chapter fifty-four.

Simon - April 2022

The air is cool and sharp in my lungs as I inhale, humidity clinging to the back of my neck. Gray clouds suffuse into the sky like flavor from a tea bag, and as I lift my head, glancing above me, I suddenly regret deciding to walk. Everywhere smells like it's about to rain or like it's just rained, yellow headlights splitting through the fog. I drown myself in the sounds of the city: high-heeled boots and polished loafers against the sidewalk, car horns and revving engines, people shouting from shop windows to Come here, take a look. Doors open and shut. Steam hisses from the sewers. Somewhere ahead of me, a ship blares as it comes into port.

The phone against my ear is slick with my sweat by now. It's starting to warm up, a little—the temperatures reaching a crisp, mid to high fifties range now—and the humidity is following with it. The first raindrop kisses my nose as Val says into my ear, "Who did you tell me to write down, again? Sorry. Charlie's watching Veggie Tales and I absolutely cannot focus."

"You're babysitting again?"

"Jo has an important presentation," Val says, in a way that makes me think that the presentation is not that important at all.

"Oh, I see," I say, making a right on Bowdoin, past the corner store I occasionally buy candy from when I'm craving it. Anything gummy and sour, usually. Sometimes chocolate. Dark, though. Never milk or white. "So I said...I said we have to have Ms. Quang on there—"

"Um, who?"

"Rebecca Quang. My old high school counselor? The one I told you about, who figured out I was a shapeshifter and everything?"

"Oh, right." There's a pause; I hear a bit of ferocious scribbling. "Okay. Ms. Quang, and who else?"

"My college advisor, too. Mr. Ripley. I just want to rub it in his face that my life isn't the dumpster fire he thought it would be."

"Fair," Val agrees. "I said Rita already, right?"

"Yes," I assure. "You said Caz, too, but I'm not sure how I feel about that."

Val sighs. "We'll talk about it later. Anyone else?"

Of course there is someone else. There is someone else who has been missing for three years, who gave up everything just so I'd have a chance at life again. There is someone else who I want more than anything to apologize to, to talk to, to thank. But that is the thing about people who go missing. Sometimes, they don't come back.

His name is on the tip of my tongue, but I don't say it. "None that I can think of, specifically. But Abbie will want to bring her friends, and so will Noah, so we should account for that."

"Yessir. Are you on your way home?"

"Yes. I'm walking."

She makes a strange, annoyed noise in the back of her throat. It's a scoff, I think, but it's the most dramatic scoff I've ever heard. Val never ceases to surprise me. "You idiot. It's gonna start pouring soon. You should stop somewhere and wait it out; I don't want you getting sick."

If I had a quarter for all the times Val has said that to me, I'd be a very rich man. Truth is, even when she kissed me that day and promised that this changes nothing, my dance with death had indeed changed something. My family and everyone tiptoes around it, but I know they're all watching—waiting to see if I'll fall again, if my newfound health is just a facade, if there was a catch to the antidote Noah shoved down my throat.

I want to say there isn't anymore. That the catch is the new face that took months for me to get used to. But how would I know, really? Everything is an educated guess. Everything.

As if on cue, there's a rumble of thunder above my head, and rain begins to hammer from the skies. Water rushes down gutters and into sewage drains, and I slip under the nearest awning on the street, which hangs over the door to a bar called Lafayette's.

"You're right," I say, peeking out from underneath the awning as a guy shoves open the bar's door, brushing past me. He starts to head for the street, catches sight of the rain, and reconsiders. "It's a monsoon out here."

"Please wait it out," Val pleads. "I want to see you but I don't want—"

"Me to get sick," I finish for her, smiling to myself. "I know. I'll wait. I'll try to be home before seven though, okay? Say hello to Charlie for me."

"Simon says hello, Char!" Val replies, her voice sounding further away. There's an unintelligible babble before Val clarifies, voice near again, "She says hello back. She's very sad you're missing Veggie Tales."

"Oh, I am as well. Depressed, actually. I'll see you in a bit, Val. I love you."

"I love you, too. Stay dry!" she says, and is gone. I linger for a moment, savoring her voice, before clicking the phone off and shoving it into my pocket. Casting one last longing glance at the mucky weather, I pull off my beanie and start to enter the bar, but a voice stops me.

"That's an interesting scar you've got on your ear, there," says the guy that exited the bar earlier. He's tall, lean, dark-skinned with strange, piercing gray eyes. I've never seen him before, I'm sure, but something about him oozes familiarity. "How'd you get it?"

I rub my left ear self-consciously, home to one of two things I still had after I lost my original skin: my caterpillar-shaped birthmark. The only other token was my voice. "Oh, it's not a scar. It's just a weird birthmark."

"I've seen it around though, squirt."

"I—" I pause, stunned, and the man grins at me. "Larry?"

His gaze darts around cautiously, checking if the coast is clear. Then, he gains a few pounds, his height shrinking, his shoulders broadening, his skin lightening, his eyes washing with dark brown instead of gray. Dark hair turns a white-blond, stubble springs upon his jawline—and my cousin, Larry St. John, stands before me.

"I wasn't sure you were alive," Larry says, stepping forward and closing me in a tight embrace. "There was no way to know if you were alive."

"Yeah, and vice versa," I say, laughing a little out of shock. I step back, just looking at him. He's Larry, but a cleaner, more polished version of Larry. A version, I realize, my parents refuse to believe ever existed. "You cut your hair."

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Dress code stuff."

"It looks nice."

"Thanks," Larry says, smirking. His eyes sweep me from head to toe, and he frowns. "You...don't look like you. Like any sort of you. Is this a new one? What's his name?"

"Simon," I answer.

Larry looks at me, his eyebrows knitted for a moment before his face floods with realization. "You mean..."

I lift my arms, as if presenting myself. "This is me, now. The antidote shook all the shapeshifter out of me, and this was what was left."

"I see," Larry says, then chuckles, clapping a hand on my shoulder. "That must have taken some explaining, huh?"

"Yeah," I agree. "I'm still not really done explaining."

Everyday there is someone else. Someone who knew the old, redheaded Simon or someone who knew Oliver or anyone else. Everyday is another test to see how good of a storyteller I am, and lately I've barely been achieving even a passing grade.

I lean back against the banister, raindrops catching my knuckles where they outreach the awning. Larry asks, "And the ring?"

I flex my left hand, glancing down at the white gold ring across my finger. "We've been engaged since January, so what is that—four months?"

Larry's face lights up more than I've ever seen it, the man's eyes going wider than I ever thought possible. He grins, patting my shoulder again with excitement. "That's great news! So I've gotta ask—how did you propose?"

I sigh, squeezing my beanie together in my fists out of apprehension. "Oh, don't ask me that. It was a wreck. We have this thing for going random places to eat super late at night, right? So I took her back to this bakery we went to on our first date—well, one of our first dates—and I gave her a book of all the poems I've ever written about her and then—well, yeah."

"A wreck?" Larry chuckles. "Sounds movie quality to me."

"I was so nervous I could barely talk, Larry," I say with a grimace. "I made such a fool of myself that Val laughed at me for three minutes before she said yes. I thought I was going to die."

"But you knew, didn't you?" says Larry. A car rumbles by, tires thundering upon the water as it slides down the street. Its headlights cut Larry's face into light and shadow. "You knew she was going to say yes. A girl like that, you just know."

"That did not make it any less terrifying."

"Touché, I suppose."

He asks about Noah and the rest of the family. I tell him that Noah moved out to Silicon Valley a while ago to help out with a new tech startup, and that Abbie's graduating next month and she's on her way to University of Maryland. He asks how Val and I are doing since we graduated. I tell him I've published some of my poetry and I'm going to teach English at a local high school next fall, and that Val's finishing up her master's before taking a job at the Herald. I ask him questions that he can't answer. I ask him, "Do you regret it?"

He says, "What?"

"Going back to them. To the government."

"Never," he answers without a beat of hesitation. "You're alive because I went back. Better than that, Simon, you are living. You're a published poet and you're soon to be married and you don't have to worry about all this shapeshifting shit anymore. I can't regret it. It wouldn't make sense."

I shake my head. "I'm sorry, Larry. I'm—"

He ruffles my hair briefly. "You stop apologizing, squirt. I did this for you, okay? And I'd do it a million times over."

I have so much to say to him. All the times I've rehearsed what I would say if I ever saw him again, all the things I promised myself I would tell him—they all vacate my mind at once. I'm standing here, the rain pouring from the skies, dripping over the sides of the awning, coloring the Boston skyline an ash gray, facing the man who gave me everything I have today. And I don't know what to say.

"Larry?"

"Hm?"

"The wedding's in November," I say. Val has insisted on a fall wedding ever since I put the ring on her finger. She's told me it will be way more romantic that way. Something about all the colorful leaves and the crisp air. I agreed, but only because I don't care too much. We could get married on a mucky day like this and I would be on cloud nine. I just need Val in a white dress. That's all. That's everything to me. She is everything.

"Whoever you are at that time," I say, frowning at him. "Whether you look like Larry or not—Val and I would really love to see you there."

Larry's face collapses into uncertainty. "Oh, I don't—"

"I know," I say. His job doesn't really allow him to guarantee anything, let alone something that far along in the future. "I know, Larry. But please. I'm trying to thank you and I can't seem to think of a way that's adequate enough. So please try to make it, Larry. You're the reason it's happening, after all."

He opens his mouth, hesitates, closes it again. A babble of voices rises from the bar beside us; Larry glances inside, gnawing at his lip. I'm losing it. My chance, likely my only one, to thank him, and it's fading right in front of me.

Larry says, "You want to thank me? Be happy, Simon."

I blink. "I don't understand."

Larry smiles at me, gently, without teeth. "Cherish Val until your very last breath. Give her as many kids as she wants—then cherish them, too. You want to be a teacher? Good. Go do it. Go see things. Get on a plane and go somewhere far away from here. Meet people who don't look or act or talk like you. Learn things from them. A lot of things. Write poems about this. Write poems about that. Write a lot of poems. If you want to thank me, do all of that and more. If you want to thank me, go and live and be happy."

My throat feels tight, all of a sudden, and the backs of my eyes are starting to sting. These are all the things I always wanted, all the things I never thought I could have when I was still a shapeshifter. For twenty-one years of my life, my future was a massive question mark. Now Larry has turned it into an ellipses. Here, he says to me now. Go make something out of it. Go and make something great.

"I want you to be happy, too, Larry," I say, my voice sounding echoey and strange in my own ears. Around us, the rain peters out to a slow sprinkle.

"I am," he says, quietly. "Because you are, Simon, I'm as happy as I'll ever be."

He looks at me, still smiling, then pulls me in to another hug, his fists grinding into my back in a way that's almost painful, but I'll be damned if I say anything now.

He lets me go, and I say, "You never said goodbye to me, you know. When you left three years ago, I never got a proper goodbye."

Larry rolls his eyes. "I told your crackhead of a brother to say it for me."

"That's not the same. It's not. I wanted so badly to see you again, you know. I felt awful that I didn't get to say anything."

"Well?" Larry says, as he shrugs on the skin he was wearing before: tall, lean, dark. "I'll say it now, then. Goodbye, Simon. I'll see you on the other side."

"Or in November!" I call, as he turns and heads down the street, eyes low and gait leisurely. "When you come to the wedding!"

I see his shoulders shake, like he's laughing.

He lifts a single hand in a curt wave, and disappears into the fog.