chapter one.

Simon

She is meeting me for the first time. I have known her for ten years.

The diner is sleepy and smells like chicken grease and neither of us should be here. I have my journal open in front of me, ink marks already decorating my fingers, smudges across my palms and on the still mostly blank page before me, when I hear the little bell ding above the door—and there she is.

Even under the oversaturated light buzzing from the overheads, there's something magical about her. She moves like a shadow in her oversized sweatpants and the equally oversized BU sweatshirt. Her curls are down and she casts her mismatched eyes briefly about the room and they entirely skip over me and for a second I forget.

She has met me as a blond surfer type that forgot her birthday once. She has met me as the nice, slightly nerdy black guy that took her to prom in junior year. She has met me as the skittish black-haired kid who helped her open her locker on the first day of the middle school, and she's met me as many other people many other times after that.

But she hasn't met me, here, as Simon St. John: literature nerd, ginger who could likely use a haircut, farsighted and a bit too gangly and definitely too pale.

I'm wondering if this is a mistake. More so, I'm wondering what I would even do if it did turn out to be. Start over again, I guess.

Val seats herself a booth away from me and rests her head on the table. She must be so tired. I remember a time in high school, our senior year, when she'd been so stressed about college admissions that she hadn't eaten. I had brought her lo mein from Li Huang's, her favorite Chinese place in town. I'd told her, "Just a piece of chicken, please?" and she had smiled sheepishly and agreed.

As far as Val knows, this weird guy in the booth just down from hers has never bought her Chinese takeout. It's an odd feeling, knowing but not being known. It is a feeling I've never gotten used to, either.

Kimmy, the only waitress still working at the sprightly hour of one in the morning, swings by Val's table. She looks up. Orders coffee, black, and a waffle. Now I know she's really tired. Val only eats waffles when she has given up.

She's not looking at me. She's not going to look at me. I have a poem to write.

I glance down at the yellow-tinted page underneath me. It's an old leather-bound journal, a warm mahogany brown, that Noah bought for me two years ago when he studied abroad in France. The pen in my hand is nothing special. A flimsy plastic one I found, oddly, in the silverware drawer back at the apartment.

Nevertheless, I set pen to the paper, but the words don't come.

and somehow I keep/coming back to you./the sea could swallow me whole...

I still haven't found the right words when I hear her voice: "I swear, ma'am, I just had it. It's in my purse somewhere."

"You keep looking. You eat, you gotta pay."

I look up. Val's frantic, rummaging around in her purse, her face ridden with worry. She's tired. She's so tired. "I know," she says to Kimmy, who's standing at the end of the booth, her hand on her hip. "If you'd just—"

I'm standing before I know what I'm doing. "I'll pay for her, Kimmy."

Both Kimmy and Val look up, Val with relief, Kimmy with dubiety. I exhale and snatch ten dollars from my pocket, fold it into Kimmy's palm, and watch as she sighs and slips off toward the register.

I'm shaking. I can't remember when I started shaking.

"Thank you," Val says, sitting back against the booth seat. "I'm just exhausted. Can't remember my own phone number right now, let alone my wallet."

"It's no problem," I say, and I stand there awkwardly for another moment until I realize that if I'm going to do this I have to do this now. I gesture towards the seat across from her. "Is this seat taken?"

"By whatever your name is."

I grin and slide in across from her. "Simon."

"Well, Simon, you seem very familiar," she says, squinting at me. "Are you sure we haven't met before?"

I can't tell her the truth, so I don't. "No, I don't believe we have."

Val squints at me for another moment. As tired as she is, something about her skin still seems to glow with health, the pale splotches of skin around her eye and on her collarbone and down her arms like milk splashed in a mug of coffee. When we were still in high school, she used to hate her vitiligo. I'm not convinced that she doesn't still.

"Fine," she says, then holds out her hand to me, one eyebrow slightly risen. "I'm Valerie."

Valerie. She always starts out as Valerie.

"Are you studying here, Valerie?" I ask, pulling my hand back. I realize I left my coffee back at my own booth, along with my journal. I feel strangely empty-handed. "At Boston, I mean?"

"Yeah," she says, as I knew she would. "Communications. Journalism. That kinda thing. Want to be like the news anchors on TV all the time."

I ease back against the booth seat, looking at her through my eyelashes. It's weird, but I almost expect her to remember, to realize—but it's never happened before, and it won't now. "You okay with that many people looking at you?"

"Why?" she says, then gestures toward her face. "Because of this?"

"No," I start, tripping over my words. "I didn't mean—"

Her eyes fall from mine for a moment, but there's a smile on her face, albeit rueful. If only she knew how far I'd go to see that smile. If only I could tell her. "It's alright. Everyone asks about it. A lot of people just stare—"

"It's beautiful."

The words came without me thinking about them, without me processing them, and now regret begins to settle in the pit of my stomach. Valerie draws her legs up in her seat, folding them underneath her, but doesn't say anything. Red begins to spread across her cheeks as she avoids looking at me, studying something on the table instead. I clear my throat and fight the urge to bang my head against the table.

You'd think, after approximately twenty-one years of having multiple bodies instead of one, I would get sort of good at keeping them separate. At reminding myself that everyone doesn't remember things the same way I do. But my life's sort of like the cord of a pair of earphones. It gets messy, tangled up, and as soon it does, detangling it could take years.

When I look up again, I notice Valerie's eyeing the smudges of ink across my fingers, then the journal I left on the booth just a few feet from us. "You an art major?"

I shake my head.

"English?"

I nod.

"So you're a nerd."

I chuckle and itch slightly at the back of my neck. "You could put it that way."

"Well," says Valerie, poking at her waffle, "you're not a bad nerd, Simon. You're a cool nerd. I find you interesting."

Here it is. It's beginning again. I have ran the race before and maybe I have crossed that finish line but there's just another, and another, waiting for me. Always waiting, always wishing. When do I get to win?

"Interesting?" I repeat.

Her eyes, one like the earth and one like the sea, crinkle at the edges as she grins. "Mm. Dare I say intriguing? Look I—I should go. Thanks for the waffle; you can have the rest."

Before I can stop her, she's on her feet, swinging her hair over one shoulder and already pivoting towards the door. I want to say something, but I don't know what to say, or rather, I'm not sure how to say it.

But she's not gone yet. She turns towards the door, but hesitates, glancing at me. "I'll make sure to bring my wallet next time."

"Next time?" I ask, but she's already gone, and I'm alone in the buzzing bone-white light as the tinkle of the bell above the door echoes like a distant swan song.

I can't decide if Valerie Love is the best or worst thing that has ever happened to me. Not even after all this time.