Mirror Image

by K. L. Denman

“Thanks,” I say. And close the door.

  She knocks.

  “I’m not exercising!” I yell. “I’m figuring something out! Please, Mom, just leave me alone for a while!”

  “You are beautiful,” she yells back.

  I open the door. “Even if that were true, does it really matter?”

  She shrugs. “It depends. Why you are asking this?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I tell her. “I’ll let you know when I know.”

  “Okay,” she says. And she closes the door. The woman is learning.

  Five minutes later, I have my black shirt on over the red top and as I pass through the kitchen I tell Mom, “I’m going to take Lacey’s stuff over to her house.”

  She looks like she wants to argue, but all she ends up saying is, “Fine. But if you are there after dark, call for ride.”

  I’m not really going to Lacey’s to return her makeup, even though I do have it with me. I’m going to ask her some questions. Very likely, she won’t be there. A warm June evening, a Friday at that, she has a boyfriend...chances are I won’t see her. But this sudden need to understand something I feel so close to understanding—it makes me go anyway.

  chapter thirteen

  I’m at Lacey’s house in no time. It must have taken fifteen minutes, but it seems like I blinked and I’m there. Now what? I look at the house, that ugly house, and I don’t get it. Why is it so neglected on the outside but so crazy perfect inside? It makes no sense. It doesn’t match the people who live there because Lacey and her mean mom look great on the outside, perfect clothes, hair, all that. Maybe her mom leaves it like this to annoy the neighbors? Maybe she figures it’s a man’s job and her husband is so busy doing art he never bothers?

  I’m not going to figure it out by standing here. I march around the back and knock on the door. Nothing happens. I knock again. Still nothing. Well, that’s what I expected. But then, I hear a small sound. “Psst!”

  I look around but don’t see anyone. Then I hear it again. It’s coming from the far side of the house. I pick my way through the weeds and crane my head around the corner. And there’s Lacey, peeking out a window.

  “Sable,” she whispers, “come here.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Keep your voice down!” she hisses. “I don’t want my mom to hear you.”

  I glance around nervously but don’t see Psycho Mom. “Don’t you think she heard the knocking?” I whisper.

  Lacey grimaces. “For sure. But she never answers the door unless she’s expecting someone.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Well, I brought your stuff. But I guess I should go, hey?”

  “No, just wait. She’s going out in a minute. Then I’ll let you in.”

  Sure enough, I hear the clatter of heels and a door opening. I flatten myself against the wall and hold my breath.

  “Lacey?” Psycho Mom’s voice comes clearly through the window. “I’m going now. I’ll lock the doors.”

  “Okay,” Lacey answers.

  “Love you,” the voice calls. Did I hear that right? Then the heels clatter again, the sound fades. A door on the far side of the house opens and closes. A car engine starts. She’s gone.

  “Sable?” Lacey’s face appears at the window again. “You can come in now.”

  She lets me in through the back door, and the inside of the house is even whiter than I remember. I can’t help it, I have to ask, “Lacey, why is your place so strange?”

  “What do you mean?” she asks. She’s stalling, I can tell.

  “You know. So perfect inside and so messy outside. Do you guys have allergies or something?”

  She shrugs. “Or something.”

  “So what’s the something?” I ask.

  “Someone’s sure nosey today.”

  “Sorry,” I mutter.

  “But you know what?” Lacey doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Maybe we could finish our game of Truth or Dare.”

  “I thought we were finished,” I say.

  “Why did you come here then? I know you didn’t just want to return my stuff.”

  I sigh. I tell her the plain truth. “I came because I’m confused. And I need to talk about it.”

  Lacey’s eyes widen. “Wow. I think that’s the first time I ever got a straight answer out of you, Sable.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I think.”

  Lacey giggles. “Come on, I want to show you something.” She leads the way into the living room. Or rather, the room most people would use as a living room. I’m thinking, Oh good, I get to see it. But some things are best left unseen.

  It’s like a carnival freak show. Standing shoulder to shoulder, lining every wall, are giant Barbie dolls. No, not Barbies. They’re mannequins, and their solid blank faces stare across the open floor at each other, past each other, past us.

  “What,” I breathe, “is this?”

  “This is a studio,” Lacey says.

  “Oh! Right! So your dad makes...fake people?”

  She shakes her head. “Not my dad. My mom.”

  “Your mom?” I repeat. “She’s an artist too?”

  “If you can call it that. She’s a fashion designer. Or more like a wannabe. Anyway, she keeps bringing these mannequins home, and she’s supposed to be making clothes for them. Only...she never buys any fabric.”

  “They’re creepy,” I blurt.

  “Yeah,” says Lacey, “I know.” She stands there with her arms folded, staring at them as if she could stare them down.

  “Um,” I say, “can we get out of here?”

  “What? Oh. Sure.”

  I bolt for the kitchen but I don’t feel any better. Those dummies are still too close. Maybe Lacey sees how edgy I am because she says, “Let’s go to my room instead.”

  And her room is normal. Pictures on the wall, clothes on the floor, a flowery bed, a desk strewn with a mix of paper, perfume and jewellery.

  “Whew,” I say.

  “I know,” she says.

  We both sink down at the same moment, her onto the bed, me into a pile of fluffy pillows. About a million questions are zipping around in my head, tripping over each other, fighting to be the first past my lips.

  “Okay,” says Lacey, “I can tell you’re dying to ask me some stuff. So I’m just going to tell you and get it over with. My mom is nuts. My dad is long gone. And that’s it.”

  I take this in. Slowly. More questions start bubbling in my boggled brain, but once again, Lacey cuts to the chase.

  “I lied about having a dad because I wish I had one. Mine left about five years ago when my mom started losing it. My mom is mostly harmless. She holds a steady job, keeps up with the bills. That thing with the scissors, she’s not usually that bad. It’s just her disorder—she’s obsessive-compulsive. She can’t stand anything icky. I mean, that’s why the outside is so grungy, right? It’s too much for her to control, so she ignores it.”

  “But...,” I search for the right way to ask, “are you okay with that?”

  “I have to be,” she says fiercely. “She’s my mom, right? So don’t go telling anyone about this, Sable, like I’m some sort of case. There’s no way I’m leaving her. We’re fine.”

  She’s watching me steadily and there’s no lie in her blue eyes. But there’s something else lurk ing in her gaze, something familiar. Fear. “I won’t tell,” I whisper.

  She sighs. “Thanks.” She pauses, and then she adds softly, “It feels good to tell someone about it, you know?”

  An unfamiliar rush of warmth washes over me. She’s saying she trusts me! Me. “Yeah,” I say, “I guess it does.”

  Lacey grins. “Funny how that works, huh?”

  I nod.

  She’s watching me, waiting, as if she’s expecting something. And I know what it is. It’s my turn to share a deep dark secret. I don’t have any, except for the doom thing. Now I need to stall for time. There are some interesting pictures in her room, stuff with vibrant colors and swooping lines. “Nice art,�
� I say.

  “Thanks,” says Lacey.

  I look more closely and notice a loopy L signature on most of them. “You did these?” I ask. And I don’t manage to disguise the surprise in my voice.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Wow! They’re really good.” They are.

  “You think?” Lacey scrutinizes the portrait nearest her and shrugs. “They’re okay. I’m working on it.” She returns her expectant gaze to me.

  I sigh and tell her. “I feel that doom is near.”

  “Huh?” says Lacey.

  “Doom,” I say shakily.

  “You mean you’re, like, afraid of something?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s it. I’m afraid of everything.”

  “Whoa,” she says. “You can’t be afraid of everything!”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Because,” she says, “that would be too much.” She leans forward. “Are you afraid of flowers?”

  “No.”

  “Butterflies?”

  “No.”

  “Puppies?”

  “No!” I shout. “That’s not what I mean!”

  Lacey leans back and asks, “So, what do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m afraid the world will end. I’m afraid of aliens, the flu, holes in the ozone. I’m even afraid of other people most of the time!”

  “Hah,” says Lacey. “Too funny.”

  “No!” I say hotly, “Not funny!”

  “You’re actually afraid of aliens?” she asks.

  “Aren’t you?” I counter.

  “Um, no. I mean I might be, if they were real.” She waves a hand. “I don’t have time to worry about stuff like that. What you need, Sable, is a real problem.”

  “I need a real problem?” I can’t believe she said that. Isn’t doom a problem?

  “Yes.” Lacey nods. “You do.” She ponders for a moment then brightens dramatically. “I’ve got it! You should get a boyfriend. They cause all sorts of problems. I mean, look at Chad. We were supposed to go out to a movie tonight, right? Only he suddenly needs to do an emergency workout at the gym with his buds. He’s such a loser.”

  Right. I felt sorry for her for about three minutes because of her nutty mom and all, but no more. She’s ridiculous. “I do not need a boyfriend problem. Thanks anyway.”

  “Oh yeah,” she says. “You’re afraid of people too. Hmmm. But then, this could be perfect. You overcome your fear of people by getting a boyfriend, and abracadabra! Everything’s great.”

  “You know what?” I don’t wait for her to answer. “I just remembered what I wanted to talk to you about. And it isn’t boyfriends. It’s about changing the world.”

  chapter fourteen

  When Lacey gets over her fit of giggles, she says, “Um, Sable, changing the world is, like, impossible.”

  “No,” I say, “it can’t be. ‘Cause if it is, then I’m toast.”

  In a gentle voice, Lacey asks, “Have you always been so messed up?”

  I shrug. “I guess. It’s no big deal. I’m used to it.”

  “Hmm,” she says. “Okay. I guess I’m used to it too. My mom, right? So what’s your deal?”

  “Well, I don’t have a mental disorder, if that’s what you think. What I have is this feeling that I have to do something. Because if I don’t then all the crap in the world probably will give me a disorder.”

  I get to my feet and start pacing. “For a long time, I’ve been trying to figure it out. I think about the problems, but I never find any answers. Only today you said something that gave me a new idea.”

  Lacey’s eyes go round. “I did?”

  “Yeah. You said beauty is power. And that’s the exact opposite of what I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking about how powerful all the horrible stuff is and about ways I can fight it. But maybe I’ve had it all backward.”

  Lacey jumps to her feet too. “I get it! So you...you.” She slumps down again. “Okay, I don’t get it.”

  I throw my hands up in frustration. “Neither do I! But I know there’s something to this. We have to think big. As in, beauty is way more than just being pretty.”

  “What’s wrong with being pretty?” Lacey asks.

  “Nothing. But don’t you think just using beauty to get attention is sort of shallow?” I rush on before she can get offended. “I mean, what if the beauty was deep? What if it was everywhere?”

  “Like art,” Lacey says. “I love art. All kinds.”

  “Yes! All kinds of art, music, original thoughts, everything. And if people had that sort of beauty all around, if they spent time with it, then...”

  “Then they’d be happy!” Lacey says.

  “Well, maybe,” I say.

  “Art makes me happy. It’s how I figure stuff out. Don’t you think creating beautiful things would make everyone happy?” she asks.

  “I think it would help. But there’d still be problems,” I say glumly. “It’s not like the flu will notice that everything’s gorgeous. And aliens could have entirely different taste.”

  “Jeez,” she says, “now you’re getting, like, negative again. Why are you so scared?”

  I know the answer. I do. But if I say it out loud, it’ll sound so lame.

  I take a deep breath and say it anyway. “I’ve been like this since I was three, when my dad was shot and my mom was so scared.... That’s all the world was, for days and days, just this huge ball of suffocating terror. And I guess it just never went away.”

  “God,” Lacey whispers. “That’s so awful. You remember all that?”

  “Not really. Not the details. I just know what happened. And I remember the feeling.”

  “And you can’t forget that stuff? Just make yourself think about nice things?”

  I stare at her. A fight breaks out in my head. Is it really that simple? Just change how I think? Impossible. I can’t pretend problems don’t exist.

  “Is that what you do?” I ask. “Just forget about your problems and they go away?”

  “No! I’m not a total slacker. Okay, maybe I am, sometimes. But why should I beat myself up trying to fix things I can’t fix? That’s just, like, useless.”

  She’s right. That is useless. But like the light shining through a crack, I see my answer. There is no point in trying to fight ugly with more ugly. No point in responding to fear by trying to be scarier or nastier. Why react like that? Why not be free and choose how to act, instead of being controlled by outside forces? Why not hold hands with all that’s beautiful?

  “Lacey,” I say, “you’re a genius.”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah. You are.”

  “Good,” she says, “but do you mind telling me why?”

  “Because of the way you see the world. I’ve been so focused on the scary stuff and feeling so hopeless...so weak.” I take a deep breath and when I exhale, I feel lighter. “Just thinking about creating beauty—that makes me feel stronger. Like I can do something big. You showed me how I can change my appearance with just a little makeup and different clothes. If it’s that easy to change me...”

  Lacey grins. “It wasn’t that easy!”

  I laugh. “Okay, maybe not. But it wasn’t so hard either. What I’m trying to say is that beauty could be my key to courage. My way to change the world. My way to conquer doom.”

  chapter fifteen

  For the last art class of grade nine, Mr. Ripley displays our mirrors on the wall around the room. “Excellent work, people,” he says. He points out a frame trimmed with papier-mâché roses. “We’ve got something romantic here.” He shifts to the next one, a metallic frame studded with rivets. “And something industrial here. We’ve got it all.”

  He moves on, commenting on each mirror. When he gets to mine, I’m not embarrassed. I didn’t do the snake after all. Instead, I went for a vine effect, tendrils of growth winding round the mirror. The best part is the quote on the back, the one Lacey gave me by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Though we travel the world over to
find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

  The last mirror is Lacey’s. She too changed her design. Her frame is the yinyang symbol, black circling to meet white, with the dots painted onto the surface of the glass. Behind her mirror is the quote I found by Vincent Van Gogh: “I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

  “Beautiful work,” Mr. Ripley states. “Very classic design. Lacey, I think we all owe you a big thank-you for suggesting this project. I’m certain everyone learned something about art on this one.”

  Lacey smiles, tosses her hair, says, “For sure, Mr. Ripley.”

  Then she looks at me and I’m able to ignore the pink bow on her head. I mean, that’s who she is, right? She tried to convince me to wear a blue one to match my new blue top. There was no way.

  But I convinced her to do something. We’re going to spend the summer fixing up the outside of her house. She loved the idea. “The power of beauty everywhere! You are going to change the world, Sable.”

  I don’t know about the world, but I figured her house was a good place to start. I got stuck with the dirt and the weeds because Lacey made up this huge story about the possibility of discovering new life forms. She said I might find a plant that cures cancer. I told her that was retarded; she told me to stop being negative. She has a point. I think the main reason I got the yard was because she doesn’t trust my artistic skills for painting the house. Her mom agreed to let her paint it however she wants, and Lacey is planning a huge mural with a mirror right in the middle of it.

  “The mirror will reflect your garden, Sable. Won’t that be cool?”

  It will be. Very cool.

  Other titles in the Orca Currents series

  Camp Wild

  Pam Withers

  Chat Room

  Kristin Butcher

  Cracked

  Michele Martin Bossley

  Daredevil Club

  Pam Withers

  Dog Walker

  Karen Spafford-Fitz

  Finding Elmo

  Monique Polak

  Flower Power

  Ann Walsh

  Hypnotized