The Looking Glass

by Janet McNally

  “Men,” Sadie says, flopping down on the bench. She pulls her knees up to her chest.

  “Yes,” I say. “They comprise slightly less than half of the population.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she says. “Those inferior life spans of theirs. I can’t wait until I’m an old lady. All the men will be gone, and it’ll just be us left.” She looks at me. “Will you be my roommate in the nursing home?”

  “Yes,” I say, smiling. “I’d be happy to.” This is not untrue: Old Lady Sadie is bound to be a doozy.

  “Good,” she says. “That’s settled.” She leans her head back on the bench and closes her eyes. My pulse is still all wonky, so this is when I tell her. I need to say it out loud.

  “Sadie,” I say. “Strange things have been happening.”

  She opens her eyes. “What kind of things?”

  “Fairy-tale things, I think.” I wait. I take a breath and let it out. “I saw this girl in a red shawl with a wolf-dog, and then Rapunzel was in the subway.”

  Sadie’s just staring at me, blinking once in a while. I realize how this must sound. At least Jack is too far away to hear it.

  “You saw some of them too. The fox, and the girl with the lost shoe earlier,” I say. “Like Cinderella.”

  “Cinderella,” Sadie repeats. She’s still staring at me. She blinks her long lashes.

  “And there was this particularly aggressive bluebird,” I say.

  Sadie’s eyes widen. “It attacked you?”

  “No!” I laugh a little, in spite of myself. “It didn’t attack me. But it landed right next to me and then just kept staring at me.”

  “Bluebird.” Sadie’s looking at me like she’s trying to understand. Or maybe she’s looking at me like I’ve finally lost it.

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a bluebird in Sleeping Beauty,” she says. “But he’s actually a guy. He dances with Princess What’s-Her-Name.”

  “Florine,” I say, and I can’t help but smile. Sadie doesn’t really get ballet, but she pays attention because of me.

  “Maybe it’s a sign.” Sadie tilts her head. “From the universe. Maybe you should try to find Julia.”

  This is why Sadie’s my best friend. She makes all the right connections.

  “Actually,” I say. “There’s something else.”

  Sadie waits. I open the back cover and hand the book to her.

  “I didn’t notice this at first,” I say, “but she drew a picture in the book. This wasn’t here before.”

  She holds the book close to her face for a moment, examining the flower, then looks back at me. “What does this mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I have to go see Grace, I guess. I sent a text to Rose. She says she hasn’t seen Julia, and that I need to let her go.” My molecules start vibrating again. My blood whirls in my veins.

  “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

  Rose wouldn’t lie to me unless she was trying to protect me. And given what I was asking—

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Sadie is frowning, thinking. She fusses with the strap on her sandal. “Rose is at Princeton?”

  I nod.

  “Thatcher?”

  “I have no idea.” Honestly, I haven’t wanted to know. I was glad when he left town. I didn’t care where he went.

  Sadie takes out her phone and begins tapping furiously on the screen.

  “Philadelphia,” she says, a few moments later. “Being a burnout on Daddy’s dime, I assume.” She turns her phone my way and there’s Thatcher’s face, on the staff page of his father’s consulting firm.

  I look at it. He looks mostly the same as he did the last time I saw him, in the hospital after the worst day. Same brown eyes and dumb smile and dark brown hair. “I didn’t know they had offices in Philly.”

  “Maybe they didn’t before.” Sadie tosses her phone into her bag. “Daddy Price probably started a brand-new office just to get Thatcher out of town.” She shakes her head. “Who’s Daniela?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I can almost see the gears in Sadie’s head turning.

  “You could email Thatcher,” she says.

  The idea of this makes me feel sick. What would I say? Remember my sister? The one whose life you helped ruin? I think maybe you know where she is. Either he wouldn’t answer, or he would, and his answer would be something like Rose’s. There’s no way he’d tell me anything useful through email.

  But Julia sent me a fairy tale book, and here’s what I know about fairy tales: when you have to, you go into the woods. You trust that you’ll find your way out.

  “What if I went to see them in person?” I ask. “That way I’d know if they were telling the truth.”

  Sadie lights up. She loves this idea.

  “Start with Rose,” she says, leaning forward. “Get right in her face so you can see if she’s lying. Shake her down.”

  I smile. “She’s my cousin. Not a perp on a crime show.”

  “Sure,” Sadie says. “But if she’s lying, you’ll have to use perp tactics on her.”

  I give her a raised eyebrow.

  “Not handcuffs. Just proximity.” Sadie’s eyes are bright. “Go next week!”

  I frown. “But I’m supposed to be at Fancy Dance Camp.” It’s a reflexive reaction, I know—I’m a Good Girl—thus I can’t quite imagine skipping.

  Sadie makes a face. “Do you really need to go drink smoothies and get massages with a bunch of ballerinas? I’m going to lose you to them soon anyway.” Her tone is about three steps short of sad, and it makes me lean toward her.

  “Hey,” I say. “You’re not going to lose me.”

  “Sure,” she says. She moves her head in a shake it off kind of way. “Anyway, this is the right answer. I know it.”

  I think I know it too, and I feel a fizzy sort of excitement rise in my chest. “So, do I just take a bus?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I think I have an idea.”

  Sadie always has a capital-I Idea.

  “Let me figure it out,” she says, “and then I’ll meet you at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Okay,” I say. Sadie unfolds her legs and stands up, then heads over to the cluster of guys off to our left. I keep sitting. I feel a little dizzy, actually.

  Near the end, Julia meant chaos. She meant lies and sickness, a too-tight feeling in my chest. She turned my body into a galaxy, molecules always swirling and spinning apart. Being near her was like standing next to the sun. She blotted everything else out.

  I hear a low rumble, and when I turn in the direction of the river I can see that someone’s setting off fireworks way downtown. A crimson burst of light explodes across the sky, then rains glitter over the water. Or what I assume must be the water, because from this angle it’s hard to tell. Artificial stars in gleaming white streak across the sky, and after that a pinwheel in shades of blue.

  The sky goes black for a full ten seconds. Then there’s a flash even higher in the sky, and I crane my neck to see it.

  My heart knows the shape before my brain does. It’s Julia’s flower, the one she wrote our names on, lit up purple above me. That same shape repeats again and again across the sky like some giant is block-printing it up there in sparks and chemicals. I look for Sadie—to point to it, to show her—but I don’t see her right now.

  So I watch it sparkle and fade by myself.

  Signs and Signals

  IT’S LATE NOW AND I’M leaning against the railing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Sadie. I don’t know if she’s up giving a prolonged, kissy goodbye to Tennis Dude or what, but I feel confused and spinny and I want to go home. In general, and definitely before I have to see Jack again, lest he glare at me with that you are a weirdo, aren’t you? look in his green eyes. Or asks me to sign over my firstborn child to him, Rumpelstiltskin-style, since he thinks he saved my life. Anything’s possible at this point. I hear footsteps on the stairs behind me and turn around. Sadie’s bare
legs appear at the top of the flight, then the shorts-wearing rest of her.

  “Success,” she says. She’s grinning.

  I smile too. Because we’re solving something. We’re figuring something out. “The plan?” I ask.

  Sadie nods. “Jack,” she says.

  “‘Jack’ is not a plan.”

  “Um, he kind of is.” Sadie is smiling, cat-that-ate-the-canary-style. “You know my dad gave Jack his old Volvo, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. I have a vague memory of Jack blah-blah-blahing about a car of some sort.

  “He loves to drive that stupid car,” Sadie says. “He’ll take you. He’ll deliver you to all the people on your list.”

  My stomach goes into a free fall. “Your brother would never want to do that,” I say. “He doesn’t even like me. He thinks I’m a bad influence.”

  “He doesn’t.” Sadie waves off the idea. “And anyway, he doesn’t have to like you. He just has to drive you. I may have already asked him.”

  “Sadie!”

  She puts up a stop-sign hand. “He’ll do it. Listen. It’s perfect. I had already convinced him to come see my dad for one night. Drive down, drive back. This just means that it’ll take a little longer, and he’ll get to drive more. With excellent company.” She gestures toward me like she’s trying to sell a boat with a hole in it. Sure, it doesn’t hold water as well as it used to, she’d say, but it’s a fabulous deal!

  “And you,” she says, “can make sure he actually does that.”

  Sadie is actually beaming, she’s so satisfied with herself. I’m frowning so hard I’m sure my eyebrows are meeting in the middle.

  Driving down the Eastern Seaboard with Sadie’s cranky brother is not on my top-ten list of Great Ideas for the Summer, but I don’t have a whole lot of choices. If I stay in town, it’s becoming increasingly likely that something terrible, or ridiculous, or terribly ridiculous will happen. (I’ll be imprisoned in a gingerbread house! Kidnapped by a wicked stepmother! Eaten by a wolf!)

  Right? That’s obviously where this is heading.

  Plus, leaving town to find Julia feels like dangling out on a ledge, but with my heart instead of my body. And that feeling is a feeling I like.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay?” Sadie sounds delighted. “Yay!” She throws her arms around me and I let myself be hugged.

  When she releases me, we walk out to the street. I feel a little dizzy, like gravity has been revoked and I’m about to float off in the atmosphere. Which, of course, would spell my doom as Jack has explained. This is what I’m imagining—the weightlessness, the floating feeling, the approaching star-studded sky—when I hear something behind me. Hoofbeats—actual hoofbeats—on pavement. A horse. I look at Sadie, who’s glancing behind us. Her eyes are wide.

  When I turn around, I see a carriage heading our way. The horse—a sleek chestnut, no blinders on, with a blue sash wound around his halter—clip-clops the remaining thirty feet, and then his driver stops him right in front of us. The horse stomps his hooves a few times and snorts.

  “Well, hello,” says Sadie. The horse swings his huge head toward her and sniffs her ear.

  The driver hops out and steps to the door of the carriage, which is so close to me I could reach out and touch its glossy black side.

  “My lady,” he says, extending his hand toward me.

  I open my mouth and then close it again. Because what the hell do you say to that? I look at Sadie, and I expect her to be amazed. But she’s just her normal fierce self.

  “Dude,” she says. “We don’t know you. There’s no way we’re getting into your carriage.”

  He smiles and tips his hat—his actual HAT—to us. Then he and his horse go clip-clopping off into the dark, the lights on the back of the carriage blinking gold until they reach the end of the street and wink out.

  Looking for Trouble

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I’M STANDING on Grace’s hallway doormat with my dog at my feet, waiting for her to answer. Pavlova’s panting. I can feel my heart butterflying behind my rib cage, even though I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s just Grace, my second sister. Grace, who’s been around since she started taking ballet classes with Julia before I was even born. And she knows I’m coming.

  Pavlova hops up to put her front feet on the door and looks up at me. “She’s on her way,” I say. She already buzzed us in from outside.

  The hallway here is dark, and Grace’s door is painted the deep green of a woodland cottage. In the middle is a small square grate with frosted glass behind it. I can’t see past the glass except for the pearly light coming through it, and then the shadow as Grace approaches. I take a breath and hold it. I let it out as she turns the lock.

  When Grace opens the door, she looks beautiful, as usual. She’s wearing a long, loose-fitting tunic with leggings. Her feet are bare. She’s not wearing makeup but her dark brown skin is still flawless, dewy and smooth. Her eyes look sad.

  “Sylvie,” she says. She opens the door a little wider. “Come in.” She folds me right into a hug and I feel a catch in my breath. I haven’t seen her much this year—we passed in the NBT hallways a few times, and every time she’d touch my shoulder or squeeze my hand, but that was it. She’d keep walking without saying much. I might as well have lost two sisters when Julia left.

  When Grace lets me go, I look at the living room behind her. It’s large, with big windows through which I can see the brick building across the way. The walls are white. None of that matters as much, though, as the fact that there are plants everywhere. Palm trees in terra-cotta pots on the floor, baskets hanging from every window frame, tiny succulents in ceramic mugs on the coffee table. It wasn’t this way before. Honestly, it’s a little out of control.

  Julia lived here with Grace for a while, nearly two years ago. Before her first surgery and all the trouble that followed. They moved in together when they became members of the corps. Julia packed her things into my mother’s fancy luggage, and Everett and I helped her and Grace carry stuff up the stairs. I think the only plant they had then was a peace lily my mother sent as a housewarming gift. It’s gained a lot of friends in the meantime.

  I step farther into the room, Pavlova at my heels. It’s humid in here, like a jungle, but the air smells so clean. It’s verdant and lush and leafy. Bookshelves edged with trailing vines line the wall next to the blue sofa I watched the movers bring in two years ago. It’s cat-scratched now. Pavlova trots right over to it and hops up.

  “Just make yourself at home,” I say to her. Then I turn to Grace. “Sorry my dog is rude.”

  She shrugs. “It’s okay with me. She might have to apologize to the cat, though.”

  “Noted,” I say. “So what’s up with the plants?”

  Grace smiles. “I don’t know,” she says. “I guess I have a green thumb.” She reaches out and touches the fringed leaf of a fern. “It seemed empty here after Jules moved out. I bought a few, and then a few more.” She gestures toward the room. “It became a thing.”

  “I can see that,” I say. “I think it’s pretty.” True, but also pretty overwhelming. “You never got a new roommate?”

  “No,” Grace says. “It’s rent-stabilized, so I’ve been able to cover it. I think in the beginning I thought Jules would come back and she’d move in like we planned.” She shakes her head. “Now I just like living alone. Plus, your dad paid Julia’s half for six months after she left.” She looks a little embarrassed. “I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he insisted.”

  “Really?” I don’t know why this surprises me. It’s sounds like something my father would do: throw money at a problem. I never considered what Jules moving out would have meant for Grace. It’s not like corps members are bringing in the big bucks.

  Grace nods. A teakettle whistles in the kitchen.

  “Do you want tea?” Grace asks.

  “Sure,” I say, and she goes into the kitchen. I sit down on the far corner of the sofa since Pavlova’s stretched out over much o
f the rest. For a tiny dog, she can really take up space. Vines fall over the bookcase next to me, covered in heart-shaped leaves. I reach out to touch one.

  It moves.

  I swear it does. It moves before my fingers reach it, drifting to the side a little and catching on another vine, winding itself further into a tangle of leaves. It leaves an open space, and in the middle of that is a photograph in a frame.

  It’s of Julia and Grace in gleaming pale pink costumes, their arms thrown around each other. The light from the flash reflects off the beading on their bodices. Their smiles are wide.

  I remember this performance. I was there in the dressing room, the first time Julia took me along with her. I was fourteen and she was twenty-one. I sat in a folding chair next to her at the vanity, watching her apply her lipstick in the big square mirror on the wall. She didn’t seem nervous at all. She was as calm as a quiet pond—no ripples, just smooth blue water. Her eyes were already done by the makeup artist: black winged liner, shimmery silver shadow, and false eyelashes so thick I wondered if they made it hard to blink. The lights lining the mirror shone like small suns, but Jules looked straight into the glass. And then she looked at me.

  “What do you think, Sylvie?”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  She smiled. “You can’t trust a looking glass,” she said, quoting Miss Inez.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said. “You look beautiful.”

  I watched in the mirror as the other apprentices glided behind us. Irina, Pia, and Marisol, who ruffled my hair with her long fingers. They weren’t dancing Swan Lake, but they still reminded me of birds. Herons, maybe, balancing on long legs, trailing glittering feathers. They were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, made more beautiful by the fact that they were in a dressing room, not onstage. It felt like I was seeing a spectacular accident.

  Grace appeared next to me then and squeezed my shoulder. Her tulle skirt was a cloud around her waist. Her lips were painted a dark shade of berry.

  Julia stood up and lifted her leg in front of her, toes in a hard point. She winced, then took a deep breath and forced her face into a smile.