The Looking Glass

by Jessica Arnold

  As she reached down to pick up the book, the towel slipped from her hands and tumbled into the pool. Quickly, Alice bent over the water to pull it out. Her hand closed around the edge of it, but then it slipped away from her. Water was soaking into the towel, a shadow that ate the edges first and then crept quickly toward the middle. She reached into the water and grabbed a corner, pulled it toward her, but the towel didn’t budge and her hand came up empty.

  “What the … ?”

  Alice knew she wasn’t what anyone would call muscled, but she wasn’t that frail either. She watched the towel as it began to sink slowly into the water and remembered how, when she was drowning, it didn’t matter how hard she pulled or how fast she kicked—nothing worked. It didn’t add up. As a kid, she’d been in swim lessons for years. Drowning had always seemed like the remotest of possibilities.

  Maybe—could it be there was something wrong with the water? She watched it rippling around the towel for a minute and it did seem sinister somehow, gleaming in folds of reflected moonlight. Tentatively, she cupped her hands and dipped them in. But when she pulled them out … no, that couldn’t be right. She blinked hard and tried again. And again. But every single time her hands broke the surface, the same, completely impossible thing happened.

  The water went right through her.

  “No,” she whispered. No. No. No. No.

  Her teeth were chattering hard and fast as she held her hands up, pulled them close to her, then out as far as they would go—squinted at the skin. Gulping, trying to stay calm, she held one hand up to the sky so that it covered the moon … or at least it should have. Through her palm, she could see a glowing circle, as if the moon itself were inside of her skin, shining silver. Pressing the hand into the pool deck, she felt it sink into the ground, just a little bit.

  This world was real, then. But she wasn’t.

  She was so cold, almost trembling. And her hand shook as she pressed it against her chest—and, yes … right there—there was her heart beating.

  “Not dead,” she told herself, her voice quaking. She was too plainly alive to be a ghost. If anything, she was more of a shadow. Pulling her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms tightly around them and rocked back and forth, trying not to panic. But her stomach felt as if it were filled with lead and when she looked up at the sky now, she felt nothing like freedom. It seemed so heavy, as if it were trying to crush her. The more tightly she held herself, the less solid she felt. She rocked faster, trying to hold herself together. So maybe she wasn’t totally free, as she had thought—maybe she still had to fight. She could do that. She could.

  And she had to.

  Looking up at the hotel, Alice saw at once where the attic room must have been. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the roofing over that square of space was completely flat, not sloped like the rest. It looked as if someone had just scraped the attic off, as if they wanted so badly to be rid of it that they had cut it out carelessly, not bothering to make it match the rest of the house. Alice’s eyes wandered down to the ground beneath where the attic would have been. If she was right, then it was highly likely that there was a key buried somewhere under that patch of grass.

  Alice forced herself to get to her feet and walk closer to the oddly shaped roofing. She began to dig in the ground with her fingernails. But digging was not an easy task since half of her cells had made the most inconvenient choice to go missing. All she managed to do was rip out a lot of grass. It felt good, though—calmed her somehow. Ghosts can’t pull up grass. She pulled faster. She pulled so hard that her hands hurt, and she actually relished the pain. Dead people can’t feel pain.

  “Pulling out grass.”

  Alice looked up, both hands full, to see that Tony had returned with his computer. She didn’t know how long he had been standing there, watching her. He met her eyes, then nodded at her pile with a faint grin.

  “Um … still upset about the parents thing?”

  Alice thought his face was kind. He might be looking at her as if she were a little crazy, but there was concern there too, as though he actually cared.

  “Hey, if you want to take it out on the grass, go right ahead,” he said. “Seems okay to me.”

  “I lost my … room key,” she said, prying another handful of grass free.

  Tony watched her for a minute, then looked at her dress and scratched his head. “Wait, where were you keeping it in the first place? That thing doesn’t exactly have pockets.”

  “I was sitting on the grass over here for a while. I must have put it down and forgotten to pick it up again when I walked over to the pool. I thought I’d be able to see it, but … the grass is long and it’s so dark out here.”

  “Do you want some help?”

  Alice let the pieces of grass fall back to the ground. “Really? I mean … I guess … ” She looked up at his face, then down at her own hand. It was dark enough outside that her skin looked pale, but normal enough. He wouldn’t notice (would he?) that the tips of her fingers were just a tad too translucent. At least he hadn’t noticed yet. “Okay,” she said. It would only make him more suspicious if she turned him down.

  He got on his hands and knees beside her and started running his fingers through the grass. He was wearing jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt now; he looked warm.

  “You lied to me,” he said.

  She sat straight up. Did he know? How could he know? “Lied?” she asked, hand clenched so tightly around a bunch of grass that she might have been trying to strangle it. “What did I lie about?”

  Pointing to her goose-bump–covered arm with one hand, he unzipped his sweatshirt with the other. “Look at you—you’re freezing cold.”

  Alice exhaled heavily in relief. “Oh—that, yeah … I’m getting a little—wait, what are you—?”

  He was putting his sweatshirt around her shoulders. “No, really. You don’t have to—” she protested. Having him this close to her was not a good idea—what if (her heart skipped a beat) the sweatshirt went through her skin or something? He’d freak out, run off.

  “Here,” he said, holding up the sleeve, “I need your arm.”

  “I’d really rather—”

  “I’m not gonna sit here and watch you freeze to death. Now—your arm.”

  Very gingerly, she stuck her arm into the sleeve, half expecting to see her elbow pop through the fabric at any moment. But it didn’t, and the other arm went in without incident. She held her breath as Tony zipped the thing up. (On him, it was loose; on her, it looked like a tent.) He reached over and pulled the hood over her head; his hands brushed against her hair and when he pulled them away the strands fell onto her face like a wet curtain closing.

  “Thanks,” she said, keeping her voice completely emotionless, afraid that he would see how nervous she was.

  “Look,” he said, folding his arms, “I know you don’t want to wake your family, but once we find your room key, don’t you want to get some dry clothes? Maybe it would be worth risking it.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.” It really didn’t matter what she said; they weren’t going to find the key like this anyway. She ran her fingers through the grass in a circular pattern, tracing the outline first, then filling in the middle, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough. A shovel would be useful—and maybe a metal detector. But how could she get Tony to help her find one? He would never believe that her key had somehow gotten buried if it had only been missing for a few minutes.

  And then it hit her: she couldn’t keep this up. If he was going to be of any use to her at all, she would have to tell him the truth.

  “So I’m gonna come clean with you,” he was saying.

  She took a deep breath. “Yeah, there’s something I need to tell you, too … ”

  “We can take turns. Here—here’s mine. I lied to you, too. Remember when I said I thought you weren’t crazy? Well, actually I kind of did.”

  Her heart fell; she brushed her fingertips over the grass mechanically. “Oh.”
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br />   “Not anymore—I don’t think so now,” he said. “But when you were saying all that stuff about ghosts and not being dead … you must have just been confused. Maybe in shock—just a little. And I guess—” He shook his head. “I’m sorry for treating you weird at first.”

  “No.” Her voice sounded small. “I get it.”

  “Do you remember what you were talking about?”

  This was her moment. This was when she told him everything. She opened her mouth, mentally rehearsing her story. Actually, Tony, I was trying to tell you that I am the girl that almost drowned and I think my body’s in a coma somewhere and … But when she spoke, what she heard herself say was, “I don’t remember.”

  She wanted to slap herself the minute she said it. But there was this knot of fear in her, choking her, keeping her from doing what had to be done. She kept imagining his eyes getting that glassy look again as he decided she really was crazy after all and told her that he had to go. And she would be alone. It would be like being stuck in the house all over again—on her own, helpless, with nobody.

  Tony snapped his fingers and she jumped. “I know what it was,” he said. “It must have had something to do with what happened today.”

  “Wait—what happened?”

  He looked at her and there was a kind of hopefulness in his eyes. “You really didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Well, you see … ” It looked as though he wasn’t so sure he wanted to tell her at all now. “My dad and I got into a little fight in the hall.”

  “Oh!” she said, nodding. “I remember now. The ghost-hunting fight. The manager almost kicked you out.”

  “My dad … ” He ground some grass between his fingers while he talked. “He’s big into ghost-hunting. Let’s just say that sometimes he takes it a little bit … too far. Anyway, maybe you saw me and remembered the ghost stuff and … ”

  “Started babbling?”

  He shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

  He had no idea.

  Trying to put off the inevitable, Alice asked, “I take it you don’t believe in ghosts?”

  “Sometimes I think maybe … Like there was this moment this afternoon—never mind, it sounds crazy.”

  She gulped and came so very close to telling him, but then he started talking again and she lost her nerve.

  “I wouldn’t have come,” he continued. “My dad and I aren’t exactly on the best terms but he’s trying. I live with my mom most of the time. My dad’s been after her to let him take me on a trip like this for years. She must have finally gotten tired of him bugging her.”

  “Did your mom make you come, then?” Alice asked.

  Tony didn’t answer for a minute, he just stared at the patch of grass that he had flattened. Then he glanced at the engineering book on the ground. “No. My mom doesn’t believe in forcing me to do stuff. It was my dad who talked me into it … You know how it is. He was just so excited. I couldn’t say no. And there was this car accident … long story. We just haven’t been super close since then.”

  Alice nodded, thinking of all the times her dad had talked her into watching his favorite comedy shows. He was almost never home and had free time even less often; though Alice didn’t love the laugh tracks, the easy jokes, she could pretend to like them for a few hours at a time. She looked at the ground, her heart pounding fast. Long nights with the TV and her dad had never sounded so wonderful.

  “I’m sorry you had to come,” she said.

  He looked at her. “Well, it hasn’t been all bad. Saving someone’s life—that’s kind of a big plus.”

  Alice smiled stiffly, then resumed her sweep of the grass with too much enthusiasm, embracing the distraction. If only she’d been a normal, alive girl drowning in a perfectly normal way. It sounded so uncomplicated.

  Tony came up right next to her, so close that their hands almost touched in the grass, and she immediately sat up, pretending to stretch her arms. If he got too close, even the darkness wouldn’t hide the fact that her skin was more than just pale.

  “So you’re here with your family?” asked Tony.

  Alice didn’t answer at once. She supposed she should have seen this coming—the questions—and yet she had no idea how to answer them. The truth … she couldn’t do it. Just … in a minute, maybe. But not yet.

  “Yes,” she said at last, deciding that simple was best.

  “Vacation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has it been fun?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Tony glanced at her, his eyebrows raised. “What’s your favorite part?” he asked, determined, it seemed, to get more than one word out of her this time.

  “Swimming,” said Alice immediately, blurting out the first thing that came to mind.

  “Do you do a lot of swimming usually?”

  “Um … yeah. I guess.”

  “I … uh …” His eyes wandered to the pool. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a swimmer. With the drowning and all.”

  Unnerved, Alice nodded. She had the feeling that he was onto her, that somehow she had given herself away.

  “Do you know this hotel is supposed to be haunted?” asked Tony, doing little to smooth her frayed nerves.

  “Oh yeah, I know all about it. You see, my little brother got to choose the vacation this year and he, well … let’s just say he’d get along well with your dad. He chose this place because of the stories about it.” Her heart was pounding so loud and fast that she was afraid he might hear it. “It’s silly, of course,” she added. “There’s no such thing as … as ghosts.” She said it as firmly as she could. She had to believe that, because whatever she was, she wasn’t a ghost. Ghosts had already died.

  “You know that every time you say that somewhere a ghost dies?” asked Tony. Alice was, however, not in a laughing mood.

  “It was a joke,” he clarified when she didn’t react. “Like in Peter Pan, with the fairies, how you have to clap to keep them alive. Except with ghosts.”

  Looking him straight in the eye, she sat back on her knees and began to clap. Tony watched her with a mixture of bemusement and fascination.

  “The ghosts are saved,” she said, and she couldn’t help but grin. She bent over the grass again and resumed her search. Beside her, Tony remained frozen for a moment, then followed suit.

  “Guess you’re not so popular with our spirit friends, are you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, your dad had better watch out. I’ll scare off all his customers.”

  Tony froze, and for a second Alice thought that she had offended him, but then he broke into a wide grin and pulled from the grass—

  “I found it!”

  It was a room key—small and silver. A tag on the end said “Reef Heron” and had a picture of a sleek bird with a long curved neck. Alice took it from him numbly; even with the sweatshirt, she shivered. Instead of blood, her heart seemed to be pumping ice water through her veins.

  “Nice bird,” he said, pointing to the tag. “My dad and I have a Spruce Grouse. Do you know what a grouse is? It’s basically a chicken. Pretty lame if you ask me. But you got lucky. And I mean really lucky—I can’t believe we found it in the dark and everything!”

  “Yeah. That’s me. Lucky.”

  The key glittered in her hand. She didn’t know what to say, what to do. This lie was swallowing her whole, and as she sat there with the room key that wasn’t hers, she felt it growing up around her like walls. She had a sudden impulse to throw the key as far away from her as she could, bird tag and all, but she couldn’t make herself do it.

  “Why don’t you go change? I’ll stay here and hunt down the news story about that girl.”

  She didn’t answer and he added, “Unless you want to just go to bed … I mean, I’d understand that.”

  “No. No, I’m not tired. Let’s look up the girl now.”

  “But your clothes—”

  “I’ve been wet this long, I can be wet a little longer.”

>   “Okay,” he shrugged, but looked confused. She couldn’t keep this up much longer. After she figured out what hospital she was in—then she would tell him. And then at least she would know something. She would have gotten something good out of all of this.

  Tony was watching her while waiting for his computer to start up, and Alice was instantly self-conscious, her posture suddenly awkward. The way she was sitting there in his oversized sweatshirt, legs bare, tangled hair hanging out of the side of the hood—she felt underdressed and overexposed and entirely uncomfortable.

  “Her name’s Alice—Alice Montgomery,” Alice supplied. Then held her breath, waiting to see if he would react to the name. But he didn’t seem put off in the least as he typed it in.

  “Seems like you know a lot about her already.”

  “I read it in the newspaper. And it’s easy to remember—same first name, you know.”

  Alice crawled to his side to get a better view of the screen, still clutching the useless key. Web addresses started popping up and Alice skimmed them over Tony’s shoulder. Most of them were about some B-movie actress with the same name, but then Alice spotted one with the words “pool accident.”

  “There!” She pointed it out to Tony and he opened it for her. The headline read, “Girl in Coma After Pool Accident in Historic Blackwell Hotel.” Alice’s heart started to pound faster and faster as she read.

  Thursday, July 13

  A 15-year-old girl is in a coma after a tragic accident yesterday afternoon. Witnesses report that Alice Montgomery was swimming with her brother in the Blackwell Hotel pool when she dove from the deck and hit her head on the bottom of the pool. Emergency vehicles arrived at the scene only minutes later, and the girl was rushed to the Ellsworth hospital. Physicians say that her chances of survival are low, but the family is still holding out hope.

  “Alice is a fighter,” Elaine Montgomery, Alice’s mother, told the press. “If anyone can make it, Alice can.” The family has asked that donations be made through www.PrayingForAlice.com. All proceeds will help pay medical bills and expenses.