This week's project in art is a little less daunting than previous ones. In a nutshell, we are using magazine clippings to collage. We will paste small, unrelated clippings together onto a paper to make one larger picture. Kind of like a mosaic. Eli has chosen to create a replica of the earth, a flattened out globe, while I choose something a bit simpler.

Each table holds a stack of magazines, and I choose one from the top and begin flipping through the pages, tearing them out at random and clipping out portions of red and green.

"What are you gonna do for yours?"

"An apple."

"Like a basket of apples?"

"Nah. Just the one."

"Typical," he mumbles.

I pause mid-cut and look at him. "What's that supposed to mean?" I ask, clearly offended, but not knowing why.

"Nothing," he shrugs, keeping his eyes trained down onto his own task. "Just that you always take the easy way out."

Something about this hits home somewhere deep within me, although I can't pinpoint where. But I do know that my initial reaction is to argue the opposite. "I do not."

"You kinda do, though. Like the clay. You made a snowman. Three balls, one on top the other. Probably the easiest thing you could make."

And I know he's right. But I still don't like it. So I still argue. "I made stick arms and a carrot nose and a scarf, too."

He shrugs again. "I dunno... I just think maybe you should challenge yourself a little more."

What do you know of challenges? I want to say. My entire existence is a challenge. "Maybe I lack the skill set required to create anything of a more advanced caliber."

I catch him smirking from my peripherals. "I think you need to give yourself a little more credit."

This both puts me down and encourages me at the same time. I doubt I deserve more credit, but the idea of it seems nice. "So what do you suggest?"

He motions to his empty sheet of card stock paper. "Okay, for instance, I'm doing the earth, because that's something that's important to me. Nature. Wildlife." He motions to my empty paper. "So you should do something that's important to you or meaningful in your life."

Unconvinced, I continue searching the magazine for red and green.

"So?"

"So what?"

"What's something that's meaningful to you?"

"Time," I say without thinking. And when I do think, I think that it's a pretty stupid answer.

He notices, too. "When I ask you what you desire most in life, you say normalcy. And now when I ask you what's most important to you, you say time?"

I don't answer, just continue clipping.

"Okay, so, you could make a clock, maybe? Like an analog wall clock? Find the numbers in the magazine and then maybe some arrows for the hands. And do a pattern or something for the background."

"No," I say. "Clocks symbolize the passage of time in a way that's looking to the future. You're watching the clock hopeful for something that's coming. That's not the kind of time that's important to me."

If he thinks this answer is weird, too, he doesn't say. "What other kind of time is there?"

I cease clipping momentarily to think on this. What other kind is there? A timer, maybe? A stopwatch?

"An hourglass."

"An hourglass?" he repeats.

"Yeah. It symbolizes the passage of time in that you're only given a certain amount. You have until the sand runs out."

"Isn't that kind of a pessimistic way of looking at it?"

I hear him, but I'm already looking for sand-colored prints in the magazine I've got. "You asked what was important in my life, not what I wish was important in my life."

"Well, it's more creative than an apple, at least."

🦎

          On the drive home, I ride without music. My mind drifts back to what he'd said to me. "You always take the easy way out." "You should challenge yourself a little more." "You need to give yourself a little more credit." I relate his advice to the current predicaments in my life, and I think he might be right.

What it all comes down to are options. What are my options? I could handle this situation exactly how I've handled it every other time. Not say a word and instead vanish quietly. But this would be taking the easy way out. And I know I cannot do that regardless of how simple a solution it may be, because this time I have a friend.

I remember what I did last time I'd had a friend. As soon as I'd found out we were moving, which had been the very night before, I'd begged and pleaded and cried for Dad to give me one more day, just one more day — a half day, even; he could check me out of school! — to say goodbye. At school, I'd cried and told Kara and Aminga that my dad had a mean boss and we had to move. They'd cried, too, and asked if I would ever come back. "Maybe," I'd said, although I'd known it was a lie. Kara had reached up to her head and pulled out her favorite zebra print sequined headband that she knew I'd admired and handed it to me. "You can have this to remember me by." Aminga didn't have a zebra print sequined headband, so she'd given me her lime green pencil sharpener. Dad had "accidentally" lost them during the move. But I knew the truth. He'd thought it wasn't safe for me to have any single tangible item that would connect me to my old life. And I'd been given two.

My only remaining option — the one that I truly owe Eli, anyway — is to tell him a simpler truth. That my Dad is needed elsewhere and we'll be gone by the end of the month. So why does this truth also feel like the easy way out?

Because Eli deserves more than a cheap version of the truth. What Eli deserves is for me to challenge myself, to give myself some credit, to take a leap of faith.

I don't think when I told Dad that I'd handle it that this is what he thought I meant.

🦎

          I keep my distance at school, because I fear I'll jump the gun and spill my guts ungracefully. I listen to Mathers's lecture silently, ignoring all of Eli's attempts to distract me.

At lunch, I eat quickly and spend the remainder of the hour with a book in a bathroom stall. I catch his gaze across the common area on the way to sixth hour, and by "catch his gaze" I mean "feel him staring through the thick crowd of students".

I shoot him a weak smile. "We're okay, right?" And he returns it: "Sure."

Bertha allows all the various models of MP3 players in class as long as we're working, and today I take her up on her offer for the first time — besides the day when I told Eli I didn't know who Chumbawamba was, and he'd whipped out his phone, opened the YouTube app, and handed me an earbud. Today, I plug in my headphones as soon as I take my seat, and I work diligently to the soundtrack of Say Anything. "You can do better; you can be better; you can be the greatest man in the world."

Eli taps me, and I'm forced to take out an earbud. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah," I say. It is a lie. I am far from okay. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You've just been acting different today, is all. Quieter."

"Maybe I just don't have anything to say." On the contrary, I have much to say. But now is not the time nor the place.

His look expresses concern. "You would tell me if something was up, right?"

"Sure, yeah."

"You're not still mad at me for what I said Monday...?"

"No, 'course not."

"Okay. Good."

I give him what I hope is a convincing enough smile before plugging the bud back into my ear. "You can do better."

🦎

          That night, as I'm sitting in my bed, alone in the dark and the silence, I feel incredibly unstable, and I wish instead to be somewhere where I will feel safe. I have chosen neither a time nor a place, but now seems to be as good a time as any.

I shouldn't do this. I know I shouldn't do this. So why is there a somewhat dominant part of me pushing me to do this?

I feel a black aura in a room that holds only me. Mother knows best. Mother doesn't always know everything. I bargain with her. I will lie down and try to sleep. If by midnight, I am still awake, I'll do it. If I fall asleep, I'll remain that way.

At eleven o'clock, I hear Dad's bedroom door click shut. At eleven eleven, I wish for him to fall asleep quickly. At eleven fifty-six, I tiptoe across the hall and press my ear to the door. He's snoring. At eleven fifty-seven, I go to my closet and pull out the first pair of sweatpants my fingers clasp around, trading my pajama shorts out for them. I slip on my low-top sneakers. At eleven fifty-nine, I text him.

You awake?

I receive no immediate reply, and I fall back onto my bed, shoes and all, suddenly exhausted. Okay, Mom. You win this round.

Four minutes into the midnight hour, my phone vibrates in my hand.

that's a negative

My heart beats against its cage in attempt to escape. My response is short and to the point.

I'm coming over. Meet me in the treehouse.

I slip out of the house quietly. I don't stop to dwell on what the ramifications might be if I'm caught — since Eli, I have successfully snuck in, and now I will (pending) successfully sneak out. I cringe every time something makes a noise — the jingling of the keys as I pluck them from the hook, the house door as it opens, the car door as it shuts, the car engine as it starts — and I pray that Dad won't hear anything above the soft rumbles of his own snores.

The short drive to Eli's is an agonizing one, and I consider turning back twice. Once, I pull into a random driveway, ready to back out the opposite way and head towards home, but that somewhat dominant part stops me.

I turn off my headlights when I pull down Eli's road. Good thing I have it memorized, so I don't really need to rely on them. I park in the street opposite the house with the bright red door and shut the car door as quietly as I can. I sneak across his yard, my heartbeat louder than the padded fall of my feet atop grass. I run and jump, hopping the fence like I'd done the night after prom. I brought my phone with me this time, just in case, and I use it as a flashlight to guide me to the treehouse. I climb the ladder, knock four times, and say "cookaburra" thrice. Eli is already inside, waiting for me.

I scoot in across from him, farther away than is necessary. He's wearing only a pair of jeans and his hair the aura of evil things falls loosely around his face; he wasn't lying about already being in bed. I bend my knees and pull my legs up to my chest. I haven't the slightest idea how to start this conversation. I wonder if it's too late to change my mind.

He waits patiently, for which I am grateful, but eventually, when I still don't speak, he does. "I now pronounce this meeting of the Super Secret Midnight Treehouse Club to commence."

It's not too late. You can still back out. Say nevermind, and walk away. You can still save yourself.

I grit my teeth together, clench my hands into fists, command the voices to go back to where they came from. All is silent for a second or two, and I think I have succeeded. I hurriedly begin before they return. "You were right."

It is too dark for me to make out Eli's expression. "I don't doubt it," he says smugly, and I can imagine the look on his face. "I usually am... Except I don't know to which instance you're referring."

For some reason, the fact that I can't see the color of his eyes comforts me and makes me brave. "Can I start from the beginning?"

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..."

"Fast forward a few years. To when I was eight. The worst night of my entire life." He falls silent, just as I'd predicted he would upon hearing that last sentence. If he keeps stopping me, I may allow the lesser dominant part of me to convince me to see this for what it will most likely become: a mistake. But for now, it is right.

I take a cleansing breath and clear my mind. I regather my thoughts, setting all the points into chronological order, sifting out the details into piles: significant and insignificant. I have never told this story before.

There is a first time for everything.

"When I was eight years old, I went downstairs in the middle of the night," I begin, "and my mom was dead. She was in the arms of a man I'd never seen before, though back then I didn't know that I'd be seeing him a lot in the future. He killed her, and I saw him, and he saw that I saw him. He got away before I even yelled for my dad. He wasn't caught."

Although Eli's eyes have gone crazy and his jaw fallen open, he doesn't speak, and I am glad. I have to finish what I have started.

"We were put in the Witness Protection Program. We've moved a total of seven times, this time being the seventh, and the man who murdered my mother has followed us and found us every time. But the police can't seem to catch him, so we just keep moving."

Eli is not angry with me for lying to him. He is not sad for me because I have to move all the time. He is not relieved that there is a reason for my hesitance towards him. He is still and white-aura'd. Patient. Listening. Mesmerized. Gawking.

I count the versions of me on my fingers as I list them. "I've been, in order, an April, Ainsley, Addie, Ashton, Arden, Andie, and an Alyssa. I don't make friends. I can't have friends. It's a lot less difficult that way. But you..." I shake my head, shake the thought away, choosing not to finish the sentence. You didn't give me much of a choice. Although I know none of this is his fault.

"I saw him at the reservation," I continue. "At least, I thought I did. That's why I fell. But he was gone after. Which makes me think he wasn't even there at all." I straighten out my legs in front of me, signaling that I have finished my story. I feel as though I've left it in an awkward spot, but I let it settle into the thick air around us. He says nothing for a long while, and I count the seconds. One hundred and forty-one. One hundred and forty-two.

"You saw her die?" His voice breaks.

I nod. Fifty-seven seconds.

"You're telling the truth."

I nod again. Thirty-one seconds.

"You're in the Witness Protection Program."

"Yes. And you know why you can never speak of this to anyone."

Now he nods. Eleven seconds.

"You saw her die," he repeats, and I wish this wasn't the part of the story he's chosen to dwell on. Seven seconds. "And he... follows you?" Before I can answer, he speaks the one question I wish I knew the answer to. One second. "Why?"

"Dunno," I shrug helplessly. "Never asked him."

"Why can't they catch him?"

"Dunno that either."

"The Witness Protection Program."

"There are more of us than you think. Of course, you wouldn't know if you'd met one." Unless they were as moronic as me and purposely blow their own cover.

"He's the one you thought you saw at the prom."

"Yeah."

He begins to shake his head, but I get the feeling that the action is more for his own benefit than mine. "This isn't real... This isn't real! This is a movie plot, not something that actually happens in real life!"

I'd expected him to react this way. "And where do you think they get the ideas for those movies?" I ask him. "I'm telling the truth. You've gotta believe me."

The thought had crossed my mind, of course, that Eli would deem my story too far-fetched. I hadn't decided what I'd do if that were the case... There is no other option. He simply has to believe me.

"Please."

Eli mumbles something, and my heart thumps so loudly that I can't hear it. "What?"

"You're leaving," he says, plain and simple. "That's why you're telling me this."

I don't want to confirm this, because then it becomes real, but I kind of do confirm it by my lack of denial. "My dad's been seeing visions of him, too."

Eli looks down at his hands. "How long?" he asks, and I don't think he means to ask how long my dad's been clairvoyant.

"Graduation," I answer.

Looks up at me, sad. "I like you." And there it is.

"I know."

He nods. And there it will remain.

He doesn't ask for confirmation of any reciprocation, nor does he ask for a denial. I'm glad, but not that it would matter either way. In a month, it'll be like he never even knew me. Alyssa George will become extinct. It's best for me to not have to deny it out loud, that way he will never know that the feelings aren't mutual and he can live under the guise that they were and maybe he'll be a little less broken because of it.

He stands and unlatches the star roof, and the area is immediately flooded in patches of silver starlight. He stretches out on his back directly beneath it and pats his chest, and I crawl to him and lie with him without thinking twice about it. His heartbeat races in his rib cage underneath my ear. His skin is unbelievably soft and he smells of trees and crunchy red-brown leaves and the wind right when summer turns to fall and I breathe it in deeply, forcing myself to remember this scent, this moment, this boy.

His body moves beneath me as he speaks. "I won't be able to contact you once you move, will I?"

Again I don't answer him, and he takes that as his answer.

"What if you, like, let him find you? But, like, set him up and let the cops get him. Then could you stay?" The pain in his voice is nearly palpable. It hurts.

I use sarcasm to combat the pain. "You know, it's been eleven years. Why didn't I think of that?" I give a brief pause. "Oh yeah, I have. But my dad..." I allow the thought to trail off into nothingness, as I soon will.

"Eleven years?!" he cries out comically. "That would make you, what? Like, thirty?"

"Nineteen," I correct him.

I can almost hear his smile, it's so loud. "An older woman," he muses. "Hot."

We lay together in silence, then, and I let him process everything he's just learned. I wish I could see into his mind and know what he's thinking. I guess that mystery will never be solved. His breathing evens after a little bit, and I decide I'll sneak out and let him sleep, but he speaks before I've even moved a muscle.

"What's your name?" he asks.

I tell him, "Aspen."

"Your full name." Déjà vu.

"Aspen Brooks Quinn."

"Aspen Brooks..." he repeats contemplatively, and in his voice I hear the hint of a smile. "Of course it is. Rivers and Brooks; that's kind of perfect." He gently trails his fingers up and down my arm, and it's as if he's doing so with little or no conscious effort at all. "You're like a chameleon, Aspen Brooks. The most talented in all of nature. You blend in to your surroundings to stay invisible from your predator."

A chameleon. I have never thought of this before. I like it very much.

I lift a hand in the air above our faces to show off my skin, pale as the moon. "Nope, not changing colors. Definitely still human."

He takes my fingers in his too-long ones and twirls them around in the moonlight. His hand is nearly twice mine, his skin dark, his knuckles bony, the shadows dancing around the silhouette of our hands, beautiful. He brings my fingers to his mouth, slowly, and I catch my breath. He doesn't kiss them, just holds them to his lips, breathing. I think he must be trying to remember, too, and for just this moment, I let myself imagine a world in which I could like him.

__________

I HAVE FINALLY REVEALED THE NOVEL'S TITLE WITHIN THE NOVEL. STOKED ABOUT IT.

...I know that in real life Aspen would've never told him. Because, you know, she's legally bound to preserve her identity. And I'm just like......... this ain't real life. Nobody in real life can read minds. Obviously. Anyway, Eli knowing is essential to other plot points I have planned. It's been a part of the plan since day one. So I hope you don't hate this.

Earlier this week LilianaAra eagerly messaged me a couple photos of her in which she excitedly said she looked like Aspen. So basically what I'm gathering is that if you wear dark lips and boots (no proof she's wearing boots beneath that skirt but idc) you can Aspenfy any outfit. So the photo attached is one she sent me. Speaking of Liliana, she has a new story called Vice Versa about demons or ghosts or vampires or some crap. She's only posted one chapter so far, but it's amazing, and she promised she'd have another chapter up soon. So go read it.

Also, I don't think I've said this yet, but I took an art class my senior year of high school. My teacher was Mrs. Berthelot, and she heavily inspired the character of the same name. She was one of the coolest teachers I ever had. And every art assignment that they do in Chameleon is similar to one I did in irl Bertha's class.

YESTERDAY WAS MY BESTFRIEND'S BIRTHDAY. Her name is Skyler and the setting of this story comes mostly courtesy of her. So everybody say thank you to ohhhskyler.