by Alex Flinn
“You’re still in Allegra’s room?” She’s wearing a black lace mantilla, but otherwise, she looks like Violet.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“Hmm, magic. That’s how I know you’re in room 2016, and Jonah was next door in 2015, so you only have to get one room over.”
“Yeah. Only.” I look out the glass doors. It’s so high, I can see Cinderella’s castle in the Magic Kingdom. “And you still can’t magically zap me there?”
“Still, no.”
“Really? What’s the good of having magic powers?”
Kendra grimaces. “I often wonder that myself.”
I hang up or sign off or whatever you do when you talk to someone in a magic mirror. I ask the mirror to show me Jonah.
He’s in a limo, sitting with Allegra, but pretty far apart. She’s trying to talk to him. “I was thinking about going back to Louisiana.”
He says, “That’s nice.” He smiles at his phone, takes a selfie, then stares at it. He picks his teeth with his pinky.
Terrific. They are well and truly broken up. That means when he meets Celine, if she does wake up, they can fall in love. He’ll be available. And he’s such a douche. I’m going through all this so a girl I like can ride into the sunset with a douche.
Maybe he won’t like her. Any guy with eyes would like her.
I visualize Celine’s smile. Of course he’ll like her.
I decide to wait in Allegra’s room for a while. The concert’s at seven, so Jonah won’t be back until at least nine. Maybe if I climb over the balcony after dark, I won’t be able to see the ground below.
I look in the mirror. “Show me Celine.”
In the mirror, I see her, dark hair fanned out over the crisp, white pillow, her heart-shaped mouth curled into a tiny smile. Is she dreaming? Does she know I’m gone?
I remember what Violet said about letting her live forever, comatose. Would I rather not know if she could never love me than lose her?
No. I want her to be happy. She’s been through so much, losing her mother, her dad. She deserves to be happy, even if it’s not with me.
“I love you,” I tell the mirror.
Celine doesn’t respond. Of course, she couldn’t hear me even if she was awake.
I stare at her another minute.
I decide to check out—just check out—the situation on the balcony. I pick up my backpack, open the sliding glass door, and head outside.
The balcony is a large one, spanning both the living and bedroom areas of Allegra’s suite. At its front is a white aluminum railing. I don’t know much about construction, but it seems pretty flimsy, with vertical rails about six inches apart and some ornamental scrollwork on top. I edge out, remembering the part in season one of Game of Thrones where Tyrion’s imprisoned in the sky cells, these dungeons on the side of a sheer cliff with no wall on one side and an abrupt thousand foot drop. At least I have a railing. At least I’ll only fall into the pool area and have the remote possibility of just being a quadriplegic.
Except—oh, right—Tyrion was fictional.
Still, I have to look. I walk to the side of the balcony closest to Jonah’s room. It’s not a balcony that bumps out. I won’t have to scale a wall. Allegra’s balcony and Jonah’s are only inches apart.
For an average height guy, it would be a no-brainer, just lift himself over the railing (which reaches my chest but would reach someone else’s hip at least), swing his leg over the other railing, and drop down.
Down.
I picture myself, swan-diving off the railing, splattering on the pavement.
Florida Man plummets from hotel balcony.
My parents will hear about it on the news.
My mother will know she was right.
And Celine will stay in a coma.
I look across again, aware of my breathing, which is crazy-hard, hard enough that it sounds like a car with a busted muffler, and my teeth feel like they’re buzzing.
Okay, I need to go back inside, just for a while, a second. Slowly, carefully, like Tyrion in the sky cells, I edge toward the door.
Shit, there’s someone in Allegra’s room. The maid.
I rush to the corner of the balcony, sit down, and hide.
The good thing about being my size is it’s easy to hide.
The bad thing is, I feel like I could fit through the railings.
I can’t. They made it so kids can’t fit through. Isabella couldn’t. I’m bigger than a kid.
That doesn’t change my racing thoughts and heart. If I could just be reasonable, I wouldn’t have this fear. But that’s not how it works.
I close my eyes and picture myself, over and over, splattering to the ground. Even the solid stucco wall behind me doesn’t help.
I want my mother.
No. No. I don’t. I’m here. I want to do this. Put on your big boy pants, Guzman. You can do this.
Once again, I take out the mirror.
“Show me Celine.”
The mirror shows me her room again, her face. Kendra, disguised as Violet, sits in the visitor’s chair while an elderly nurse checks Celine’s chart. I watch until the nurse walks out.
Desperate not to look down, I ask the mirror to show me Stacey.
She’s at home, in our kitchen. God, I wish I was in our kitchen. She’s cleaning up dinner dishes. She hasn’t noticed I’m gone yet. At least, she hasn’t started worrying. I check my watch. Seven-thirty. Half an hour into the concert.
“Show me Jonah.”
He’s in his dressing room. I can hear the opening band in the background. He looks stoned, and he’s meeting some fans who are posing for cell phone pictures.
“Show me Violet.”
The mirror shows me the same elderly nurse who was in Celine’s room.
“No, show me Violet.”
Still, the nurse.
I get it. The nurse is Violet. But Violet promised to leave Celine alone.
Violet lied.
Of course Violet lied. Violet is at the hospital, disguised as a nurse. With access to drugs, access to needles.
And access to Celine.
I look at her name tag as she walks out. It says, Lavinia Barnes, RN.
“Show me Kendra.”
“I still can’t zap you into Jonah’s room.” Kendra still looks like Violet. This is really confusing.
“Listen! Violet’s in the hospital.” I tell her about Nurse Barnes, what I saw. “Please don’t let her hurt Celine, and maybe . . .”
“What?”
“Maybe get my parents, my dad. See if there’s something they can do to protect her.”
Her face, Violet’s beautiful, horrible face, shows confusion. “But if I go to your parents, I can’t stay with Celine.”
“I was thinking maybe you could use the phone.”
She rolls her eyes. “Ohhh, the phone. Of course.” She turns and looks at the old-fashioned beige phone on the bedside table. “How does it work?”
Geez. I walk her through it. Several times. Finally, she gets it. She says she’ll call.
I’ve been trying not to look around too much, not to look down. Instead, I look out. It’s after eight now. The sun is sinking into the orange pool of the sky. The mirror shows me Jonah, singing onstage. It’s almost time.
I stare through the glass door. The maid is still in Allegra’s room. She’s drinking the wine Allegra left. What if she sees me? I walk to the edge of the balcony. Even though it’s June and hot, I suddenly feel chilled to the bone. My legs, my arms, my hands are shaking, teeth chattering.
As I reach the very edge of the balcony, my hands shake harder. The mirror slips from my grip.
I hear it shatter to the ground, twenty floors below.
Shit.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
..................................................................
10
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I dive to the floor in case someone below saw the mirror (how could they not?), guessed where it came from.
I look through the bars, down, twenty floors below. The ground swims up to my eyes, and I feel like a cartoon coyote.
On the floor as I am, I’m not worried about falling. That won’t happen. I won’t fall off the balcony. Even I know I can’t fall from the floor.
I’m worried about the entire balcony falling, detaching from the building and crashing to the ground—but only after it hits every single balcony in between. How is it even attached to the building? Screws? Concrete? Who put it up there? Were they drunk? Disgruntled? Insane? I was able to push these thoughts from my head when I could look at the mirror or talk to Kendra. Now, with nothing to drown out the noise in my head, all I can think of is the screws that hold the railing up and when was the last time they were inspected?
Probably never.
I have no idea whether Celine is safe from Violet or when Jonah will be back. I know nothing.
The good news is, I hear nothing from below. Hopefully, they’ll think some kid at the pool broke the mirror.
Because kids are always running around with antique sterling silver mirrors.
The bad news is, it’s almost dark.
Or maybe that’s the good news.
I reach for my backpack with a shaking hand. I fumble for the one distraction I have left. Celine’s picture. I take it out and stare at it in the waning light.
The day it was taken was the first day I’d told myself, screw it. I’m never going to not love this girl, the day I knew it would never work with Willow or any other girl because I would never stop thinking about Celine.
She’d been so beautiful that day, in a sweater the color of iceberg lettuce that perfectly set off her pale skin and dark hair. They’d been practicing the scene before Oliver and Dodger meet, the scene where Oliver is bullied by Noah Claypool. This guy, Tedder Strasky, was playing Noah, which was perfect casting because Tedder’s a serious bully, like the kind that puts guys’ heads into toilets (not mine, but still . . .). Celine had been playing Oliver halfheartedly. Acting wasn’t really her thing. But when Strasky said his line about Oliver’s mother being “a real bad ’un,” everything changed.
Oliver’s supposed to attack Noah, and considering Strasky is about twice Celine’s size it should have taken an impressive amount of stage combat to make it work. But as soon as Strasky said his line, Celine stood, launched herself at him, and practically pushed him off the stage. For a second, it was so real. I knew.
I knew, whatever happened, I wanted that girl on my side. She was a fighter.
Just like that day in biology class.
Now, she’s in bed, maybe dying.
I know if our positions were reversed and it was Celine in a situation where she could save me, she would not be cowering on the floor. She would not be worrying about how the balcony was screwed in.
She’d be fighting her way into Jonah’s room.
And that’s what I’m going to do.
What I am doing.
I pull myself up on the railing. I feel it wobble a little, hear it creak. I drop back down.
No, it didn’t wobble. It’s solid.
I’m solid.
I take a deep breath. Okay, I take five. I’m doing this. I don’t look down. I can barely see.
The distance between the two balconies is less than a foot. All I have to do is climb up on one, then down the other. All I have to do.
And if it falls off and crashes to the ground, I will just die. That’s all.
I read a book once, about auditioning. It said that you could combat nerves by imagining the worst-case scenario. Like, you don’t get the part, so you have no money so you starve and die. Death is the worst-case scenario. Some comfort.
But the worst-case scenario right now is that I don’t do it and Celine stays in that cold, gray place for the next fifty years.
Worse than death.
Death, I’ll risk.
I stuff the photo into my backpack, zip it, and throw it onto Jonah’s balcony.
I take one last breath and hold it.
I pull myself up on the railing and over.
Maybe it’s adrenaline rush that lets mothers lift cars off their infants. I pull up first one leg, then the other. I’m on top of the railing like I’m Spider-Man.
Okay, not exactly like Spider-Man, but pretty good. It holds. It’s not crashing to the ground. But the whole thing is like slow motion, like I’ve been here for an hour, and just as my foot is searching for the other balcony, the sky lights up with an explosion of red and gold.
Fireworks. Disney fireworks, which means there are a lot of them. Fifteen minutes at least.
I freeze. The balcony, the building, the entire city is shaking with explosions, first from one side, then another.
Think of Celine. Be brave like Celine. For Celine.
My foot finds the other rail. I don’t want to move. I want to stay, hug the railing forever.
No. I want to land on the other side, save Celine.
The fireworks explode like bombs bursting in air all around me. I wonder if this is how it feels to be in a war, like in the 1940s in London or Berlin.
The balcony’s trembling, and I’m trembling with it. I picture Celine on the other side, arms outstretched, beckoning to me, telling me that loving her isn’t a crazy idea.
My feet hit the ground.
I crumble to the floor.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
11
Okay, so I know I’m small. And being small sort of skews your perspective. So, possibly, you might see someone who’s just a little tall and think they look like Fezzik, the giant in The Princess Bride. Especially if you were already completely freaked out from hanging from a balcony two hundred feet up, during a fireworks display.
But really, I think this guy is literally eight feet tall.
And there are two of him.
Wait, the second guy is the one I talked to at the elevator, the one with the cut. He’s only seven feet tall. My bad. And I get a good view of the cut on his face because the first guy is lifting me by the shirt collar. It’s a festering, weirdly swollen open wound.
“You really should get that looked at,” I gasp as Fezzik strangles me with my own shirt because, even in stress situations, I can never just shut up. My mom says, no matter what happens, I always have my mouth to keep me company.
These guys aren’t talking much, though, unless you count cursing. Fezzik carries me into the room and swings me like a pendulum against the wall, then drops me. He starts to pick me up again.
“Stop!” I yell because that seems like a reasonable thing to say.
And, weirdly, they both do stop. They stop and stare at me like they think I’m going to say something brilliant. I try.
“I’m not here to hurt Jonah. I mean, how could I? Look at me.” I stare at the guy with the cut. “Does that thing feel hot when you touch it?”
The guy holds his monster-hand up to his face. “Yeah, really hot. Is that bad?”
“I’m not sure.” I’m glad no one’s picking me up, and I’m trying to prolong that. As I said to Allegra, talking is my superpower, my only superpower. “It gets a little warm just because it’s healing. But if it’s really hot, it might be infected. I knew a guy with a wound like that, and he was seriously ill.”
Actually, I don’t “know a guy.” It was a character on TV. And he died. But I keep that in
formation on a need-to-know basis. “Anyway, you should have it looked at.”
The behemoth puts his hand to his face. “Thanks, man.” He turns to his friend. “Otto, do you think it looks infected?”
Otto squints at it. “Could be. He’s right. You should get it looked at.” He turns back to me. “We need to get him out of here. He’ll be back soon.” He starts to pick me up again.
“Wait!” I scream. “Wait! Wait!”
He drops me again. Hard. My head is ringing. “What?”
“Please,” I say, channeling Westley from the same movie. I’m on my knees, more because I’m already down there than because I’m begging. But partly because of begging. “I have to talk to Jonah. I came all the way from Miami and climbed over a balcony.”
“What are you, in love with him? ’Cause he likes girls, lots of girls.”
“I know. That’s what I need to talk to him about, a girl. She’s my friend. And she’s dying.”
“Haven’t heard that one in a week.” The scarred guy is still touching his cut.
“No, it’s true. If you let me get my backpack, I could show you pictures of her. You could see.” I wish I had the mirror. With that, I could prove lots of things, including the existence of magic. I could check on Celine too. I push aside my worries about Violet. Kendra’s taking care of it.
But the mirror’s gone. I have, as usual, nothing but my big mouth.
So I start talking, telling them the whole story, about how beautiful Celine is, and how nice, all the things that happened to her, her parents dying and everything. At some point, the scarred guy (whose name, I find out, is Sherman) does get my backpack. He takes out the photos and shows them to Otto. I’ve got one of Celine, lying still on the bed. When he gets to that one, I’m practically crying. And so are Otto and Sherman.
“So you see,” I say, “it’s really important that I find Jonah. Only he can help.”
Otto looks at Sherman and shakes his head. “That little prick’s never going to help. He’ll probably fire us for letting him stay.”
“Tell him it would look bad in the papers if Jonah’s bodyguards beat up a shorter statured individual like myself.” They look at me, confused. “A little person, a dwarf. If a big guy beats up someone smaller, that’s . . . frowned upon.” This has gotten me out of many a fight (when my mouth has gotten me into one), questioning the guy’s manhood for hitting someone smaller.