My roommate is actually a set of identical twins who are both pretending to be the same person. I’ve noticed several fairly obvious details that give it away. For example, his closet is full of matching sets of clothes. He also openly leaves out notebooks filled with pages tracking the people he’s met, and conversations he’s had. On top of all that, I’ve walked in on both of them out in our room at once. When this happens, one of the twins will scramble under the bed in a panic, and the other acts like nothing is wrong. After I leave the room, I listen through the door and can hear them whisper “that was a close one.”

I brought the subject up to my roommate the other morning, and he got very defensive about the whole thing. He called my accusation “baseless, outrageous, and hurtful.” After he was done denying it, I watched him blatantly pass a granola bar to his twin hiding in the closet.

For fun, I’ve started spending long periods of time in our room hoping to catch them. Once several hours have passed, I can hear one of the twins squirming from his hiding place within the room. Yesterday, I watched a hand appear from inside one of the dresser drawers, frantically reach around for a water bottle, and then disappear. When I walked over and opened the dresser, the twin curled up inside it just held his breath and crossed his fingers, as if that would turn him invisible.

Moving forward, I’m not really sure what to do. Part of me envies the childlike joy it brings the twins to think their plan is working. At night I hear them whisper about how proud they are of each other, and how they want to keep the trick up for all four years. It seems to give them a sense of purpose, and who am I to take that away?