One Door From Heaven

personal grooming is related to socializing, and he has proven time and again that he's a lousy socializer. Yet he can't go through life without a bath, because walking around filthy and stinky is not good socializing, either.
        In addition to those worries and woes, he's still embarrassed about being naked in the sisters' bathroom, and now he realizes that he will have to wear nothing but a large towel until his clothes are laundered. He turns to the mirror, anxious to see if his face remains an unnatural shade of lobster, and he discovers something far worse than expected in his reflection.
        He isn't being Curtis Hammond.
        "Holy howlin' saints alive."
        In shock, he drops the towel.
        More accurately: He is being Curtis Hammond but not entirely, not well, certainly not convincingly enough to pass for human.
        Oh, Lord.
        The face in the mirror isn't hideous, but it is stranger than any face in any carnival freak show that ever welcomed gawking rubes into its sawdust-carpeted chambers.
        In Colorado, in the farmhouse, beyond the bedroom door with the plaque announcing STARSHIP COMMAND CENTER, this motherless boy had found the used Band-Aid discarded on the nightstand, and the dried blood on the gauze pad had provided him with a perfect opportunity to fashion a disguise. Touching the blood, absorbing it, he'd added Curtis Hammond's DNA to his repertoire. While the original Curtis continued sleeping, his namesake had fled out of the bedroom window, onto the porch roof, and then here to Castoria and Polluxia's bathroom, though not directly.
        Being Curtis Hammond-in fact, being anyone or anything other than himself-requires a constant biological tension, which produces a unique energy signature that identifies him to those equipped with the proper scanning technology. Day by day, however, as he adjusts to a new identity, sustaining the adopted physical form becomes easier, until after a few weeks or months, his energy signature is virtually indistinguishable from those of other members of the population that he has joined. In this case, that population is humanity.
        Stepping closer to the mirror, he wills himself to be Curtis Hammond, not in the half-assed fashion revealed by the mirror, but with conviction and attention to detail.
        In the reflection of his face, he watches several peculiar changes occur, but the flesh resists his command.
        One slip-up like this can be disastrous. If Cass and Polly were to see him in this condition, they would know that he isn't Curtis Hammond, that he isn't of this earth. Then he could probably kiss their generous assistance and their root-beer floats goodbye.
        As good as his motives are, he might nevertheless wind up like the stitched-together brute who escaped Dr. Frankenstein's lab only to be pursued by torch-bearing villagers with zero tolerance for dead bodies revived in creative new formats. He couldn't imagine Cass and Polly hunting him with torches high, howling for his blood, but there would be no shortage of others eager to take up the chase.
        Worse, even a brief lapse in the maintenance of his new identity reestablishes the original biologic tension and makes his unique energy signature as visible to his enemies as it would have been in the minutes immediately following his original transformation into Curtis Hammond, back in Colorado. In essence, with this lapse, he has reset the clock; therefore, he remains highly vulnerable to detection if his savage pursuers cross his path again in the next couple days.
        He worriedly studies the mirror as the pleasant features of Curtis Hammond reassert possession of his face, but they return gradually and with stubborn errors of proportion.
        As his mother always told him, confidence is the key to the successful maintenance of a new identity. Self-consciousness and self-doubt fade the disguise.
        The mystery of Gabby's panicky exit from the Mercury Mountaineer is solved. Racing across the salt flats, rattled by his inability to calm the ever more offended and loudly blustering caretaker, the boy had suffered a crisis of confidence and for a moment had been less Curtis Hammond than he'd needed to be.
        Physical danger doesn't shake his equanimity. Adventuring, he is comfortable in his new skin. He's able to be Curtis Hammond with aplomb even in great jeopardy.
        Although remaining poised in peril,