The mirror boy blinked back at him—curly-haired, bright-eyed, dressed like a kid who’d sprint across a field for the sheer pleasure of it. John tugged at the loose sleeves of his hoodie until the cuff elastic hugged his forearms. The fabric bunched and stayed, the pale green bright against his smaller, tanned skin. He felt an odd lightness in his legs, a bounce under the soles of his feet that made standing still feel like holding his breath.
Violet cleared her throat. “Letson family, eyes over here.”
She didn’t have to raise her voice; the room obeyed her anyway. A metal case sat on the table beside her. She unclasped it, flipped it open, and drew out a neat stack of cream folders with blue elastic loops. Each had a nameplate stamped in silver.
“Your file, John.” She handed him one that read LETSON, JOHN (TRIPLET B). Below the name: AGE 8. COVER LIFESTYLE: SUBURBAN / ACTIVE. PRIMARY TRAITS: HAPPY-GOING, SPORT-ORIENTED, OUTDOORSY, ‘GETS INTO TROUBLE’ (TEACHER EUPHEMISM: SPIRITED). FAMILY ROLE: ‘MOTHER’S BOY’ (AFFECTED AT HOME), PROTECTIVE TOWARD SISTERS.
His stomach went cold. He could already feel his curls shifting as he dropped his chin to read, an unthinking gesture he didn’t recognize as his until after he’d done it. The elastic loop bit lightly into his thumb as he slid it free and opened the folder.
There were photos first. Not of him—of John Letson. The child in the pictures was him-but-not-him: laughing with a soccer ball under one arm, a smear of grass across one knee; cannonballing into a backyard pool, water blooming around him; hair plastered to his forehead, eyes flashing at the camera. Other pages followed with bullet points: Favorite foods (strawberries, peanut butter); favorite games (pickup soccer, swimming races in the cul-de-sac community pool, backyard tag); school notes (good reader, fidgets, “friendly to everyone,” needs reminders about inside voice).
He flipped to the page labeled COMMUNITY PROFILE. Cedar Ridge, population 14,042. Smallish town, two exits off the highway, a white-painted water tower with a stylized cedar leaf. The Letsons were moving into a pale stone Craftsman on Willow Bend, “recently renovated,” wraparound porch, vegetable planters on the side yard, a backyard big enough for a scrimmage. The file had photos of the house staged with fat throw pillows and navy-striped deck chairs. There was even a suggestion for a tree swing. The details felt so complete that for a second he could almost smell cut grass and grill smoke.
Barry—no, the nameplate in Dad’s file said ETHAN LETSON—stood next to Linda—now MARA LETSON—looking like two people borrowed directly from an athletic clothing catalog. Violet handed them their folders last, and John saw his father’s throat bob when he read the first line: OCCUPATION: REGIONAL DIRECTOR, PACIFIC SPORTS & LEISURE. PUBLIC PERCEPTION: CHARISMATIC, APPROACHABLE, VOLUNTEERS TO COACH YOUTH SOCCER.
Linda—Mara—looked radiant and ill at ease at the same time. Her file said COMMUNITY ROLE: PTA ENGAGED, RUNS “LITTLE OAKS” CHARITY FUN-RUN; NEIGHBORHOOD PERCEPTION: WARM, ORGANIZED, FRIENDLY. HOBBIES: PILATES, GARDENING, SEED-STARTER TRAYS IN KITCHEN. The photo mockups showed a sunny kitchen window with neat rows of sprouts and a delicate glass watering can mid-pour.
Casey’s folder had a tiny sticker of a watercolor palette on the tab. She lifted it with pinched fingers, read: CASEY LETSON (TRIPLET A), “QUIET AND CREATIVE,” DRAWS CONSTANTLY, LOVES BALLET CLASS, SLOW TO WARM UP SOCIALLY BUT SWEET-NATURED. A piano gleamed in one of her staged photos. The look in her eyes hardened, then wavered, then softened—like she was swallowing something with corners. Zoe had never been quiet or sweet-natured.
Amanda’s folder had a soccer ball sticker, but when she opened it, her eyebrows shot up. AMANDA LETSON (TRIPLET C), “CHATTERBOX,” LOVES GYMNASTICS, CRAFTS BRACELETS, “TEAM SPIRIT,” TENDS TO LEAD OTHER CHILDREN INTO GAMES (TEACHER EUPHEMISM: BOSSY). Mikey had been a quiet kid who disappeared into videogames for hours without blinking. The little girl clasping the file now had trembling hands and a determined set to her mouth, as though daring the world to say this was her.
“This isn’t…” Amanda started, then went small at the sound of her own high voice. “This isn’t us.”
“Correct,” Violet said briskly. “It can’t be. You need to be forgettable in all the right ways and memorable in none of the dangerous ones.”
The curls on John’s forehead tickled. He pushed them back, then stopped himself, annoyed that the impulse felt natural. The file’s paper smelled faintly of toner and lemon sanitizer. He skimmed the school page again. Cedar Ridge Elementary: Mrs. Glasby for third grade; field day in May; fun-run in September. A circle around SOCCER SIGNUPS—WITH DAD (COACH ETHAN). And under that, in smaller type: John is energetic; he responds well to high expectations framed as games. Parent prompt: “Can you beat your best time?” He felt a strange heat behind his ribs, like the thought of racing excited something that wasn’t his.
He snapped the folder closed. “This is not going to work.”
Violet didn’t look surprised. “Say what you mean, John.”
He lifted the folder, shook it a little, the papers whispering. “I can’t just become some happy, popular kid who loves sports. That’s not me. I’m not… that.” The word lodged. The hoodie tugged at his shoulders when he shrugged, baggy and alien. “I was mostly an outcast. A nerd.” The word felt sour, like saying something unkind about a friend, but he said it anyway because it was true. “I don’t… I don’t talk like that. I don’t run around. I don’t get into trouble on purpose. I don’t—” He stopped, breath hitching.
The curls fell back and brushed his temple. The sensation was so vivid it made him flinch.
Violet set her clipboard down with a click. “You don’t have to pretend from scratch.” Her tone softened by a fraction. “We don’t rely on pretending. It’s unreliable. People slip. They hesitate. The wrong word comes out, the wrong stride, the wrong laugh. So the program doesn’t ask you to act. It helps you become.”
Mara glanced up sharply. “Helps how.”
Violet slid out a pamphlet thin as a prayer. “You were anesthetized, yes. But you were also calibrated. Your neurochemistry and endocrinology are gently nudged to harmonize with the profile. You’ll still think like yourselves. You’ll remember everything. But the body has its quiet loyalties. The right hormones rise at the right times. The right muscles prime. The right dopamine spikes when the right activities occur. You will find yourself choosing to do what this life expects—because it feels good to do so. It will feel normal.”
“Brainwashing,” Ethan—Barry—said, jaw tight.
“No,” Violet said, and for the first time, John heard something close to offended in her voice. “We do not erase you. We do not overwrite you. We give you a path of least resistance that matches your cover, and we ease the friction between mind and body so you don’t chafe. You can fight it. People do. They get headaches, they feel restless, they snap at each other—until they stop pushing, and then it quiets.”
“And after a week,” Casey said slowly, eyes on the watercolor sticker, “no one wants to fight anymore.”
“After a week, most people are relieved not to be fighting their own skin,” Violet said. “And yes, they’re… happy. We would like you to be happy. But mostly, we need you to live. The people who will come for you do not get bored. They get patient.”
Amanda hugged her folder to her chest so hard the edges bent. “What if I like videogames again and not crafts and… and bracelets?” Her lower lip wobbled as though the word itself embarrassed her.
“Then you will like videogames,” Violet said, polite as a bell. “But the odds are that you will like both. Or you will like crafts because you will like the way your mother smiles when you bring her something you made. Or the way your friends at school crowd around your desk. Or the way your hands feel when they’re busy. We prime the body. Connection learns the rest.”
John’s fingers crept back to the hem of his hoodie, rubbing the stitching. The sensation was curiously satisfying—rough, patterned, rhythmic. He caught himself and stilled. “You’re saying I’ll… slowly grow into this. Without noticing.”
“You will notice,” Violet said. “You’ll notice that you’re making different choices. You’ll notice that you run when the sun is out because it feels like a waste not to. You’ll notice that the pool calls to your shoulders in a way it didn’t before. You’ll notice that your feet bounce when you stand and that you want to lean against your mother when you’re tired, because the profile says you are a mother’s boy at home.” She glanced at Mara. “And you’ll notice that you don’t care that you notice, because it isn’t painful. It’s ease.”
Ethan’s hand found Mara’s. Their fingers laced tightly. John watched the new knuckles press and whiten. He had never seen his father’s hands look elegant before. It made something twist in his chest.
“So he’ll be active,” Mara said quietly. “Sports. Protective of his sisters.”
“Yes,” Violet said. She turned to John. “You will not become cruel. You will not become someone who hurts people. We do not manufacture malice. We align. We blur the edges between story and skin so the story can keep you alive.”
“I liked who I was,” John said. The admission came out small and hot. “I didn’t like how school made me feel sometimes, but I liked… I liked reading. And thinking. And the way it feels when you solve something hard that doesn’t require moving.”
“You can still like those things,” Violet said. “Your file does not forbid books. It does not forbid quiet. It simply adds other joys that make this life true.” She tapped his folder. “Happy-going does not mean shallow. Protective does not mean reckless. Trouble does not mean unkind. It means you will climb a fence you aren’t supposed to and scrape your knee and your sisters will laugh, and you will laugh harder, and the neighbor will shake his head and call you ‘spirited,’ and then he will forget you because that is all you will be to him: a boy with grass stains and a grin.”
The idea of being forgettable had never sounded so much like a wish.
It didn’t fix the fear.
Violet handed out the last sheets. “There are scripted first-week events,” she said. “Groceries at Tulip Market. A ‘welcome’ basket drop-off from the PTA—standard. Soccer league sign-up Saturday morning. Pool membership application. A walk around Cedar Ridge’s downtown; ice cream on the corner by the post office. You will be seen doing the things your file says you do. That is how people remember what we need them to remember.”
Casey stared at a page that listed BALLET CLASS, TUES/THURS, CEDAR ARTS ACADEMY. “I’ve never danced ballet.”
“It is not difficult at eight,” Violet said with a matter-of-fact kindness that somehow made John want to throw the folder across the room. “Your body will find the shapes. You will find your way to the mirror and your posture will adjust because we adjusted it already. You will feel proud of your first plié. You will start to crave the quiet of the studio. Or you will hate it and love the piano more. Either way, your cover holds.”
Amanda peered at a bullet point labeled CRAFT FAIRS / GIRL SCOUTS? as though it might bite. “I don’t even know how to tie those friendship bracelets.”
“We put a video in your moving boxes,” Violet said. “Three, in fact.”
Silence settled over them like the thin scratchy blanket hospitals always used. John looked down at his hands. Smaller. Quick. The tendons along the back of his hand made clean little lines under the skin when he flexed his fingers. He wondered what it would feel like to jam those fingers into the pocket of a baseball glove and hear the leather pop. The curiosity came and went like a wave: there, cool around the ankles, gone again.
Ethan closed his folder with a snap. “You could have told us before you did this to them.” It wasn’t loud, but the words moved like a knife laid carefully on a table.
“We don’t ask parents to choose between their children’s survival and their children’s comfort,” Violet said. “We choose survival for you. It’s what you would have chosen anyway.” She didn’t flinch when Ethan stared at her. “And we are not done. There will be check-ins. There will be adjustments. If Casey’s ballet class places her in a room with a teacher whose cousin cleans weapons for the people we are hiding you from, we will make Casey a soccer player too. If John breaks an arm and cannot swim, he will become a boy who loves books for a season. The story breathes. But the spine holds.”
The metal case clicked shut. The room felt smaller with it closed, as if breath could no longer leave by the same route it entered.
“Any questions?” Violet asked.
John lifted his folder without looking up. “What if I don’t want to like this?” The words felt raw. He wasn’t sure who he was asking—Violet, his new parents, the boy in the mirror with the dimple he didn’t earn.
Violet’s gaze was steady. “Then you can not like it,” she said. “You can complain and keep your books and refuse to sign up for soccer and we will write you as difficult and neighbors will remember you as the boy who doesn’t play well with others. And when men with patient eyes ask at the hardware store about the Letsons and the clerk says, ‘Oh, the grumpy kid who never goes outside?’—we will have to move you again, because that does not match this life. And one day, we will move you too late.”
He swallowed. The hoodie’s drawstring brushed his palm. He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger once, twice, as if that texture could write an answer inside his skin.
Mara cut in, voice gentle but firm. “We’ll learn together,” she said. “We’ll… try things.” Her eyes moved to John’s. “You don’t have to like it today.”
He didn’t. He didn’t like any of it. But her voice had an anchor in it. The room swayed a little less.
Amanda set her jaw and pulled her folder closer until it pressed against her ribs. “I don’t want to be bossy,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to be bossy,” Casey said, surprising everyone. “You can be… leader-y.” She squinted at her own page. “And I don’t have to be quiet. I can just… be tired sometimes.”
Ethan huffed a laugh that wasn’t quite a laugh. “And I can be charismatic, I suppose.”
“You always were,” Mara said, and something warm crossed his face that looked like a memory found a new suit to wear.
Violet checked her watch. “We’re done for today. Rest. Hydrate. There will be a debrief in the morning. The truck leaves at seven.” She gathered her things, then paused in the doorway. “One last note.”
Everyone turned.
“You will see small changes in yourselves that you did not rehearse,” she said. “They are not accidents. They are the body making introductions to the life. You are allowed to be unsettled. It will not mean you are failing.” She looked at John one more time. “It will not mean you are being erased.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Silence again. A different kind—one with air in it.
Ethan found a chair, sat, and put his face in his hands for a moment. When he looked up, he had put on the easy half-smile that had always come out when bills were due or Zoe came home late or the sink broke for the third time. It didn’t quite fit the new jawline, but John recognized it anyway. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll… start at the start. Names.”
They went through them haltingly. Ethan. Mara. Casey. Amanda. John. Saying them felt like trying on shoes in a store—stiff, too new, squeaking a little. But they did not pinch hard enough to cry about.
Eventually, Mara opened her folder and read the page about Willow Bend aloud, turning the paper so the three children could see. The house looked like something out of a catalog: pale stone, tall windows, a wide porch. John stared at the porch and imagined kneeling to tie muddy laces there, felt a flicker in his fingers where a knot would pull tight. The image was so crisp it made his breath catch.
He hated how much he could see it.
His curls shifted again when he looked down. For a second—ridiculous, impossible—he imagined they had weight to them, a direction, like they were always falling toward something he couldn’t see yet. He ran a careful palm over them, felt the spring and give, the way they held shape and then slipped free. He didn’t know the last time his hair had been anything but stubborn red cowlicks. He didn’t know this body’s reflexes. He didn’t know if he wanted to.
“This is not going to work,” he said, softer now, as if confiding it to the table. The words tasted the same, but they carried a different shape in his small mouth.
Mara reached out, and he let her, even as he noticed he let her. Her hand settled on the top of his hoodie where his shoulder rounded. He leaned the slightest bit without meaning to, and he noticed that too. He did not pull away. He noticed that as well.
Around him, paper rustled. Casey traced a finger down the ballet schedule, then up again, as if learning a map. Amanda practiced saying “craft fair” without squinting. Ethan flipped a page and frowned at the lawn mower brand suggested, then snorted softly, like even in this he had opinions.
John slid the elastic loop back over his folder’s corner and watched the blue band stretch and snap into place. He stared at his name printed neat and fake across the tab. He thought about Cedar Ridge, where the water tower painted a leaf against the sky and the streets had names like Creekside and Maple. He thought about being seen on a sidewalk with a soccer ball, about neighbors who would wave because he was the kind of boy people waved at. He thought about finding himself laughing at something he would not have laughed at a week ago and only realizing afterward.
He didn’t know if he liked any of that. He thought he probably didn’t. He thought he might, and that scared him more.
Around the edges of his fear, he could feel it: the slow, patient press of the life they’d designed, like hands shaping clay. Not crushing. Just nudging. Just rounding a corner here, smoothing a bump there. Just enough that, in a week, he might not notice the difference between what he chose and what chose him.
He let out a long breath and felt the curls whisper against his forehead when he did, as if nodding for him.
He looked down at the profile again—happy-going, loves sports, trouble, mother’s boy, protective—and the words lay there like labels for jars he did not want to fill, and a small part of him already reaching for the lid anyway.
He swallowed. His voice came out thin and true. “He is going to move into this new town pretending to be this boy,” he said, not sure who the “he” was anymore, not sure if it mattered. “And he will slowly end up being him like it’s normal.”
No one corrected him.
He closed the folder and held it, and for a moment the weight of it felt exactly like the weight of a soccer ball tucked under his arm.
He let it fall to his lap before his fingers got used to holding it that way.
