Eyes in the Mirror Read Online Free Page B

floor. Into my floor? How can someone just disappear into a floor, into shards of glass on the floor?
    For a moment I thought I would be able to grab her leg, but just as I reached for it, she was gone. Gone into the mirror. Into the shards of a mirror that was broken on my floor. Into the world that I hadn’t even really believed existed. But there had to be something. There was no other explanation.
    She should have just fallen and gotten scratched up. Her hands should have bled, and maybe her pants should have gotten cut up. But instead, she just kept falling. Falling past everything into something. Or into nothing.
    I stared after her, looking at the empty hands I had thought were holding on to her. What had just happened? I was speechless, terrified, alone, petrified, horrified. I had made my mother disappear, the one person I loved most in the entire world. The one person I could trust, the one person who knew what to do when terrible things happened. I stared at my colorless face in the shards of glass on my floor.
    My mom is usually the person I go to when I don’t know what to do. She’s the one who fixes things when I mess them up. She’s the one who…just disappeared. People don’t just disappear. They don’t just fall through floors or into mirrors or into other worlds. How would you get them out if they did? Where was my mother? What the hell had just happened? There was only one person who, maybe, might believe me.
    ***
    I ran to his house and knocked on the door. Jamie answered and looked at me just a little bit wide-eyed.
    â€œDee, what’s wrong? You look…Are you okay? Come in. Sit down.”
    I tried to catch my breath as I sat down and started talking. “I’m…Well, I think…I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
    Then I blurted out the whole story. I was terrified he was going to think I was crazy. I thought I was crazy. But I had just seen it; it had just happened a minute ago. But I still couldn’t believe it. When I got to the part about trying to find the door, he whistled quietly, “I don’t think anybody has ever taken me that seriously, let alone when I’m stoned.”
    â€œFocus! My mom is missing!”
    â€œOkay, so what do we need to do? How do we get her back out?” he asked, popping up and beginning to pace back and forth across the living room.
    â€œI think I have to go in after her. I mean, now that I know how, I don’t think there’s any other way to get her out.”
    â€œDo you really think that’s a good idea? I mean, what if it doesn’t work? What if you get stuck, or you get hurt or something? What if you didn’t see what you thought you saw? What if…” The what-ifs kept coming. And finally they ended with, “Why don’t…why don’t I go with you?”
    I looked at him. “Oh, no. You don’t have to get involved. This is my thing. I just wanted advice, and I needed someone to talk to.”
    â€œI want to go with you,” he said, sitting down on the couch next to me and rocking back and forth a little bit.
    â€œI really think this might be something I have to do alone. This is the world that I found, and it’s my mom I’m trying to get back. I don’t know. Plus I think it would help if you could be here to cover for me. Can you come up with a good reason for me to be gone?”
    Jamie popped up and started pacing in a circle around the living room again. I loved that he was always moving, never boring. “Well, your mom’s a nurse. So you two could be going away to take care of someone. Like your grandma or something.”
    That made more sense than anything I could have thought of. And the babbling that came out of my mouth was nothing compared to the babbling going on inside my head. There were thousands of what-ifs. What if she was already gone? What if there was no way to bring her back? What if I never saw my mom