He has fingers that move like they have no bones. He has eyes that move like he has no patience. He has a tongue that changes shape every day. He has a face that changes shape every day. He has a skeletal structure and coloring and hair that change every day. He seems different than you remember. He is always unlike he was before.

Imagine.

Good. That’s actually pretty good.

His name is Josh Crayton.

Her name is Diane Crayton. She is Josh’s mother. She sees herself in Josh.

Josh looks like a lot of things. He changes his physical form constantly. In this way he is unlike most boys his age. He thinks he is several things at once, many of them contradictory. In this way he is like most boys his age.

Sometimes Josh takes the form of a curve-billed thrasher, or a kangaroo, or a Victorian-era wardrobe. Sometimes he amalgamates his looks: fish head with ivory tusks and monarch wings.

“You have changed so much since I last saw you,” people often say to him. People say that to all teenagers, but they mean it more with Josh.

Josh doesn’t remember how he looked the last time each person saw him. Like most teenagers, he always was what he happens to be in that moment, until he never was that.

There was a girl Josh liked who only liked Josh when he was bipedal. Josh does not like always being bipedal and found this news disappointing. There was a boy Josh liked who liked Josh when he was a cute animal. Josh always likes being a cute animal, but Josh’s subjective sense of the word cute was different than the boy’s. This was another disappointment for Josh, and also for the boy, who did not find giant centipedes cute at all.

Diane loved Josh for all of the things he appeared to be. She herself did not change forms, only showing the gradual differences that come with gradual changes of age.

Josh sometimes tried to fool Diane by taking the form of an alligator, or a cloud of bats, or a house fire.

Diane knew to be on guard at first, just in case there really was a dangerous reptile, or swarm of rabid flying mammals, or a house on fire. But once she understood the situation, she was calm, and she loved him for who he was and how he looked. No matter what he looked like. She was, after all, the mother of a teenager.

“Please stop shrieking and swarming into the cupboards,” she would say. It was important to set boundaries.

Josh sometimes appears human. When he does, he is often short, chubby-cheeked, pudgy, wearing glasses.

“Is that how you see yourself, Josh?” Diane once asked.

“Sometimes,” Josh replied.

“Do you like the way you look?” Diane once followed up.

“Sometimes,” Josh replied.