. That is the only way I can only describe what I felt at that moment. I imagine that even had I known then what was going on, as I do now, I would have had emotional whiplash regardless. Mom was acting like she had when I first demonstrated using my tablet to speak, and that level of parental pride was entirely incongruent with my expectations for how she should be reacting right then. The changes were too minor aesthetically for her to not recognize me, and she certainly seemed to know who I was, but if she did, then she ought to have been freaking out and wondering why I had—
“You’ve blossomed, honey! Oh, I told you, didn’t I? I told you, it doesn’t matter how much of a tomboy or late bloomer you are, you’ll still need a bra eventually!”
All at once it clicked: The Mandela Effect. Mom was confabulating, explaining away her son Ervin as her daughter Chanel. I was awestruck. I could hardly believe it. The loop was without question a more impressive thaumaturgical work than changing a body, but it was the former I was afraid of. What was happening in that bathroom? My Mom seeing my truth and embracing it? I could only think of it as a miracle.
It was the ‘miracle’ I should have been afraid of.
The next half-hour passed in a bizarre blur of confabulation and unexpectedly playing dress up. I took a far shorter shower than I had intended, more worried about the unfolding situation than I was about examining the changes the code had produced. By the time I finished, Mom had dug out an old sports bra that even someone as inexperienced with feminine underwear as I was knew was too loose to be doing me any good.
“It was just something to get you through today,” she told me, chewing on her lip when I hesitantly stuck my upper body out the bathroom door and showed her I could easily fit a couple fingers between the band and me. “That is a bit more room than expected… While I was digging through my things, I found some of my clothes from back when your father and I were dating. There were a few tops that have built in padding and support that you could try? I know it’s not your normal style, but…”
When I answered the knock on the door some time later, Dani was pleasantly surprised, if not nearly as much as Mom was, to see my outfit. And that was saying a lot because Dani squealed and latched onto me with a gigantic hug when she saw me.
“Ohmigod, you look great!!” she said when she pulled back and looked me over a second time, hands going wild. Honestly, I was embarrassed by my clothes. The bright tank, girl’s button down shirt, and bell bottoms with flower prints were very hipster, but… Still, I couldn’t deny I was feeling just as much joy as embarrassment.
“Doesn’t she?” Mom said as she grabbed her purse and keys off the coffee table. “A very pleasant surprise!”
Dani leaned in close and whispered, “You told your mom?”
I shook my head fervently and gave the best ‘it’s complicated’ face I could while wiggling my hand. Dani didn’t seem to understand what I meant, so I pointed at my tablet to try and indicate I would tell her shortly, which got me a nod. Mom ushered us out the door before anything further could be expressed, and after Dani and I loaded our book bags and her trombone into the trunk of Mom’s car, the two of us piled into the back seat to go to school.
As Mom got us going, I fervently typed up a quick explanation for Dani. [She walked in on me using the spell this morning, then suddenly she was acting like this?? I think it’s a side effect or something. She’s calling me Chanel and acting like I’ve just been a tomboy my whole life!]
The car started to make a loping turn as I held out my tablet for Dani to read, and I looked up to find Mom had gone by the bus stop and was doing a u-turn to pull up alongside Haven Atteberry. He looked just as surly as he had yesterday morning, glaring at the hill the bus would be cresting as if it had done him a personal disservice. It wasn’t until Mom stopped at the sidewalk next to him and rolled down the windows that he seemed to notice us at all, blinking in surprise against the glare of the morning sun.
“Good morning!” Mom said with a wave, one hand still on the wheel. “Haven, right? I’m Lynn Scrivens—Chanel’s mom.”
“… Chanel?” Haven asked, unsure.
I was already absolutely mortified that Mom was just rolling up to the bus stop like this, but I nearly died on the spot from sheer embarrassment when she rolled down my window too, giving the Thacher boy an unobstructed line of sight to me. Mom was seemingly completely oblivious to how I was attempting to become one with the backseat in an attempt to vanish or how Dani had started to fidget almost violently from the mounting tension.
“She mentioned you might be interested in a ride to school in the mornings, but I would need your guardian’s permission, and I wasn’t sure who you’re staying with.”
Despite having two true miracles under my belt already, I managed neither to turn invisible nor otherwise prevent Haven from perceiving what was right in front of him. Wide-eyed and transfixed by me, he told my Mom, “I’m staying with the Waller-Gardeners,” without his eyes ever leaving me.
“The— The Waller-Gardeners?” Mom repeated, as if unsure she had heard him right. “On Salem Avenue?”
Haven still hadn’t looked away. I was starting to get afraid my cheeks would burst into flames, they were so hot. “Yes, ma’am. That’s them.”
“Oh. Well. I’ll, uh… I’ll have to give them a call today then. We’ll figure things out from there.”
Haven finally, blessedly, looked away to give Mom a polite nod. “Have a wonderful day, ma’am.”
“You too,” Mom said before pulling away and rolling up the windows, finally sparing me from further indignation. “What a polite young man. Still, the Waller-Gardeners…”
Dani was still recovering from being overwhelmed, so I opened the TTS app on my tablet and asked the question I imagined she was thinking too. “What’s wrong with the Waller-Gardeners?”
“Oh, nothing is wrong with them,” Mom vehemently denied. “They’ve been quite lovely every time we’ve interacted. It’s just…”
“Just?”
“Well, with the Thachers being so very religious, I was just surprised DDS would place Haven with a lesbian couple.”