by C. T. Aaron
Just like that.
That’s the last thing I remember before falling asleep.
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Mom’s gone by the time I wake up, and it takes me until after I’ve had some cereal to realize I’m still in yesterday’s clothes. I dropped like a rock last night.
Mae has not texted me.
I get ready fast, then beeline for her house. Not exactly running, because I’ve got cross country after school and don’t really want the warm-up right now. But I’m not moseying, either.
Basically I fret the entire way. All of yesterday tornadoes in my head until it all melts into one big blur. Mom, Dad, Maebry, Oscar, the mirror world . . .
It occurs to me to just ditch. Call out sick or whatever. Mom does it. What do adults call them? Mental Health Days? That’s what I need. My cold cereal burbles and tumbles in my belly the entire way, begging me to be still for a few hours.
When I reach Mae’s street, I spot her sitting on the low step up to her front door. She’s facing my direction, and stands when we see each other.
Well, she didn’t ditch me, anyway. Maebry and I usually walk to school and take a bus home or get picked up by her mom when her schedule allows. During track season, Mae either sits in the shade somewhere and watches me train with the rest of my team when we’re on the track, or else hangs out in the art department to, quote, “sling paint with the rest of the malcontents,” as she puts it.
As soon as I reach her, I blurt, “Are we breaking up?”
Because, honestly, that’s the worst thought of it all. For all the other crap swirling in my head, that’s the number one thing that scares the cereal out of me.
“Baby,” Mae whispers, and brings me close, hugging me with one hand on the back of my head, the other around my waist.
“Need an answer,” I grumble back as my heart races.
She pulls away. “No, Briar. Okay? No. It was a tough day. And I’m so sorry. Going to the mirror world was probably not that smart, and I’m sorry. But that’s probably not the worst day we’re going to ever have together. We’re just going to have to get through them.”
Keeping my jaw clenched, I nod quickly.
“Wanna ditch?”
At last I smile and Mae grins back at me. I take her hand and we go to the sidewalk. “You’ve never ditched a day in your life.”
“Neither have you.”
“First time for everything.”
“Just kidding. French test for me today.”
“I’ve got cross country after school, can you stay?”
She smiles at me. “Absolutely.”
We walk to campus, still holding hands as we go. Mae’s hands are amazing. They’re just a shade smaller than mine—we’ve checked—but also softer and always warmer somehow. How I could be on a track team and have poor circulation, I don’t know, but that’s sure what it feels like. And while I know it’s sort of ridiculous, paying such close attention to something as simple as holding hands, I always get a thrill when we do it. Maybe it’s because we tend to avoid any other “public displays of affection,” as the school calls it, so the one thing we can do makes it all the more important.
Maebry was not the first person I ever dated, or kissed for that matter. No, that was Jeremiah Victor in junior high. It was one of those awkward things where we sort of got thrown together by our friends. We just played along with it for a few months before quietly breaking up amidst the next big junior high scandal. Jeremiah was very nice—we still crossed paths in high school sometimes—but not only did I know by then that guys were not in my future, Jeremiah’s hand was too big. We didn’t fit there, or in any other way.
Mae, though . . . I don’t know if us being Counterparts had anything to do with it or not, but man, we fit just fine. Me and Jeremiah were not the same thing as Mae and Oscar, not by a long shot. Jeremiah and I literally did nothing. Not even texting at night.
“Where’d you meet him, anyway?”
“Oscar?”
“No. Big Bird.”
She bumps her hip into mine. “Cute. It was at school.”
“He went to that fancy private place up north?”
“Yep. Only for like that year. He said he went to a lot of different places growing up. I think it had something to do with his dad.”
We’re close to school by then, about a block away, and Mae pauses.
“Hey, wait.” She steps off the sidewalk onto a gravel yard so other people can get past us. This close to school, there are a lot more pedestrians.
I stand beside her. “What?”
“Do you feel it?”
I flutter my eyelashes. “The way your presence makes my heart burst into showtunes?”
Maebry grins. “Yes, that. No, the—” She pauses and glances around for eavesdroppers. “The sense. A doorway.”
That word, doorway, sucks all the humor right out of me. “No. Or—wait.”
I slowly swivel my head around, “reaching out with my feelings” or whatever it is we do. Then I catch it: something like an aroma, except it’s something I smell inside the confines of my head, not out in the air.
“Wow, that’s really unsettling,” I tell her.
“It can be. Come on, let me show you.”
“Why? Mae, we just got back from that place.”
“This doorway is different. Look, we have a way to sneak out of this entire world in an instant.” Mae guides me back to the sidewalk. “You don’t think that comes in handy from time to time?”
Fair enough. Maebry and I cross the street to stop opposite our high school. I stare at a converted house that’s been renovated into a business.
“A pre-school?” I say. “Wonderful. They’re not . . . I mean, there’s no, like, danger to them, right? It can’t hurt them?”
“Absolutely not,” Mae says. “Not unless one of the kids is a Counterpart, and had the maturity to focus her senses to find it. Pretty unlikely. Remind me how old were you when you first discovered Ezzy?”
“Eight,” I say, and realize it wasn’t all that long ago, not even ten years yet.
“You dreamed about him first, didn’t you.”
I nod. “Like it was really happening. Then I had to go to the soccer field the next night. Like, had to. It was like the dream downloaded all these instructions on where to go, and not to tell anyone . . . it was kind of freaky.”
“But cool.” She squeezes my hand.
“Oh, yeah. Definitely cool.”
That first time we met, I mostly just sat and stared into Ezzy’s eyes for at least an hour. I’m not entirely sure. From that moment forward, I knew I could never tell anyone about him. It was just instinctive.
We stare at the inky blackness of the doorway, which is sort of attached to one outside wall of the preschool. It’s a weird feeling, looking at something no one else can see. I have to make sure and avert my eyes when some other students walk past us and, for just one moment, look in the direction we are, as if something must be happening over there and they need to see it.
“We should get going,” I say after they pass.
“Yeah,” Mae says. We check for traffic before jaywalking across the street to our school parking lot. “But isn’t it good to know that’s there?”
“How long will it last? Is it stable?”
“That’s only the third one I’ve ever known about,” Mae says as we drift into the foot traffic wandering down the breezeway. The first warning bell goes off. We can talk more-or-less openly now, because there’s so much noise that it affords us a sort of privacy. And, let’s be honest: in high school, no one’s exactly worried about your thoughts over theirs.
Mae goes on: “The last one was only in place for a week, but I’ve never heard of one lasting less time than that.”
“I have an idea,” I say as we near her first-hour AP English class. “Let’s do a science fair project on it.”
Mae rolls her eyes and brings me in for hug. “You’re terrible. See ya.”
“See ya.”
She starts to walk into class. I smile to myself, watching her go, wishing again we could just ditch class today and go someplace to hunker out of the sun, away from school, and with our Fams. I can’t deny that her point about escaping to the mirror world from time to time makes sense. It sucks that there’s no really secure way for her to pop Aison here. He’s just too big and out of the ordinary. While I don’t like the idea of Maebry going to the mirror world alone, suddenly the possibility of us being able to disappear there together doesn’t sound so bad.
As Mae reaches the classroom door, it flies open from the inside. She only barely gets her hand out of the way. Someone in a red baseball cap who’s walking past almost takes the door full in the face.
He shouts and falls back a step, scowling fiercely. “Whoa, watch it, lez!”
It feels to me like I’ve been doused with gasoline and lit on fire.
The guy who threw the door open from inside the classroom moves on down the hallway, glancing over his shoulder. In a moment he’s swallowed by the crowd. The ballcap guy doesn’t see him. In any other circumstance, I could understand how he thought it was Maebry flinging open the door without looking out first.
Unfortunately, he’s made this about something else now.
Mae stares up at him, speechless. At no point does it occur to me that I should explain to him what happened. Maybe he should have considered his words more carefully first.
So I act.
I shove the guy with both hands. “Back off!”
“What the hell!” he shouts back at me. His breath stinks like pizza topped with asshole.
“Don’t you ever fucking say that word to her again!”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard it, of course. Even at school, where saying words like that is supposed to be against the rules but somehow isn’t. People never get in trouble for it. Not once. Maybe it’s because we’re not boys? Is that what makes it “okay?” We used to have a GSA at school, but they shut it down before the beginning of the year, and so far, no one’s told us why. Political stuff, I guess.
“Crazy lez,” this ballcap-wearer says, and pushes past me with his shoulder.
My heart was already racing, but now it kicks into overdrive. Shit just got escalated. I can feel it in my stomach.
This feeling . . . there’s nothing quite like it. It’s a powerlessness and outrage that is way beyond just being pissed or even furious.
I’m so angry and sick to my stomach I don’t know what to do. “Can you even hear yourself talk? Where are you from, man? What year is this? What country? And here’s what I don’t get: let’s scroll through your history and see what kinds of porn you’ve been surfing, hmm? Because I bet there’s a lez or two in it. Is that irony or just colossal hypocrisy? I-I’m sorry, I just, I get little confused on that point.”
He doesn’t quite know what to make of that. By his expression, I hit it pretty close to the mark, though.
Ballcap gives me a sneer and a “Psh!” I take a step toward Mae, reaching for her, to see if she’s okay.
But Ballcap isn’t done, and everything goes to hell.
Glancing at Mae, still walking, he calls over his shoulder: “Why’s a pretty girl like you fuckin’ an ugly dyke like that?”
Of all the words that he just shit out of his mouth, two are the sharpest, the hardest, the worse. They jab my jugular like an icepick.
Those two words?
Like that.
Meaning, me.
Not like her. Not like I’m a person.
I’m not saying he chooses to phrase it like that—I don’t think he has that level of cognition, to be honest—but that only makes it worse. That his gut-level response to my actual existence is, I am a “that.”
I go from zero to red in less than a second.
I do hear the crowd that’s gathered release an “Oooo!” at the same time. I think maybe a couple of people I don’t know step forward and say something like, “Hey!” to the guy. Great, but, I don’t want the help. I’ve got this under control. Maybe I can’t pop Ezzy here, but that’s okay . . . I’ll handle it myself.
Maebry thinks my temper will get me into trouble one day?
That day may have just come.
Screaming, I let my teal North Face backpack slide off my shoulder, grip it by one strap, take a lumbering step, and sling it as hard as I can toward his back.
Ballcap is close enough and I’m enraged enough that the pack sails through the air and thumps him squarely between the shoulders. A victorious thrill races through me as I cuss at him with everything I’ve got. I must look insane, with my shoulders pulled back and my fingers curled into talons like Wolverine just snikkt’d out his claws.
“You fuckin’ crazy lez!” Ballcap shouts and marches toward me.
The crowd cheers.
They actually cheer.
Not all of them. But a few. Phones have appeared in several hands, ready to record whatever happens next. It’s all just a show to them.
They want a show? Well I got a giant wolf I could call up in the blink of an eye, and he could literally eat this jackass. Sure, that might be tough to explain in court. You see, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there’s this scientifically impossible mirror world . . .
Not that I stop to think about all this in real-time, of course. It all zips through my head in a nanosecond.
Some dude in the crowd who is not holding a phone up does reach out for Ballcap to stop him. Ballcap shrugs it off, eyes targeting me.
Snarling madly, I accept the challenge and lunge for him. I land both hands on his chest and shove him back a foot or so. He swings a backhand at me as he stumbles, his palm catching me on the chin. It’s no more than a hard finger-flick against me, but it’s all the trigger I need.
I scream and lunge again.
“Briar!”
Maebry’s voice freezes me. Through the crimson haze in my vision—not all that different from being in the mirror world—I manage to see that the noise has brought several teachers out of their classrooms.
Ballcap is on the ground. When he sees the teachers, he starts groaning and awkwardly holding his back with his right hand arched over his shoulder. “Aw, she hit me!”
“And I’ll do it again!” I scream as I rush back to Mae. “Are you okay?”
She nods, gasping a bit and clutching my forearms. “You?”
Before I can answer, we’re surrounded by two male teachers. One of them, I don’t know him, says, “All right, knock it off, it’s over, you two come with me.”
Good, I think. It’s about time an asshole like this got in some trouble for once.
Except . . . I’m the one being taken by the shoulder and moved down the hall, away from my European history class and toward admin.
“What?” I turn my head to find Maebry being escorted beside me. “Wait, what? What? What’s going on?”
Maebry’s face goes blank. She stares straight ahead, like we’re marching to a gallows. “Just don’t say anything,” she says quietly. “Keep your mouth shut, B.”
Yeah, except keeping my mouth shut is not anywhere on my résumé. “What is happening?” I say, looking up at the teacher on Mae’s side. We’re being marched between the two men. “What are you doing?”
“That was assault,” the guy on Mae’s side says through a bushy goatee. I think he’s a science teacher. “You’re in a lot of trouble, young lady.”
So, as any sane person would do, I laugh.
“Us?” I squeak. “You’re saying we assaulted him?”
“That’s what it looked like.”
“Give me a break! Are you kidding me right now? Did you hear him?”
The teacher on my side, a tall, thin man says, “I heard you. We’ll get it sorted it. Right now you need to see Mr. Zohn.”
Our principal. Not even going the assistant principal route, we’re going straight to the Oval Office of Bullshittery.
Which I almost say, but have just enough sense not to.
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br /> Ballcap is on his feet. He sneers at me as we walk by and grumbles, “Hope they kick your ass out, freak.”
I stop dead in my tracks, breaking the teacher’s hold on me.
“Stay away from us, or I swear by God and sonny Jesus I will feed your balls to my dog.”
Some of that I got from a Stephen King movie, but I can’t remember which one. Either way, thanks Mr. King! Ballcap’s eyebrows shoot up and he doesn’t say a thing.
Then the teacher has my shoulder again, and we’re marching off to certain doom.
I shut my mouth, finally, per my girlfriend’s instructions, and don’t say another word until Mae and I are sat down in plastic chairs across from Mr. Zohn’s office while the two teachers go in and talk to him, the door closed.
My legs bounce and up and down fast, twin pistons. I also feel like I can’t see anything, even though nothing goes hazy or black. I discover then that there’s angry, and there’s furious, and there’s scared . . . and that what I’m feeling is all of those things and none of them, all at once.
With Maebry in my peripheral vision, I whisper, “We could call them.”
She faces me. “Our parents? Yeah, don’t worry, I’m sure they will be.”
“Ezzy. Aison. We could call them. They’d fix this.”
Mae looks around, but no one is in ear shot. “I don’t care if you’re joking, you can’t say that.”
“I’m not joking!”
Mae’s mouth snaps shut and a secretary further down the hall calls, “Girls!”
All my multicolored emotions I’d been feeling coalesce into just one: revenge. “We have power, Maebry. They think they do, but they don’t. We could absolutely one hundred percent literally kill guys like that any time we wanted. So what’s stopping us, huh?”
“Because we’re better than them!”
Her words slap me across the face even as she turns in her seat to plead with me.
“B, you’re upset, and I am too, but even talking about that kind of thing starts opening doors that are hard to close. That’s not what our Fams are for, and you know that. You’ve seen it first-hand. Last night?”