Chapter 70 - Bravity is the Soul of Tit

And by 'you', I mean YOU. The one checking out this online from somewhere in Jakarta, near Kansas City, or on the Isle of Man. I know you. I'm not the name you see at the top. I'm Kenzie and I've always been this way.

I've been alive for over eight years now. I started as a joke, an idea translated from the infinite possibilities of reality. Back then, I barely had any features. I was a face with a sharp-tongued voice. My space, my place, my world were the confines of a single story: "Bros Forever".

I was simply Kenzie then. No last name, no family, nothing beyond the stage I was given. I barge into the apartment of two male friends and soon admonish my creator while receiving narrative slights and belittling descriptions. I'm less than Daffy Duck subject to the impish gloves and brush of Bugs Bunny.

I think I know everything. I can see the page, the HTML, where it all began and where it's going. The plot then follows as I am a plaything before narrative peaks and valleys. After a final punchline, I am allowed to lodge my complaints in the author's notes with the implication of a sequel or follow-up that will never come. Or so I thought.

Kenzie Waller. I am Kenzie Waller and simply Kenzie. I am writing this, and I am being written. The events of my youth are my own and yet they are someone else's. All of this is mine and yet it is not. Every word is a release, and it is also one more bridging the gap between now and the end.

Words have power, they transform and reshape as much as the mere presence of 1998 Kenzie. I am real and, yet, I am words on a screen. Some of it is mistaken and flawed with too many commas or too few. A thought trailing out or snipped short. Every word added is an ornamentation and a step forward I can never take back.

If I had my way, this would merely be book one of a minimum of twelve, chronicling the slow discovery and rise of my powers that separate me from everyone else. Rise of a good weekend, fall of showing up on the news, crest of hoping for Lea, plunge down the pit of my stomach to see an omen of pain, lift of Lea by the lockers, crunch of Nats scolding...and so on. A real-time tale of the pendulum swing of events.

I could easily share and inhabit these margins of more than half my lifetime. And, after that, think of the what-if prequels! Preschool Kenzie as a little bomb and I don't mean when she's too scared and nervous to ask for the restroom in her first week of class.

...I don't want to die. I don't want stories to end.

I'm the narrator, but I'm also an inhabitant. I'm a scared sixteen-year-old and I'm also some caveman trapped in the ice for thousands of years. But who am I really? Who am I right now, in this crystallized moment of words and time?

That's my secret. Not a repurposed character from a short, silly tale that went cartoony and meta. Not an author stand-in. Not even a jaded, depleted-feeling adult struggling for the right words to reflect on a vision of their younger selves as she grapples for puns on memes and phrases more amusing than strangled. Those are all....facets of me. They're maybe even bigger than what I refuse to say.

But enough of that. Despite my innate hesitation, we still need to make some progress. There's also at least one more thought rattling around inside my brain, but I'll save it for later.

In 1998, I tried to focus on whether I felt anything towards lacrosse or tennis. Golf sounded theoretically possible and Valerie definitely had a bias towards soccer with Reina rounding out her support with a swift treatise on the best qualities of a soccer ball.

Though I had little hope of success, I didn't want to take sports off the table because it was a way to be social, active, and around others, while remaining a certain distance away from them most of the time. Tennis had potential. Reina gave me my own, fuzzy pet tennis ball to squeeze. The rough, yellow texture tangled a bit on my dry skin and under my nails.

To that, Valerie excavated some hand cream from the lowest tomb of her mountain of stuff. I rubbed it in and then fussed with it, curling up the lingering bits and scooping them back across my hands like old piles of snow shuffled and reshuffled. Scratching only made it worse.

The trio included me in their chats, even though I wanted to retreat to the state of an observer. When I feared that my beautification presence might cross the threshold where Valerie could no longer explain her hips as my good vibes and prayers and someone might feel their plush lips, I resolved that I needed to get up for a break and ask something of Bledsoe.

A suffocating miasma of marker and chalk sunk into my clothes as I approached him. When he asked me what was wrong, I simply explained it as, "I just need a minute."

He simply asked, "Group working out?" To which I nodded.

After he'd sent me to retrieve something from the storage room, I eased back into my chair, pushed out from the table slightly with my back casually up against the counter.

Again, Valerie took charge of comforting me, relaying, "It'll be fine, Kenzie. We're here to support you, no matter what. The team of Group Front Right. No, that's bland. Team..."

She looked at the others for suggestions. Reina offered up Team Ovoid. Wendy cautiously hinted at Team Swift while Valerie warmed to Team Strikers. My brain drifted over the terms we'd seen on the test and had flipped through for the group study. Team Enzyme....and Osmosis.

This clicked for Valerie because it was a recent term and sounded "nifty". She elaborated, "Team Osmosis, just drawing everything in to make us stronger." Reina dug it because she wanted to make a drawing where the Os in the name were balls that got bigger. They even let me do a little ornamentation on the group sign as we completed the assignment.

Before long, Valerie was changing again. The fervent visualization of purging everything into a rock had failed. And as a side cost, my eyes kept drifting closed from a looming wave of exhaustion. Well, I would've been sleepy at around this time in the morning anyway, especially with all that had happened so far. A few, deep breaths only provided a temporary stopgap from my eyes blinking for a long time.

Did it change anything if Cody was gay? The question roused me like a rough needle prick in the chest. I'd already stirred that pot of concerns. He was sharply funny, casually friendly, and made me feel good to be around. I would risk getting yelled at by teachers just to have the opportunity to talk to him, especially at the end of a long summer.

He'd been strikingly chill about me turning him into a chick. As though, instead of real life, it had happened in some story that contained people I knew in a fictionalized context, like, say a society of secret wizards that protected the world from chaos and made their home base out of an interdimensional IHOP. Hypothetically...

I couldn't ask him about this. But that didn't stop me from envisioning the act of questioning him, only without questions or any of his responses. That thought skipped roughly in place, like a drive scrambled by a magnet.

The better, dated analogy would've been a skipping record or a stuck tape because either I had the same word caught in my throat, drowning and flailing to escape or I find myself frozen in fear with no way to speak my question as I remember how I may have subtly betrayed him in a dozen different ways he likely didn't even remember. But you don't just ask someone if they're gay. Not seriously. Not in my high school in 1998.

At most, it might be a joke or a statement to get attention. Or a deadpan string of lies. It was for screwing around. You don't sincerely ask, you don't honestly tell. I should've just let it go, smolder on the mystery because I had plenty of other things to be concerned about. But my brain would do that. Like the fixation of thinking about Lea when it didn't matter or a dozen different stupid obsessions, I had to think unrelentingly about Cody and whether he was gay. I should've enjoyed the respite of three, friendly classmates. But I made my own personal Hells instead.

When Valerie noted that her pants were riding up and she needed a drink of water, I found another reason to briefly excuse myself. It felt like that geode was scraping against the inside of my skull and I was still gathering and reapplying the icky remains of the cream.

This was why I never used hand lotion. I should've and really needed to use it with how the cold, dry desert wastes wind-blasted my flesh. But whenever I put it on, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact it was on me as I tried to go about my day. Hand slime on my textbook, my papers, and my clothes. Not for me,

Beyond that, I hadn't forgotten the conundrum of how I was going to talk to Cody about anything but what Valerie implied. With my heart racing, I kept my attention on scribbling for our Team Osmosis sign. Eventually, Bledsoe checked in on us and approved of how not only had we made a cohesive group, but we had visually demonstrated one of the terms. For the last item and as homework, he wanted everyone to "synthesize" a term like that for demonstration.

Reina traced a sheet to hand in for the assignment as we each reflected on a term. Wise of the group not to call upon the void where any of my artistic skills would be. And they also left me to hunch over the cold table with my brick-hard backpack as the only item of comfort.

So tired. So drained of everything I had. Micro naps dragged at me like waves pulling me into the ocean. It didn't occur to me then that an obsessive focus on blasting a rock had taken away my energy. Despite getting in bouts of rest, I still lucidly responded to group work and perked up whenever I was needed.

When Valerie turned in our work, I reflected on how much time was left.

In all my previous groups, especially amidst the slog of a Monday, we crept our way to this progress with a frantic rush at the end to complete what one person had made with everyone's name on it. Despite assurances from the others it was fine for me to take it easy, I still invested time in knowing more about Reina's love of balls. Potatoes were casually included. She had a full baked potato wrapped up in her bag for a snack. Wendy knew several recipes for cooking pork chops and meatloaf in ways my mom never considered. Some were ones passed down from her grandmother and others were of her own design. Valerie explained a simple version of soccer to see if it would take and also demonstrated the kind of things I would need to do, as gently as possible so the nearby glass cabinets wouldn't rattle or break.

It was enough to rouse me from my stupor but not enough to put Cody out of mind. When his group finally finished and laughs were shared, I got up to clear the change buffer for the three before they noticed differences, and I saw that Cody was coming over to our area in the front.

On my return, I edged my seat around the corner to give Cody as much space as possible when he leaned against the lab counter. He and Valerie looked congenial with one another. Her voice raised at several points with enthusiasm and she giggled. Their discussion sounded like nothing specific with a touch of Biblical stuff from their prayer group. Some camp also came up and references to people I'd never met.

My search for words felt like when I saw a big snake trying to swallow something as large as itself. Only little spasms crossed my lips, as though I couldn't decide whether I wanted my words out or in. My toes perched on their tips, as I finally managed to put together, "Cody?"

He turned his eyes to me and asked, "Uh yeah, what's up?" Valerie immediately turned to look at me too, with an expression of stark seriousness. It would be a betrayal to take little more than a hunch she'd shared with me and run with it.

Focusing all my energy, I swallowed with a smile and asked, "How was your weekend? Mine went by way too fast." He watched me for a lingering moment before smirking, "Same. Ha. My cousin was over..."

I only half-heard what he said after that, but Valerie was smiling, so I know it was fine. Reina contributed a discussion about squishy bright spheres and it finally clicked for me that Wendy was the six-foot girl I'd noticed previously and specifically when we were lined up outside (because of me) a week ago. This all contributed enough of a distraction to take us to the bell.

But I couldn't leave well enough alone and kept pace with Cody as he walked out the door. Almost at the end of the row of classrooms, I told him, "Thanks for the chat. Shame you can't fit in the group. Since we already have four."

Cody chuckled and added, "Yeah and I don't want to be playing for the estrogen brigade."

"You sure?"

He tilted his acne-scarred chin up and asserted, "I'm sure."

"Wouldn't it be better in some ways...considering...?"

He gripped his backpack, cleared his throat, and told me, "Maybe for some. Not for me."

"You seemed okay with it on Thursday. Curious about it, at least."

He dropped his hands and tightened his jaw. "That was...just a game. Don't dwell on it."

"I don't have that luxury. This is with me all the time. I can't not think about it. Do you want to be a part of that or not?"

He slipped on a scowl. "I want my normal, dudely life. I don't want that to change."

"Everyone I've changed is happy. They can be with who they want."

"Shut up!" His demand cut low in his voice, nearly a growl. In response, I took a step back with my hands away. His eyes flicked around before returning to me.

Clearing his throat, he responded, "Please don't badger me with this. I'm fine. I don't care what's happened with others and I don't want to ask what you've done. If you try anything though, I will sock you hard, right in the boob. Sproing and kablamo." His eyes took on a wide, animated wiggle.

I crossed my arms over my chest and managed a reserved smirk. "Sorry. I promise not to hurt you. I just thought maybe I could help you with this weird thing I have. You seemed really...well, you seemed drunk but having a good time. Sorry."

His tight shoulders relaxed. "Well, there's a difference between a walk on the wild side and tumbling in. Thursday it was like...playing a role that fit the look. Making the group laugh. You tell a joke too long and it doesn't work anymore. Anyway, let's hug it out, booby lady."

With his fists not too tight on my back, we hugged it out, even though I felt like he was forcing things back to normal. I knew he went through plenty of shit with the divorce and his parents arguing all the time, so giving him an end to an argument I didn't even want was the least I could do. I apologized again even though he brushed any concern away with another effete hand wave.

He left me there by that grassy knoll as I had a lot to process.

Each word I'd spoken to him felt like a free-fall away from all the nerves and common sense that usually held me in check, like gravity. I'd relentlessly pursued him, while never broaching his sexuality. A sour pit in my stomach and flush wooziness was my reward, along with that awkward, teenager hug.

I feared I'd pushed him too far and what solemn, playful friendship we had before had been irreparably damaged, but then I fretted that about everything I did. It would be okay. Don't do my mom's work for me of tearing apart my friendships. At the same time, a nagging thought, like a stray morsel in my teeth which no tenacious sucking or tongue probing could drive from my senses, invaded me.

Cody got inebriated and woozy. So did Heather. Wes, notably didn't, nor did Ben. What made them different? Heather had a nearby seat to the Chernobyl of my bitter, vindictive blasting of Wes's gender for giggles at my writing years ago. Cody just sat in the radius of my background radiation.

It was weaker than conjuncture and the only proof I could foresee was to remain right next to someone like Sebastian in Spanish class and see if he got tipsy. Although that might not prove anything either since it could just be something in the brain or another factor. And doing anything uncertain to Sebastian just felt wrong.

I'd never seen Heather with a boyfriend. In all the time I knew her, even back when she was still in the medical magnet, she'd never talked about anyone like that in her life. But then I was a screwed-up goofball with a supernatural power that leaked everywhere. I never asked the right questions of anyone at the right time, and on the rare occasion I did and got the right answer, I would stupidly miss the obvious, like neglecting a meteorite about to smack me in the face.

I also felt like I was on awkward and uneasy ice with Heather. Just asking her about a boyfriend when I hadn't even hinted if I was curious, felt like the worst idea. But if she was a lesbian, then what? My blast just made her snuggle. Was that going to make her a super-duper mega lesbian who wasn't afraid to show it, with even more pronounced girlishness?

Or would that unlock my ability to make her a boy? If I even had something like that. As if that would fix things. I could make boys into girls and the only saturated example was a physical girl in more of a heterosexual alignment after clearly being a heterosexual boy. Would girl Cody flip the same way and be into girls? I had less than soggy tea leaves to interpret.

Well, at least in 1998, I did. No one should let a dumb kid like that loose with the power to reshape others. Peer pressure to go this way or that is bad enough.

So, what about now? Oh, big spoilers. Well, why not use one's talents? And include a lengthy release form for the lawyers. If it doesn't work out, then I warned you. Everyone wants a definite answer and thinks they have the definitive question. Ask one group and every question starts the same way. Ask another and they will have another question to stick to.

I don't have either. I just have what I've got. If only I could give less of a fuck what Cody and Heather were supposed to be around my questions. I was trying to make sense of this world and myself, but it doesn't happen. None of it actually fits and that's shockingly normal.

As I passed through the central courtyard area with the library to one side, vending machines, the store, and the cafeteria nearby, I caught a glimpse of an oddly-colored van just through the forest of railings, bars, and fences with uneven ground.

The edge of Administration almost looked like it was obscuring signs of a satellite dish on the top of the vehicle. It certainly wasn't your average white van or supply truck from Sodexo for the cafeteria. Frozen by the uncertain vision, I tried to blink it away.

Certainly, no one from the front office would make me talk to them, or even want me to talk. At the same time, here they were. Looking for something out of the ordinary and here I was. I had power, power I didn't understand which could make rocks glow, boys become girls, mental states alter, maybe murals change, and more.

If I wanted, if I let myself really go like an irradiated tempest against an unknown creature of shadow, could anyone....ANYONE...out there actually stop me? Yes, if you simply made me nervous, frazzled, and uncertain about anything in my life. And that could be done with a single conversation.

No way I could approach that possible news truck. Better to ignore it and hope it went away, even though that was impossible.

When I checked one last time before the trek to English, my eyes held on the pale, ridged vision of a satellite dish peeking through the trees flanking Administration. Before my fear could build to certainty, I resolved that the dish actually sat atop the building and not some vehicle in the parking lot. Had that always been there?

The problem was I tended to gloss over details like that. I could tell you more about the mottled ground than what loomed above me like an invasion ship ready to melt the world away. It had to have been there before. Same as the poppies had to have always been there instead of the sunflowers Lea enjoyed. Before I could swing back into doubt, I turned away and hustled the rest of the way to the ramp that led to Chilton's room.

My serenity with the surrounding currents of people going this way and that lasted only moments before I saw Natalie pass the nearby wall. However, Lea wasn't trailing behind her submissively. She pushed ahead with her arms out, checking on me and glowering on Natalie as she clearly ordered, "No! NO!"

None of me thought I could decapitate her with my bag but gripping a strap with both hands certainly seemed like a good idea, just in case.

Like a referee in pink and silvery flannel, Lea became a wall between me and Natalie as the scowling, dirty-blond practically spat, "You made him gay! Why did you make my boyfriend GAY!?"

The word shattered the air and rung in my ears as I simply managed, "What?!"

"My parents are suing you to your last penny. How dare you...how da..."

Sharply, Lea cut her off, "I'm not your boyfriend."

Slowly, stiffly shifting her head, Natalie released a rumbling, "....what..." Without the direction of a question.

Drawing in her breath, Lea resolved, "I am not your boyfriend. I still want to be your friend but...I'm very concerned right now. Please, Nats. Cool off."

In my head, I wondered if I could hold a beam of my energy to focus on Natalie. But then she might be the sort to become an angry drunk. At least it would resolve...hopefully...some of my questions.

Visualizing the string of energy wasn't as easy as when this feeling was at its peak. Instead, it felt like I had the dregs of my oomph and could only summon a twisting, frail amount of what I wanted. Still, Lea bent her head as far towards me as possible and simply stated, "Not now, Kenzie."

The whisper of light drifted away from me but Natalie flashed her teeth and demanded, "What's she doing? What is that bitch trying now?!"

Though I only saw the back of her head, I knew Lea's eyes were drilling into Natalie's as she resolved, "I know she wants to support me. But this is between you and me, right now."

Only withdrawing slightly, Natalie intoned, "I thought you loved me..."

"Likewise", was Lea's terse reply.

Shaking her head, Natalie scolded, "And you just want some guy's dick to suck off. Disgusting. Maybe you always were that..."

Before she could finish, Lea brought her hand loudly across Natalie's cheek. All words dropped from her lips as her head drifted the way it had been struck. Her eyes stared off in shock. Lea panted and shuddered through tears as she barely found the voice to say, "Goodbye, Nats..."

Lea still blocked the way to me as Nats blankly met her eyes for a moment before dipping her head and slowly returning the way she came. I wasn't sure how to feel.

When Nats was gone, I noticed the hand Lea had struck her with had a tremor that refused to stop, even though she held it against the other one. I didn't have time to observe the crowd, but I heard some whoops, whistles, a gasp, and plenty of hushed murmuring.

At least we didn't get security jumping on our asses this time. Cautiously, I approached Lea with my attention on her trembling hand. Before I could offer support, she whirled around with glossy, dark eyes despite the bright, optimistic colors of her outfit.

"Please. Don't. Not right now. Just...not right now."

With a sigh, I lowered my hands and took a step away. Clinging to her clothes, she wandered towards the ramp and found the loneliest nook to squeeze herself into, looking so very small.

I could think of so many words, here and there, but there was nothing to be said.