The Three of Me

Chapter 1

Hey. Hello. I hope you're listening to this. And if you are, please don't turn it off. I know after finding out that I'm actually three different people, you have no reason to trust me and I don't have any right to ask anything of you, but I hope... well, I don't know - I just hope.

I thought about writing you a letter or calling you to explain, but I think my words would just get jumbled up. I never meant to hurt you, Mark. I wish I could say that I never meant to deceive you either, but that's how I live. My whole life, all my lives – they are a lie. Except for when I was with you.

I don't know if this will make things better or worse – I'm not sure how they could be much worse anyway – but I'm going to include some recordings with this voice message. See, when you've got multiple identities, it gets hard to keep track of what you're up to, which stories you've spun with who. So, a few years ago, I started recording every conversation I was involved in so I could come back and check on details later. I know, I know, it's creepy and a privacy violation and uses up a massive amount of cloud storage – but I'm grateful for those recordings now. I can share them with you, so you can see the world through my eyes.

And maybe, by the end of this message, you'll know that I meant it when I said that I loved you.

*

I guess I should start at the very beginning. I found out I could change my appearance when I was only four. It didn't begin with a radioactive bath or an alien gift – it started with plain old jealousy.

My big sister, Madeline, she had these amazing blue eyes. Everywhere we went, people would comment, "Oh goodness! Look at those peepers! They're divine!" No one ever gushed over my eyes, which you've seen when I'm Ava – they're just a non-descript, muddy colour.

But my dad - he always tried to make me feel better. "Ava, your eyes are ever-changing!" he'd say. "Today, they've got flecks of gold in them, but yesterday, they were grey. How do you do that, my clever girl?"

I would race to the bathroom mirror, pressing my chubby little nose against my reflection, staring into my irises, trying to see what he saw. Dad was right – my eyes did change. Depending on what I ate, the weather, the light, or my mood, they would shift from greenish to brownish to goldish. Nothing as spectacular as my sister's brilliant azure gaze, but still.

With the determination that only a bratty younger sister can have, I started to spend hours in the bathroom, focused on my eyes – willing them to turn blue. My reasoning was that if my eyes could change without me concentrating on them, they surely had to change on cue if I compelled them to.

I know you think I'm stubborn; at least, that's what you've told me as Alex. I did this for weeks. Months. Years. It was my secret ritual. Dad started to worry I wasn't getting enough fibre because of all the time I wiled away in our bathroom; my breakfasts were bran-heavy for a long time. I turned five, then six.  Seven...  Eight...  Nine...  Nothing.

But I didn't give up. I don't know if it was the sheer volume of time I spent on this task; I doubt that any other person in the world has been such a persistent brat, spending thousands of hours fixated on turning their eyes blue with the belief that they could actually make it happen. But I think that my ability to change my appearance isn't anything supernatural - it's sheer determination. 

One day, when I was ten, I was pressed against the mirror, same as always, and I felt something twitch. I can't really describe it properly, but it was like discovering a new muscle I'd never realised was there, one that was particularly underdeveloped and hard to isolate.  I explored the twitch, pushed on it, stretched and pulled it. And as I did, the colour of my eyes shifted – from dull green to dull blue.