Royal Dilemma

Chapter Three

(Caleb's Point of View)

"Do you want to go out tonight?" Colin asks, watching me as I fiddle with my gaming controller, trying to get it to work.

"Like to a bar?" I clarify, glancing at him.

I frustratedly hit the controller a few times with my hand, as if that will help.

"Or a club," he answers.

I let out a short sarcastic laugh. "No."

I'm surprised he even asked. Going to bars and clubs isn't exactly fun when you get mobbed and bothered everywhere you go. He knows this as well as I do. Maybe he's in the mood for a little masochism.

"What if I had a way to make sure nobody knows who we really are?" Colin asks, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"We'd have to be completely different people," I remind him, not even bothering to entertain the thought. I toss the broken controller on my coffee table and sigh.

He holds up his index finger, signaling me to wait, then reaches for his backpack and starts digging through it. A few moments later he produces two vials of shimmering purple liquid and holds them up proudly. His eyes are sparkling the way they always do when he sets his mind to something.

"What's that?" I ask, looking between the vials and him uneasily.

"Shirashio," Colin replies, as if he's telling me he's found the cure for cancer.

Shirashio is a potion. It changes your features and voice but not your body. So you'll have a different face but your freckles and birthmarks will all be in the same places. It has limits too. It changes your features the same way every time, so you'll always look different in the same way. It's also very, very illegal.

"Where the hell did you get that?" I ask accusingly, shying away from the vials like they might reach out and bite me.

"Some guy I know's brother is selling it," he says excitedly. "Isn't it awesome?"

"If dad found out—"

Colin cuts me off, shaking his head. "Dad's not gonna find out, we just need to be careful."

I watch him for a moment, turning the idea over in my head. Then I apprehensively reach out and take one of the vials, studying it.

"I guess if we're careful it'll be fine..." I look between him and my vial.

The opportunity to be anonymous is just a little too sweet to pass up.

An hour later Colin and I are sitting in his car, parked in an empty parking lot. We uncap our vials at the same time and take them like shots, downing the whole thing at once. The change happens fast, faster than I expected. I watch Colin's face morph and shift before me. His sandy blonde hair darkens to brown.

I pull down the overhead mirror to see his face staring back at me. I guess that makes sense since we're identical twins. My dark brown eyes are now reflected back at me as a light blue. I touch my face, having a hard time believing this is real. The man in the mirror mimics my movements, though he looks completely foreign to me. Colin and I shut the mirrors and look at each other with big goofy grins. This is awesome.

The bar we choose is one we've been to before but it's like I'm seeing it through different eyes. The long wooden bar and large collection of matching tables seem a lot more inviting than they did the last time we were here.

Colin immediately abandons me to talk to a small group of women. One might think without his status he wouldn't do as well with the ladies but my brother could charm the pants off of a nun, no matter what face he's wearing.