I´ve been Jasmine, Jane and Jade. Jennifer, Jessica and Jessy. Jana, Jody and Joanne. And all these girls had nothing at all to do with each other – After all I´ve been bred and trained for the game my siblings and I´ve been playing these past ten years. Looks, mannerisms, gestures, accents – they are all to be controlled. "Jane´s" best friend would not have looked twice at "Jody" had they incidentally met somewhere. Just as "Jennifer the hairdesser"´s boyfriend would not have recognized his lost girlfriend in "Jasmine" the bartender serving him his beer. Not that such a meeting ever took place! After all, a new identity is always to be assumed far away from any place with any connection to the formerly used one.

I´ve been so many people, it´s hard to rememder which one of them is supposed to be the "real" me. After all, when was the last time I actually got to be Jondy?! Maybe you can just spend so much time pretending, before the edges between who you are and who you make people believe you are begin to blur.

Zack´s often scolded me for keeping the first letter everytime I change personalities, calling it "foolish sentimentality" among other things. But is it really? Is it "foolish" to try to hold on to some part of you you know to be true – to some part to which that letter is the last connection to have left? Especially if we´re not talking about loosing just a splinter of yourself but a whole chunk? A part of you that is absolutly integral - or at least used to be, once upon a time?

I can still hear her voice sometimes – even though it´s been ten years and even though the whole world has changed over and over again. But still, at night, when I go to sleep – on the rare occasion that I actually sleep, that is. That voices enough makes me try a little harder at pushing my body into another night of wakefulness, it has nothing to do at all with Manticore and keeping my guard up as Zack thinks! It´s just – it hurts. Hearing her. In that moment when sleeps grabs you but doesn´t have a firm hold on you yet. When you can´t tell if your already dreaming or wether your senses are still reacting to the world. Everytime I´ve sat up straight upon hearing her I´ve found myself alone – well, that is if you don´t count the inconsequential company that is now and then snoring on the other sight of the bed. I´m still – well not exactly human – but still fallible, I know. Oh god, do I ever! So when the urge is there, why fight it?! And thanks to dear Manticore it´s not like finding company is ever a problem. The fixation this world has on outside beauty is ridiculous to me. Ive seen a good deal more than your average person of what is hidden under these faces – the beautiful as well as the ugly! – to know that good looks truly ARE only skin deep. There is no such thing as handsome bone or pretty blood.

Still, I´m not one to complain. The body and the face I was "gifted" with make a lot of things easier – and what they make harder is easily balanced by the extra strenght and speed I was given along with them. This – by today´s objective judging - perfect body is not one anybody grabs twice. Or TRIES to grab, to be accurate. Wrists and fingers are so easy to damage. To break. To snap.

But yeah, her voice. Whispering. "Are you awake, J?". Yelling "Duck, J". Laughing "J, we made it!". Frightened "I think we should go back, J". Nicknames are intimate for us, far more intimate than for the ordinaries we hide amongst these days. Yes, there was all the "baby sister – big brother stuff", but real nicknames – changes to the pracious names we´d given each other... We as a rule didn´t do that. It came to close to messing with these gifts. Well of course, as almost always she was an exaption, her name being up for everybody to play with. So there it was, Max, Maxie, Maxie-Baby. Maybe it was because for HER we needed to have more than one name. Like she needed to have at least two, to show how special she was to us all. But actually that was only fair - after all, it was SHE who came up with the idea of naming us in the first place. But, like everything else that used to be typically unmistakably HER, that is long over. When we talk about past times, what we almost never do on the rare occasions that we speak to each other at all, she´s "Max": That and just that.

When she fell through the ice that night, it all happened so fast, she didn´t even have time so scream. As it was, the only scream that night was mine. But still, at night, just before sleep finally catches me I can hear her. "J". A cry for help she never had a chance to utter.

So, I guess I could leave that letter behind. Be Anna, Bonnie or Caroline.

But then again - I don´t think I´ve ever been Janice. Or Jude. Or Janine. After all, it´s the one thing she´s ever given me that I can still hang on to. Sorry, brother. I guess I´m not yet ready to give up my foolishness.