Into the Mirror

I’m usually a pretty ordinary girl. Most of the time. I had cheerios for breakfast and pizza for dinner. I live in your world, that is to say, a boring and uneventful world. Nothing ever happens there. At least, that’s what I thought. Until- well...

Lily said I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I knew I couldn’t, anyway. But there are some things that are hard to keep to yourself. Even though no one would ever believe me, I can write it down in my diary. No one would read it, but I would still have kept my memories somewhere. Lily says she can’t stay forever. I have to remember her.

My name is Lila Turner, and I’m eleven years old. This all started... Well... long ago, before I can remember, but it happened yesterday. Well, ever since I can remember, I’ve been seeing movements out of the corner of my eye, even when nothing was there. I dismissed them from my brain, and by the time I was five, I just ignored them. But they were still there. I just didn’t bother to look for the source anymore.

Well, yesterday, I heard the thump. I spun around. I just saw my reflection, pale, and staring back at me. She was holding a stack of books, and one of them had dropped.

She blinked, put them down, straightened up, and waved at me.

“Oops.” She giggled nervously. “We weren’t supposed to let you know yet.”

I nearly fainted in shock.

“Who- What are you?!”

“That’s not a nice way to greet me! I’ve known you your whole life! I’m Lily. I’m your ‘reflection’.”

My jaw dropped.

She stuck out her hand. It splooshed through the mirror with a sound like someone breaking a vacuum seal and water cascading everywhere. She smiled, took my hand, and led me back through. “Hold your breath,” she warned.

Going through the mirror was like getting your head dunked in ice-cold water, then being perfectly warm and dry again. I resurfaced in a very familiar room, one that I had seen since childhood. It was my room. Mirrored. It smelled of the lavender perfume I had accidentally spilled the other day. A cool breeze was blowing from the fan beside my bed. The window seat with its faded red velvet cushion was sitting in the window overlooking the harbor. Just where everything was supposed to be. But it was all wrong. At first my eyes didn’t want to take it in, so I closed them and sat down for a couple of minutes. It helped. I decided to imagine I had never seen this room before, and it was completely new to me. That worked.

I explored the room. To the right was a window with a view of a garden of roses and peonies and wisteria and a thousand other flowers and plants I couldn’t begin to describe. Next to the bed with the blue blankets was a big bookshelf with books written in some foreign language, Oh, it was backwards English, of course! I saw an old battered copy of Treasure Island, a collection of Calvin and Hobbes books, and a lot more. I smiled. In the corner over there was a really old rocking horse. Its mane was falling off, and one of its eyes was missing. It had a crooked painted smile. It had the look of something very well loved. At the back of the room, where I had come from, instead of a mirror, though, there was a glimmering crystal archway. Opposite the archway was the faded old door that I had stared at for ages when I was little, trying to see if I could find anything secret concealed by its old oak panels. There never was anything. Of course. There was no magic in my world. This one, though, I wasn’t so sure about.

I hoped that there would be magic.

Lily opened the door with a creak.

“Sssh, Sofie’s sleeping.”

We tiptoed past the room of her baby sister. My baby sister was named Sofia.

“What’s your mom’s name? Every name in this world seems like it’s based on the names in my world or the other way around. My mom is Irene, so yours would be...?”

“Ilene. Shh.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

“We can’t let my mom know you’re here. You aren’t supposed to know about us yet.”

I was surprised to find that outside of the mirror viewer’s line of vision, the house was quite different. It wasn’t as new. There were all sorts of weird things, like creaky hollow stairs, and an old-fashioned coat rack. The walls were painted a faded blue. At one point I tripped, and the top of one of the steps flew off. Underneath was a pile of faded yellow documents.

Lily replaced the top and motioned angrily for me to shush.

We snuck downstairs to the old-looking kitchen, where a mournful tune was playing on the radio, and the smell of home-made baking was drifting on the breeze.

“I know you’re out there girls. Come on in and have some brownies. Yes, you too, Lila,” Came a very familiar voice.

I looked at Lily. The shrugged and went in. I followed her. There, cooking at a chipped old oven, was a face that was the exact mirror of my mother’s. No, duh! What am I saying?! Of course it was her mirror image! It was her mirror image! I smiled.