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“I’m not doing anything,” Cookie said. In spite of her denial, she subtly leaned in the other direction. It was like wiping the crumbs off your face after everyone watched you eat half the cake.
“Oh yeah, sure you’re not,” Dice said. “You’ve been hanging on Billie like a sleazy date trying to get a cheap feel all day. Is it the hair, eyes? Nose?”
Nose? Was she sizing up my body parts for something?
Dice stared at her, waiting for an answer. I watched to make sure she didn’t reach for one of her knives as I inched a little farther away from her.
“What are you talking about?” I looked at Dice and Cookie.
Cookie shot Dice a look that made it clear he was the one she was looking to cut up.
He laughed as he said to me, “There’s an old wives’ tale that says you turn into the people you’re closest to.”
“Huh?” Was this a Body Snatchers-type situation? I was about to throw myself through the door to Nowhere and take my chances.
“Shit, you really know nothing,” Connor said, not bothering to look up from his magazine. It might be a good thing he didn’t speak often. Maybe his silence was a survival mechanism.
“Can you please explain this to me?” I asked Dice, the only one who seemed to be forthcoming.
“We don’t age like normal people. You’ll never look older than you do today. What happens is we morph. It’s slow going but unavoidable.” He dug out his phone and held up a picture of some guy with platinum hair, brown eyes, and a hawkish nose. “See this? This was me about twenty years ago.”
“That was you? You’re kidding me, right?” There was no resemblance to the man in front of me. Wait, maybe the ears? I looked again. No. Not even them.
“Nothing.” He swiped at his phone again and held up a screen with two more people, a man and a woman standing together. “That was Cookie and Connor.”
They were unrecognizable from the people in this room.
“What about Kaden?”
He froze for a second and then pocketed his phone, as if there hadn’t been a glitch, as if Connor and Cookie didn’t drop their heads down another smidge, as if they hadn’t heard the question.
“Yeah, I don’t think I have any pictures of him on this phone.”
He pulled off a lie about as well as a toddler pulled a two-ton boulder. I hummed, nodding, as if it were believable he’d have pictures of Cookie and Connor but no Kaden.
“So that’s why she’s…” I tilted my head toward Cookie.
“I think it’s your eyes. She’s been pretty unhappy with her current shade,” Connor said.
“It’s not her eyes, know-it-all.” She shifted toward me, right back to brushing shoulders. “It’s her hair. I’ve never had red.” She lifted a lock of my hair. “I think I’ll wear it well.” She glanced at my t-shirt and jeans before going back to her magazine, giving the sense that she didn’t think I was wearing it well at all.
At least she’d stopped verbalizing the insults.
“How long does this take?” How long could I expect a Cookie glued to my side?
“The hair? I’m not sure that it works, but she’s stubborn. Or the total morph? You’ll look like a completely different person in about fifteen years.”
“In twenty years, I’ll be unrecognizable to anyone I know?” I touched my face. I’d never been enamored of my appearance. But to look completely different? It would be another tie to my life severed. No one would remember me. No one would recognize me. I’d think back to my family, friends, still have all these memories, but no one to share them with. For all intents and purposes, I’d cease to exist.
“Yeah, thankfully,” Cookie said. “Otherwise, how would you explain that you didn’t age? We think that’s why it happens, keep the idiots in the dark and all, but we’re not sure.”
Cookie grabbed the remote and turned on season five ofFriends, signaling she was bored of this conversation. Dice and Connor had already checked out.
I absently touched my face.
“You’ll adjust. It’ll get easier,” Cookie said, showing she was a little more aware than she was acting.
Kaden walked into the lounge, glanced in my direction, and said, “My office,” before continuing on his way.
