After a time Sweeney spoke, and her voice was small. Uncertain.

“It might help catch the guy who did it, though, all this,” she said. “If you really didn’t do it.”

Dear Diary,

I guess I’ll do this. Write it out. Go back to when it started and try to understand what I can do. Writing about telling someone for the first time what I am deep down inside, the real me, that felt really good. Maybe if I can write about what I did, I can prevent myself from doing it again. Because I don’t want to do it again. I feel bad. Of course I feel bad.

It might take a few entries. But I want to understand it. There’s so much I need to say.

See, it’s like this:

I’m a normal young man. I make sure that I do absolutely everything that twenty-five-year-old, heterosexual, part-time employed men do. It’s not hard. We’re not complex beings, full of mystery and intrigue. All I’ve had to do to construct my disguise is play a constant game of mirroring. I hang around other guys my age, at uni or the bar where I work, and I listen to what they say. I say the same things back.

I go to “the club” and stare at “bitches” and talk about how bad they want me to “put it up” them. I can tell by their lips. Their big, plump “booties.” When women turn their backs on Pete and Dave and Steve and me, one of us makes a gesture, grabs our crotch or something, makes a pained noise like dogs howling after their mates trotting across the other side of the pound wire. When we’re not scoping bitches I complain about my work, my boss, keep one eye on the rugby on the screen in the corner. Moan as the ball fumbles out of someone’s hands. I’ve got the guys covered. They believe I’m one of them.

My therapist, I’ve got him fooled. No real hardship there. Chloe, she was a little harder to convince, but again, it’s not unachievable. If you’re a red-blooded Aussie bloke who’s half–decent looking, you’ve got to have a girlfriend. So I picked her up in sociology class. I’d moped around a few dead-end jobs in my late teens and decided I’d do a bachelor of arts, keeping my head low, trying to keep up with the normal crowd. I found Chloe there, struggling with the material and needing pointers. I’d had a couple of girlfriends before her, but nothing serious, and I needed to get into something serious before people started wondering why I kept leaving these perfectly good girls. We’ve lived together in our soulless little rental property in the sun-scorched suburban hell that is Blairmount for five months now. Vinnies furniture. She vacuums a lot. Insists on the kitchen benches being empty, me not leaving my wet towels on the floor. She wants a cat, but I’m not big on pet hair all over my clothes. I fuck her about twice a week. To maintain my disguise, I think a lot about what she’d say if I was ever arrested. If they ever found me out for what I really am, what I’ve done. How was your sex life? Normal. Did you ever fight? Now and then, about inconsequential things. How were his university grades? Fine. Did you get on with his friends? Yes. Did he ever express any strange desires? Say odd things in the bedroom? Leave questionable material on the computer? No. No. No.

If I were a chameleon, my color would be gray. Depthless, calming gray. I’d be a slow-moving, bug-eyed creature creeping along in the gray world, taking hand-holds of storm-colored branches, sliding my round belly over steely leaves. The hardest part about it all is how boring it is.

But I do get my color. About a year ago, when I’d first met Chloe, I took her to a café for lunch. Comfortable, getting used to being around each other, the supposedly easy intimacy of young lovers. She blathered on about something. Trying to tell me all the time about her childhood, so that I could really appreciate her for the woman she was becoming, bond with her, intertwine her history with mine. In my memory, the street outside is gray. Then, a flash of coral pink in a window across the street.

A group of ballerinas prancing across a polished floor. Ten or fifteen brown-limbed girls, preteen beauties hurling themselves through the air. I watched their heads bobbing and thin arms flailing as they fluttered into a corner, formed a huddle, burst away from each other, a pink flower blossoming. I was mesmerized.

Chloe was scanning the newspaper. I’d stopped listening, had no answer for her question when it came. I’d dropped the mask. I could feel the color flooding through me, blood surging in my face, dangerous flashes of the beast inside trying to penetrate the surface, alert her. Alert the waitress setting our coffee on the table. Alarm pulsed in my neck and eyes.

But Chloe didn’t see it. She’s stupid. I chose her because she’s stupid.