by Vox Day
“Well, I do!”
“Of course you do. For the first time in your life you aren’t juggling three different guys, and you don’t know what to do with yourself. So you’re butting into my love life, which is stupid since he’s just my first boyfriend and who ends up with their first boyfriend anymore.”
“You are, like, the least romantic girl ever. If you were Juliet, you’d look at Romeo and be, like, gee, sorry dude.”
“If I was Juliet I wouldn’t have gone for him in the first place. I’d be like, hey guy, do you ever shut up? Now, give me a hand and help me up. I’ve got to go for a jog before my hamstrings tighten up on me.”
She grunted as Holli helped her to her feet, then shook out her legs, first her right, then her left. She glanced sidelong at her twin’s face, but her expression was neutral and told her nothing. Did she really want to talk about Jason, or was that just a cover for something else. When she reached the door, she hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should turn around and badger the truth out of her, but then she remembered how many times she’d tried, and failed, to do that over the summer. She sighed, feeling vaguely guilty, then flashed a cheerful smile.
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so.”
“I’ll be here. See ya later.”
Chapter 18
Lying to the Mirror
So go on and scream
Scream at me, I’m so far away
I won’t be broken again
I’ve got to breathe, I can’t keep going under
—Evanescence, (”Going Under”)
Holli felt strangely dismayed as her sister left the room, but she didn’t really know what to say. She wasn’t in the mood to be by herself, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to admit that to anyone, not even Jami. It was strange, and she didn’t know exactly when it had started, but she had really didn’t like it when she found herself alone now. Why, she wasn’t sure, exactly, but a vague sense of unease seemed to creep upon her at times, as if solitude left her unprotected from some shadowy, nameless thing that stalked her.
She hadn’t been sleeping all that well either, not because her dreams were disturbed, but because she just couldn’t fall asleep. In fact, her dreams, when she remembered them in the morning, were often the highlight of her day. Several times she had woken with a hazy image of Eric in her mind and she knew she had dreamed about him, but only once had she seen him clearly and remembered it afterwards.
The strange thing was that she was still not entirely sure if she’d only had a daydream or if it might have been some peculiar form of waking vision. She’d been reading a magazine one afternoon when she found herself standing before an unfamiliar house, an olive-green house with a cobblestoned courtyard which led to the front door. She opened the door, and found herself surrounded by walls hung with bold and unusual paintings, art that was not quite frightening but was a shade too colorful to be entirely comfortable. She shied away from a bright yellow glow which threatened to overwhelm her, and turned instead to the left, towards a warm, dark cavern of a room, all weathered grey wood and brick.
She caught her breath as she saw a familiar, but unexpected person seated on the far side of the room. It was Eric, sitting on a white couch in front of long window with rust-orange curtains. He was not lounging with his feet on the narrow, rectangular coffee table as he usually did, but was sitting upright, with both hands on his knees, almost as if he was expecting something. She had made no sound, but somehow, he detected her presence, and his eyes lit up with joy, though only the faintest smile crossed his lips.
He glanced sideways, with a solicitous look that suggested he was being careful not to make too much noise, and for the first time she realized that there was someone else on the couch beside him, lying down with a white blanket wrapped around her. Holli could not actually see the prone figure, and the top edge of the blanket obscured the person’s face, but she felt sure that it was a woman sleeping there. Or perhaps not sleeping; so tightly wrapped, the white blanket looked as if it might have been a shroud.
At first, she felt reluctant to go to him, unsure of herself, but after her tentative first step, certainty filled her and she could feel her heart pounding with anticipation as she quickly, but quietly, walked towards him across the bare wooden floor. He rose as she approached, but instead of embracing her, he only held out his hand. Strangely, she was not offended, but she took it with a sense of shy wonder. And as she did so, he smiled, a shining, affectionate smile of such genuine good will that it warmed her body as if she were standing in the radiance of the noonday sun. She smiled back at him, in fact, she could do nothing but smile, for the joy that filled her heart was almost too much to bear.
She felt a strange tightness around her mouth, as if her delight was threatening to burst forth from her face, as if her smile could not possibly stretch wide enough to convey the happiness overflowed her in his presence. He, too, was without words, and yet he did not need them, so pure and white was the light that glowed in his gentle eyes. He only smiled, and somehow, that was enough—more than enough—for there was perfect understanding in the mutual joy they shared in the simple companionship of the lost other.
His hand felt strange, waxen and paper-thin. She could feel each separate line distinctly, as if they were a strange Braille that she was meant to read somehow, but the message was beyond her. She did not care. She was content to rest in the salving warmth of his regard, drinking him in all the while. Not for one moment did she look away from him, nor did he drop his eyes from hers.
And then, it was time to go. She retreated slowly, glancing again at the woman, but her sleeping figure did not stir and her face was still obscured. When she looked back at Eric, he was still smiling, but she had the feeling that he was bidding her farewell. She tried to speak, tried to call out to him, in vain. Tears filled her eyes as she watched him, the woman and the dark room gradually fade away.
She had awoken with a start, sitting in an awkward position at her makeup table with her forehead resting on the flat surface and a kink in her neck. Something dripped from her nose as she sat up, and she saw two perfect liquid circles on the tabletop where her nose had been. She dipped her finger in one, breaking its flawless form, then touched the tip to her tongue. Tears.
What did it mean? She didn’t know. Was she happy or was she sad? She didn’t know that, either. Crazy, probably. Her hands were shaking and she wanted to scream. Then she heard Christopher’s voice coming from the kitchen; she couldn’t really hear what he was saying, but she found it comforting all the same. Desperately needing to remain within earshot, she wandered into the living room. There was a long, rectangular mirror over the fireplace and she started to look away, afraid of what she would see there. But something inside her rebelled against the fear, and for the first time in months, she dared to meet her own eyes. They were older, somehow, they looked sadder, if no wiser. And in them were two reflections within the reflection. One of them, she felt sure, was still the happy little girl that had no name, the one who was looking out of this unfeeling shell that looked exactly like her.
You are a bad, bad person, she told the mirror silently. You’re nothing but a fake! How much longer did she have to pretend that her life had been torn apart and ruined forever by Eric's death? What was wrong with her? Sure, she had liked him, a lot, but she was only fifteen! Jami might think she didn’t ever want to get married, but Holli knew better. She knew she wanted a family one day, but she’d also known perfectly well from the start that her romance with Eric wasn’t ever going to survive college. In fact, she probably would have been fine if he’d dumped her for another girl—okay, majorly P.O.’ed for a week or two until she met someone else—but since it ended the way it did, there was just no end to it! Everyone had turned her into some sort of tragic survivor, as if she were a saint or something.
She’d come to hate the way that the coffee shop hushed noticeably when she and Jami walked in, and the sympathetic look in everyone’s ey
es. The sad puppy look was always the same, from the old married women who blew in with their special silver car coffee mugs to the dweebs who parked there for hours with their laptops. No one saw her as herself anymore, she was simply “the girl whose boyfriend got shot at the prom.”
And if it was this bad during the summer, she couldn’t even imagine what it was going to be like once school started in September. The worst thing was that it was all her fault. At first, she’d enjoyed the attention, all the weird celebrity that the brush with tragedy had given her. The Martin-Wallace school shootings were the biggest and most awful thing that had ever happened in the history of Mounds Park, and of all the victims, Eric, who’d made the homecoming court, had been most popular. The best-looking, too, so of course, the picture that was always in all the newspapers was one her Dad had taken of the two of them in front of the limo that afternoon.
It was a strange sort of kick, but it had been weirdly easy to fall into. She didn’t know when she’d first realized that she was faking it—maybe faking it was the wrong word, overdoing it was probably closer to the truth—but that was when she’d first begun to feel the strange sense of detachment from herself. It wasn’t too long before she found it hard to keep from laughing when someone she didn’t know would walk up to her and tell her how sorry they were about Eric, even as she would start to put on a delicate hint of the expected waterworks lurking behind her eyes
God, I hate myself! What is wrong with me? Why do you just leave me hanging out to dry here? Are you as disgusted with me as I am? If you are, I don’t blame you. I don’t like getting off on this sympathy stuff—I mean, I did, but I don’t now! But how do I stop it? Help me stop it!
She tried to imagine the look on the face of the next guy trying to be nice to her if she just blew up in their face and told them: “Look, he was just a boyfriend, all right? And he’s dead! Now shut up about him and ask me out, will you?” Right, they’d be all over that. Any normal guy would totally think she was some kind of psycho-ho with less feeling than your average rock.
Well, she knew one thing for sure. She didn’t want to sit around the house by herself tonight, so she’d better ask Christopher for a ride before he finalized his plans with Rachel. After pushing her straying bangs out of her eyes, she turned from the mirror and headed towards the kitchen.
“Hey!” Christopher shot a lethal glare at Jami as she flounced triumphantly away.
“Hey, you.” Rachel’s voice was soft, and much lower than his sister’s. It always made her sound like she was being coy, although he knew now that it was just shyness. “You were killing elves? That doesn’t sound very nice. What did they ever do to you?”
He made a mental note to strangle Jami at the first opportunity.
“Elves,” he said with remarkable restraint, “were not involved. I’m afraid you were misinformed. I was playing ASL with Don.”
“Oh, is that your game with the little toy soldiers? Those teeny little tanks are so adorable!”
With some difficulty, he managed to choke down the urge to deliver an extensive monologue on the subject of the finest historical simulation of tactical World War II infantry combat, the allure of its intellectual challenge, the difficulty involved in mastering its complex details, and the aesthetic, not to mention technically challenging, appeal of painting the miniatures. Not only would it be received with the telephonic equivalent of a blank stare, but it would only make him look like a bigger dork than he already did.
Assuming that was possible, of course. It had been a bitter truth to swallow, but swallow it perforce he had. Hard as it was to accept, chicks did not, in fact, dig guys who played computer games. At least not on that basis.
“Did you win?” Rachel asked him.
“The issue is still in doubt.”
It wasn’t a total lie, but it was stretching the truth. A little. Okay, a lot. He quickly changed the subject. “So, are you doing anything tonight?”
“That depends. Do you want to see me?”
He smiled, picturing her long-lashed brown eyes, always partially-hidden by her straight, chestnut-colored hair. After two months of summer vacation, she had a killer tan that brought out the whites of her eyes most beautifully and made her teeth almost appear to glow during the dark summer evenings. She was tall and strikingly slender, and Christopher was still surprised that he’d ever had the guts to ask her out. Of course, his sisters had had something to do with that. It’s always easier to go for it when you know they’re going to say yes.
“You know I do,” he told her sincerely. “What are you up for?”
“I don’t care.”
He grimaced. He’d lived with three women for most of his sixteen years, and although he wasn’t exactly fluent in their language, he knew enough to know that ‘I don’t care’ did not indicate actual indifference on the part of the female speaking. The proper interpretation was something more on the lines of: “I don’t know, at least not right off the top of my head, so be a sport and come up with something that you think I might like. But if I don’t like it, I’ll be sure to let you know right away so you can think of something else.” It was a pain, but he also knew better than to fish for a suggestion that was never going to be forthcoming.
“What if we went to the evening service tonight, instead of tomorrow morning,” he suggested. “I heard they’ve got a new speaker in town this weekend, this young guy from Texas, I think. Then, afterwards, we can go to Barnes and Noble, the big one by the movie theatre, you know, with the coffee shop in it.”
“That sounds good,” Rachel answered, sounding pleased. A swing and a hit! He mentally high-fived himself. Rachel was an avid reader, much to Christopher’s delight, and she shared his love of bookstores.
“I have some credit left on that gift card my aunt gave me for my birthday, and it would be awesome if I could sleep in tomorrow morning.”
Christopher jumped as someone cleared her throat behind him. It was Holli. “You just about gave me a heart attack,” he accused her.
“Sorry. Hey, can I get a ride to church tonight?”
Drat! Had she overheard him talking? He really didn’t want to have Holli along making a third wheel tonight, but you couldn’t exactly tell your sister to bag worshipping the Lord because you were kind of hoping for some quality kissing later.
“You’re, ah, not going tomorrow or anything?”
“No, I want to go tonight.”
“Um, sure, I guess.” He winced, but forced himself to tell Rachel now. Better to get it over with than surprise her with Holli later. “Say, is it okay if Holli comes along with us?”
“Sure,” Rachel answered. Her ready agreement came a little too quickly for his liking. He glanced over his shoulder, upon which Holli was tapping.
“You don’t need to take me back, Angie will pick me up there.” His relief must have been apparent on his face, because she winked playfully and punched him. “I wouldn’t wreck things for you, you know that!”
Good old Holli. Of course she wouldn’t! He returned to the phone.
“Hey, she’s meeting Angie after church!”
“You don’t sound very disappointed.”
“I’m not. Should I be?”
“Don’t be silly. What time will you be here?”
“Five o’clock.”
“Okay, I’ll be ready.” She paused for a moment. “Bye, Christopher.”
“See you soon! Bye.”
He pressed the disconnect and absently placed the cordless on the nearest flat surface, quite happy with the outcome. Not only was he going to get to spend a whole evening alone with Rachel, which was great in and of itself, but their plans left him with more than three hours to continue the British assault. Don had killed the one tank, true, but in doing so, he’d revealed the disposition of his entire force in only the second turn. Christopher still had two Churchills left, more than three platoons of infantry, and plenty of time to work with. The unfortunate tank and its crew would soon be avenged!
Christopher whistled cheerfully as he walked down the basement stairs towards the little battlefield and the waiting enemy commander.
Four hours later, he was sitting quietly in a chair in between Rachel and Holli, holding Rachel’s hand as he continued to reflect obsessively on what had gone wrong. The ‘shreck-toting tank hunters had cunningly used an orchard to cover their withdrawal into town, surviving what Christopher had intended as a lethal barrage of firepower. The German machine gun crew had also executed an orderly retreat, and in doing so managed to slow the British advance into the all-important exterior line of buildings. The tide had finally turned against the Germans in turn six, as his last Churchill bagged the Jagdpanzer with a nicely placed side shot and his infantry took out the machine gun in close combat, but the delays had eaten up too much precious time. The last turn came to a close with his troops controlling only five of Sinagoga’s seven main buildings, one short of the number required for a British victory. Another ignominious defeat, about which he’d be hearing for quite some time. Don was many things, but being a modest winner was not one of them.
“Do you think we should volunteer too?” Rachel squeezed his hand, and the sound of her voice pulled him back to the present.
“What’s that?”
Christopher looked around in alarm. On every side, people were raising their arms, some cheerfully, others more reluctantly. Only weeks ago, their fast-growing church had moved from its meeting place at his old elementary school to this massive building, which had once housed a Home Depot. The new auditorium was huge and held something like three thousand people. It was only half-full for the Saturday night service, but even so, there were more than six hundred people holding up their hands.
“Um, what are we volunteering for, exactly?”
“Don’t you ever listen?” Rachel sounded unsurprised. This wasn’t the first time she’d caught him zoning out. “They’re going to have a crusade here in September, at the Metrodome, and they want people to volunteer to pray for it every day.”
