“I’m really alive,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else.
Her mom took her hand. “Yes, you’re alive, thank God.”
She had really escaped. She had really broken the curse. Alice twisted around to look at the window behind her. It was see-through. She sighed in relief.
“I need a mirror,” she blurted out. “Does anyone have a mirror?”
“Honey, you look fine,” said her mom, smoothing her hair. But the nurse pulled a handheld mirror out of her pocket anyway and handed it over to Alice. She flipped it open; she had to know, she had to make sure.
“Normal,” she sighed, when she saw her tired-looking but real, undistorted reflection staring back at her. “All normal.”
“Of course. Everything’s going to be fine,” said her dad.
“You don’t have to sue the hotel, then?” Alice said, feeling that she owed it to the poor manager. The last time she had made a trip back to reality, she’d left him close to a nervous breakdown.
Her parents looked at each other, shock evident in their eyes.
“How did you know about that?” asked her mom.
“Tony … Tony told me,” said Alice, looking to him for backup.
“Um … yeah,” he quickly filled in. “I told her all about it.”
“Well,” said her dad, eyeing him suspiciously. “I’m sure we can call it off, if that’s what you want, of course.”
“Yes. I think that’s exactly what I want.”
Her mom leaned in and whispered confidentially in her ear, “Alice, how do you know that young man? He came in here just last night, demanding to see you. Says he met you somewhere.”
Alice smiled. “Oh yes. We’re friends. We’re very good friends.”
***
It was a long time before Alice managed to get some time alone with Tony. When her parents weren’t talking to her, it was Jeremy, jabbering about how he’d been so bored all week and no one had done anything with him and he was so glad she had woken up because everyone had been so boring. Alice wasn’t fooled by any of this. She knew Jeremy well enough to see that in his face there was genuine relief.
But late on Monday night, when her mom had gone to take a shower and her dad and brother were back at the hotel, Alice heard a knock on her door and Tony’s familiar voice coming from the hallway.
“Can I come in?”
“Tony!” Alice cried, and he took that as a yes. He came inside and closed the door behind him, then sat down in the chair by her bed.
“No one else is here,” he said, nodding at the empty room.
“Thank goodness! I’ve been getting so tired of company.”
“Well, I can leave if you—”
“No,” Alice interrupted. “No, I want you to stay.”
“That’s good, because I’ve been wanting to ask you what happened when you got back into the hotel.”
Alice told him the whole story in great detail, relieved she could at last tell someone the complete and entire truth. It felt good to get the experience out of her mind, to cleanse herself of it. When she finished, Tony sat back in his chair.
“So it wasn’t William that she hated after all.”
“No,” said Alice. “Funny, isn’t it?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure that it was.
Tony appeared to be lost in thought about this; Alice waited, then asked a question that she had been wanting to ask.
“What happened to you—after I left? The police didn’t do anything to you and your dad, right?”
“Oh no,” said Tony, waving off her concerns. “Let’s just say they got the impression that the manager wasn’t a completely reliable source. They scolded him for calling them and told him to see a doctor.”
“I guess it’s good he didn’t get the videotape after all.” It was easy to say that now, when all she wanted was as few complications as possible. The tape would have been just one more thing to explain.
Tony grinned. “Well, about that … Turns out my dad still has it.”
Alice gaped. “But he threw it in the pool! It was destroyed.”
“He threw a tape in the pool. He switched the real one with a blank—kept the actual tape in his pocket the whole time. He was pretty shocked that I thought he actually damaged the real one, said he thought I knew he was smarter than that.”
“What will he do with it?” she asked, alarmed. The questions she would get if anyone saw that tape …
“Well, now that everyone knows you’re alive, it’s not going to have much weight, is it? If he tries to use it, people will just say that he made the film after you recovered from the coma. But he says he’s hanging onto it anyway—he’s just going to show it to a few close friends, ones he knows will believe it.”
The idea that random people might see what she had said, know what she had gone through, left her feeling exposed. But Alice knew she owed George for what he had done to help her, and so she swallowed hard and bit her tongue, hoping fervently she would never run into any of George’s “close friends.”
“Where is he now?” she asked.
“Oh, he’s locked himself up in the hotel room—a different hotel. I think the manager might have killed us in our sleep if we’d stayed there after the ghost fiasco. He says hi but he’s on one of his writing kicks. He says he wants to record everything that happened before his memory degrades.” Tony pointed to his forehead and said in a mock older voice, “‘Don’t have a hard drive in here, son. Gotta write it before it turns to mush.’”
“And what are you still doing here? Don’t you have to go home sometime?” Alice asked, although she was fairly certain that she already knew the answer.
“I’m here for you. Once you get out of the hospital, I’ll fly back to my mom’s place.”
Suddenly Alice had no desire at all to recover. “Oh.”
“You live in California, don’t you?”
She sighed. It hardly mattered where she lived if it wasn’t next door to him. “Yeah. How did you know?”
“Your mom told me.”
“I see.”
He smiled, like a little boy with a great secret to reveal. “Did I ever mention where I live?”
“No,” Alice said. She almost didn’t want to know.
“California,” he said, and Alice took in a sudden gulp of air. Did she dare to hope?
“And I figured out,” Tony continued, “I only live about forty minutes away from you.”
Alice would have hugged him if she had the strength. She would have jumped out of the bed and clapped her hands like a little kid.
“That’s wonderful!” she said.
The sides of Tony’s mouth twitched, as though he was having a very hard time keeping his nonchalant grin from exploding into a gigantic smile.
“Alice,” he said very seriously, “there’s something else we need to talk about.”
She felt a few butterflies pop into her stomach.
“What?”
“Well, you should know that you can’t just demand that a guy kiss you and then disappear before he has the chance.”
The butterflies tripled in size.
“Would you like me to make it up to you?” she asked.
Tony pretended to consider this very carefully. He ran his finger over his chin and looked thoughtfully at Alice for a very long minute before answering.
“I guess so,” he said at last.
Alice gulped and closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding and, for perhaps the first time in her life, she couldn’t seem to think at all. She was only aware of how loud her heartbeat was and how her ears were ringing so that she couldn’t hear anything. She felt Tony’s lips meet hers and everything—every sensation—ripped through her like electricity. Tony’s hand was around the back of her head and she could almost feel each and every one of her hairs bending under his touch. So much awareness at once—it overwhelmed her and she could hardly stand it.
She had no idea how much more time went by before Tony pulled away. She fell back against her p
illow.
“Are you okay?” Tony asked her. She must have looked pretty bad for him to sound so concerned.
“I—I’m … ” But what was she? Every single bit of her was tingling. Everything around her, every light, every color, every texture seemed so much more real than ever before. Alice took a deep, exhausted breath and let it all sink into her. She felt the reality of everything around her and she was a part of it. At last she was a part of it.
Opening her eyes, she looked at Tony, still bent over her with that concerned look on his face. She smiled at him, seeing him now as she had never seen him before—every twinkle in his eye, every curve of his face.
Alive, she thought. Finally alive.
***
When Tony finally left, Alice lay back on the hospital bed; the butterflies in her stomach were gone, but she was still full of tingling, fluttering happiness—its intensity surprised her. She stretched, her arms pulling backward, upward, fingertips brushing the glass of the window and the wood of the ledge underneath. They ran up against the pocket mirror the nurse had left and Alice picked it up. She opened it hesitantly and looked at the image inside. For the first time in many years she looked at her reflection and didn’t feel anything other than the simple joy of being alive. She felt no hate; it was as though the curse had ripped it out of her.
You are wonderful.
And she believed it.
Thanks go first to my agent, Carrie Pestritto of the Prospect Agency, who has believed in this story for a very long time and worked inexhaustibly to get it to this point. This finished book would not exist without her support and great advice.
A huge thanks also to Mandy Schoen, whose spot-on editing was invaluable in shaping this story. And thanks to all the great team at Month9Books for their hard work.
Thank you to my family for putting up with my editing grouchiness and for supporting my crazy writing dreams. My love to all of you.
JESSICA ARNOLD
Jessica Arnold lives (in an apartment) and works (in a cubicle) in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a master’s degree in publishing and writing from Emerson College.
The Looking Glass Page 24