Eyes in the Mirror Read Online Free Page A

gotten through and I opened my eyes to look around, but all I got was soap in my eye. It burned.
    ***
    The bathwater didn’t discourage me, though. The mirror seemed like such a perfect place for this alternate universe. Walking to school two days later, I passed my reflection in a store window. I walked toward it, watching my reflection walk toward me. I tapped on the glass. Someone tapped back.
    For a moment I thought I had found it. I thought my reflection was there ready to talk to me, tapping back, ready to let me into her world. All I needed to do was know it was there, there was my…I looked past my reflection for a moment and noticed a guy cleaning the inside of the window. He was staring at me, snickering. He waved. I smiled but I felt my shoulders slump. I smiled a little more to try to make it seem like I wasn’t crazy.
    I became fascinated with mirrors. I’m sure everyone must have thought I was just enchanted with myself. I carried around a hand mirror and checked the mirrors in my locker and the school bathroom all the time. Of course, I couldn’t be sure that the alternate universe was in the mirror, but I had a gut instinct. The way you know when you’re walking down the street if the person behind you shouldn’t be there.
    I knew the alternate universe had to be related to the face in the mirror. My face, but not really mine because I have a birthmark on my right cheek and she has one on her left. After I realized this, I could have sworn that once in a while, I would see my reflection fall a half second behind me, but I was sure that was just my imagination. I wanted it to happen so badly that I was pretending to see it, even if it wasn’t there.
    ***
    A week later, I got home from school and stood in front of the full-length mirror in my closet. I tried opening the door and standing behind it. I tried standing in the closet in the dark. I stared at the mirror. “Abracadabra, open sesame,” I said to my reflection. I stood back and looked her directly in the eye, saying, “I’d like to get in, please. Open the door and make way for Dee. I’m ready to come in and I want to meet you, so open up.” I thought I saw my reflection twitch, but no door opened. None of the words made any difference.
    The girl in the mirror was exactly who I wanted to meet, someone who lived in a world like mine but was still just the opposite, but it wasn’t until my mom got involved that I had any sort of breakthrough.
    She was worried about me. I guess she, of all people, couldn’t believe I was vain enough to be looking at myself all day, but she also couldn’t understand what I was looking at besides my own reflection. I came home from school the day after I’d tried all the magic words to find her taking down the mirror in my room.
    â€œMom, my mirror!” I screeched.
    â€œSweetheart, I’m concerned about what you’re seeing in this thing. It’s a distraction to you. I don’t want you getting involved in this…in this staring at yourself all the time.” She said it calmly, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t argue her out of her decision. She held the top of the mirror firmly, and I grabbed the bottom. As though I would ever overpower my mom. We must have pulled and let go at the same time because the mirror fell and broke at the same moment that my mom lost her balance and fell into the shards on the floor, disappearing to the other side of the mirror.
    I saw it in slow motion, but it happened so fast. For a second, it looked like she was going to fall and cut herself on the glass. But rather than getting cut, her hand went straight through the floor, and then her arm. It was like when you see a car accident happening, but you’re a block away and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
    She just kept falling, and every time I reached for her, she seemed to slip through my fingers. Ghostlike. Disappearing into my