chapter three.

Simon

Mr. Ripley's office smells awfully like old cheese. I'm not sure why, as he decided to go vegan last year, but regardless, I'm sitting in the worn, green-upholstered chair in his narrow office and can't help but sense the faint odor of aged gruyere.

He's lecturing me. At this point I'm pretty sure this happens at least once a week, and the face I'm wearing during this weekly occurrence varies. The first time he caught me I was my default, redheaded self, but today there was a science olympiad competition, so I'm dark-haired Oliver Bonavich, reigning science master since seventh grade. I was also Oliver Bonavich the first time Val and I ever met, in sixth grade. We don't talk so much anymore.

Finally, Mr. Ripley exhales, though his face remains a purplish-red, like a strangled tomato. He combs a hand back through his thinning hair and then rests his fidgety hands on the desk, glaring at me in silence.

I look back at him. "Everything alright, Mr. Ripley?"

He adjusts the plaque on his desk, which reads John B. Ripley, Upperclassman Advisor. "You can't keep doing this, Simon."

"It's Oliver today, actually," I say, gesturing towards my face. Oliver has a skinnier nose and less freckles and his eyes are blue. Which is to say I have all these things, as this face is mine, but I've just assigned a different name to it. Oliver's driver's license is in the glove compartment of my car, along with everyone else's: Iggy's, Eli's, Kenzo's, Simon's, and some other random ones for when I'm in a fix.

"Yeah, not to me, Simon," he says. "Look, I—God, can you just talk to me, please?"

"Am I not talking right now?"

"No. Talk to me. I mean—please just tell me you have a plan."

I'm not sure I like the direction this is going. I'm not sure I ever like the direction these conversations with my advisor go, but nevertheless, they are conversations that must be had if I'm planning to get out of college alive.

I shift my weight uncomfortably in my seat. "A plan?"

"For what you're going to do," says Mr. Ripley impatiently, "in the future."

The future. One of the most terrifying words in the entire English language, if you ask me. It's especially terrifying for me, because I don't have just one future to worry about. I've thought about it before, and God knows my parents and my brother have asked me about it before. How long are you going to keep this up? Juggling all your appearances? Aren't you afraid?

No one ever finishes that last question, but I know what it says. Aren't you afraid you'll disappear?

I'm not afraid if I don't think about it. So I don't think about it.

"You're getting sloppy, St. John. All of your...selves are falling behind in their classes. You're never punctual. There's been at least two or three reports of guys going into the bathroom and never walking out again." Mr. Ripley pauses then, eyebrows slightly risen. "Do you know what this means?"

I sink down in my seat. I knew it was bad. I didn't know it was this bad. "I thought I was figuring it out."

"Well, you're not. And soon enough we're going to have to offer an explanation," Mr. Ripley tells me. He plucks a pen from a plastic cup at the edge his desk and taps it against his wrist rhythmically, so rhythmically I start to hate it. "Is that what you want, Simon? To be exposed as a freak?"

"I'm not a freak."

"You're not normal."

"Obviously not. Who'd ever want to be?"

"Simon, are you hearing me?"

I open my mouth to respond, but the painful realization that he is right and I am wrong and that this possibly means I'm on my way to being screwed swallows the rest of my words. This is a point I never wanted to reach.

I lean down, snatching up my backpack. Mr. Ripley doesn't stop me as I get to my feet, slinging the backpack over my shoulder and adjusting my jacket. I catch a glimpse of my dark-haired, blue-eyed self in the reflection of Mr. Ripley's trophy case, and wonder, just for a second, how it would feel to wear this face everyday. To never wake up with a new one. To be normal, God forbid.

I've never believed what my parents do: that I'm sick, that I have some sort of genetic illness they somehow passed down to me. But would it be terrible to believe something, at least, is wrong with me?

"I hear you," I tell Mr. Ripley, turning towards the door. "Loud and clear."

"Then fix it."

I pause on the threshold, fingers still hanging on the doorknob. "I'm trying to," I tell him. "I've been trying to my whole life."

When I get home, Noah's turned the dining table into his workshop, as usual. I shuffle into the apartment, keys jingling, and jostle a light on with my shoulder. The front room floods with yellow-gold light, illuminating the scratches across the wood floors (from the multiple times Noah and I have tried and failed at rearranging furniture), bathing my array of potted ferns and miniature trees in artificial sun.

A shiver runs down my spine; Noah must have touched the AC again.

As I bump the door shut behind me, my older brother doesn't look up. "Hey, Ginger Snap. Did you procure the sushi?"

I approach the table with caution, as the collage of wires and electrical tape and tools I don't know the name of is making me feel like one wrong step could fry my insides. I set the to-go bag down in front of him. "California rolls."

Noah snorts. "Basic."

"Sometimes it's not so bad to go back to the basics."

"Oh, you—" Only then does Noah look up. His mellow brown eyes regard me in disgust for a moment before he says, simply, "Fix your face."

"But I'm Oliver today."

"I hate Oliver. Oliver looks like some obscure model that got put out on the street and is now trying to make homeless look fashionable," Noah says, lifting his safety glasses from his face, pushing them up into his reddish-blond hair instead. "I'd like my little brother instead, please."

"This isn't—this isn't the sort of thing you can just order. I'm not a dollar menu."

Noah silently replaces his safety glasses. I exhale, and by the time I've sat down across from him, I'm in my own skin.

He casts a brisk glance upward to validate that I am in fact Simon now, grins a little, and sets his screwdriver down. He rustles around for the California rolls, and soon the kitchen's heavy with the scent of soy sauce and ginger.

"What's this mess you've made of the table?" I ask, splitting apart my chopsticks.

Noah downs at least two rolls of sushi before answering. He's bigger than me—in both height and muscle mass—but watching him eat like a bear (which is pretty much how Noah always eats) still perturbs me sometimes. "A motor," he says around the sushi. "Or, at least, it will be. I'm gonna attach it to a bike so I can get around the city better."

"Sounds nerdy."

"You," he says, gesturing at me with chopsticks, "write sad little love poems in a tiny journal that you won't ever let anyone read. Don't talk to me about nerdy."

"Not just poems. I do prose, too."

"God, I can't believe we're related," he says, shaking his head. If I had a quarter for the amount of times Noah has said this to me, I could have bought every single one of my faces a brand new car. (That is a lot of quarters, in case you were wondering.) "Look. Just leave me and my motor alone and I'll leave you and your poems alone. Fair?"

"Fair," I agree, "but I feel like we've made this deal before and it did not work out."

"You are probably right," Noah says, then sighs, setting his safety glasses down. He regards me with considerably less mirth now, like a judge presiding over a court. Noah has never been interested in law and yet somehow manages to mirror a judge's cool, reticent expression with the utmost accuracy. It's almost scary. Okay, no. It is scary. "What did Mr. Ripley want?"

I suffer a mini heart attack. "I didn't tell you—"

"You came home from your philosophy class slightly later than usual. Usually that means Mr. Ripley paged you," Noah says. Promptly, he rolls up the sleeves of his flannel. I hate flannel. He knows I hate flannel and I'm pretty sure that's why he wears it all the goddamn time. "So what did he want?"

I could lie. It would be so easy to lie.

Except it's my brother, and if anyone knows me inside and out, it's him. I've never been able to lie to him, not all twenty-one years I've been alive.

Just so I don't have to look at him, I lean forward, resting my head on the table. My hair falls around my face, shielding me from the world, just the way I want. "He said I'm getting sloppy, and that people are gonna start getting suspicious if I don't fix it," I say. "He also asked me the future question."

"Shit, man," Noah says, scarfing down another roll. "You're screwed, aren't you?"

"It could be worse, couldn't it?" No reply. "Noah. Please be a good person and tell me it could be worse."

"It could, I guess. You could be exiled out of the country. Or you could have contracted a terminal illness, like ebola," Noah agrees. I turn my head to the side, just so I can glare at him. "Thank goodness it's not either of those, right?"

I grit my teeth. "You're insufferable."

Noah smiles at me. He got Mom's dimples, two perfect little divots in each of his cheeks. I did not get Mom's dimples. I got this stupid ability to not hold on to one face, the origin of which is still yet to be known. I'm a walking enigma, and it's because of people like Mr. Ripley who say things like what Mr. Ripley said that I am growing slightly tired of it.

"One of my many charms," Noah says. He flicks his safety glasses back on his face and picks up his screwdriver again, leaving the empty sushi container in front of him like a devastating casualty of war. Because I'm a somewhat considerate person, I pick it up and drift off towards the kitchen, where I drop the chopsticks in the sink and chuck the rest of it in the trashcan.

Then I stop.

I know what he's going to say, once I tell him—so by all means this is a bad idea. For some reason, though, I'm going to do it anyway.

"Noah?"

"Hm?"

"I'm...going out with Val again."

I almost expect him to throw something, so it's twice as scary when he calmly sets his screwdriver down and just looks at me, silently. Even then I'm expecting him to start yelling. A fair half of the memories I have with Noah, he's yelling. But he isn't now.

"You're sick," he says, "and not in the cool way. How many times does she have to reject you until you get it?"

"I—" I cut off, not entirely sure how to finish the sentence. The chopsticks clang as they settle near the drain and then I'm crossing the room, pulling a chair out for myself and sitting beside Noah, close enough that he seems vexed. "It's not me, exactly. I don't force whenever we meet; it just happens. And it just so happens that this time, I was wearing my face. This face. Simon St. John. Not Oliver, not anyone else."

Noah scowls at me. His breath still smells like soy sauce. "You really think that's going to make a difference?"

"It has to," I say, fumbling with my fingers. "I mean...I want it to."

Underneath the faded overheads, Noah's eyes are pools of honey, but not quite as sweet. They're cool and collected and frighteningly matter-of-fact. Nothing slips by them, not even me, one of the most elusive creatures on the planet. Perhaps it's only fitting that a natural-born deceiver would get stuck with a brother whose only priority is the truth.

You're a shapeshifter, I remember him telling me once, when I was still in high school, that doesn't mean you have to be a liar all the time.

"Simon."

I expect him to go on, but instead he just sighs and ruffles my hair gently. Mine's way redder and thicker than his. My hair is made for a mountain man. Noah's is made for magazine covers—blond, neat, not too fine and not too thick.

"Simon," he starts again. "I know what you're afraid of. I know you mean well, but you have to promise me something."

"Sure," I tell him, as he drops his hand. "Anything."

"If...if it doesn't work out," he says, lowering his head slightly and regarding me from underneath his eyelashes, "you've gotta let her go."

You've gotta let her go.

The words hang in the air between us like a scent lingering days after its source was introduced. I've thought about it before. Val's and my childhood together isn't like most others; it's nothing like the movies say. I can't say that it's much of a childhood together at all, really. How can it be, when only one of us remembers every piece of it?

So I've thought about this before. One day I'm going to have to move on. I want to believe I keep running into her for a reason, but maybe it's just the most painful sort of coincidence.

No one could ever trust me. No one could ever trust me, because no one knows me.

When it comes down to it, that's the truth.

Noah's peering at me now, like I'm one of his disassembled robotics projects. Like he can click a button or weld a wire and fix me, easy, but he just has to figure out which. God, if only.

"I promise," I tell him, getting up again. I don't want to look him in the eye. "Okay, Noah. I promise."