Chameleon ✔️

5 nominations

"That's not him," I say as I stare at the picture my dad is showing me on his phone.

He pulls it back to his face to inspect it, squints over his reading glasses, pinches the screen to zoom in on the man walking through traffic and looking over his shoulder.

"Are you absolutely sure?" he asks me. "He matches your description perfectly."

My dad's right. He does. From the salt and pepper hair to the square jaw and pointed chin. "It's not him, Dad."

He pulls his eyebrows together and continues to hold his phone up to me, as if the longer I look at it I'll somehow miraculously realize I've been remembering the face of the man who took my mother's life wrong all along.

"But are you sure, honey? It's been almost eleven years. How can you be certain your memory of him hasn't been distorted over time?"

I take the phone from his hand, press the lock button so that the screen goes black, and hand it back to him. "I will never forget his face, Dad. I couldn't even if I wanted to. It's the only thing I see every time I close my eyes."

"Well, darn," Dad says. My father never curses, not even in trying times of frustration and red, red, red. "Brody was so sure about this one, too."

I scoff. Dustin Brody is the detective who was supposed to catch Gray and get us out of hiding ten years ago. And all he's managed to be good for is he somehow gets me an 'A' name every time we switch identities, a small favor in exchange for a lifetime of running, a chance to keep a small sense of myself throughout each change of my person. He's sent us several photos of "Gray" through the years, none of them legit. I stopped believing he would save us a long time ago.

"Brody?! I thought we agreed you were gonna get rid of him! How hard could it be to report a conflict of interest and get him taken off our case?"

And then I feel a black aura, and it is not my father's, as his is still red as ever. "Mom wants you to, too."

He sighs, and it is more like a disgruntled huff than a sigh. "It's gonna take more than just your woman's intuition and your superstition of your mother's lingering spirit to convince me to put the man's entire career on the line. Brody's been very good to us over the years."

Dad doesn't really believe me when I say I can still feel Mom's aura. He thinks it's something I've made up to use against him in my favor. And I can't argue that too much, because although I feel it more often than just when her opinion matches mine, when she proves me wrong I don't always admit it to him.

"Whatever, Dad. That picture? It's not Gray."

He grunts at me. "Good heavens, Aspen. How many times do I have to lecture you about the name thing?"

"Well, what else do you want me to call him?" I ask, my voice raised. I hate raising my voice to my father. "The unidentified subject?"

"First you name the stray dog, Pen. Then you start feeding it, then you let it sleep in your bed, and then you take down all the FOUND ads and it becomes a part of your family. I don't want you to get too attached to this man you call Gray — don't want you to let your life revolve around catching him, because then, once we do and we're free, you'll be lost, and you won't know what you're living for anymore."

He is genuine, this I know for a fact. But that doesn't stop me from saying what I say next. "I hate to break it to you, Dad, but I have no option to detach from him as of late, my life does revolve around his capture, and I'm already lost."

Then I turn and go to my room because I am ashamed of the dark blue disappointment I feel from both of the auras in this one.

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