Chapter 46 - I Am Your Density

Because of that, I wasn’t moved. I did push my chair back from time to time to look at the science-y nothings in particular behind me. Eventually, Kats noticed that her hair had gotten longer and thicker.

She used her compact to check it out. “That is sooo weird, I just checked myself before class. That’s like two inches. For real. Does anything else happen?”

I shrugged again and told her, “I suppose, but I haven’t really been keeping track with other girls because boys have been more obvious. Hips maybe? Boobs?”

Kats giggled to herself. “Man, I wouldn’t mind more of that.” She wasn’t flat and narrow but also wasn’t especially gifted in either respect. Jen brushed back her hair with its own extra inches and flipped through her textbook.

I established what I suspected was the range of the effect. Carlos quietly and Duncan loudly made sure they were fully outside my supposed zone on the opposite end of the table.

Showing her slim teeth, Kats looked over at the boys and back at me as she admitted, “I kinda want to see it happen up close. That’s gotta be nuts. Hey, Dunk, wanna earn a dollar?”

He kept his head down in his book and only showed her his middle finger. She stuck out her tongue and then proposed, “How about…” She bent close and whispered in his ear. I was still able to hear, and that was probably the point. She had to be flirting with him, but in about the weirdest way possible.

She added, in her normal voice, “With tongue. Or…for after, if you get stuck…even more tongue. Promise.”

Dunk leveled an annoyed gaze and intoned, “I don’t play that way.”

Kats peered across at Carlos and inquired, “No tongue but you game?”

Carlos swallowed quietly and took a pause to answer, “I don’t. I just…I got a girlfriend and shit.” Then he returned to his handout.

Plopping her head down, Kats muttered through her hands, “I just wanna see it happen. Shit. How many guys has it happened to?”

After a moment to reflect, I held up one hand. Kats scuffed her feet and grumbled, “I like gotta grab my friend Tomas and make him do it.”

It only really occurred to me then that girls around me and in the influence of this thing seemed to be more accepting. Was it like with Lea cuddling up to me? No idea. Maybe it wasn’t even a thing but just a case of running across certain kinds of girls. After all, Jen was right in the path and she was ignoring me.

Maybe ignoring me was kindness for her. Or it could be the fact I was some stranger from half a room away who’d suddenly been moved over. As well, that stranger claimed to have supernatural powers to transform people and my hair was getting longer.

What would my reaction be in that situation? Ask to be moved? Get filled with abundant confusion and concern? Get morbidly curious? I really had no way to know. I had a collection of reactions from random people. I hoped though, that I would find myself sympathetic to that theoretical Kenzie in someone else’s shoes.

While brushing back her hair, Kats asked, “So, there’s your ex but who else? The guys at your table, right? That’s three.”

Cody and Ben. Against all probability, the two of them actually walked through the classroom door when I was thinking of them. Of course, I’d already thought of them a few times and they hadn’t made an appearance, but the timing was curious.

They were both dressed in flannel. It was the golden age of flannel. Woo… Ben’s was a red tartan and Cody’s was a deep blue. I tried not to stare, lest I give Kats the right idea at the wrong time with my body language.  

All I offered was, “Just two other guys I know from lunch and stuff.”

She persisted, “Friends?”

“Hopefully.”

She scrunched up her pencil-mark eyebrows. I noticed that her acne was gone, and her complexion was clear. I pointed this out to her. and she stared into her compact with her lower lip dangling.

“Woah! This is because of you?”

I had to give her a shrug again, even though it was probably bingo.

She continued, “This…wow. I mean like, I have sooo much stuff in my room I’ve been using for my pores and it burns like fuck. But it’s just…gone.” A giddy smile flared across her face.

I cautioned, “It wears off though.”

Pouting to her reflection, she muttered, “Crap. Oh, but what about your ex?”

She flashed an expectant gaze as she closed her compact. I noticed Cody had taken his regular seat. Ben was placed with a group near the door, far from me. Both seats were pretty far from where I was anyway, but Ben was as far as one could get and still be in the same room.

Rebecca had moved to another group but it was just two tables over. I did my best not to overthink it. If he kept to groups only on that end, then I could start to irrationally worry.

I sighed through my nose with Kats’s question and tried, “It was kinda a freak event. I dunno what happened to make things go that way.”

Outright frowning now, Kats inquired, “Aww. So…if I go as far away as Dunk and Carlos then it stops? What about closer?” She scooted right beside me to demonstrate.

She got even closer than Lea did, with her face almost pressed against mine. I flinched slightly. I liked people, but I liked them at a comfortable distance. I could just about feel her breath on my neck, and I could definitely feel the lavender of her perfume raking my nostrils.

Thankfully, she did back off a little, when being close didn’t accelerate the changes. Subtle acne scars on her cheeks, which she’d tried to hide with makeup, smoothed away like they’d never been there.

Making her smile gave me a smile of my own. It was a smile which promised possibilities. Perhaps the other girls wouldn’t all scorn me and call me a witch and a destroyer of boys. Perhaps Natalie wouldn’t be angry. Perhaps Lea could be accepted and happy without worries in her skin. Perhaps I could figure this shit out and find new joys rather than new pains and fears.

Perhaps…I will allow my sixteen-year-old self the indulgence of optimism. For now.

Kats was already wondering what might change next. She lamented, “It would be pretty cool if you could fix my voice too. Like…it’s too nasal, right?”

I was hardly one to judge with how it felt like my voice emerged from the depths of my sinuses, but I noted, “It would be cool.”

She did test the limit by scooting away from me but soon freaked out when she felt the rough patches on her forehead returning. Fortunately, they were gone again in just a few minutes. She remarked, “We should stick around each other all the time. What classes do you have?”

We had a few with the same teacher but none lined up as the same class. She bit her lip and asked, “Where do you go for lunch?”

She didn’t seem the type to want to sit with our odd little group, but it is best never to try to guess in advance what sort of group someone fits in. Still, I told her I was often busy at lunch.

Pursing her lips, she offered, “What about after school?”

I told her about helping out at my dad’s college. She drooped again and muttered, “Rats. Hmm…maybe if we like…sit next to each other every day then it’ll stick, like with your ex?”

I could’ve told her that I focused on Wes specifically, but I finally came to my senses about revealing too much and just stated, “Maybe.”

It was then, out of the blue, that Jen finally addressed me to say, “I remember you from Creosote Elementary. We had Mrs. Winston, first grade.”

I looked back at her deep, brown eyes, which dipped to evade mine. “Really?”

To say I vaguely remembered first grade is being immensely kind to my memories then, let alone anytime. I remember physically being there and a few names of teachers. I remember the terror of being put in a class with older students and harder reading just because I liked reading. I’ve mentioned that story before, again, but it’s easier to remember the traumatic than the normal days in my life.

I also recalled trying, for some reason, to reenact the clock tower scene from Back to the Future with some forgotten friend. Let’s call him Freddy the Friend.

Freddy climbed way too high on the fence to get to the imaginary clock. I never got to tell him about the future either, because I cried that he was gonna break his neck.

I also remember it felt like a long way from one end of campus to the other.

No memories of Jen. I cocked my head to the side and offered, “Oh. That’s cool.”

And then she just went back to her work. Kats quipped, “Wow. Jen is really chatty today.” That didn’t prompt her to say anything else.

Kats filled me in on some of her personal details. She lived way out in the desert, past 50th on the east side. Eventually, the city would spread beyond even that but, back then, there was only an old Mexican restaurant that never seemed to be open and the mobile home park where Kats lived.  

I learned she had a boyfriend on the JV basketball team and was in the art club, explaining, “I just know how to draw shit like flowers and teacups though.”

Would I have talked to someone like Kats under normal circumstances? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t have a reason. Maybe abnormal circumstances aren’t always bad.

I checked on Ben, past Kats’s shoulder. He’d moved a little closer but not by much. I stared a little, but he didn’t look up from his paper. Rebecca was by my regular table. And it was probably time to focus on what we were supposed to be doing.

The words in the textbook looked like a blur. I enjoyed reading, but textbooks found a way to wring all the fun out of the task. Then add the frustration of sifting through a list of concepts that didn't even resemble the lecture.  

“What does your ex look like now, you know, as a girl?”

It was then I realized that the urgent feelings of last period had slipped from my mind. How could I have so neglected sending good thoughts to Lea at such a time? Before, I’d been so consumed that no other thoughts were possible. And, in less than an hour, she had slipped to something I needed to be reminded of.

My throat tightened. Lea. What did she look like? A young girl stepping out into her first hours in the world all alone with a hostile girlfriend and no allies in sight. How could that ever leave my mind?

I repressed a wince. Quietly, I told her, “So much smaller. He used to be…” I pointed out the edge of the glass cabinets set in the wall. “About that height, now my ex is a little under my height or so.”

Kats looked between it and me and gave a wide-eyed nod. I continued, “Hair a little longer than mine and darker. Figure a little like…” I pressed my lip to my teeth and glanced over at Jen then back at Kats so she would get the idea without me saying.

She did, with a mouthed “Ah” and another nod, before asking, “Did he freak out?”

I dog-eared the left edge of my handout and answered, “He told me I’d killed him. And had some really…dark thoughts.”

Her mood shifted. Even the guys on the other side quieted. Jen stayed the same. Rubbing her hands, Kats responded, “Damn. But you said he’s alright…now?”

I’d said that. I offered a shrug and told her, “I dunno. Maybe…people get used to what I do to them. Or it’s another thing that happens.”

I had a clearer idea than that, but it was the safe thing to say. Kats rubbed her shoulders and leaned a little away from me. Still close enough but with some breathing room.

“That’s nuts. I still wanna see it though. At least once. But damn…Dunk wouldn’t be Dunk if he was just some girl. Tomas neither.”

Dunk shook his head and inquired, “You finally learning?”

She stuck her tongue out at him again but said, “Anyways, I hope what happened to me sticks around, because I’m fine with it. So far.”

Art by Alexis Rillera/Anirhapsodist