im not even gonna edit this lmao im just gonna fuckin sin. also this is a huge joke/bastardization of the manic pixie dream girl trope. it's probably been done to dust but fuck it.

Along with 5,357,765 other people in the United States, my name is James.

It's the most common name for men, and people named James are roughly 17 in 1,000. Meaning for every 1,000 people you ask of varying genders, 17 will tell you that they are named James. Which makes my opening statement rather unoriginal, as there is a 17 in 1,000 chance that it's already been said. Truthfully, it's probably been said better. Of all the James' in the world, I am almost certainly not the wittiest or most clever.

This doesn't bother me much- one gets over their doomed-to-an-average-life fate by the time they're 10 if they're cynical enough.

I've lived through 19 winters and 18 summers on this earth, and never once has that cynicism in me wavered.

There are fewer than 1,610 people in the United States named Rhylee.

The chances of me meeting someone with that name were near impossible. But there was still a chance. And by that logic, at least one James was doomed to meet an extraordinary human like Rhylee Sommers eventually.

When I first met her, she was new to the town I'd lived in my whole life.

It's easy to spot an outsider in Alva, Oklahoma. For one, there are less than 5,000 individuals currently and consistently occupying our town. For two, she had life.

See, I've had this long-running theory that Alva was actually an industrial factory that ran off the innocent and unsuspecting civilians' will to live. Maybe I just experience life through a gray filter, but I swear, every second spent in a small town is a second one becomes hyper-aware of their waning mortality. The air is never brisk, and the sun is always a bit too cold. And I can always, always, feel myself dying.

When Rhylee Sommers wandered into the local library with her brilliant eyes and vibrant smile, I knew she couldn't've been from here.

She was the type of girl who could make a cellphone snapshot come out like a Polaroid. She had long blonde hair and pale skin embroidered with peach freckles. And God, was I a mess when she found me.

I shelved the last of the nonfiction books, tapping my fingers against their worn spines to the beat of the music flowing through my headphones. Typically, wearing headphones at any job is frowned upon, but as the only employee present at the library, I decided to make my own rules. I'm very aware that an ordinary color-inside-the-lines guy like me shouldn't dabble in such rebellious disregard of societal norms, but I was feeling extra dangerous that day.

I'd just been accepted to a fantastic college that would one-way ticket me the hell out of here, and honestly, I was feeling kind of okay.

And then Rhylee Sommers, like every other reasonable girl would, slapped me upside the head with a book.

I jumped, pulling out my headphones and turning around, ready to swear the fuck out of whoever thought that was a sane way to catch my attention. And then I saw her, and the words caught in my throat and left my body in the form of a long, drawn out, "Ummmmmm".

"Do you work here?" She asked, leaning on one leg with her hands planted at her hips.

"Yes?" I said, still dazed. "I mean, yes. Sorry. What can I help you with, ma'am?"

"Don't call me ma'am," she frowned. "It makes me feel old. Anyways, I've been standing at the checkout desk for the last, like, half-hour, and I got so bored of waiting that I actually started reading this thing, and now I'm on chapter two and you still haven't offered to check me out even though I've been standing here for two whole minutes."

"O-oh! Shit, sorry," I stammered, racing to the checkout desk, my face a lovely magenta. "I'll totally check you out. I mean. Wait. No. That came out wrong."

She flashed me a goofy grin, and I wanted to ask her if she ever modeled for a Colgate toothpaste advertisement because goddamn, her smile was unreal.

"You can check me out and check me out," she offered jokingly, passing me a tattered copy of Perks of Being a Wallflower.

"I might take you up on that," I retorted, scanning the bar code and ripping off a receipt from the register. "You have to return this in two weeks. Or you can renew it, if you're not finished by then. You've got a good taste in books, by the way. That's one of my favorites."

"I can see why. It's fascinating," Rhylee agrees. "Does Charlie ever tell us who the mystery person he's writing to is?"

"Nope," I say. "But I like the ambiguity. Kind of like how he uses generic names for everyone he knows to keep confidentiality. It makes the book interesting."

Rhylee smiles, biting her lower lip and staring at the cover of the novel in thought. "I should do the opposite of that one day. Find a bunch of generically named people and give them really exciting aliases."

"You'd be taking pity on our poor and poorly named souls," I attest.

"Oh? What's your name?"

I look down at my shoes before murmuring out a disconsolate, "James."

"Well James, I think you can be the first test subject in my experiment."

"Your experiment," I parrot, quirking a brow.

"That's what I said. I mean, you know how people kind of look like their names sometimes? It's like when you hear the name Bob you know that person probably enjoys fishing, or when you hear Beth you think of a feisty PTA soccer mom with an affinity for making casseroles. Well, I have a hypothesis that a new name can change a person. I mean, you're a James, so I bet you're probably going to law school to study the art of critical reading skills, are you not?"

"How'd you guess?" I ask, impressed at her intuition. She was right, after all. I was accepted into law school so that I could become a defense attorney. And she'd guessed it.

"It's in the name," Rhylee grins.

And thus, I became the first test subject to Rhylee's new experiment- which, in honor of its source of inspiration, would be dubbed the Charlie experiment. She would not find a nickname for me the next day, the next two days, or even the next week. But she swore that when she did, she'd tell me.

And I, for once in my life, found myself excited.