His name, that year, was Callum Haines. At least that's what the teachers called him, what he wrote at the top of his worksheets, and what was printed on the card he tapped to enter the school gates. Before that, it had been Cal. Before that, Jamie. Before that, Len. Names rolled off his skin like rain on glass. He changed them every few months. Some people dye their hair to reinvent themselves. Callum chose syllables.
He wasn't trying to deceive anyone. He never lied. He just never stayed the same.
In a world obsessed with titles, Callum was something of an anomaly. Most people clung to their public Spectrum label like a lifeline, shaping themselves to fit its narrative. But Callum didn't care. He ignored the profile feed, the trend scores, and the optimization notices. When the notification came in at age sixteen, it titled him:
"🎉 Congratulations!
You've been titled by the Global Consensus:
Most Likely to Forget Who They Are,"
He didn't cry or panic. He just shrugged, put his phone on silent, and walked into English class like nothing had happened.
It was Mr. Elron's class, a long gray room with high windows and a dead clock above the chalkboard. They were reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and Mr. Elron asked if anyone had ever felt like they weren't being seen.
Callum raised his hand, then lowered it halfway.
"I don't think I ever was one person," he said. "So maybe there was nothing to see in the first place."
Some students laughed. Others squinted like they weren't sure if he was being deep or strange. Elron, to his credit, nodded.
"That," the teacher said, "is a terrifying thought."
Callum's mother worked nights and rarely asked questions. She used to try, but at some point, the shifting names and moods exhausted her. He knew she loved him. She packed lunch, left notes, and bought him books he never asked for. But her eyes were always distant now, as if trying to track the versions of him that had come and gone.
In private, Callum kept a box under his bed. Inside were old-school ID cards, journal pages, and rejected name tag stickers. Each with a different name. Different handwriting. Different drawings in the margins. He treated it like an archive—a museum of selves. Sometimes he'd take out the pieces, arrange them in a line, and try to remember which one had felt most like him.
The answer was always none.
He wasn't depressed. He wasn't broken. Just... unsure. Some people grow like trees, straight and proud, with roots in one place. Callum felt more like water: shapeless, shifting, flowing into every container handed to him.
He once tried to explain this to his guidance counsellor.
"But don't you think it would help to settle into one identity? One clear goal?"
"And do what? Practice being someone until I die?"
She blinked.
"That's very cynical for seventeen."
"It's not cynical," he replied. "It's just boring."
Despite his reputation, Callum had friends. People liked him—at least, whichever version of him they happened to know. He had a way of making people feel seen, which was ironic, considering his own title. He listened without interrupting, asked unusual questions, and laughed at the parts no one else noticed. His curiosity was deep and undemanding, like sunlight through water.
One of his closest friends was a girl named Renna—short for Serenity, a name she hated. Renna was sharp and impatient, always wearing chipped black nail polish and quoting philosophy like threats. She and Callum shared a lunch bench every Friday. She called him a "human collage."
"You're made out of magazine clippings and movie lines," she said once. "And it's weirdly beautiful. But also kind of fake."
Callum had smiled at that.
"So what? Everything real started as something fake."
On a chilly afternoon in March, the school hosted an exhibition called "Mirror Titles." It was a Spectrum initiative aimed at helping students confront their assigned identities. Every student was instructed to write their title on a mirror and then stand beside it while others passed by. Some used it as performance art. Others cried. A few wrote sarcastic comebacks in lipstick.
Callum hesitated.
He took the mirror and wrote his title in black marker—Most Likely to Forget Who They Are.
Then, below it, in smaller writing: "But what if that's not a bad thing?"
Students stopped. Read. Moved on.
That night, Renna messaged him.
"Yours was the only mirror I didn't want to punch."
"Is that a compliment?"
"Close enough."
Two weeks later, Renna stopped showing up.
Rumors spread: her parents moved, she got expelled, and she ran away. No one knew. Her social feeds went dark. The bench stayed empty.
Callum didn't say anything. But every Friday, he still sat there. Still left a space.
One day, he left her a note.
"I'll change my name again next week. Just in case you need a new friend to come back to."
He signed it: Nobody in Particular.
That summer, Callum applied for a summer program at a theater collective two cities over. He wrote his application essay as a dialogue between all his past selves, each one arguing for a different reason they deserved to attend. It was strange. Unconventional. Honest.
They accepted him.
In the weeks that followed, he wore all black, took movement classes, and learned to project his voice. The director, a gaunt woman named Marten, told him, "Don't act. Just echo. Real people are echoes anyway."
He liked that. He made friends with a costume designer named Pol, who wore a new wig every three days. They bonded over rootlessness. One night, Pol leaned over and whispered, "You're not lost. You're just big enough to contain contradictions."
Callum didn't reply. He just nodded. But the words stayed.
By the end of the summer, he stopped throwing away his name tags. He started keeping them, even when the names didn't feel quite right. Not as evidence of confusion, but as proof of becoming.
When he returned home, he didn't revert to an old name. He told his teachers, plainly, "Just call me Callum. That one feels like home today."
They nodded.
No one mocked him. No one asked why.
His Spectrum title never changed. It still read: Most Likely to Forget Who They Are. But when Callum read it now, he saw it differently. It wasn't a warning. It was permission.
To change. To shed. To shift.
Not because he had no identity.
But because he had room for many.