The Looking Glass

by Janet McNally

  “Where did you get this?” She touches the tattoo so gently with her fingertips—to see if it’s real, I guess—but I pull my arm away. I don’t even want her to see it. For the first time since I ended up at Butterfly and Bee, I wonder if the tattoo was a mistake.

  “Was it Toby?” Julia asks. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Why?” I say. “It’s not your job to protect me, right? You left. You didn’t come back. You needed a fresh start.”

  “I was going to come back,” Julia says. “I miss you so much.”

  “When, Julia? I was moving forward, you know? One foot in front of the other. Then I got that book and it broke the world. Or it fixed it. I can’t really tell.”

  Julia sighs. Her cheeks are flushed. “I’m sorry, Sylvie. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “Julia.” Someone else has entered our conversation. I turn, and there’s a man standing at the end of the table. He’s wearing a dark blue polo shirt with a name tag that says Ken pinned to his chest.

  “You have an order up,” he says.

  “Okay,” Julia says. “One second.”

  He looks a little baffled at her answer, and then something changes in his face. If I didn’t know better—I know better, don’t I?—I’d say that this is when he turns into an ogre.

  “Now,” he says.

  Julia takes a shaky breath. I hold her gaze.

  “You don’t have to let him talk to you like that,” I say. I want to tell this Ken who Julia really is. I want to tell him what she can do.

  Or rather: what she used to be able to do. I want to tell him a once-upon-a-time. But I can’t find the words.

  “Sorry, Ken,” Julia says. I glance up at him quickly. He looks bewildered. I grab my sister’s hand across the table.

  “Just come with me,” I say.

  “I can’t,” she says. There are tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  I pull my hand away as if she’s burned it. I can see the magic cracking, this world I’ve built falling apart. It wasn’t that she couldn’t call me. It was that she didn’t want to. My sister, who doesn’t need me, who didn’t want me to find her, who was just trying to send me the book so she wouldn’t have to feel guilty. Sadness bubbles up in my chest, golden and frothy.

  This time, I’m the one who leaves.

  Seven Little Men

  AN HOUR LATER, I’M SITTING on the Lincoln Memorial, on a ledge near the bottom of the stairs. Somehow I ended up here, seeing the sights like Jack suggested all those hours ago. I wandered in the general direction of the Washington Monument and then kept going. And now I’m here. I haven’t turned on my phone yet, but I’m going to soon. I’m going to text Jack and have him come get me, and I’m going to tell him I’m sorry. I’m going to buy him an ice-cream cone. Or something.

  “Do you mind if I sit here?”

  I look up. It’s a girl in an emerald-colored sundress, pale-skinned with a black bob.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “This is like, the farthest I can be from over there”—she gestures in the direction of a small crowd in front of Lincoln’s statue—“and still be at the memorial. I’m in charge of those seven little boys over there. In the green shirts.” She points, and I look. They’re shoving each other at the top of the monument.

  “They look like fun,” I say. She just sighs and takes out a flat green package of candy. Laffy Taffy.

  “Want some?” she says. “I know it’s, like, fluorescent, but it’s pretty good. It’s apple, not lime.”

  “Thanks,” I say. She breaks off a piece and hands it to me.

  “This is the problem,” she says, waving the candy above her head. “They give the kids tons of sugar and they wonder why when they’re bouncing out of their skins.” She looks right at me, her green-eyed stare intense.

  “I’m giving out free advice, if you want it.” She pops a piece of candy in her mouth and chews.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Don’t ever agree to be a day camp counselor.”

  I laugh. “I just spent some time at a sleepaway camp,” I say. “It seemed pretty great, actually.”

  She shrugs. “Maybe it’s different if they’re with you twenty-four/seven. Some kind of survival instinct kicks in if they know they’re dependent on you for food.”

  “Right.”

  “My boss offered me a brief reprieve.” She laughs. It sounds the teensiest bit maniacal. “I think because she could see I was going to lose my shit. “Being ordered around by tiny . . .” She waves her hands in front of her face—she does a lot of hand waving—as if it’ll help her think of the word. “Tiny dwarves! Even seven-year-olds can mansplain, did you know that? They already know everything there is to know about Abraham Lincoln and they’re really happy to tell me. All. About. It.”

  “Well, now you’re here, and you have Laffy Taffy,” I say.

  “True.” She’s nodding. She breaks off another piece. “So what’s your story?”

  I take a breath, let it out. “I was trying to save someone.”

  “What happened?”

  “She didn’t need saving.”

  She shakes her head, turning to look at the reflecting pool. “Isn’t that how it always is? Boys go on adventures! Girls get into trouble.”

  I breathe in fast. “What?”

  “Girls. In. Trouble.” She says it slowly, one step away from spelling out each letter. “You know.” She doesn’t elaborate, but she’s right. I do know.

  “Seven seven-year-olds,” she says, half to herself. “There’s a terrible symmetry to it.” She squints in the direction of her people. “Oh, crap. They’re calling me back.” She smiles at me.

  “Wish me luck,” she says. I do.

  When she leaves, I look out over the water. I keep waiting for the sun to set. Even though this day seems like it’s been twenty hours long, it’s only six o’ clock.

  I stand up, even though I can’t see much farther that way. The sun is behind me, and my shadow spools out on the dirt in front of me, on the leaves of the bushes below and the concrete just past. A V-shaped flock of geese sails down toward the reflecting pool, not even flapping, wings spread wide on a current of air. They touch the water so softly the surface barely ripples.

  I feel a little funny, all of a sudden. My heart beats hard and my blood starts spinning. The world erupts in sparkles around me and for just a moment, it’s beautiful. And then I fall into the dark.

  Gold Dust Woman

  THE SUN IS CROOKED IN the sky, and I’m looking up at it. I’m lying on the ground. I sit up slowly, gingerly moving my arms. I’m a little scratched up, but I seem to be in one piece. Something feels off, though. Tilted. But before I can figure it out, a shadow falls across my body. I look up and see the silhouette of a person blocking the sun. Long black skirt skimming the pavement. Long blond hair, lit up from behind like the sun’s corona.

  I figure it out from its pieces the way I’d recognize a constellation in the sky. It’s Stevie Nicks.

  I am not kidding.

  Actual Stevie Nicks. Singer. Songwriter. Member of Fleetwood Mac.

  Stevie puts out her hand and I take it. She pulls me to my feet.

  “You all right?” she asks. Her voice sounds like the inside of a geode: secret sparkle, lowlight glitter. Hearing it out in the open, not in Jack’s car in the middle of a song, is startling at first.

  I just nod. I can’t seem to make my mouth work. Truthfully, I feel a little woozy again, but I try to stay upright. I’ve done enough falling for one day—right off that five-foot ledge. Which, I see when I turn around, isn’t quite the same as it was when I fell off it. The whole memorial is different now, built of dark, gleaming gray-blue marble, and it’s not Abe Lincoln in there. It’s a woman, I think—I just have this feeling—though from here I can’t quite tell who. And when I turn back around, I can see that the water in the reflecting pool is deep purple, and it’s full of flamingos.

  Yes.

  Flamingo
s.

  Totally normal. Nothing to see here.

  “What’s wrong with everything?” I ask Stevie.

  She shrugs. I have to tell you this: a Stevie Nicks shrug is a thing of beauty.

  “Who says anything’s wrong?” she says. “And anyway, you should know. You made this.”

  There are honeysuckle vines trailing the wall next to me, and I can smell the heavy sweetness of the flowers. “I didn’t make anything,” I say.

  “You underestimate yourself,” she says. “We build the world we want,” she says. “We see what we want.”

  I look at the monument, glistening in the sun, the purple pool, the flamingos. This is what I want?

  “Wait,” I say. “Do you mean the magic?”

  She shakes her head.

  “No,” she says. “The magic just gives you what’s missing from the world. I was talking about the way you thought you had to save Julia.”

  “I didn’t,” I say, too quickly.

  Stevie looks at me pointedly. “Didn’t what?”

  Good question. I think my first impulse was to say that I didn’t think I had to save her, but that would be a lie. She was the princess in the tower with a dragon outside the door, and I was the one with the sword. Or at least that’s what I thought.

  “I didn’t save her,” I say.

  Stevie smiles just a little. “That was never your job.”

  We start walking toward the main set of stairs up into the memorial. We’re the only ones here; the steps are empty otherwise. Stevie starts walking up the stairs and I follow.

  “Who’s in there?” I ask.

  “Aretha.”

  “Aretha Franklin?”

  “Is there another Aretha worthy of a monument?” Stevie asks.

  “No,” I say. “But Aretha isn’t dead. She’s my mother’s favorite singer. I would know.”

  “Who says you have to be dead?”

  I’m certainly not going to explain to Stevie Nicks that memorial literally means something made to preserve the memory of someone who’s gone. But I guess that doesn’t mean dead. After all, that’s what I’ve been doing for Julia for a whole year. I built her a memorial out of my own life. Everything I did was what she would have done. Or what she should have done.

  We’re standing at the top of the stairs now, looking out on the reflecting pool. The flamingos move slowly across the purple mirror-water, their necks in graceful S shapes. They dip their whole heads in the water and then pull them up again, black beaks dripping. They are the beautiful weirdos of the bird world, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for not believing they exist. Like I said at Camp Wildflower: it’s so hard to tell with this world sometimes.

  “So is it real?” I ask. “The magic?”

  “Honestly?” Stevie turns her gaze toward me. “Does it matter?”

  I open my mouth to answer, but before I can, Stevie smiles and raises her hand to stop me.

  “It’s time to go,” she says. The world shimmers apart then, dissolving into molecules and sparks. The whole place goes galaxy around me.

  Then I’m falling again, or maybe I’m waking up.

  Can I Get a Witness?

  WHEN I COME TO, EVERYTHING is hazy around the edges, and my head feels like it’s made of glass, a hundred cracks spiderwebbing through my skull. I’m lying flat on my back, indoors, and the room is shaking.

  No. It’s not a room. There are windows at the far end of the space, and medical supplies in bins lining the walls. There’s no siren that I can hear, but this is definitely an ambulance.

  There’s a paramedic sitting next to me. I grab his hand and try to sit up.

  “Whoa,” he says. “Lie back down.”

  The world is tipped and spinning, so I do.

  “I don’t need an ambulance,” I say.

  He gives me a capital-L Look. “Miss, you’re in an ambulance,” he says. “So I think that’s already been decided.”

  He has a point. I try a new strategy. I take a deep, calming breath and put a sweet smile on my face. I am definitely not a person who is panicking. I definitely didn’t just see Stevie Nicks at the Aretha Franklin Memorial.

  “What happened?”

  “Witnesses said you fell off the memorial,” he says.

  “Witnesses?” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “The people standing around you. The people who called us.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I open them again. “Stevie Nicks?”

  “Um.” He narrows his eyes. “No, I didn’t see her. Or any of the other members of Fleetwood Mac.”

  I lean back a little and look at the ceiling. “Dammit,” I say. “I would have liked to meet Lindsey Buckingham too. I’d tell him he should have let Stevie put ‘Silver Springs’ on Rumours. That asshole.” I smile, trying to show him that I’m being funny, that I’m not actually hallucinating 1970s rock stars outside the Lincoln Memorial (though that matter’s still up for debate). He isn’t having it.

  “Can you tell me your name, please?”

  “Sylvie Blake.”

  “Good,” he says. I see he’s got my purse right there, and he’s already read it on my ID. The ambulances lurches a little, then stops. He stands and, when the driver opens the back doors, starts to move my stretcher toward the opening. He and the other guy bring me down in one quick, smooth movement. For a moment, I look up at the still-blue sky and feel like I’m flying. Then the wheels of the stretcher touch down on the pavement.

  “I’m sure I don’t need a hospital,” I say.

  “Well, we’re already here,” he says and smiles, not unkindly. He points toward the doors, whooshing open for some people in scrubs walking out. “You’re going to have to tell them that.”

  Sara, Like the Song

  I DO. AT LEAST, I try to. But the nurses with their calming voices just want me to get out my insurance card, and have my blood pressure taken.

  The doctor has a badge clipped to the pocket on her scrubs. Her first name is Sara, and she’s young, with curly blonde hair pulled back from her face. A resident, maybe. Just a few years older than Julia.

  “Sara,” I say. “Like the Fleetwood Mac song.”

  She straps the blood-pressure cuff around my upper arm. “Okay.”

  “Haven’t you heard it?”

  “I’m not sure,” she says. Her eyes are on the dial. The cuff starts to inflate.

  “Oh, you should,” I say, because apparently, I am now a person who recommends the Mac to random strangers.

  I am also now a person who calls the band “the Mac.”

  “Okay,” she says again. There may be a tiny hint of a smile on her lips. “Your blood pressure is normal.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “You know your name—”

  “Sylvie.”

  “—and who’s president and all that, right?”

  “Of course,” I say. “But please don’t make me talk about that guy.”

  Dr. Sara smiles, finally. “I sure won’t,” she says. She looks down at her clipboard and then back up at me. “To be honest, I think you’re okay. I don’t know why they even put you in an ambulance. You’re a little scratched up, but I’m not convinced you hit your head. I think you just fainted. When did you last eat?”

  “Breakfast.” Suddenly I’m craving whatever Dolley Madison and Eleanor Roosevelt have to offer.

  “Right. And it was hot. Probably a combination of hunger and heat.” She hands me a paper cafeteria menu. “You should call down and get some food sent up here. The grilled cheese isn’t bad. Maybe an orange juice too.”

  “Can I text my friend?” I hold up my phone. “He’ll come pick me up.”

  “Sure,” Dr. Sara says. “But you have to stay three full hours, okay? Just to make sure you’re okay.”

  She’s already walking out the door when she says it, so I don’t bother to argue. I text Jack the whole story, stripped down to the essentials, which are basically I found her and she doesn’t want to see me. I try to play down the fallin
g-off-a-national-monument angle. Then I wait for his reply. It only takes a second.

  I’m coming, he says.

  Knight, Shining

  JACK GETS THERE IN RECORD time, maybe a half hour from the moment I pressed Send. He’s breathless, flushed, Pavlova in her travel bag slung over his shoulder. When I see him, a bottomless well of relief fills my stomach. (It probably helps that I’ve already eaten my grilled cheese.) We look at each other for a moment, smiling wide enough for the International Space Station to see us.

  Dr. Sara pokes her head into my room.

  “Is that a dog in there?” she asks.

  “Um.” Jack looks at me. “No?”

  Dr. Sara shakes her head and sighs theatrically—I love her—but she doesn’t tell him to leave. So he sets Pav in her bag down on the ground and folds me into his arms. I let myself exhale fully for what feels like the first time in hours.

  “I’m sorry,” he says into my hair.

  “I know.” I put my nose against his shoulder and breathe in his scent like a weirdo. “Me too. I want to get out of here but they told me I had to stay.”

  “Well, they’re not just going to let you wander out of here by yourself. But maybe they’ll let you go with me.”

  I flag down Dr. Sara as she passes the room.

  “I have someone to pick me up,” I say. I point at Jack. “Him. I have a chaperone. Can I go now?”

  “I told you, Sylvie. You have to stay.” She’s shaking her head. “You need at least three hours of observation.”

  “I guess.” I look at Dr. Sara. “Can we at least take a walk around the floor?”

  “Sure,” she says. “But you”—she points to Jack—“need to stay next to her in case she gets unsteady. Hold her hand.”

  Jack smiles then, a straight-up grin, and holds out his hand. I take it. Just before we go, I grab my bag and slip it over my shoulder. Jack picks up Pav’s bag.

  When I smile—he’s carrying my dog!—he says, “Well, I’m not just going to leave her unattended.”

  We walk through the doorway and out into the hall, straight into the bustle of the hospital floor. There’s a desk in the center and Dr. Sara’s already sitting there, filling out paperwork. My paperwork, maybe. I wave to her and mouth the word “thanks.” She smiles.