Mirror Mirror

by Estevan Vega

  Somehow, I got through the day and the last bell rang and I was emancipated from Grover Cleveland H.S. Jimmy had Chess Club so I had to walk. I don’t mind. Kathi Mueller lives in my direction and we always walk together. I just thought of something—it seems half of my friends’ names end in “I”—there’s Missi and Kathi and Teri and Joni and somebody else, I can’t think of her name right now but it’ll come to me. I wonder if they’re all the same ethnic group or what! Patti. That’s the one I couldn’t think of. Most of them dot the “i” in their names with these little hearts. That’s incredibly brilliant, isn’t it?

  The second Kathi turned down her street and we yelled goodbye at each other I began to think about that darned mirror person again. I tried to think about other things, like a report I had to do for soch on the Kallikacks, this retarded family in New Jersey who all ate paint chips or something, but my mind kept returning to the face I’d seen in the mirror. The Kallikacks, I think was their name, was this famous family in sociology who lived in New Jersey somewhere in the hills and intermarried and did nasty things like that and ended up mentally challenged. Actually, more like mentally triple-dared. I think my former boyfriend, Chris, was a distant cousin. Just kidding—his last name was Chroninger which is English, I believe, whereas Kallikacks is Russian or something. Still...

  It was a big report, worth one third of my semester grade and I hadn’t even started on it, but all I could think of was what I’d seen in the mirror that morning.

  When I got home, no one was there. Dad was at work and Mom was probably down at the grocery unloading her coupons. And Mike? Probably playing with his little criminal friends. Usually, I would be ecstatic if Mike wasn’t there as he feels his mission in life is to totally drive me bazonkas, but this time I would have almost welcomed his presence. I studiously avoided the hall mirror when I came in and kept my eyes averted from the one in the living room.

  I kind of messed around at first, looking at Mom’s magazines, taking off my old nail polish, eating about two dozen chocolate chip cookies and just killing time in general. Finally, my kidneys were about to explode. There was no way around it. I’d have to go into the bathroom.

  While I was sitting there, I was aware of the mirror in front of me, but thankfully, it was high enough from where I was I couldn’t see my reflection. This is ridiculous, I remember thinking. Even if there is someone in the mirror they haven’t done anything to harm me. All day long, ever since I’d seen Miss Blue Eyes that morning, I’d known what I was going to have to do. The only way to get over this fear was to face it.

  And, logically, the downstairs bathroom was the best place to confront whoever or whatever it was, lurking in mirrors. Just in case something did happen, I’d be found there quicker. No one will come into my room unless it’s a national emergency. Once in a while, Mom sneaks in and the way I know she does is at supper she’ll diss me, saying she’s going to call the exterminators and thanks to me they’ll qualify for the bulk rate. I don’t think it’s that bad myself. Granted, it’s a bit messy, but I have my own system and whenever I clean it up to her Better Homes and Gardens specifications, I can never find anything in a hundred years. Who keeps shoes in the closet? It’s so dark in there I’d have to hunt up a flashlight every time I needed a pair. I’ve tried to explain to her that if she doesn’t want me to be late to school, let me organize my space in my own way but she makes this funny sound with her nose and cracks on me. I sincerely hope when I get to be her age and have children I give my daughter more latitude than I get. I think she ate too much sugar before they found out it was bad for you and did stuff to your chromosomes or something.

  I ran the water in the sink, kind of avoiding the mirror at first. I took a drink, using my hand as a cup. I know it’s not lady-like, but if I ran to get a glass every time I needed a drink I’d die of dehydration.

  Then I looked. Ohmygod.

  There she was all right. Old Miss Blue Eyes. I forced myself to stare at her. At first nothing happened. I stared until I thought my eyeballs were about to bleed. Then, I noticed it. She was smiling at me. I thought maybe I had a grin on my own face but I felt it with my hands and all I felt was a wet frown. Wet because my hands were sweating. Big-time. Worse than a mid-term exam or a first-date sweat. And my heart was beating so fast I thought it’d blow up. There really was someone behind the mirror.

  Oh lordy.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I KNOW YOU’RE IN there.” I don’t know why I said that. Stupido! What else was there to say, though?

  “I’m glad you decided to talk to me.”

  If I hadn’t already just gone, I would have wet Calvin on the spot. She spoke. To me. With my own voice, only not out loud. It was more like in my head. It’s lucky I wasn’t an old-fashioned Southern belle like in Gone with the Wind. I’d have come down with the vapors, sure as my name wasn’t Scarlett O’Hara, girlfriend. I came close enough as it was. My knees turned to Cheez-Whiz and I had to grab the sink to stay up. I don’t know what I expected her to say. “Take me to your leader,” I suppose, or, “We’ve got you surrounded. Surrender, earthling.” I guess I didn’t expect her to say anything because I didn’t really expect there to be a person in the mirror. Now what was I going to do? I had sure enough confronted my fear and here it was, gabbing at me like we were both in the same gym class.

  I did the dumb thing.

  I spoke to her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “WHO ARE YOU?”

  Original, huh?

  “I am you,” she answered. What do you think of that? She intoned the words, kind of like Charlton Heston giving out the Ten Commandments in that old movie that’s on TV sometimes.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple. I’m you, Elizabeth. You created me.”

  This was getting bizarre. Getting bizarre? That’s like saying “this is getting damp” when you’re on the crest of a tidal wave.

  “Please,” I said. “Just tell me who you are and what’s going on here. I don’t feel very well. This is a dream, right? You’re the ravioli I ate last night?”

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I don’t mean to upset you. Don’t be afraid of me. I won’t harm you.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You see, you created me. When you were six years old. Don’t you remember?”

  Boy, did I ever! Like a prison tattoo I’d woke up with.

  “The only way I can be created is by someone on your side of the mirror. And I couldn’t have been created by just anyone. It requires someone with an overactive imagination.”

  Lucky me! She sounds just like my mom. Overactive imagination, my behind! My imagination wasn’t any more overactive than anyone else’s I know. She kept on talking and I listened. I didn’t have much choice. She was turning out to be Chatty Cathy with blue orbs.

  “You see, our universes are twin worlds. Whatever is reflected in a mirror has an exact duplicate in my world. Some of your scientists and philosophers have guessed at our existence but they always get it wrong. They assume there’s some kind of other dimension when we’re both really in the same dimension. The only thing is, all you can see is a still image. Sort of like looking at a snapshot except that it moves when you do. More like a movie I guess is how you’d explain it. But we have a restriction you don’t.”

  This ought to be primo, I thought. Sort of the Land of Oz with disclaimers. I wondered again if I was in a dream but the pinch I gave myself felt real enough. I was in your basic state of 3-D terror, but I was also fascinated by what she was telling me.

  “We are basically a slave world over here. All we can ever do is exist as your reflection. Unless...”

  She stopped here. Just stopped talking. It made me crazy. Unless what? Was I supposed to guess what the “unless” was? Was this twenty questions? I kept wishing my mother would walk in and see Miss Blue Eyes talking to me so I’d know I wasn’t going over the falls, mentally.

  “Unless what?” I had to ask, didn’
t I? Me and my famous big mouth.

  “Unless a person imagines there’s someone behind the mirror. Like you did when you were six.”

  “What difference would that make?” I finally found my voice. “I’m sure there are millions of people who imagined what I did. On this block alone, there are probably ten.” I was thinking of old Mrs. King who lived three doors down and saw cockroaches crawling all over her about once a month. Usually right after she put out a bushel basket of Old Granddad empties for the trashman.

  “You’re right. I’m not the only one in a mirror. There’s more of us than you know. But not millions. Maybe a few thousand. It takes more than just imagining there to be someone there for there to be someone there.”

  That was a brain-twister if I ever heard one. A bunch of gobbledygook if you ask me. I was more confused than ever, but she didn’t let me down with the crystal-clear explanations.

  “There are some other conditions. For instance, you have to be looking at yourself in a mirror when you imagine there to be another world there, and you have to really, really believe there is another world.

  “And that doesn’t even guarantee you’ll see someone other than yourself—create your double, so to speak.

  “There are some other things that have to be just right. Like atmospheric pressure, temperature, things like that. We’re not even sure about that; we just think those things make a difference. The magnetic field, too.”

  Now, I wish I’d paid more attention in science class. She was saying there was a whole world back there with her in her mirror world. I was getting more and more spooked. I could feel the goose bumps on my arms and they were roughly the size of tennis balls. She kept on with her dissertation. I felt like I was on the set of Weird Science.

  “The biggest component necessary to achieve trans-starence—our term for what happens—is the electrical activity of the particular individual’s brain at the time. It seems to be a combination of electrical impulses and chemical activity and just a few of you seem to have the proper combination to bring us to life.”

  Just what I wanted to hear. I had some kind of mutant brain. Now I’m a mirror freak because the zinc in my brain shorts out differently than anyone else on the planet. Didn’t she know teenagers would rather be green than different? Like my dad says, in a snide little voice, “I suppose if all your friends walked off a cliff you’d follow them.” You’d better believe I would! I’d be second in line, especially if the leader was Sandra Dean, the most popular girl in the universe. I’ve seen what happens to people when they look or act different. They sure don’t get sixteen offers to the Senior Prom. No thank you! When I get to be a hundred and ten then I’ll work on being an individual. Until then I’d like to have a few friends!

  “Now—you create us, but once we’re here we kind of develop on our own. Within limits. We can’t change our appearance too much—we’re pretty well stuck with whatever you look like...” well, I swear!...“but I got to change mine ‘cause you were wishing you had blue eyes when you first imagined me.”

  I not only create Mutant Mirror Person, I give her a better eye color than what I’m stuck with. Why couldn’t life have been reversed and she gave me blue eyes and kept the pine cone-colored ones for herself? Sometimes life is just a dog-eat-dog world and you’re forever wearing Milk Bone underwear.

  “There’s a lot more to it, like how you’re wondering where I was for all those years when you didn’t see me—see, I can read your mind when you’re facing me—and I’ll explain it all to you eventually, but I thought you might like some good news. You look like you need some.”

  Yeah, like this is all a dream and I promise never again to eat that many chocolate chip cookies. No such luck. Blue Eyes was really there. I was as wide-awake as Anne Boleyn was two minutes before she lost her head. She was babbling on again.

  “Now that you’ve acknowledged me and we’ve communicated, there’s something cool we can do, provided we both agree to it.”

  Great. Now she thinks we’re best buds. Next thing, we’ll be having jammy parties, freezing each other’s bras. I waited, afraid to ask what delightful thing it was we could do. I didn’t have to wait long. She was about as anxious to let me in on her secret as five-year-olds are to open their Christmas presents.

  “We can trade places.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  TRADE PLACES.

  Like I’m frothing at the mouth to get inside that mirror! Does she think my I.Q. lost a couple of zeroes?

  “Uh, I don’t think that’s something I’d like to do especially, this current century,” I offered.

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss the idea,” she answered. “Just think about the possibility for a while. Don’t you think it would be exciting?”

  Yeah, like being shot into space strapped onto the side of a Saturn rocket. The first five nanoseconds would be a thrill, but after that...? I didn’t vocalize my thought but she wasn’t kidding when she’d said she could read my mind.

  “I’m not familiar with a Saturn rocket. Is it fun?”

  “You’re spooky!” I said, watching my/her eyes grow about as big as my fat Aunt Minnie’s dessert plates. (My cousin Sam calls Aunt Minnie Aunt Maxie if that helps you get a fix on how big her dessert plates are.) She was spooky! “How can you read my mind?”

  “It has something to do with the electromagnetic field around you. I can’t explain it and it can only happen when you’re looking into the mirror into my eyes.”

  I lowered my eyes, picked out a spot on my chin and thought, that’s just about the last time I do that. Or if I do, I’m crossing my eyes or something. A terrible thought struck me.

  “How long have you been able to read my mind?”

  Her answer was swift. Too swift.

  “Since you were six.”

  “What have you read?”

  “Oh, lots of stuff. How’s Jimmy?”

  She knows everything. My gosh, some of the things I’ve thought about Jimmy! Some of the things I’ve thought about anybody! Some of my thoughts were so personal I wouldn’t even tell them on an overnight camping trip to my best friend. This was gross, terrible! Then, I realized Miss Blue Eyes wasn’t a for-real person. I had created her. I stared back at myself. Maybe I could un-create her.

  “No, you can’t.”

  I turned from the mirror and took a step back over to the stool and sat down, head in hands. It was hopeless. What was I going to do? I felt like bawling, but if I did, she’d probably materialize and hand me a tissue. There was no doubt about it—I was a slave to Blue Eyes. Might as well hang a ball and chain around my neck and call in the dogs. This was a disaster. This was a ground zero nuclear blast. I wasn’t ever going to escape her. Ever.

  I remembered this book I’d read about some black lady last year and in it she made the statement that “education gives a person their freedom.” Maybe that was the answer. Maybe if I learned everything there was to learn about this mirror person I could make her vanish and get my life at least back up to the bargain basement. It would be a pleasure to only have to worry about getting into college or if science would ever come up with a cure for acne. Those seemed like very faraway and very childish worries compared to the situation I faced right now. I got back up and stepped over to the mirror and faced it squarely.

  “Why would you want to come out here if it’s so great in there?”

  “That’s easy, Liz. It looks like a lot of fun there, too.”

  I hate it when someone calls me Liz. Here I was, almost seventeen and she wants to give me this little kid’s name. She was blathering again.

  “See, it’s okay in here—for instance, since it would all be new to you, you’d enjoy it. But me, I’ve never been anywhere but in mirrors all my life and I’d like to see some of your world. You’d get a kick out of what you can do in here, too, believe me.”

  “I’ve seen you in more than one mirror. Can you get around to different ones?”

  “Sure. There’s one little drawba
ck. I can only get around from this side of the mirror. I’ve seen lots of things, trees, parks, playgrounds, stuff like that, but I can’t get out to enjoy those things. Sometimes I’ve been out with you in your compact and it looks wonderful! Grass and hills and going fast in cars. I love that stuff. But...” I could see a pout in her lower lip and I felt sorry for her in that moment, “you never have it open for more than a minute or two and them boom! you slam me shut and I’m back in the dark, wondering where we are and what it looks like. I can go to another mirror any time I want, but lots of times I just want to stay with you and do what you’re doing.”

  “I didn’t realize...”

  “There’s other things too, Elizabeth. You seem to feel things, physical things that I’ve never felt. I’ve heard you say ‘ouch’ and I’ve never had an ouch thing happen to me. Nor an ‘oh boy!’ thing either. I’m just kinda in here, looking out, not feeling anything. I think I’ve got the capability—last week you were sad and crying and I sort of felt sad too, I think. When you weren’t looking for a second I put my hand up to feel the tears on our face and I couldn’t feel them. What are they like? If I had a real body, I think I would experience and feel some of the things people in your world do. I just want a chance to try. If I could have even five minutes of being real, I think it would satisfy me the rest of my life.”