by Julia Mayer
I had been right all along. I always am. I try to force myself to believe that someone else can care about me, that someone might want to get to know me just because I’m a cool person, just because they think they might like me. I’ve done it with everyone in my life.
But Dee was just using me, and I didn’t even know for what. Usually I at least know what I’m being used for. I didn’t know who Dee was, or even what she was. I didn’t know what she wanted from me, or what in me had told me that it was safe to open up to her and give it to her.
Angry as I was, I could hear a tiny voice in the back of my head begging me to go back and find out the answers to all the questions I had. What was Dee doing here? What was this other world she talked about? Was she real? Had I finally gone as crazy as everyone thought I was?
When I got outside to the parking lot, I felt that voice getting stronger. I wiped the tears from my eyes and stood, unable to decide what to do. I turned in circles a couple of times before finally deciding to go back into the café. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open. I looked in the mirror in front of me, and…nothing. She wasn’t waiting for me to come back. She wasn’t standing in the mirror. There was just me looking back at me. She had just walked away.
I wondered if I had imagined the whole thing. If Dee was just something I had made up on my way to losing my mind, like hearing things or seeing people who didn’t exist. I heard someone flush a toilet in one of the stalls. Real, concrete. If Dee existed at all, it was only barely. It wasn’t real. She wasn’t here; she wasn’t in this world. I felt the tears well up again. I ran out of the bathroom and all the way home.
***
I had tried to be open again, tried to let in people, to care. One of them had disappeared without a trace, and the other one had turned out not to be real. I ran up the stairs to my room and slammed the door. I saw the full-length mirror on my closet door in front of me. I slammed that door too, and was left with nothing to do, so I lay there on the floor screaming silently, hearing only the quiet whir of the ceiling fan.
The tears kept coming, faster and stronger than tears had ever come for anyone else in my life. It was like every failed relationship in my life had been leading up to this moment. To this betrayal. This dual betrayal. I pulled myself off the floor and went into the bathroom, automatically grabbing the razor blade I had put underneath the soap dish.
I started cutting my hip—carving would be a better word—and I would have gone all the way down my leg, but watching the blood drip down was enchanting. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The blood, the physical color and smell, calmed me the way a cigarette calms an addict after years of not smoking.
The bathroom was blue and green with white tile, and the red blood was such a necessary addition to this cold, unforgiving room. I could feel Dee calling to me. Telling me to talk to her. But I couldn’t. I was tired of being lied to, tired of people taking advantage of me. I wanted to know who and what she was; I wanted to find out about her. But I hated her, and I refused to give in.
I was sitting in the cabinet under the sink with my knees pulled up to my chest, leaning sideways to avoid the drainpipe and staring at the dried blood on the floor when my father knocked on the door. “Samara. Samara, it’s almost time for dinner. Are you okay in there?” I took a deep steadying breath.
“I’m fine. I’ll be down in a second.”
I splashed cool water on my face, avoiding the face staring back at me in the mirror, reapplied mascara, and walked downstairs to eat dinner with my father. It was the only time we would eat together that week. He asked about my day, and I nodded as nonchalantly as I could. I wasn’t sure I could make something up that would make it sound like I had had a normal day.
“I have some good news, Pumpkin.”
I looked at him, chewing and not really taking in what he was saying.
“I said I have some good news,” he repeated.
“Oh?” I mumbled into my spaghetti.
“I was promoted at work. VP of purchasing. It’s a big change for us. It means not only college but a master’s, if you want it, or an extra year abroad or whatever makes you happy. And without any debt when you finish.”
I nodded, chewing slowly and swallowing.
“Congratulations, Dad. That’s great! I’m so…Well, that’s great.”
“Thanks, Sam. There’s a downside, though, that I should tell you about. It means a lot more traveling for me. A lot more time out of town. Is that okay with you? I want to be able to spend more time together. But this could be a big difference for us. For you. In our lives.”
Time out of town didn’t seem like a bad idea to me at that moment at all. Some time alone sounded perfect. Sounded like exactly what I needed.
“Definitely, Dad. Take it. It’s great. Congratulations.”
He smiled at me from across the table and nodded. I did my best to smile back at him, and we sat in silence, lost in thought for the rest of dinner until I eventually said I needed to get upstairs and finish my homework.
***
I swore to myself that I wouldn’t give in to the curiosity. I wouldn’t give in to missing her the way that I did. I wanted to be mad; I wanted to separate myself from everyone, especially the people using me for their own twisted gain. It lasted three days. Then I gave in.
I was lying in bed. I had been awake most of the time since I found out the truth about Dee, or I had at least spent most of the time between nightmares awake. My mother’s death, the boys who had left, a father whose main talent was a disappearing act. I know I had told him it was all right, but his promotion was only the latest addition. One more reason for him not to spend time with me. If it wasn’t this, it would’ve been something else he didn’t bother asking permission for.
Losing Dee would just be another in a long line of bad dreams. I sat up in bed. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep again if I didn’t understand what had happened, what Dee had done, or what she wanted from me.
I walked over to the mirror and looked in. I thought I saw her for a moment, but then I was sure it was a figment of my imagination. I sank down to the floor, put my head in my hands, and whispered, “Where are you, Dee? How could you do this to me? I just can’t understand.” I looked back up into the empty eyes of my reflection and saw another face appear behind mine. I turned around slowly. And there was Dee standing behind me in my room, face streaked with tears.
“I’m so sorry, Samara. I won’t lie to you again. I didn’t mean to do this. It just happened and then I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you wouldn’t understand, so I didn’t tell you and then…” she trailed off. I tried to control it but I couldn’t. I collapsed into sobs. “I never meant to hurt you. I wanted…I wanted you to be the sister I always wished I had. Please, please trust me.”
She looked so earnest, standing in my bedroom at 2 a.m., apologizing. I tried to shake my head, tried to back away, but I couldn’t. I nodded and fell into her arms, still crying. She stroked my hair for a moment, and I could feel her tears mixing with my own as they fell.
“I promise not to disappear again. I’m not going anywhere, not until I’ve told you everything you want to know. Not until you tell me it’s okay to leave.”
I leaned back for a moment and looked at her. “I promise,” she told me, “you’ll never lose me. Not for as long as you want me here.”
We sat there quietly for what felt like ages before I said anything. I wasn’t sure what to say. “Talk to me. What’s the mirror world? Which of us is the real one? How did you find this? How did you find me? How did you find out about it?” Every question I thought of led to ten more questions I wanted to ask. And Dee started to explain.
She told me about the party she had been at with Jamie, what he had said, and how she had thought about it for ages. “I was bored out of my mind in my world. I needed to meet someone different and exciting and new. Som
eone with some personality. The people in my school, in my life, are so boring. I wanted to find, umm, find a mirror opposite,” she smiled, “to all of that. I’m just lucky it was you.”
“How does it work?” I asked her, turning back to the mirror in my closet and tapping it lightly.
“I think that what happens is that I can only come through when you’re looking in the mirror. When I’m here and you look in the mirror, you see basically a photograph of yourself. It’s a two-dimensional reflection. But when the two of us are both at the mirror, we see each other.
“My mom was able to get through more easily than I was, I think, because her reflection would be your mom and your mom is dead. If she wanted to, I think my mom could get through any time.”
I stood up, staring at the tear-streaked girl looking back at me in the mirror. “So this is what I actually look like? It’s strange, isn’t it? You and I don’t look, well, I mean, we look similar, but we don’t look exactly the same. But I’ve never noticed that I don’t look like my reflection, I don’t think.”
Dee had no explanation for that one. I guess I didn’t really need one. She and I look similar enough—especially that night when we were wearing matching yellow pajamas with pink moons—but Dee was much prettier than I was, and I wasn’t sure how that could work. If she was my reflection, shouldn’t we have looked the same?
***
After that, Dee started going to her own school again. I went to school but I had never liked it, and now that I had conversations with Dee to look forward to, the days trudged by even slower. I started sleeping through classes just to be fully rested when I talked to Dee at night.
We would both change, brush our teeth, and go sit in front of the mirrors in our rooms talking. “Okay, Dee. You’ve lived in both worlds. Which one is better?”
“Here’s the thing about the different worlds,” she said. “I don’t think one is better than the other necessarily. Except that I’ve lived in this world all my life so I find it pretty boring. Yours is more interesting. There are all sorts of crazy things happening and new people to meet.”
“You just think that because you didn’t have to do anything while you were here.”
“What do you mean? I had to stalk you!”
I laughed. I supposed that was true. “Of course, stalking your reflection is more interesting than going to classes. And writing bad papers. I mean, come on. If you had to actually live my life, you wouldn’t think this world was so great.”
“Maybe you’re right. But, well…”
“What?”
“Nothing. I mean, not nothing but…another time.”
I rolled my eyes. But my limited experience with Dee told me that I would probably find out sooner if I just kept my mouth shut and waited for her to bring it up again.
I changed the subject. “There’s nobody in my world like Jamie, though. Nobody suggested a place to look for an alternate universe to me. So your world has at least one thing on mine. You guys figured out the alternate universe. I never would have figured it out if you hadn’t come through to find me.”
I saw Dee smile for a second, twirling one of her curls around her finger. “That’s true. My world does have Jamie. Or, I mean, people like Jamie. You’ve got good people in your world too, though. What about that teacher you told me about?”
“She was great. But she disappeared on me. It doesn’t sound like Jamie is going anywhere.”
“No, he’s not.” Dee’s smile flickered again.
***
Dee was always asking questions about my dad. My mom too, the one time, but mostly my dad. I guess it was because she doesn’t have a dad, she didn’t know how little I wanted to talk about him and the parade of bimbos he’d brought home and the allegiance he felt to his job over me.
“Are you close to your dad?”
“No. At least not anymore. We used to be, I guess, before Mom died. But even then I was much closer to her. She’s the only person I ever met who was right about everything. Once in a while we would argue, and it was never long after I stomped off that I realized she was right. I used to hide in here after we fought.”
“In your room?”
“In my closet. She’d come up eventually and slip a cookie under the door or ask me to meet her downstairs for a walk or to sit on the swings in the backyard. We used to swing together all the time. When I was little, I always thought she was just thin, but I guess ‘gaunt’ would be a better word. But since she was so small, we could both fit on the tire swing in the backyard. Then we’d spin it around and around.
“Once in a while, instead of spinning we’d pretend we were the Flintstones and try running as far as we could in our wheel car. And she would quietly explain what she had been saying before and she would be right. She just…always knew what to do, I thought. I guess. I mean, she had a dark side, but she tried to keep it away from me.
“I never really got to say good-bye to her when she died. My dad wouldn’t let me go to the funeral. I guess he thought I was too young. And now, I just…I just can’t. I miss her, though.”
Dee looked at me without saying anything for a moment. “Samara, you don’t…you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to.”
“Okay,” I said. “What’s the question?”
“How did she die?”
It had been a long time since I had talked about how my mom died. Or even talked about her at all. Dad never liked to talk about her. I think it was just too hard. I looked away but I could still feel Dee’s eyes on me. I almost told her that I didn’t want to talk about it.
We hadn’t actually known each other for a long time, but we had in a way, and the two of us clicked. We understood each other, and I had never felt that way with someone. I guess I had never had a real best friend before. I wanted Dee to know about my mom. I wanted her to know everything, almost everything, about me. So I took a deep breath, looked up, and looked her in the eye.
“She killed herself. She was upset because she and Dad had an argument. I had never heard them yell like that before. I just left for school without saying anything, and when I came home she was dead.”
“Oh, Samara. I…I had no idea. I’m so sorry.” She was quiet for a minute. “You know it wasn’t your fault, don’t you? I mean, it isn’t either of your faults. You or your dad. People don’t kill themselves over one fight, even a big one. You know that, don’t you?”
I nodded. I knew Mom had this other side to her; I had always known. And I had been told that before, but it was good to hear it from Dee too, because I trusted Dee. There was one thing that had always made me feel like it was my fault, though, and I had never told anyone.
“Can I show you something?” I asked Dee. “It’s a little scary, but I want to show it to you.”
“Of course. What is it?”
I went into my closet, all the way to the back, and found the shirt I had been wearing the day I found my mother. The day she killed herself. I pulled it out. I hadn’t looked at in years, but the ink was just as fresh as it had been that day. I called to Dee to come through the mirror so I could show it to her properly, and when I walked back out, she stepped through.
“This is the shirt I was wearing. Look.” I pointed to the ink stains. Dee furrowed her eyebrows and stared at the stains.
“It got stained at 1:57 in the afternoon, when my pen broke. It exploded all over me.” Dee looked up at me, confused, and I continued. “When I found my mom, the bloodstains on her shirt were in the exact same places. She had taken sleeping pills, but she must have hit her head or something because it was bleeding and there was dried blood all over her shirt. In exactly these places. The paramedics said she had probably died between one and three in the afternoon. It was at 1:57, Dee. I know it was.”
I had never shown the shirt to anyone, but this was it, the final proof of the connection I had lost when my
mom died.
Tears were rolling down Dee’s cheeks. She put her arms around me. “I’m so sorry, Samara. I’m—” Her voice cracked and she couldn’t say anything else.
I pulled away from her and walked to the far back of my closet to hang the shirt up. I had wanted to throw it away at the time, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I knew I could never wear it again. I couldn’t even wash it. But for some reason I couldn’t let it go either. I felt so much better after telling Dee; something about having someone else know my secret made it easier to keep. I slept well that night.
***
It was another three days before Dee brought up the suggestion I had let drop. She shocked me, scared me, and entranced me all at the same time. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the only natural thing to do.
Switch places, lead each other’s lives.
I didn’t know why Dee would want to live my life. After all of our time talking, it had become clear that Dee was only becoming more content with her life. She said that was because of the addition of a best friend, and I know she wanted me to think she meant me, but a part of me wondered when she said that if she was talking about Jamie. But she’d suggested it, and I figured if she wanted my crappy life, she could have it.
The only thing that stopped me was that I was afraid of walking through the mirror for the first time. Dee promised it was incredible, and I believed her. But what if I couldn’t make it through? What if I wasn’t able? If I wasn’t good enough? What if I was never able to make it out? Dee swore up and down that would never happen and eventually, whether I believed her or not, my desire to be happy the way she was happy—if only for the day we would switch—overtook me and I agreed. I wanted to be Dee.
I remembered a time, as a little girl, when my mom was still around and I felt happy. That I had trusted people. When spinning on a tire swing was a good way to get out anger instead of carving anger directly into my body. I remembered that time, and I wanted it back. Switching places with Dee would give that to me.