Smoking Mirror

 

 

 

©2008 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)

Daria and associated characters are ©2008 MTV Networks

 

 

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

 

Synopsis: After a disastrous experience in Central America, Penny Lane returns to Lawndale, her life in shambles—but with her is a dark souvenir that unravels the lives of everyone around her in terrifying ways.

 

Author’s Notes: Most events in this story take place in August 2001, the year in which Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane graduate high school, per the Daria movie, Is It College Yet? This movie is assumed to take place throughout early 2001, based on a reference to Dale Earnhardt’s death in one scene. The reader is assumed to have a working knowledge of the major characters from the Daria series, so personal introductions are not given in the story. More “Author’s Notes” and the Acknowledgements are given at the story’s end.

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

Part One

 

If You Multiply an Unknown Quantity by Zero

But Get a Result Greater Than Zero,

Are You Using Complex Numbers or Imaginary Ones?

 

 

Part Two

 

The Secret History of Jane Lane

 

 

Part Three

 

Everest

 

 

Part Four

 

In the Light of Days to Come

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

Part One

 

If You Multiply an Unknown Quantity by Zero

But Get a Result Greater Than Zero,

Are You Using Complex Numbers or Imaginary Ones?

 

 

 

Surely, you think, there will come a time when there will be no further heights to conquer. This view is mistaken. You underestimate even the foothills that stand in front of you, and never suspect that far above them, hidden by cloud, rise precipices and snow-fields.

 

          —Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men

 

 

 

It is possible that you can move into the moment of a Might-Have-Been and change it.

 

       —Madeleine L’Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

 

       Listening to a Mystik Spiral jam session in a dive on a hot Friday night in August was one of the last things on Earth that Penny Lane wanted to do, right down there with swimming through a lake of bat excrement or accidentally meeting her former high-school phys-ed teacher. However, her younger brother Trent said McGrundy’s Brew Pub on Main Street sold all sorts of beers, even ones from south of the border, and she finally thought it worth the risk of rock-induced ear and brain damage to see what they had. Plus, there was nothing else to do in Lawndale on a Friday night. Penny had walked across deserts that held more of interest.

       She wandered into McGrundy’s just after seven that evening and asked for her favorite Mexican beers at the bar, but the bartender had never heard of Negra Modelo, Bohemia, or even Dos Equis, which was just ridiculous because everyone had Dos Equis. Even Taco Hut and Burrito Barn each served three types of Dos Equis. However, behind the bar at McGrundy’s were row upon row of Corona and Tecate and, gods forbid, the locally made Blank Check Beer, which was worse than cat piss no matter how many limes you stuck in it.

       Muttering a curse she had picked up from an old Zapotec woman in Guatemala, Penny was storming her way out of the pub when her gaze fell on a colorful label on a clear bottle at the end of one shelf. She stopped dead in her tracks. It was a Del Maguey, an Oaxaca mescal so smooth that it could be drunk straight. She dug into her pockets and bought the whole bottle, the only one that McGrundy’s had, and then she settled down to get deliciously messed up. It was at the top of her list of things she wanted to do most at this dead-end stage of her life, ranking even above trekking up the cordilleras again or watching her former phys-ed teacher roast in a gasoline-fed bonfire.

       “Here’s a glass,” said the bartender, placing one on the counter in front of her.

       “Won’t need it,” said Penny, and she took a long, slow swallow straight from the bottle. When she lowered her drink, her mouth filled with half-remembered flavors and her throat lightly burning from the alcohol, she looked right into the mirrored wall behind the bar’s stock shelves. Her reflection caught her eye for a fraction of a second: a lean, wiry, hard-faced burnout with short red hair and dull jade eyes, wearing a low-cut black tank top with white lettering across her braless breasts. Lowering her head, she pretended to study her long camouflage pants and knee-high black-leather hiking boots, hand-tooled in Mexico City. Looking at her own image was the thing she least wanted to do. It reminded her too much of that one other time she’d recently looked into a mirror. And there was nothing to see in the mirror, anyway—just herself, the nothing.

       She heard noises behind her suggesting that her brother’s band was setting up its equipment on the stage across the room. Turning around on her bar stool, Penny leaned back and put her elbows on the counter, letting her dangling legs swing free. The mescal bottle rested on her thigh, with the neck in the fingers of her right hand. Trent’s three band buddies were plugging in amps and doing sound checks. The younger brother of one was helping out. Was he Jesse, or was Jesse his older brother in the band? Penny couldn’t remember their names. She’d never been home long enough to learn them.

       Black-haired Trent sat on a bass speaker, tuning his guitar. Glancing once at Penny, he looked down at his guitar again with no change in expression. He’d spoken maybe two-dozen words to her since she’d come back to Lawndale from El Salvador the day before, acting like her arrival home for the first time in over a year was nothing big. He hadn’t even invited her to the session at McGrundy’s. The idea had actually been her younger sister Jane’s, made after Penny complained that the liquor cabinet was empty. It was likely that Jane just wanted Penny out of the house so Jane could finish a painting in relative quiet, and Trent went along with it. Penny tried not to let it bug her too much.

       Though she hated her older siblings, Penny saw Trent and Jane differently. True, she had resented babysitting them in her high-school years while Mom and Dad ran off to the ends of the earth, but Trent was rarely awake long enough to fight with, and Jane was absorbed in her art—which, Penny admitted, was pretty good, better than her own. Trent and Jane also liked each other, a miracle for any two Lanes. More power to them, Penny thought with a touch of sadness. She recalled the nightmarish fights between her parents before her photographer father began taking overseas assignments. Now, he and his wife Amanda got along smashingly for the few weeks out of the year they were under the same roof. Hitting each other with foam bats helped a little, too.

       Penny sighed in contentment, feeling the mescal spread through her bloodstream. Good thing the house is within walking distance from here, she thought. She watched Trent as he talked with one of his band mates, a skinny bald guy she thought might be the drummer, and she wondered what would become of her twenty-something brother when Jane went off to college in Boston in four months’ time. He’d probably travel more with Mystik Spiral, become another ever-wandering Lane without Jane to anchor him. The house would likely stay empty for long periods after that, unless their mother started teaching ceramics classes in the basement again when she returned from Ireland.

       Where will I travel next? When will I go? Penny wondered. She fingered the mescal bottle. Will I ever go south again, knowing what I do about me? I sure as hell can’t stay around this dump. What the hell am I going to do with my life, now that I have no life left? Does it matter? Couldn’t that whole mess with the mirror have just been a bad dream? She remembered the moment when her life had changed, barely a week earlier, and felt renewed shame. Dream or not, the message rang true—the Penny Lane in the mirror had been the real one.

       Pity that the tavern had only one bottle of mescal left. She was in the mood to drink a case of them.

       At this moment, Penny became aware that a heavily muscled guy in a T-shirt and athletic shorts was walking toward her from the left. He was about to say something that Penny knew would be a come-on. She tensed, angry that her solitude was threatened.

       The guy slowed, clearly staring at her chest—and the warning printed across her tank top. After a moment, the guy laughed and walked on by. Relief ran through her as he did. The tank top’s message was better at deflecting unwanted male companionship than a charged TASER gun.

       Raising the mescal bottle again, she took several long, deep swigs. A girl sitting two stools away on her right hummed an old Sixties song by—what was the band? Jefferson Starship? Penny remembered her ex-hippie parents once sang that very tune whenever it came on the oldies radio stations, so it automatically sucked. Still, when the girl hummed it in her measured way, it didn’t sound too bad. Depressing, maybe, but not too bad. Don’t you want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody to love?

       As Penny lowered the bottle, her head buzzing and her muscles loosening at last, the girl sitting on her right leaned in close. Now on the stool next to Penny, she was a thin girl with long, thick black hair, candy-apple red lipstick, and eye makeup that gave her face a hyper-intense look. Below her leather and copper choker, the girl wore an ash-gray vest over an olive-green tee, tight black pants that bordered a hand-span of bare midriff, and fashionable black boots with platform soles. Penny had a half-second to absorb this before the girl said in a cheery voice, “Hey! This your first time here?”

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

       The redheaded girl sitting two seats over at the bar looked familiar, but Monique couldn’t place her at all. One thing for sure: she looked interesting. Maybe a little weird, too. She was kind of young and kind of old at the same time; Monique guessed she was around thirty, give or take a couple years. After wandering in alone, the new girl bought the bottle of hard liquor that no one ever bought, the one shipped by mistake with a case of Mexican beer. It was clear the new girl meant to get blasted out of her mind. She probably had a good reason to do it. People who drank like that always did. Monique found herself thinking about her father, but she shook it off so she could focus on having a good time and not be depressed.

       She gently scratched the reddened base of her nose. The new girl had the strangest sea-green eyes. Those eyes had looked into dark places and not forgotten what they’d seen. Haunted, that was a good word for them. A good story lurked behind those eyes. Monique loved to listen as well as talk, if someone had something interesting to say. The redheaded girl sure would. What was written on the new girl’s shirt didn’t put her off, either. Monique liked everyone. She could deal with it.

       A jock started to walk toward the redheaded girl, who tensed as if she’d seen him in the corner of her eye—but then the jock read what was printed on the redhead’s butch tank top: I’M HERE LOOKING FOR GIRLS, TOO. The jock laughed and walked on, but Monique sensed that he was eyeing her next. Time to squelch that impulse.

       As the redheaded girl raised her liquor bottle and began chugging it down, Monique got up from her seat and moved over to the stool next to the redhead. For some reason, an old Jefferson Airplane tune from the Sixties came to mind, and she began to hum it—“Somebody to Love,” from a worn-out Surrealistic Pillow LP that elementary-school Monique played on her father’s battered stereo when no one was home at night. The jock got the hint and kept walking. Tah-dah!

       The new girl lowered the liquor bottle and took it from her lips with a sigh. She sensed Monique’s presence and gave her head a half turn.

       “Hey!” Monique said in a lively tone. “This your first time here?”

       The redhead looked at her in vague surprise, blinking. “¿Qué?” she said.

       “I haven’t seen you around before. I’m Monique. Are you here for the band or the booze?”

       The new girl looked flustered. “I’m just hanging out,” she said, a little tense. She started to point to Mystik Spiral, still setting up for its session across the room.

       “Oh, the band!” said Monique. She clapped her bone-thin hands in delight. “I know the lead singer, Trent Lane! He and I used to go out, but that was like a while ago. We broke up. He’s okay, but we didn’t have any karma as a couple, you know? We like fought all the time. We used to be like good friends, and maybe we should have stayed that way, you know? I mean, he’s like a cool guy and all, really, and he helped me get my start in music. He’s the best, I mean it. He says I have stage presence. We were in this band together for a while in high school, before he started Mystik Spiral, and then I got into this other band, a girl band called the Harpies, and I was with them for a couple years, but then I like wanted to do my own thing, you know? Start my own group? It didn’t work out, but I still sing and play bass guitar and do drums a little, too, sort of as backup for different groups when someone gets sick or something, you know? I’m multitalented or something, I guess. How about you?”

       The new girl barely suppressed a smile. “I’m Trent’s sister,” she said.

       “Oh, no!” Monique gasped in mock horror. She then got the giggles. “Oh, my God, you are so kidding me! Really? Oh, my God! You’re older than Trent, right? Are you the oldest?”

       “No,” said the new girl. “I’m la hermana media, the middle kid. I’ve got a sister and brother older than me, and a sister and brother younger than me.”

       “Oh, my God, that’s right! I remember you now! Trent showed me a picture with you in it. I thought I recognized you from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where. Wow! This is so cool! You’re Penny, right? You were like in Arizona or Mexico or the Amazon for a long time, right? And you just came back? Wow!”

       Penny hesitated, unsure of which conversational thread to follow. “I’m back, yeah,” she said. “I was . . . I was just living around south for a while, doing odd jobs and selling handicrafts.”

       “So, you make craft stuff, right? What kind of crafts do you do? Trent told me that everyone in your family is really artistic, like really into arts and crafts and things, so you must be really good at it, right?”

       The smile on Penny’s face faded. She looked down at her mescal and made a pained face. “No. It was just yonque. It wasn’t any good.”

       “Oh, right!” Monique nodded and laughed. “I bet you’re great! Oh, hey, look—Spiral’s about to play!”

       Penny looked up. Trent was warming up on his guitar, but he was eyeing both Penny and Monique with concern. Penny waved at him, but he continued to look bugged and even frowned before he looked down at his guitar again. What’s his problem? She snorted, lowering her hand. Fine, be that way, then. Don’t pee on my evening. She took a quick drink from her bottle and was surprised to find it was already down by a third. The mescal buzz had deepened into a profound sense of well-being and warmth.

       “You like Spiral?” Monique asked. “They play here all the time. Well, not really all the time, you know, but like once a month or so, or like when another band falls through. I played backup bass guitar for them when Nick got food poisoning in June, but he got over it in a couple weeks, which was good, like really! I mean, he was really sick. It was weird, though, being in a band with Trent again. He was like, you know, kind of quiet and didn’t talk to me much, but he’s always like that. He doesn’t say much about anything, you know? Is he like that with you? I mean, we didn’t talk much, but I think he was glad I could help him out. He’s pretty good. Too bad we couldn’t make it together, but that’s life, right?”

       Penny shrugged, content. Her input did not seem particularly necessary. She thought it curious, given that she had wanted so much to be alone, that Monique’s presence wasn’t bothering her more. Maybe the mescal was responsible.

       “I bet you have some really good stories, you know, from all the places you’ve been. I love hearing stories. Where did you go last?”

       Penny’s cheek twitched. “Just around,” she said. Her expression darkened. “El Salvador for a couple months, then through Guatemala and Mexico up into Texas, then here. I took buses. I wanted to see the countryside on the way home, like a turista.”

       “Why’d you want to leave and come back? I thought you like lived down there or something, from what Trent said.”

       Penny stared at her mescal, her good mood souring.

       “Broke up with your girlfriend?” Monique asked gently.

       Penny looked up in surprise, then caught on. “Oh,” she said, more animated now. She looked down at her tank top, her face coloring. “Oh, no. Um—” She hesitated, then leaned close to Monique and whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not really a lesbian. I just wear this thing when I want guys to leave me alone.”

       Monique gasped, then burst into laughter and pounded her knees in hysteria. Penny looked away, trying not to smile. She spotted Trent watching the two of them with clear anxiety. His band mates were looking to him, waiting for him to start the jam session, but he was oblivious to everything but his sister and his former girlfriend, and the secret thing that had passed between them that caused them to look so happy together.

       I wonder if he thinks I’m going to hit on his ex, Penny thought, and then realized, He thinks I am hitting on her, and she’s going along with it. Penny burst into laughter, too. She couldn’t help it. The mescal was in full bloom inside her. Her spirit was at peace, for this one blessed moment in time, and she felt great.

       When Monique recovered, Penny leaned over and whispered, “Trent thinks we’ve hooked up.”

       “What?” Monique looked at Trent in confusion. “Why would—oh!” She clapped a hand over her mouth as she looked down at Penny’s tank top. “Oh, you’re kidding! Is it freaking him out?”

       Penny grinned. “Sí, it’s freaking him out.”

       “Oh, my God! That’s great!” said Monique—and she leaned back and slipped her left arm around Penny’s shoulders as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

       Penny turned and stared goggle-eyed for a moment at Monique—then on impulse she put her right arm around Monique’s shoulders, too, the mescal bottle still in her hand. She looked at Trent for his reaction.

       Trent could have been hit with a sledgehammer. He stared white-faced at his sister and ex-girlfriend, while his band mates and several members of the audience shouted his name and snapped their fingers, trying to get his attention to start playing.

       Penny laughed as she hadn’t laughed in years. The mescal made it funnier, until the joy became spiritual and lifted her soul. What am I doing? she asked herself, but then she stopped questioning the moment and simply enjoyed it. She forgot she was a failure, the laughing stock of not only the world but the heavens, too. She forgot all but her joy at a practical joke—and her joy at being close to someone who seemed to like her. Penny hadn’t had a real friend in ages, just acquaintances who tolerated her until either they or she found a reason to move on. Having a friend was a fragile thing. In her heart she knew it could end at any moment—yet it held on as if it might grow.

       Thank you for this moment, she thought in gratitude, to any higher being who could hear her. Thank you, gracias, thank you so much—but if it is your will that this joy should not last, please let me die tonight and remain happy forever.

       She did not die. She forgot herself, her arm around her friend, and laughed.

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

 

       The mescal was gone an hour later. Penny had the idea that her hangover the following morning would be spectacular, but that was all right. It was a small price to pay for having fun.

       It was impossible to hear anything in the pub with everyone talking and Mystik Spiral playing, so Penny gestured toward the door until Monique caught on. They got up and walked out of the bar together, bathed in the strains of “Icebox Woman” and the interested stares of several hundred people. Penny noticed that Trent stopped singing in the middle of a stanza as they headed for the doors. She snickered and waved him goodbye, then put an arm around Monique’s waist as they went out, just to rub it in.

       Once outside, awash in the warm evening sun and the roar of rush-hour traffic, they had to stop because they were laughing too hard to walk straight. Penny wiped her eyes as she leaned against a streetlight by the pub. She could not recall the last time she had felt this good.

       “Ohmigod!” gasped Monique through her laughter, standing on the sidewalk doubled over. “Ohmigod! I’m never going to breathe! I have to stop!” She straightened, saw Penny and her tank top, then burst into new hysteria and bent over again.

       Penny pushed away from the streetlight and tugged on Monique’s arm. “C’mon! ¡Vamanos!” she said, resisting a new round of giggles. “Let’s walk it off!”

       “O-o-okay!” Monique agreed, and she staggered off with Penny. A half-block later, when they stopped at a traffic intersection, they were close to normal again.

       “God, did you see the look on his face?” Monique dabbed her eyes with her vest sleeves. “I thought he was going to die! I hope that wasn’t too mean or anything, but that was so funny! Ohmigod!”

       “Yeah.” Penny nodded, then caught herself swaying where she stood. “Oh, boy,” she said, steadying herself against a signpost. “I drank muy too much.”

       “Wow, like, what was that stuff you were drinking? Vodka?”

       “Uh-uh. Mescal. It’s a Mexican thing, like tequila. Aiy-yi-yi! That stuff was good! Do you drink?”

       “Oh, no.” Monique sniffed and rubbed her nose, suddenly sober. “No, no, I can’t. I mean, I don’t. I don’t like to get drunk.”

       “It’s fun sometimes,” said Penny, feeling light-headed. “I really needed it. Damn, that was so funny with Trent.” She took a deep breath and shook her head, flicking her ragged red hair back and forth. “I am going to be so freaking sick tomorrow, though.”

       “Oh, I hope not.” Monique sighed and straightened her vest. “See, that’s another reason I don’t drink. I mean, I don’t mind if you do, you know. That’s okay with me. I just . . . you know, everyone’s different. I used to smoke weed when I was in high school, and I did some E a year ago when I was with the Harpies on this gig traveling up the East Coast, just to see what it was like, but I had to quit. It was really messing me up. I had to quit everything last fall, a year ago.” She ran both hands through her thick black hair, then shook her head and blew out a breath. “Wow, I think I’m okay again. Tired, though. That wore me out.”

       “Whoops.” Penny caught herself before she stumbled and fell on the sidewalk. “I need to sit down for a minute.” She stopped and looked around, shading her eyes against a reflection of the setting sun in windows a block away. “Over there,” she said, pointing. “Let’s go across the street to the pavilion, behind the town hall.”

       “Where?” Monique looked around. Across the street she spotted a small city park in back of the ex-cathedral that now served as Lawndale’s government building. In the center of the park, surrounded by a circle of trees and shrubbery, was a domed structure on columns done in Greek style, perhaps twenty feet wide and twenty high. “Oh, sure. I’m kind of beat.”

       They made it across the street when the light turned red and a traffic jam developed, dashing between the stalled cars. Penny bumped into several, yelling, “¡Excúseme!” as she went. On the other side, she stopped beside Monique, who seemed quite tired and was doubled over again, panting for air.

       “You okay?” Penny asked, feeling her thighs and thinking she’d bruised herself pretty good a few times. Stupid cars! They should watch where I’m going!

       “Huh?” Monique gasped. “Oh, yeah, just winded. Just a sec.” She straightened, her pale face almost white.

       “Bueno.” Penny led the way across the manicured park grass and through several rows of flowers and shrubs to the pavilion. The pavilion lights weren’t on yet, as it was still too bright out. No one else was around. “We’ve got it all to ourselves,” Penny announced with satisfaction. She walked up the few steps to the pavilion, went inside between two columns, and threw herself down on a varnished wooden bench. Draping her arms over the back of the bench, she stretched out her legs and waved her feet back and forth. “Grab a seat,” she said, patting the backrest of the space beside her.

       Monique sat down beside Penny and leaned back, blowing air from her lungs.

       “You look tired,” said Penny. She frowned and leaned in for a closer look. Beads of sweat had formed across Monique’s forehead. “You really okay?”

       “Yeah,” said her friend faintly. “I don’t get out enough. I was going to stay home tonight, but . . . this is silly, but when I heard Trent’s band was going to play, I sorta wanted to come out and hear him again. Hear them again, I mean.”

       “You still have a thing for him?”

       Monique shook her head slowly. “Nah. He’s really nice and all, but it just wasn’t working out. He was always like, I’m going to be a rock star some day, you know, and then he’d always sort of sleep on it, and nothing would happen. We had so many fights, and—” She looked, annoyed with herself. “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about your brother like that. He’s okay, he just—we just didn’t work out. I just wanted to hear them play tonight. I like his music.” Her face relaxed. “I always did like to hear him play. Sorta helps me get centered, you know?”

       Penny snorted and looked across the park at an emptying parking lot and a distant gas station. Trees blocked the setting sun. “You didn’t offend me. I never got into his music. His lyrics were too silly and pretentious, I thought. And he really does sleep more than any human being should. If he ever got off his butt, he could make something of himself.” She exhaled. “Only one of us Lanes who’s probably going anywhere is Jane.”

       “Jane? Your little sister?”

       “Sí. I dunno, she just seems like she’s got her head together, mostly. It’s not stuck up her butt like some people I know. I think she’ll make it. Hope so, anyway.”

       “Don’t you think you’re going somewhere?” Monique sat up on the bench. “I mean, wow, you go all over the world, don’t you? You’ve seen a lot, right?”

       Penny shook her head and looked away. I saw too much. She tried not to think of the mirror.

       “Don’t want to talk about it?”

       “No. Not right now.”

       “So, why’d you come out tonight?” Monique asked. “You weren’t really looking for chicks?”

       Penny glanced over with an eyebrow raised, but Monique was grinning. She looked a little better now, though still pale. Penny smiled back and shook her head. “Trent told me that McGrundy’s had lots of good Mexican beers, but all they had was the same old mierda. The mescal, though, that was muy fantástico.”

       “Yeah, but now you’re going to be sick tomorrow.”

       “Eh, so what.” Penny shrugged. “I feel pretty good now.”

       “So, you got a boyfriend?”

       “Nah. A guy here, a guy there, whatever. Just a little fun, you know.” She made a face when she caught herself saying you know, just like Monique did. “Doesn’t happen too often, though.”

       “Really? That’s weird, ‘cause I’d think you wouldn’t have any problem, you know? You’re so cool. I’d think, like, traveling around, you’d meet a lot of cool guys.”

       Penny grimaced, her spirits sagging. “It’s . . . what it is, see, a lot of places aren’t like here. They’re just different. It’s a cultural thing. The people get pretty wound up about stuff. They don’t like it if you act like you’re liberated, especially if you’re a woman. They can get pretty tense about it.” La puta americana, they had called her in southern Mexico—the American whore—or things far worse than that. She rubbed her cheek where an old woman had slapped her. “You have to be careful about your personal life in other countries, you know?” She caught herself saying you know again and groaned, but then gave up editing what came out of her mouth. She was too drunk to care.

       Monique nodded at the sage advice she’d been given. “Yeah. I have to be careful, too. So, why are you back here? I mean, in Lawndale, you know? This place is nowhere. You could be partying around in like the Amazon or something.”

       Penny shrugged. I have nowhere else to go. “I just came back,” she said.

       “Well, where would you rather be, here or there?” asked Monique.

       A serene expression crossed Penny’s face as she looked at the distant parking lot. “The cordilleras,” she said. “I’d like to go back and see the mountains again.”

       “Mountains? Which mountains?”

       “Sierra Madre,” said Penny in a soft voice, looking away. “It’s the southern part of the Rocky Mountains, going down through Mexico into Central America, all the way to Panama. They call them the cordilleras. You can climb them. Some are volcanoes, but you can climb the dead ones. Some of the lower peaks are covered in jungle. They’re all different, each of them. I’ve gone up a few.”

       “Wow! What was that like?”

       “Oh . . . it’s hard, even if you have a guide, but when you get to the top and you look around, it’s so incredible. You’re standing on top of the world, and everything is down below your feet—the cities, the roads, the people, everything. Sometimes even the clouds. You can see the ocean, if the atmosphere isn’t too misty. It’s . . . it’s beautiful.” She sighed. “I’d love to go back.” A pause. “Maybe.”

       “When are you going back?”

       Her lips pressed together, Penny shook her head. “I don’t know.”

       Monique was uncharacteristically silent.

       “I left home when I got out of high school,” said Penny. “I was fed up with everything: my parents, my school, my stupid older brother and sister, everyone. I wanted to get out and change the world. I had this plan . . . oh, forget it.”

       Monique poked her in the thigh. “No, c’mon. Tell me.”

       Even drunk, it was harder to talk about it than she thought. “It . . . oh, I don’t know. I just wanted to change the world. I had this idea that if I could show the local people how to use their native crafts, making cool useful things, they could sell them to turistas and bring up their standard of living and get rid of all the fat-cat companies and big governments that were exploiting them, show the people how to bring themselves up from poverty. I guess it was like capitalism, though I tried not to think of it that way. I mean, capitalism is kind of exploitative, but it was capitalism for the people, I guess.” Her face tightened. “It was estúpido. I shouldn’t have done it.”

       “Why? That makes sense, what you were saying! Why was it stupid?”

       “Because everyone was already doing that!” said Penny with some heat. “They were already trying to get themselves out of poverty! It wasn’t that they didn’t understand how. It was that I didn’t understand what was really going on, how hard it was for them to do it. I didn’t really want to see it, all the troubles they were having: war and terrorism, overpopulation, bad soil, earthquakes and hurricanes, prejudice, diseases, lack of jobs, right-wing death squads, left-wing revolutionaries who murder the people they claim to help, everything!” She glared into the distance. “I was the stupid one. I didn’t understand anything. I wanted to be like some kind of messiah, I guess, walking among the peasants and making their lives better, and they’d love me for it. Instead, I just made myself look like a fool, from one end of Central America to the other. Gecko-skin coin purses—Jesús Cristo, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

       They sat together in silence, listening to the traffic.

       “I was in El Salvador a week ago,” Penny went on, “and I was trying to help these street kids in this village near San Salvador, the capital. I bought them food and gave them handouts, whatever I could. Then they stole my money in broad daylight, almost everything I had. They grabbed it and ran, and I was chasing after them, screaming at them, and then everyone around started laughing at me. Everyone in the street, everyone, laughed at me like I was the biggest fool. There was nothing I could do. I just gave up and walked off. I had enough money left to get drunk, so I went off to these really old Aztec kind of ruins, maybe a thousand years old, and I climbed one of those big piles of stone with some bad tequila and I got really stinking drunk, just totally wasted.” She skipped over the pivotal event of that night as she went on in a subdued voice. “The next day, I sold everything I had left and got on a bus and came home. I don’t have to go back there. I don’t have anywhere to go, now. The hell with it.”

       She looked down at her empty hands and wished she had another bottle of mescal. “I’m thirty years old and washed up. Twelve years I spent running around after I got out of high school, wasting my life, and here I am. A nothing—no, I’m worse than that. I’m a joke, a total joke.” She turned to Monique. “I’m sorry, but I am so damn drunk. I wouldn’t say this to anyone if I wasn’t smashed.”

       They sat quietly for half a minute more.

       “So, what’re you gonna do?” asked Monique.

       Penny turned to look at her. It was hard to believe anyone could be as thin as Monique. Did she eat three meals a day and throw up two, or just eat one?

       “I have some money left,” she said. “Is there a liquor store around here?”

 

 

 

Chapter Four

 

 

       The idea of visiting a liquor store caused Monique’s stomach to knot up. She remembered walking nervously behind her dad into liquor stores when she was a kid, always the prelude to a long, bad night of listening to him swear and throw things in the living room while she locked herself in her bedroom and tried to watch TV. Why am I always meeting people who either drink a lot or ignore me? “You’re not a joke,” she said at last. “Can we just sit here for a while? I like talking to you. I don’t want to go anywhere just yet.”

       For a moment, Penny looked as if she was going to get up and find a liquor store on her own. Her face worked, but she settled back with a heavy sigh. “Fine,” she said. “Maybe later, then.”

       Monique nodded in relief. “Sure. Nice evening, isn’t it? I like it like this, when it’s warm and you can like sit and listen to the world go on around you, you know? I like to sit in my room with the windows open and play my guitar and just feel really, I don’t know, like, peaceful.”

       “It’s more fun to get a little drunk,” said Penny. “You really should try some mescal. It’s incredible stuff.”

       Monique crossed her arms over the knot in her stomach. “I can’t.”

       “Can’t or won’t?”

       “Can’t.” Taking a deep breath, Monique decided to spill it and get it over with. “It’ll mess up my liver. I got sick a year ago, and it sort of screwed up my liver real bad, so I can’t drink or do anything else that would hurt it.” She glanced over and saw Penny eyeing her.

       “Screwed up your liver?” said Penny. Her eyes narrowed, her mind flipping through a long list of diseases with which she had more than a passing familiarity in her years of travel. “Hepatitis?”

       Monique looked away and swallowed, nodding. “Yeah, hep C. I didn’t even know it at first, you know, which was sort of crazy, but I got a blood test when I went to the doctor last year, ‘cause I had this nose ring and it got infected, so like I went to the doctor for some stuff, and they did a blood test and said I had hep C. They said I probably got it from the nose ring. I used to go to this guy in town named Axl who ran a tattoo and body-piercing shop, and they said he didn’t clean his stuff when he used it, so I like caught hep C from it, from some blood or something that was on the nose ring. I guess someone else had used it before he gave it to me. The health department shut him down, and then he ran off before they arrested him. I felt bad about it ‘cause I really liked him. Axl was a nice guy.” She picked dust from her vest sleeves. “So, that’s why I can’t drink. It would hurt my liver, and the doctor said my liver isn’t doing all that well anymore. I get kinda run down and have to rest sometimes, but otherwise I’m okay, I guess. It could be worse. I just have to watch myself.”

       Penny stared at Monique without blinking or speaking.

       “You can’t catch it from me,” Monique added quickly, looking up. “Seriously, you’re okay. It’s like a blood disease, so even if we were like, uh, you know, touching or anything, you still wouldn’t get it from me. I mean, you couldn’t catch it from me unless you were like, you know, touching my blood or something, that’s the only way. I mean, we can’t like share toothbrushes or anything, or razors, ‘cause like there might be a cut or something, but other than that, you know, you’re safe. It’s okay. I mean, like, when we were sort of hugging back at the bar, you know, trying to fool Trent, you didn’t—”

       “I know, I know,” said Penny softly. “Don’t worry about it. Are you taking medicine for it?”

       “No, not really. I mean, I don’t have any health insurance, you know? I can’t get any. I was like covered by my dad’s insurance when I was in school, but when I turned twenty, three years ago, it all stopped, and I never got any health insurance on my own ‘cause it was expensive. My dad helps me pay my medical bills, but he doesn’t have a lot, so I try not to go to the doctor too much. I don’t get sick very often, but now, with the hep, I can’t get any insurance. I couldn’t afford it even if they offered it to me. I don’t make enough money playing in bands or anything. I’d have to be like Britney Spears or something to get insurance now, so, no, I don’t take any medicine. I’m kind of scared, ‘cause actually I’m doing okay right now, just tired sometimes, but if it gets worse, I don’t know what I’d do. I just don’t know. I have to be real careful about what I do, so I can’t drink or anything. I like hanging around you, if that’s okay, and I don’t mind if you drink, but I can’t.”

       “Okay,” said Penny. She hesitated, then added, “I like hanging around you, too.”

       “Good,” said Monique in relief. She rubbed her eyes. “Thanks. You’re pretty cool.” Monique sniffed deeply and stopped rubbing her eyes, which were turning red. “Trent . . . he was cool with me playing with Spiral, like when Nick ate that bad tuna salad that got left out for a few days, but some of the other guys got sort of worried ‘cause they thought I might cut myself or something while I was on stage with them, and I don’t know if they’d ask me to come back. They told me to use my own guitar, which was okay. I understood, you know. I’ve played solo a few times at places around here, but I don’t travel around like I used to.”

       “Do you wear out a lot?”

       “Yeah. I’ve been sorta down for a while. I haven’t really wanted to go anywhere, though it . . . I dunno, it might be fun to try it, I guess, to go places. Somewhere away from here. I liked getting around before I got sick. I just kind of worry about it now, if I get hurt when I’m not near a doctor, you know, ‘cause I don’t know how I’d pay for it.”

       “Where do you live?”

       “Oh, I kind of like rent a room at my dad’s house, over on Disher Avenue on the south side, between the landfill and the railroad tracks. I guess he really just lets me live there, ‘cause I haven’t been able to pay him much. I make enough to get groceries, and I pick up around the house and take our clothes to the coin laundry, and he says that’s okay. He counsels drunks and druggies at Cedars of Lawndale. He cleaned himself up a few years ago, which was really great, and now he helps other people kinda like him. Like he was, I mean.”

       “Is your mom around?”

       “Ah, nah, she kind of like took off when I was in second grade. We never did find her. It’s just been my dad and me, mostly, with my aunts and uncles helping out. They live around here.”

       “Oh.” Penny became thoughtful. “Well, my parents both ran off, but they keep coming back. That’s the real problem.”

       This had the desired effect of making Monique laugh. “That’s awful!” she said, but she kept laughing.

       “Well, I’m kind of kidding, but my parents really are off in their own worlds. They left me on my own a lot when I was growing up, which always pissed me off. I wish they’d been around more. On the other hand, if my older brother and sister disappeared, that would be great. Mi Dios, listening to them whine and cry and fight when I was growing up was the pits.”

       “I always wanted a brother or sister,” said Monique with a smile, wiping her eyes, “but maybe I didn’t have it so bad growing up by myself after all.”

       “Got a boyfriend?” As the words left her mouth, Penny realized it might be a dumb thing to ask.

       “Huh? Ah, nah, no one.” The cheer faded from Monique’s face. “Nah, they sort of like don’t hang around anymore. Trent was the last. It’s sort of complicated.”

       “Because of the hepatitis?”

       “Ah, yeah. That’s . . . yeah. That kind of . . .” She shrugged. “Eh.”

       “Well, screw ‘em,” said Penny. “You need a shirt like this.” She tugged on her tank top and its warning.

       “What? Oh, yeah!” Monique laughed again in relief. “I probably do! That would be funny! Sometimes it would be, I guess. It’s just that . . . you know, I hate having to explain it all, over and over and over again, to every new guy. It like kills everything, you know? There are certain things you gotta do, I tell them, ‘cause I got this problem, I got this thing, and they like—hey, whatever, I’m out of here, and off they go.” She waved it away but looked sad. “Whatever.”

       “Shame you can’t drink.”

       “Yeah, sometimes I think so, too. I could really do that. I probably would, if it wasn’t for the other stuff.”

       “Huh.” Penny watched the traffic pass by. “So, what do you do for fun?”

       “Oh, my guitar, you know, I play that and sing a little. When I can get a solo gig in the county somewhere, I like that a lot. It doesn’t pay much, but it helps with groceries and stuff with my dad. I want to get a job, but no one will hire me now, ‘cause of the, you know, so I do whatever. I don’t have any good job skills, I guess.”

       Just like me, Penny thought. I don’t have any real skills, either. Both of us are screwed. On impulse, she turned to her new friend. “Hey, muchacha, you wanna come over to my place? You can stay over if you want.” She hesitated—then decided to go ahead and show her the souvenir. It was risky, but it was all she had to share. “I brought back some things from down south, if you want to take a look at them.”

       Light spread over Monique’s face. “Wow, yeah! That would be great! Are you staying with Trent and Jane?”

       “Yeah. The house is about three, four blocks from here.” Penny pointed to the east, between the gas station and a light manufacturing plant beside it. “You went out with Trent, right, so you know where it is?”

       “Sure! I know where it is.”

       “Think you can make it over there?”

       “Yeah! No problem!”

       Penny got to her feet and gritted her teeth against the sudden pain in her thighs. Did I run into something and bruise myself up? She vaguely remembered bumping into some cars crossing the street a few minutes earlier, but it hadn’t seemed important at the time. She reached down to help Monique up. “Thanks,” said the dark-haired girl, and she brushed off her pants and straightened her vest.

       “I have to ask you something, if you don’t mind,” said Penny.

       “What? Oh, sure. Anything.”

       “If you don’t drink, why do you hang around bars?”

       “Oh. Yeah, well, I really wanted to hear Trent and all, but yeah, I do kind of like hang around bars a lot, ‘cause that’s where the cool people hang around, you know? It’s kind of fun there, everybody talking and stuff. And—” She shrugged and grinned “—I might get lucky there, you know?”

       “Might get lucky,” repeated Penny. She glanced down at her tank top. “You sure you’re straight, mi muchacha?”

       Monique giggled. “Yeah, but I just want someone to talk to, you know?”

       “Yeah, sí,” said Penny. “Me, too.”

       Penny led the way out of the Greek pavilion and across the grass to the street. “We’ll cross over there and cut through the gas station and some people’s yards. I did it all the time when I was in school.”

       Looking refreshed, Monique kept up the pace. “So, like, what kind of stuff did you bring back from South America? I mean, Central America? Or Mexico, you know, wherever?”

       Penny chewed her lower lip. They got to the road and waited for traffic to clear before crossing the street. “I kind of stole something,” she said in a low voice.

       “Stole something?” Monique stared at her with huge eyes and open mouth. “You stole something?”

       “Yeah,” said Penny. “Don’t talk about it right now. Later!” She caught Monique by the arm, pulling her across the momentarily clear highway. “¡Vamanos!”

 

 

 

Chapter Five

 

 

       When she opened the front door at the Lane home, Penny heard Jane’s voice back in the kitchen. She motioned Monique inside, noting that her friend was sweating and panting from exertion. “You need to rest?” she asked.

       Monique waved it aside. “Nah, I’m . . . fine,” she huffed. “Ruh-really.”

       “Want a drink of water?”

       “Shuh-sure.” Monique nodded rapidly and dabbed at her face with her sleeves.

       The kitchen seemed brighter than Penny remembered. Someone had replaced the burned-out bulbs in the ceiling lights since her last visit—probably her little sister, who was talking on the phone. Her black bangs framing her heart-shaped face, lanky nineteen-year-old Jane sat at the kitchen table wearing a red T-shirt, a pair of black jeans, and high gray boots. A box of leftover pizza sat in front of her, beside a glass of cranberry juice.

       Jane looked up from the phone, her blue-eyed gaze jumping from her older sister to Monique and back. “Hold on, company’s here,” she said, then lowered the phone without covering the receiver. “Did Spiral blow out the fuses again?” she asked Penny. “Or did McGrundy’s lose its liquor license?”

       “Nothing happened, they’re still there,” said Penny, walking to the cabinets and getting a glass. “We left early.”

       “Hey, Jane!” Monique waved with an excited smile. “Good to see ya!”

       “Hey, Monique,” Jane replied. She didn’t wave back. “You waiting for Trent?”

       Monique shook her head and giggled. “Nah. We’re just . . . hanging out.”

       A strange expression crossed Jane’s face as she looked from one woman to the other. She raised the phone to her mouth. “Daria?” she said, eyeing Monique. “Can I call you back later? Yeah, and Penny’s here, too. Why don’t I call around ten? Yeah. Curiouser and curiouser. Okay. Bye.” She reached back and hung the phone on its wall hook. “‘Sup?” she asked in a casual voice.

       “Nada,” said Penny, handing Monique a glass of water.

       “The two of you get bored?” Jane asked, looking at Monique.

       “Oh, no,” said Monique, who drank half the glass before she continued. “We just wanted to get away, you know!” She held out the glass to Penny. “Thanks! That’s all.”

       Penny started to reach for the glass.

       Jane was out of her chair like a shot. “Let me!” she said. She snatched the glass from Monique, put it in the sink, then flipped on the hot water and rinsed off her hands and the glass as well. “Hey,” she said, shaking water from her fingers, “you guys want the rest of my pizza? It’s only a day old. Monique, have a seat and I’ll warm it up.”

       “Hey, what are you doing?” Penny asked, looking confused.

       “Being helpful,” said Jane. “New thing for me, I know. Had to start sometime.” She grabbed the pizza box from the table and began putting slices into the toaster oven’s stained metal tray. “It’ll be warm soon. Penny—got a sec?” She shut the toaster oven and set the temperature, then turned around. “I have a sister-to-sister sort of question for you, about some things. Can we go in the other room?”

       “Jane, it’s okay, really,” said Monique. She stood by a chair, biting her lower lip.

       “What’s okay?” said Jane.

       “I told her about the hep,” Monique said softly. “It’s okay.”

       Jane stared at her. The moment drew out.

       “And we’re not hooked up,” Penny added in an irritated tone. “We’re just friends, okay?”

       “Not hooked up.” Jane looked from one to the other. Her actions noticeably slowed down. “Yeah, well, that’s not really any of my business. I was just—”

       Penny took a seat at the table. “Look,” she said to her sister, “she and I are friends, okay? We met while Trent was playing, we got to talking, and we took a walk. It’s okay.” She tugged on her tank top and its lettering. “You know this is bogus, right?”

       Jane slowly took a seat across from her sister. “I don’t see much of you,” she said in a low voice. “I really don’t mean to piss you off, but I don’t know what’s real with you and what isn’t these days.”

       Monique edged toward the door. “You know, maybe I should go,” she said. “I don’t want to—”

       “No, stay,” said Penny. “Please.” She reached over and caught Monique by the arm, gently pulling her close. “Have a seat.”

       Monique looked at Jane, who sighed and gestured to the chair beside Penny. “The pizza offer still stands,” she said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

       “You really thought I was gay?” Penny asked her sister as Monique sat down. “I thought you of all people would know me better than that.”

       “Know you?” Jane looked exasperated. “Penny, I hardly ever see you! You blew out of here before I got into first grade, and you’ve been back for a total of six months in the last decade. What am I supposed to know about you, exactly?”

       Penny’s expression hardened, but she held her tongue for a few moments longer and softened her response. “Well, for starters, I’m not gay.”

       Jane nodded. “Okay,” she said slowly, “that’s one thing I know now,” she said. She waited.

       Penny spread her hands and looked annoyed. “¿Qué?”

       Her sister leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get on your back. Perdón yo, por favor. Let’s drop it, okay?”

       “Something eating you?” Penny asked, her eyes narrowing.

       “No!” Jane snapped. “Nothing’s—” She bit off her reply and turned her head away for a moment. “Sorry, forget it.”

       “It’s not me being here at home again, is it?”

       Jane looked away with a sad smile. “No. Just forget it.” Her attention turned to Monique. “So, how are you feeling?”

       “Okay, but tired,” said Monique, trying to be cheery. “Mostly okay, though.”

       “Did you have a checkup recently?”

       “Uh, yeah, two weeks ago. Doctor said I was okay, I guess. He was a little bugged about some stuff, test results, but he said I was okay, mostly.”

       “You look good, if that counts for anything.”

       Monique brightened. “Thanks!” she said. “Yeah, I try to keep up appearances. I think it’s good for me, you know? Hey, was that your friend Daria on the phone?”

       Jane hesitated, looking tense. “Yeah. She’s packing her things. She heads off to Boston next week, to Raft.”

       “Raft, that’s a good school, I think,” said Monique. “That’s great. Trent said Daria was really cool.”

       Jane shrugged. “Yeah, she is. We’ve had our ups and downs, but yeah, she’s . . .” She let it go.

       “You aren’t gay, are you?” asked Penny with a thin smile.

       Jane’s frosty blue eyes took in Penny for a long moment. She leaned back in her chair. “Nope,” she said softly. “Guess we’re even, there.”

       “Hey, you know,” said Monique, looking nervous, “I always wished I’d had a sister. It would have been super to have someone to talk to when I was growing up, you know? That would have been great. Sisters are great, right?”

       Penny and Jane looked at each other in cold silence. Penny finally turned to her friend. “How about we go upstairs for a minute while the pizza’s getting ready? I’ll show you what I brought back.”

       “Oh, sure! Thanks!” Monique hesitated, then got up from her chair. Penny followed suit.

       “I’ll call you when it’s ready,” said Jane in a lackluster tone.

       Monique followed Penny out of the kitchen to the stairs by the front door. They stomped up the steps together, Penny in the lead.

       “Jane’s a good person,” Monique said in a low voice.

       “Usually,” Penny grumbled as they walked to one end of the hall. “Something’s bugging her, though. She’s usually not this pissy.” She threw open the door to her room, flipped on the lights, and walked in, turning left to get into her curtain-covered closet. Monique came in behind her, looking around.

       Penny’s room was square, the hall door opening in the center of the north wall. The wood-slat floor had a large square rug in the center with a southwest-flavor abstract pattern on it. Posters, photographs, masks, chili-pepper strings, and maps hung from the beige walls, and wind chimes and planters with artificial plants from the off-white ceiling. Two windows with crystals hanging in them were across the room, with a desk between them. On the near left was a closet with a curtain door, beyond which were wall shelves lined with pottery, sculptures, baskets, and wire figures. On the near right, a bookshelf and a round table with a lamp, with throw pillows surrounding it. On the far right, a mattress laid on two-by-fours, just above the floor, with a Mexican-style wool blanket and pillow. Discarded clothing lay scattered over the floor near the closet curtain. The room smelled faintly of incense, chili peppers, and dried leaves.

       “Wow.” Monique stood in the center of the room, rotating to take it in. “Did you make all this, the masks and pots and stuff?”

       “Most of it.” Penny dragged a large, dirty duffle bag from her closet and began pulling clothes out of it. “I experiment with different crafts sometimes when I’m home, then leave the experiments here.”

       “Cool. It was nice of your folks to keep your room for you.”

       “I doubt that they’re around enough to know when I’m here, most of the time. Jane said she let a friend stay over in my room for a while a year and a half ago. I think it was that girl she was talking to on the phone. Her friend moved my stuff around, but she didn’t take anything, so I guess that was okay. Have a seat at the table over there.”

       “On the pillows?”

       “Yeah. I’m just looking for what I brought back.” Penny pulled dirty socks and underwear from the bag and threw them behind her in a pile.

       Monique sat on a purple pillow at the table. “I know a joke,” she said brightly. “All this stuff reminded me of it. Wanna hear?”

       Penny tugged out a muddy t-shirt and tossed it aside.

       “What do sheep in Mexico call Christmas?” Monique went on.

       With a pained expression, Penny looked up and waited.

       “Fleece Navidad!” said Monique with a grin. “My dad told it to me.”

       Penny groaned and went back to emptying her duffle bag while Monique giggled. “Hey, I wanted to ask you,” Monique went on, “what are your older sister and brother like? The ones you don’t like so much?”

       “They suck,” Penny said, pulling dirty socks from the bag. “I don’t like talking about them.”

       “Oh,” said Monique, looking embarrassed. “Sorry.”

       “Don’t be.” Penny let go of her duffle bag and sighed. “Oh, okay. Summer, my older sister, she’s thirty-five now. She’s a baby-maker. It’s the only craft she can do, I guess. She’s got like four kids, and they always run away because she either ignores them or screams at them. Wind, my older brother, he’s a drama queen. He can’t keep a relationship going to save his life. Women like him at first because he’s sensitive, but he’s like a big jellyfish, all mush and goo and no spine. Come to think of it, Summer’s got no spine with her kids, and she can’t keep a relationship going, either. She comes back now and then looking for her runaways, and Wind comes back when he breaks up with his latest wife or fiancée or girlfriend, whatever. Me—” Her voice became softer “—I only come back when I go broke, after my bright ideas about saving the world blow up in my face. Last time I was back, over a year ago, a volcano had wiped out my crafts stand in Costa Rica—” She gave a grim smile when Monique gasped “—yeah, a volcano, and when I came back here, I got into this big fight with my older sibs, and then I had a fight with my dad and mom, so I split. I wasn’t even here a week. And now I’m back again, broke as always. Sorta figures, doesn’t it? Predictable. Penny Predictable.”

       She looked at the floor, her dark smile fading. “I had a parrot when I was here last: Chiquito, a green macaw. He was a good bird. He liked me. I told people he was possessive, because he got upset and squawked whenever anyone got too close. It was cute. Came in handy sometimes, too. His pet carrier got lost the last time I flew into Mexico City, and I don’t know what happened to him. I looked and looked, but he was gone.” She exhaled heavily. “But that’s life, eh, muchacha?”

       “I’m sorry to hear that.” Monique put down a ceramic ashtray she was examining. “Are Summer and Wind coming back anytime soon?”

       “God, I hope not. That would pretty much drive me back to the bar, if not out of the country again. We don’t get along, the three of us older kids. We never did. Wind and Summer are assholes.” She pulled a few more dirty clothes out of her bag. “Can’t say I’m any better, though,” she added.

       Monique winced. “Why do you do that?”

       “What?”

       “Put yourself down so much.”

       Penny exhaled. “Because it’s true. Look—” She held up a hand to stop Monique’s protests “—I know myself, all right? I’ll tell you why I think that, but let me sort through all this crap for a minute.”

       She broke off, looking at the doorway. Boot steps sounded in the hall. After a moment, Jane appeared with a tray on which were stacked steaming pizza slices and three cans of soda.

       “Yo,” said Jane, making for the round table by which Monique sat. “Sorry we got off on the wrong foot. Here’s a peace offering. Don’t throw anything sharp, okay?”

       “Jane, thanks!” cried Monique with a huge smile. “This is great!”

       Penny straightened, letting the half-empty duffle bag sink against her legs. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “Look, I’m broke, I’m in a pissy mood, and I’m sorta drunk on top of it all. I’m sorry about everything, okay?”

       “S’okay,” said Jane. She took a soda can from the tray and headed for the door.

       “Jane?” Penny called. “Wait. C’mon back and hang out a little, if you want.”

       Jane stopped and looked back at her sister and Monique, weighing an answer. “You mean it?”

       “Hell, yeah. C’mon and sit with us for a little.”

       “Sit by me.” Monique patted a pillow within arm’s reach. “It’s okay.”

       Jane hesitated, then shrugged. “Sure,” she said, and she walked over and dropped down on a floor pillow, getting comfortable. Popping the top on her soda can, she took a sip. “What are you looking for?” she asked, indicating Penny’s duffle bag.

       “My souvenir.” Penny hauled out two more wrinkled shirts, then said, “Here it is.” From of the duffle bag, she pulled a pale linen sack that crackled as if stuffed with wadded paper. It held a flat, round shape.

       “Is that the thing—” Monique began, then glanced at Jane and stopped.

       “What thing?” said Jane.

       “It’s the thing I stole when I was in El Salvador,” said Penny, walking over. She sat down on a pillow by the small table and peered into the sack. “Hope it isn’t broken. I bet that would be some major bad luck.”

 

 

 

Chapter Six

 

       “You stole something?” asked Jane. She put down her drink. “I’m coming into this conversation late, remember, so you’ll have to—”

       “I took it out of some Aztec ruins. Had to disguise it to get it out of the country.” Penny reached into the sack. Paper crinkled.

       “Whoa,” said Monique in amazement. “It was in some ruins?”

       “Penny,” Jane asked, eyebrow raised, “weren’t the ruins guarded?”

       “They were too busted up to be worth it. Everything else that was worth anything was already gone. No one cared much about them, from what I saw.”

       Jane let out a long sigh. “Oooh-kay. If memory serves, most countries have laws about borrowing their ancient artifacts without asking. I could be wrong, but I think if you get caught, they make you star in a very long and very bad B-movie about a foreign women’s prison.”

       “Send me a file in a cake, then.” From the linen sack, Penny pulled out an object wrapped in newspapers, which she began removing and throwing behind her. “It’s painted over,” she continued. “I told the people in customs it was a handmade stone plate for pizza baking. They said I should get into another line of work.”

       The last crumpled newspaper was pulled away. In Penny’s hands was a gray-painted disc about a foot across and one inch thick. It was unattractive in color, but it was also flawless in shape.

       “An Aztec Frisbee?” said Jane.

       “I have to wash off the paint first,” said Penny. She licked her thumb and rubbed it over a spot on the gray disc. The paint blurred, then came away. Below it was a polished black surface.

       “Is that obsidian?” asked Jane, pointing.

       “Yeah, the whole thing. Not a chip or scratch in it. Wait a sec.” Penny put the disc on the table, then got up and walked out of the room. “Don’t pick it up,” she called behind her as she left.

       Monique looked down at the rubbed-off spot. “It’s shiny,” she said. “I can almost see myself.”

       Jane licked her own thumb and rubbed at the spot a little more. The smeared paint came off. She leaned over the plate, gently moving Monique aside. “Damn,” she said, wiping her thumb on her pants. “That’s nice. She got this out of an Aztec ruin?”

       Penny came back in the room with a few towels and damp washcloths. “Hey, careful. Lemme fix it up.” She laid one towel on the floor and put the gray plate on it.

       “Hey!” Jane cried. “Those are my bath towels!”

       “The paint’ll come off in the laundry, so don’t worry. It’s water soluble.” Penny rubbed at the disc with a wet washcloth. The gray came off in moments and stained both towels. Jane groaned aloud.

       “They really let you through customs with that?” said Monique.

       “The air conditioner in the building was busted, and it was roaring hot,” Penny said as she scrubbed. “Over a hundred degrees, I bet. It wasn’t a dry heat, either. I don’t think anyone much cared what I had, as long as it wasn’t drugs, explosives, or guns.” She flipped the disc over and wet the backside, then rubbed it hard with the cloth.

       “Didn’t their sweaty hands rub the paint off when they handled it?” asked Jane, looking at her towels with growing distress.

       “They didn’t handle it. It was in a clear plastic bag. They looked at it, the dogs smelled it, they x-rayed it, and they let me take it.”

       Jane shook her head in disbelief. “Jeez. Anyway, remember, you’re doing laundry this time.”

       The disc was largely free of gray paint by this point. The deep, polished black of the surface was evident. Monique and Jane stared at it with wide eyes.

       “Man,” said Monique in awe. “That rocks.”

       “It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” said Penny, hunched over the obsidian plate and scrubbing it clean. “Couldn’t believe I’d found it. It’s like a mirror. The Aztecs didn’t know about glassmaking like the Europeans, but they did okay with this stuff.” She exchanged towels again and rubbed the plate down, holding it by its rounded edges without looking at the plate directly. A minute later, the black disc gleamed like a piece of starless night.

       “Oh, my God,” said Jane, staring. “I can’t believe you stole this. It’s bloody priceless.”

       Penny nodded, her fear increasing. “It’s a perfect mirror,” she said with a dry throat. Setting the cloths and towels aside, she steeled herself and picked up the obsidian plate with both hands to examine it—but found she could not make herself look into it. She kept it aimed away from her face and peered at objects slightly to the side, holding it as if it were a bomb.

       “Me, next,” whispered Monique.

       Jane frowned. Penny looked as if she expected the round black plate to explode in her hands. With trembling fingers, Penny laid the disc on a relatively clean towel, flipping the edge of the towel over to cover it. Her breath came out in a ragged sigh. “Pretty, isn’t it?” she said in a strained voice. She wiped her face. “I wonder if I was hallucinating the first time I picked it up. It looked so real, though.”

       “What was real? What happened when you looked into it before?” asked Jane.

       Penny sat back on her heels. “The first time I looked at it, I saw me,” she said. “I mean, I saw who I really was, like . . . like the, um . . . like he said I would.”

       Jane frowned. “Who was ‘he’?”

       “The . . . the god I thought I saw in the mirror.”

       “You met Jesus?” Monique gasped, her voice rising.

       “That would be hay-soos,” corrected Jane under her breath, glaring at her sister. “Oh, c’mon, Penny!”

       “No, not Jesus!” Penny said. “It was an Aztec god, or spirit or whatever.” She gave Jane a weak smile. “This is loco—correcto, mi hermana?”

       Jane didn’t bother to answer, shaking her head and staring at the plate instead.

       Monique looked confused. “You didn’t meet God?” she asked. “I don’t get it.”

       “Not the Judeo-Christian God, no. It was some other being.” Penny gazed at the obsidian plate with a depressed look. “It was so real.”

       “You said something happened when you met this being,” said Jane, to keep the story going.

       “Yeah.” Penny carefully picked up the plate again. “I looked this mirror and . . . I saw who I really was. Who I really am, I mean.” Light from the nearby lamp reflected from the plate onto the walls and then her face, before she adjusted the plate’s angle to look at her image once more.

       “And who are you?” asked Jane. “The who that you saw in the mirror.”

       The life ran out of Penny’s voice and face. “I’m a nothing,” she whispered.

       Several beats passed. “The mirror said that?” said Jane.

       Penny slowly nodded. “It showed me, actually.”

       Jane raised an eyebrow. “For what it’s worth, I never thought of you as a nothing, Penny. Aggressive, blunt, and touchy, maybe, but never a nothing. I don’t—”

       “I am a nothing,” repeated her sister. “I’ve had no effect on the world. I’ve failed at everything I ever wanted to do. I’m thirty years old, almost halfway through my life, and I’ve thrown away the whole damn thing. I’m a nothing.”

       Jane’s gaze dropped to the mirror. “Sis,” she said gently, “you weren’t by any chance wasted when you had this . . . this vision, were you?”

       “I was a little drunk,” Penny admitted. “Well, more than a little, but that . . . that didn’t have an effect on what happened.”

       “Penny—”

       “No, really, it didn’t. What happened—when I looked into this mirror the very first time—that was real.”

       “Look,” Jane said, “I know this revelation is important to you, but under the circumstances, I don’t know if I’d put any more stock in what you saw than if Summer had said it, if you get my drift.”

       Penny looked away. “It wasn’t like that.”

       “Can I look at myself?” asked Monique.

       “What?” Penny looked back.

       “Can I try it?”

       Penny hesitantly handed over the plate. “I don’t know if it’s working or not,” she said. “Be careful with it.”

       “I will be,” said Monique. “I won’t drop it.”

       “That’s not what I meant.”

       Monique held the plate below her face and peered into it with an intense look. “Hey, it’s like a real mirror, only dark everywhere,” she said. “Oops, I fogged it up.”

       “Smoking mirror,” said Jane. She turned to Penny. “Is that what the Aztecs called a smoking mirror? I had a history class about the Aztecs. Wasn’t there a god that—”

       “Tezcatlipoca, yeah.”

       “Tez . . . cat, okay. Was that the god you saw? Wasn’t he something like the god of jaguars?”

       “He was the god of the night and the north. His name means ‘smoking mirror’ in Nahuatl, the Aztec tongue. He carried a polished obsidian mirror that he used to foretell the future, see faraway places and other worlds, or look into people’s minds. He used a lot of magic.”

       Jane pointed to the disc Monique held. “And this is supposed to be his mirror? That Tezcat guy, or god, or what?”

       “I dunno,” said Penny. “I found it on top of the ruins, under a flat stone. It looked like someone had hidden it after wrapping it up in leaves. I don’t know how long it had been there, but I think it was a long time. It was in some kind of painted wood frame, but it had decayed and it fell apart when I found it, leaving only this.”

       “And that night god, Tezcat-whatever, he told you where to find it?”

       “No. I found it while I was getting drunk, and then he appeared in the mirror the first time I looked.” Her shoulders drooped, and she smacked her forehead. “This gets stupider the more I try to explain it.”

       Jane drummed her fingers on the low table. “I should have both my heads examined,” she said, “but I believe you.”

       “Oh, right,” said her sister sourly. “Don’t give me that mierda.”

       “You’ve never lied to me, Penny, not once. I don’t think you’re lying now. Maybe all that alcohol had something to do with it, but I still believe you.”

       Penny exhaled, taken aback. Jane sounded sincere. “Well,” she began, “I—”

       “Mommy?” said Monique in a high voice, looking into the mirror.

       Penny and Jane turned to her, startled.

       Monique laid the plate on the floor, still staring into its surface. “My mom, yeah,” she went on in a more normal tone. “Yeah, she—”

       Jane leaned toward her. “Say what?”

       Penny’s face went white.

       “I get it,” said Monique to the mirror. Her voice picked up speed. “When she ran off, and my dad didn’t pay attention to me, I thought it was my fault. I always wanted him to notice me, I’ve always wanted someone to notice me, so I pick people who don’t notice me so I won’t be the one respons—” She looked up into space across the room, rocking from side to side. “That’s why I’ve—why I do the performing, yeah, and the piercing and the makeup and everything, and why all this time, I’ve tried so hard just to get people to notice me and make things work—”

       Monique put out a hand to steady herself, but she swayed off-balance and fell over on her side on the floor. As Penny and Jane watched, she rolled and pushed herself up on an elbow, looking back at the mirror with a dazed expression. “And then,” she said, her words slurring, “I keep picking up guys or finding friends who . . . one or the other, they get wasted or they never talk to me. . . I pick them because I want to undo—and I try so hard to get them to—but they never—just like Dad, they never . . .” She rolled on her back and stared at the ceiling, motionless.

       “Monique?” Penny scooted over quickly. “Monique, you okay?”

       “What the hell happened?” asked Jane, moving over on hands and knees.

       “I see it,” Monique whispered, staring up at nothing. “I thought it was my fault, that I was the one who drove her off, that it was me she didn’t want, and my dad, I was nothing to him when he drank. All the time I was growing up, I was like nothing, running behind him, but he wouldn’t—” Her voice faded. “I was—I was like—”

       Penny got her hands under her friend’s shoulders and heaved up. Monique was heavier than she appeared, but Penny pulled her into a sitting position and scooted up behind her, wrapping her arms around the thin girl with the long, dark hair. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Monique, are you all right?”

       “Penny! What’s happening?” Jane took one of Monique’s limp hands and felt no resistance, the fingers and wrist flopping as if Monique were dead. Penny began to gently rock from side to side with her friend in her arms. Jane laid Monique’s hand on the floor, then glanced back at the obsidian mirror. She saw herself, she thought with a cold shiver. She saw who she was.

       “I’m sorry,” Penny whispered into Monique’s hair, holding her tightly as she rocked. “I’m so sorry, mi muchacha! ¡Perdóneme! ¡Estoy aquí!”

       Jane pressed her fingers against Monique’s neck, above her choker, and felt a pulse. Monique still breathed, though her eyes were fixed on a distant point in space. “Yo!” Jane said in a louder voice, trying not to panic. She gave Monique a light slap on the cheek. “Hey, wake up! Come on!”

       “Jane, cover it!” Penny cried. “Quickly! Cover it up!”

       “What?”

       “The mirror! Don’t look at it!”

       Jane whirled around, snatched a paint-stained towel, and threw it over the obsidian disc. “What happened?” she shouted when she turned back. “Talk to me!”

       “It’s the mirror!” shouted her sister. “It’s what she saw in the mirror!”

       “Penny, for God’s sake!”

       Monique stirred, waking up. She blinked and looked at Jane with unfocused eyes. “What?” she said—then flinched and put her hands in front of her face to ward something away. She struggled violently in Penny’s arms. “No!” she screamed. “NoooOOO!”

       Jane grabbed Monique’s flailing hands by the wrists and forced them down by half sitting on them. Her sister hugged the crazed young woman around the torso and buried her face in Monique’s shoulder. For a woman who barely weighed over a hundred ten pounds, Monique was insanely strong. Back arched and muscles knotted, she made a supreme attempt to break free from the sisters and strike out. She screamed so loudly, Jane’s ears rang.

       Then, with a fading cry, Monique fell back against Penny, drew a breath and began to sob. “Why didn’t you want me?” she shouted when she could breathe again, and then she inhaled and screamed, “Why didn’t anyone ever want me?”

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

 

       Twenty minutes later, the forgotten pizza and drinks had reached room temperature on the little table. Penny and Jane managed to get Monique to Penny’s low bed, where she now lay on her side, her legs drawn up and her face hidden in the black waterfall of her hair. Jane sat on the bed behind Monique, ready to grab her hands or sit on her legs if she began to thrash about. The Lane sisters were not up to light conversation and merely waited.

       Monique stirred. Jane noticed and watched her like a hawk.

       “I’m okay now,” Monique whispered. “I’m okay.” She turned her head to look up at Penny through her hair. “I’m sorry.”

       “No problema,” Penny whispered back. Her hand came to rest on Monique’s arm. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have let you do it, muchacha.”

       “No, it’s all right,” said Monique. “I’m okay. It was just . . . a lot of stuff came back, and I was sorta . . . I had a hard time dealing with it. It’s okay.” She blew out a long breath. “I’ve been through it before, I guess. Most of it’s old stuff, wasn’t anything new. It just . . . it surprised me, that’s all. I’m okay now.” She cleared her throat. “I’m a little hungry,” she said.

       Jane and Penny exchanged glances. “I can reheat the pizza if you’ll be okay here,” said Jane to her sister.

       “No, that’s all right,” said Monique. “I’m okay now. I’m mostly thirsty. Maybe a little drink of something, if—”

       “Un momento.” Jane got up from the bed, stretched to get the cramps out of her legs, then walked over to retrieve a soda can. She brought it back and handed it to Penny, who popped the top and helped Monique sit up to drink from it. After a few sips, Monique handed the can back to Penny, who set it aside.

       “I feel so stupid,” Monique murmured. She sat up on the bed as Penny and Jane hovered beside her. Her long black hair fell across her face. “I’m sorry about that stuff I said. I was like . . . it just all came up, you know, and out it went.”

       “It’s okay,” said Penny.

       Monique’s mouth tightened. “My dad put me in therapy a few times after my mom ran off, and when he quit drinking he made us both go to therapy for a while. It kinda helped, I guess. I already knew most of that . . . that stuff I saw. I already knew it.”

       “What you saw in the mirror?” asked Jane, sitting on the mattress.

       “Yeah.” Monique nodded. “Man, I haven’t thought of some of that stuff in years, you know? I wish I hadn’t seen it, ‘cause . . . takes a little while to get over it, you know? It’s kinda . . . eh, it doesn’t matter, I guess. I know . . . I know that’s what I think sometimes, but it’s not what I should think. It wasn’t . . .” She shook her head. “It wasn’t my fault. I saw that, too.”

       “What wasn’t your fault?”

       “Jane,” said Penny, “just let it alone.”

       “Nah, it’s okay.” Monique took a sharp breath, then said very quickly, “It wasn’t my fault my mom ran off, or that my dad drank.” She took another breath and blew it out. “Whew! Kinda hard to say it, even now. Man, that was a kick in the head.”

       “Huh,” said Penny.

       “What?” asked Jane.

       Penny swallowed. “This will sound dumb,” she said, “but I’ve never been to therapy for anything.”

       Jane shrugged. “So? Neither have I. What’s your point?”

       “I dunno. Maybe I should have. Gotten therapy, I mean, for—for stuff.”

       “Our whole family could go into therapy,” said Jane. “We’d keep generations of shrinks occupied. So what?” She peered closely at Penny. “You think therapy would have helped you when you looked in that mirror the first time?”

       Penny turned and looked back at the rumpled towel covering the obsidian plate. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m still not over it.”

       “I dunno if it would,” Monique said, looking up. “I saw stuff that I never talked about in therapy.”

       “What was it like?” said Jane after a pause.

       “The mirror? Oh.” Monique sighed. “Well, at first, it was just me looking at me, and then I started thinking about stuff, and then . . . this is weird, but I thought the mirror was looking at me, too. I didn’t see any god or anything, but inside my head, it was kinda like . . . like a soup, you know? With bubbles coming up, and stuff turning around in it while the soup boils, and suddenly things started coming out, stuff I hadn’t thought about in like years, and . . . it was still kind of like looking in the mirror, because what was coming up was like . . . like someone was looking at me and telling me who I was.” She was quiet for a moment, then added, “It said I was going nowhere.”

       “It said that?” asked Jane.

       “Well, sort of. I mean, I know I’m not going anywhere. I’m just spinning my wheels, I guess. I did something really stupid, getting that nose ring—my dad was really against it, but he hasn’t gotten on me about it since he found out about the hep, thank God. But I feel so bad for him, ‘cause he . . . oh, I dunno, I’m rambling. I saw in the mirror that all my trying to make people notice me sort of got me in big trouble, and now it’s gonna kill me in a few years or so, from the hep if it gets bad, and I’m still not going anywhere. I’m a big drag on my dad, money-wise, though he won’t say it. No one around here’s wanted me, except my dad, and I must be such a disappointment to him, and—” She shrugged, her face tight, then relaxed again. “That’s all.”

       It was quiet for several long seconds.

       “I have to go to the bathroom,” said Monique in a tired voice. “Can I use your—”

       “Sure,” said Jane. “Down the hall, same as always.”

       “Thanks.” Monique slowly got up. “Be right back,” she said as she left.

       Penny and Jane sat in silence until they heard the bathroom door shut.

       “I’m so sorry I let her do that,” whispered Penny. “I swear, I thought maybe I was just dreaming it or something, but—oh, damn it to hell.”

       “Did that happen to you?” Jane asked.

       Penny licked her lips. “Yeah,” she said without looking up. “It was worse than what happened to her. I freaked out. When I woke up the next morning, my throat hurt like hell. I think I screamed all night. Can’t believe I didn’t fall off the damn rubble.”

       “I’m glad you didn’t,” said Jane. She reached over and took her sister’s hand. Penny did not resist, though she did not look up at Jane. When Jane squeezed her hand, Penny squeezed back.

       They were silent a while longer before Penny got to her feet, wincing from the pain in her bruised thighs. “I’d better check on her,” she said. “Just in case.”

       “Sure.”

       “Be right back.”

       Jane nodded. As Penny walked out, Jane’s gaze turned to the spot on the floor where a towel covered a flat, round object. She stared at it without blinking, deep in thought, until Monique and Penny returned.

       The rest of the evening was a wash. They ate all the pizza, but little of importance was said. They could not bear to talk about their lives, the mirror, or anything else. It was too much. Monique fell asleep on Penny’s low bed, while Penny pulled out her sleeping bag and crashed on the floor beside her. It was warm enough in the house that blankets weren’t necessary.

       Only Jane was unable to sleep, being accustomed to nodding off at three in the morning during the summer. She went back to her room at the opposite end of the hall, and about one a.m. stood in her sock feet, staring at her current artwork in progress. It was an abstract painting of a fish. She wondered what she was trying to say with it. The original idea was that the fish was her, the inner Jane Lane, swimming through the sea of her life, but it was missing the vital element that would bring it to life and make it click. A few possibilities had been in her mind earlier in the day, but now they were gone and would not come back.

       No longer in the mood to paint, Jane found herself staring at the fish’s round, black eye. What am I not seeing about me? Is it that I can’t see it, or that I won’t?

       The black eye looked back at her. Her thoughts drifted to the smoking mirror. What would I see if I looked for the real me? What would that mirror show, if anything?

       “Mom and Dad, for sure,” she said aloud to the painting. “Being left alone in the house so often with only half-with-it Trent looking out for me, getting pushed around by kids in school who thought I was crazy or a whore or worse, getting shut out and having no friends at all, walking home alone every day, arguing with teachers who didn’t understand what I was drawing, blowing off everyone who didn’t get what I was about, everyone except . . .”

       She thought, but did not say, Daria.

       And mentally added, And look where that got me.

       She fell silent, feeling at loose ends. She turned away from the fish and looked around her room, noticed nothing worthy of attention, then left and went down the hall to check on Penny and Monique. They slept soundly in the darkness. On the round table near the door burned a lone candle shaped like a rattlesnake coiled into an upright cone.

       On the floor by the table was the gray-stained towel. Jane stood in the doorway and looked down at the towel for a long minute.

       With a last glance at Penny, she quietly walked into the room, knelt by the towel, and picked up both it and the heavy obsidian disc below it. She held them in her hands for long seconds, weighing them out.

       Her mouth tightened. Without a word, she rose to her feet and left the room. The smoking mirror went with her.

       Exhausted and asleep, Penny and Monique noticed nothing at all.

 

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

 

       Hours later, Penny became aware of light filtering through her eyelids. She stirred and yawned—then grimaced as a dull throbbing in her head pounded with growing strength. Her brain felt like it had been through a trash-compacting machine. Bright dawn came through the shades of her room windows, making her head ache even more.

       Where the hell am I? Memories slowly leaked in. She turned her head and recognized her room, then rolled on her side and saw Monique, asleep only two feet away on the low mattress.

       Even through a hangover headache, Monique was a welcome sight. Penny smiled. Mi muchacha, she thought. Strands of Monique’s raven hair vibrated around her nose. Penny wondered how sick Monique was. How advanced was the hepatitis? Was she having other symptoms? Did she have long to live? Could she could make it to Central America and climb a mountain? She’d be great company, no question of it. There was the money issue as well as the health issue, of course, but they could work their way south, Monique playing guitar on street corners and Penny making pots for cash as usual, or maybe they could—

       Monique’s eyelids fluttered and opened. She focused on Penny’s face. “Hey,” she whispered, and she smiled.

       “Hey,” said Penny with a grin. Her headache lessened. “Buenos díaz.”

       “Yeah, you, too. Good to see you.”

       “Sleep okay?”

       “Yeah, it was okay. I was really tired.” Monique rubbed her eyes. “Man, I had this really weird dream. Something about a cat.”

       Penny’s smile faded in surprise. She’d had a weird dream, too, just a week ago in El Salvador. In the dream, a great black cat, like a jaguar, had come up to her as she lay on top of a ruined temple, drunk as a skunk. The cat had looked her in the face for a moment before walking off. It did not seem hostile, but it was not particularly interested in her. She thought it was looking for someone, but who it sought, she couldn’t say. It was a very large jaguar, with eyes of infinite darkness—

       Something niggled at her memory. She pushed herself up on her elbows in her sleeping bag and looked across the room. A gray-stained towel and washcloths lay on the floor where she had dropped them. She couldn’t remember what she had been cleaning with them—probably a paint spill, nothing important. She lay down again and tried to remember what had happened the night before. She and Monique had been talking about their lives, and Jane had been there, too, but there had been something else, a topic . . .

       “Penny Lane,” murmured Monique.

       “What?”

       “Oh, I was just thinking. Penny Lane. It sounds familiar, like something in a song, sort of. I’m sorry if this is weird, it’s just kind of familiar, and—”

       “It was from a Beatles song, years ago,” said Penny in annoyance. “My stupid parents named me after—”

       “Oh! Yeah! ‘Penny Lane, you’re in my ears and in my—’”

       “Don’t sing it!” Penny snapped. “I really hate that song!”

       Monique stopped instantly. “Sorry.”

       I shouldn’t have jumped on her like that. “I’m sorry. It’s okay, just don’t do it anymore, please. The kids at school really razzed me about it, but the teachers were even worse. My old P.E. teacher used to yell at me about not being a joiner, and she’d sing that song every time I screwed something up. Mom and Dad would hum that damn song sometimes at home, and if I complained, then Summer would start in until I screamed. She was such a jerk.”

       “Oh. So, you hate your name?”

       Penny shrugged. “I don’t think about it much. It’s okay, most days.”

       “Do you have a nickname?”

       Penny rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Some people used to call me Roja. It’s Spanish for red. That wasn’t so great, either.” It was a hell of a lot better than la puta americana, though. ”Just call me Penny.”

       “Penny’s a good name.” Monique rubbed her face. “What a night. I don’t know why I got so upset about stuff. Guess I was just thinking too much.”

       “Thinking too much isn’t good for anyone.” Penny got out of her sleeping bag and tried to stand. Her head roared with the hangover, and her thighs hurt like unholy hell. Running into stopped cars the night before had not been the smartest thing to do. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to her feet, wearing only her tank top and underwear, and did a few stretches to get her blood flowing. That done, she walked across the room and stared at the paint-stained towel on the floor. Was I cleaning something I brought back, like a pot?

       “Something smells good,” said Monique, sitting up in bed. “Is that coffee?”

       “Think so.” Penny kicked the towel aside, peered into the hall, then walked out for a moment. When she returned, she yawned. “Trent’s not back yet. Let’s see what’s downstairs in the kitchen.”

       “Gotcha,” said Monique, getting out of bed. She wore only her olive-green tee, black underpants, and a sleepy expression.

       The entire house smelled of strong, fresh coffee. Down in the kitchen was a hot pitcher of black liquid in the coffeemaker—and a note beside it, in Jane’s neat, all-capitals printing.

 

 

 

YO,

 

WENT FOR A RUN. ENJOY THE COFFEE BEFORE IT BURNS.

THE THINGS IN THE FREEZER MIGHT BE DONUTS. PLEASE

REMEMBER TO PUT MY TOWELS IN THE WASHER. THANKS.

 

JANE

 

 

 

       “Okay, I’ll wash your damn towels,” muttered Penny, who still couldn’t recall how they got dirty. She put the note aside and turned to more important issues. The things in the freezer were indeed leftover cake donuts and crullers, which the microwave magically defrosted. The two settled down at the table, sitting next to each other at one corner.

       “This helps,” Penny mumbled after a long slurp of coffee. She wondered where her headache had gone. That was the shortest, easiest hangover she’d ever had. Still, that wasn’t reason enough to get wasted on mescal again. She got lucky this time, and she’d have to be more careful in the future. Drinking worried Monique, too. Maybe she should think about cutting back. A lot.

       Monique leaned across the table, squinting at Penny’s chest through her tangle of black hair. Penny looked down, then realized she was still wearing her I’M HERE LOOKING FOR GIRLS, TOO tank top. Monique pointed. “Did anyone really think you were gay?”

       Penny pulled at the stretched-out neckline of the shirt, then let it go. “Yeah. Some asshole kids in high school said I was a lesbian because I didn’t date around and I ran track. After a while, everyone said it.” Her jaw tightened. “I got beaten up a few times, but I beat some of them up, too, until they left me alone. It was what I wanted in the first place, getting left alone.”

       “They beat you up?” Monique asked in shock.

       “Oh, it’s no big deal,” said Penny, but she flinched, remembering the dry-mouthed fear those times when she was surrounded and blocked from escape, then pushed from behind until she fought back, then hit everywhere, even in the face and groin. Her voice was a whisper. “That was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter now.”

       “No one hits on you ‘cause of the shirt? I mean, don’t other girls try to hook up?”

       “Once in a while.” Penny shrugged. “I tell them to buzz off, like everyone else. They can do what they want, but it’s not for me.”

       “I can’t believe anyone would do that—beat you up, I mean. I can’t believe it.”

       Penny did not look up from the tabletop. She could still feel the punches. Some girls could hit almost as hard as the boys. No wonder she had avoided having friends for so long. No one could be trusted not to hurt her.

       “Hey,” Monique said, “can I tell you something?”

       Coming to life, Penny blew on her coffee. She let her mind go blank. “Sure.”

       Monique studied her cup for a moment. “You know,” she began, “you’re not really a failure.”

       Penny gave her an irked look. “Don’t analyze me this early in the day, okay?”

       “No, really. Listen to me,” said Monique. She looked into Penny’s eyes. “Think about it, all the stuff you’ve done in your life, going all over the place for a dozen years. Look at all the things you got to do. I mean, I’ve never done anything like that, you know? I just went around playing with bands and stuff, but it wasn’t anything big. You did all the cool stuff. To me, you’ve really done stuff, you know?”

       “Oh, jeez, stop trying to—”

       “No, really!” insisted Monique. “I know you don’t see it like I do, but think about it. See, I don’t feel like I’m really grown up yet. I have all these ideas about doing stuff, you know, all these dreams and ideals and things, but I haven’t done anything much about them. I mean, I write songs about life and stuff, but I haven’t really done anything. You know what I mean? You’ve been out there trying to make a difference. You actually did something about your dreams, you got to do stuff to help other people all these years, you met people and went places and saw things. You got the chance to do what you wanted to do, right?”

       Seeing no immediate reaction, Monique pressed on. “Well, I haven’t. I’d give anything to be like you. I really would. I want to go see those mountains you were talking about, go traveling around and actually feel like I got somewhere in the world, you know?” Her words slowed. “I was thinking about it last night and I was afraid I’d never do it. I’m tired all the time, and I’m scared of going somewhere but then getting sick—not that I guess it matters anymore since I can’t afford any medicine anyway. You’re the first person I’ve met in ages who had a dream and got to follow it, you know? I’d love it if only I could—”

       Without warning, tears ran down Monique’s face. She brushed her fingers against her eyes and struggled to get her words out. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t think you’re a failure, okay? I don’t care what anyone else says. I mean, look at me! All I wanted down deep was for someone to notice me, and I got a nose ring ‘cause I thought it was cool, but it was infected and now it’s going to kill me one of these days, and I haven’t done anything with my life! I’m dying because of a damn nose ring! I have all this music I want to write but probably won’t, and—” Her voice broke “—what am I gonna do?”

       Penny came out of her trance and scooted her chair next to Monique’s, putting her arms around her friend. Monique rested her head on Penny’s shoulder and wept, her hands in her lap. They sat like that for a long time as Monique cried. It was the first time ever that Penny remembering caring about someone enough to hold her. She could hardly believe it.

       The tears finally slowed. Monique pulled away and blew her nose on her paper napkin. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m the failure, not you.”

       “No,” said Penny. She put her arms around Monique again. It was quiet between them this time, and Penny listened to Monique’s breathing. One day this sound will stop, she thought. How long does she have left? What is there she can do before the end, however long she has?

       “I should call home,” Monique mumbled at last. “My dad’s probably wondering where I went. I forgot to call him last night.”

       Penny let go. “Sure. Use the phone over there.”

       “Thanks.” Monique got up and went across the kitchen to the wall phone. Penny looked down at her steaming coffee, then wrapped her hands around the cup and felt the heat soak through her fingers.

       I should stay in Lawndale with her, she thought—and then, Stay in Lawndale? What the hell am I thinking?

 

 

 

Chapter Nine

 

 

       I’m thinking about staying in Lawndale? Penny thought in amazement. I’ve never wanted to stay in Lawndale! I’ve always wanted to get the hell out of this dump, and I’ll do it again as soon as possible—right?

       And then do what? a part of her mind asked.

       Well, maybe go back to El Salvador or Honduras. I’ve been in Belize a couple times, that was nice. Maybe stick around there for a while. Still have Panama to see, too, and all those islands, and South America—one of those places might have the spark I need to get my plans going.

       Those save-the-world plans that can’t possibly succeed?

       They might work!

       No, they won’t. That part of my life is over. I’m thirty, I’m grown up, and it’s time for something new. I still want to travel, I still love to go places, but I need to think about my life plans and how they would affect things with Monique. I can’t imagine she’s up to traveling around like I usually do. If we’re careful, though, we could go places together, lots of places. I hope.

       Penny played with her coffee cup. Running away now would be stupid. She’s the only real friend I’ve had in years, maybe the only real friend I’ve had since day one. It’s crazy, because we couldn’t be more different, really. She’s Trent’s age and cheery and bright and optimistic, and I’m thirty and burned out and old and always pissed off about something. She likes people, and I hate them. She does music, I do crafts. She’s sick and sits around a lot and might have trouble going places, and I’m healthy and like exercise and traveling—although I would like to settle down for a time, too.

       She sighed. The truth is, I don’t feel like going anywhere for a while. I need a break to get my head together about where I’m going in life, from this day onward. All my big plans didn’t amount to squat. I haven’t changed the world one crappy iota. I’m a big damn zero, and I know it, thanks to that little revelation on the Aztec ruin, whatever brought that on. Bad tequila, no doubt. Still, it was true. I’ve changed nothing, saved no one, accomplished nothing.

       But . . . what if I could save a little part of the world? A little part, like Monique?

       She listened absently as Monique chatted on the phone behind her. “Yeah, Dad, I’m okay. I’m at a friend’s house in town. No, just tired. Yeah, we’re having breakfast right now. No, it’s a girl, little older than me. You remember Trent? It’s his big sister, one of them. Yeah. I met her last night at McGrundy’s and we’ve been hanging out. Not much, just sitting and talking. Okay. Yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t call. Okay. Probably later today. Nothing. I didn’t have anything going on. What? Hey, that’s good. Are they going to promote you, too? Oh, hey, cool! About time, isn’t it? Yeah! That’s great!”

       Will Monique and I be forever friends, always-together kind of friends? I feel it happening. We have a weird chemistry going, even as different as we are. It could work. I’d have to hang around town for a while and put up with this mindless, plastic blunderland, maybe even meet a few bonehead former classmates or my Nazi P.E. teacher again, but it would be worth it to hang out with Monique. It all fits together, too. She wants to be noticed and feel like she matters. She needs someone to be there for her—and I’ve always wanted to be needed. That’s why I went to Central America so many times, looking for people who needed me, like Mom and Dad never seemed to. Why didn’t I ever look for only one person who needed me? Why not one friend instead of a whole country? No one would be my friend at school. I was just too different, too idealistic, too radical. After the lesbian rumors got out, nobody would hang out with me at all—but after they beat me up enough, I didn’t want to hang out with them, either.

       Shouldn’t I be looking for a guy who needs me, though?

       Well, why? What did a guy ever want from me besides sex? Any guy, anywhere? I need the sex too, yeah, and I want guys for that and I can get them, but when did I ever meet a guy who could be my friend? When did I meet anyone I trusted that much? Isn’t a friend what I really want, a companion to share life with, someone I believe in? Haven’t I wanted a real friend to love and be loved, right from the start? Is it too late to try?

       She turned around. Monique stood on one foot as she looked out a window, listening to the phone and scratching her standing leg with the toenails on her other foot. Monique, with her drab-green t-shirt, big eyes, and Victoria’s Secret black underwear. Monique, with her big raven-black hair, stick-thin figure, poisoned blood, and gravely shortened lifespan.

       Monique. Penny felt a rush of peace go through her. Don’t you want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody to love? Wouldn’t you love somebody to love?

       “I better—” Penny whispered before she cut off the rest of her words. I’ve found what I wanted. I’ve found the friend I never believed I’d have. I can let her go like the butterfly Mom always talked about, let her go her way and I’ll go mine and head on toward age forty and fifty and sixty and death with nothing to show for it, nothing to show for my life, or I can—

       Two paths diverged from that moment. The choice was upon her.

       “Hey, Monique?” Penny said.

       Monique turned around, phone still pressed to her ear, eyebrows raised.

       “Can I come over and see your place?” Penny asked, the words rushing out before she thought them through. Talk, don’t listen! “We could hang out together for the weekend. I was thinking I’d like to hear you on guitar or we could go somewhere or something, if you’ve got nothing going on. Okay with you?”

       Monique’s eyes got larger. “Dad?” she said to the phone. “Wait just a sec, okay?” She took the phone from her ear and pressed it to her chest. “Hang out for the weekend, you and me?” she asked.

       And maybe longer. A lot longer. “Yeah. You could show me around town, too. I haven’t been back for a long time and I don’t know where anything is anymore.”

       “You really want to?” Monique looked stunned.

       Penny gave her a twisted grin. “Yeah! Let’s have some fun!”

       “Hey, sure!” cried Monique. “That rocks!” She brought up the phone again. “Hey, Dad? Can I bring a friend over? She’s the sister of Trent’s, the one I stayed over with last night. Yeah, she’s cool! You’ll like her. Okay! We’ll be over later, then. Thanks! I’ve gotta go. Love you, too. Bye!”

       Penny got up from her chair as Monique hung up the phone and shrieked with delight. She impulsively pulled Monique close and hugged her, felt her thinness and her warmth and her breath and her heartbeat, how small she really was—one candle in a world of darkness, one light that might soon go out.

       “Thanks,” whispered Monique.

       “That’s what friends are for,” whispered Penny.

       Elsewhere in the house, the front door opened and shut.

       “Jane?” Penny looked up without releasing Monique.

       “Not Janey,” called Trent in a tired voice. He appeared in the doorway a second later, a black guitar case in one hand. His wrinkled clothes were stained with sweat, and he gave off an odor cloud of stale beer and cigarettes. His eyes grew huge and his mouth fell open as he took in his half-dressed sister and ex-girlfriend hugging in the kitchen.

       “Hey, Trent!” cried Monique. She pulled away from Penny and waved, excited and grinning. “You want some coffee? Jane made it. It’s pretty good.”

       Trent took a step back. Penny had never seen her brother so flustered, even after the prank the night before. “Oh, man!” he gasped, and he dropped his guitar case and ran from the kitchen to the stairs.

       “Are you okay?” Monique called after him, puzzled. “Trent?”

       “What’s eating him?” Penny grumbled. Trent had seen her in her underwear before. He’d probably seen more of Monique than this, too. Whatever, it was his problem, not hers. Penny gave Monique’s hand a squeeze, then saw that her coffee cup was empty. Her urge for donuts was sated, too. “We should go get showered,” she said. “You can use the upstairs one. I’ll use the one on this floor.”

       “Thanks! I could use it.”

       “Me, too. Wish I could remember more about last night.”

       “What about last night?” Monique called, heading for the stairs.

       “Nothing,” said Penny. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t important. Finding a lifelong friend, feeling the joy she’d always wanted bloom inside her and fill the world with its bright color—that was important. She had it, and it was hers.

 

 

 

Chapter Ten

 

 

       As steaming hot water sprayed in her face, Penny mulled over her future after thirty. I need to start over, she thought. I need to find my way again, but without any hurry. I might leave again one of these days—rather, we might leave, but we might not. I don’t know anything anymore. I know nothing except that I’ll never be alone again.

       Her thoughts drifted to something Monique had said, about wanting to write more songs. The entrepreneur part of Penny’s mind woke up. If that’s what she wants to do most, then she should do it, she thought, scrubbing shampoo into her brick-red hair. And why can’t she get solo gigs? If her music’s good, she can play anywhere. Hell, if a crap-ass band like Mystik Spiral can get gigs, Monique can get them. She just needs someone to push for her, open the doors, make it happen. Penny knew little about the music business, but she knew how to talk to people, how to sell them on things, how to network. It was what got her handicrafts sold, all these years. If Monique needed something, Penny knew she could deliver.

       Monique surely had some original music sitting around, but playing covers wasn’t out of the question, either. Maybe she knew a few other old hippie tunes besides “Somebody to Love,” and some catchy ways of singing them. Penny knew she could bring out whatever talent Monique had, and she suspected Monique had a lot.

       But there would be less drinking for Penny, for sure. The hangovers were too much, and she didn’t feel the need to medicate her pain as badly as before. Whatever had happened last night had set her free.

       Penny began to hum as much of “Somebody to Love” as she could remember. When the truth is found / to be lies / and all the joy / within you dies—hmm, that part doesn’t really apply to me, does it? It probably applies to someone else, somewhere, God help them, but not to me. Just the refrain, then—Don’t you want somebody to love? / Don’t you need somebody to love? / Wouldn’t you love somebody to love? / You’d better find somebody to love!

       This was the start of something big, she knew. She smiled. It was the start of something really big.

 

 

* * *

 

 

       It was impossible to believe, but someone wanted her. Monique could not get it out of her head. She stood under the shower and let the hot spray wash over her. She had the curious feeling that she was being born again, and someone was there with her, sheltering her with a great wing like a mother bird, yet letting her fly free, too.

       Someone wants me. Dad wants me, I know, but now someone else wants me, too. I think she means it. Monique massaged her face as the water fell over her in sheets. I was a nothing, but now I’m not. Someone wants me. Someone really sees me as I am and wants me.

       Part of the weariness that had dogged her for a year faded away. There was still a bit of the old fear, the old emptiness, but with it was a new thing that was scary but nourishing. She wants to hear me play my guitar, she said to herself. She’s not afraid of my illness, not afraid to hug me whenever she feels like it. I need to be hugged, need to be noticed, need to have a friend, and she does it all.

       And Penny undoubtedly had stories to tell, like the stories Monique’s father used to tell her about the places he’d gone when he was younger, the adventures he’d had, the dreams he’d dreamed before they were washed away in a liquor bottle. The bottle—that was the one frightening thing about Penny, that she liked to drink. Still, she had stopped herself from going to the liquor store when Monique asked her not to do it the night before. No one had ever done that in Monique’s experience. Her father and many other boyfriends hadn’t, so Monique had stopped asking them. Trent hadn’t been much of a drinker, but he hadn’t been much else, either. Would Penny break the mold?

       Monique rubbed her stomach to relieve a knot of fear. It’s okay, she told herself, it’s okay. She listened to me and didn’t drink. She might keep listening. I’ll play my guitar for her and show her the shoebox full of photos of me as a kid and when I started playing in that band with Trent in high school, before Mystik Spiral, and when I was touring with the Harpies and when I was doing some of my solo gigs. Maybe I could try for some more solo gigs or get back into a band that won’t mind having me. I could ask around. It wouldn’t hurt, except for being rejected, but I can get over that.

       Hardly aware of the water hitting her face, Monique picked up the soap and began to wash. A song drifted into her head from another of the records she used to play at night when she was a little girl, waiting for her father to come home from the bar. She’d have to be careful singing it around her new friend—but, for now, it was the Magical Mystery Tour album by the Beatles. The tune was the obvious one. She remembered only the refrain, which was enough.

       “‘Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes,’” she sang, scrubbing away. “‘There beneath the blue suburban skies . . .’”

 

 

* * *

 

 

       Trent sat on his bed in his messy room, his head in his hands. His asshole sister, fresh from terrorizing Central America for the upteenth time, had just transformed his former girlfriend, the sweet and naïve Monique, into a wretched love slave. Trent was not mourning for himself, as he already knew he and Monique were not destined to be a couple. The farther apart they kept, he correctly reasoned, the happier they would be in both the long and short run. He wasn’t upset about Penny being a lesbian, either, as it made no difference to him who she hung out with. Everyone in Lawndale knew Penny would turn out to be a dyke, anyway, and Trent had long ago decided Monique was probably bi. It was no surprise.

       Instead, he mourned for Monique, who would soon bear the searing scars of Penny’s acidic personality, her bubbly enthusiasm crushed into jellied nothingness like a hapless chipmunk caught under the steel treads of a multi-ton bulldozer. It boggled his mind. Trent could not imagine anyone who would go for Penny under any circumstances. She had all the loving appeal of a bloodstained machete. Poor Monique must have been desperate to hook up with her. It was worse than sad. It was tragic.

       “Like a chipmunk under a bulldozer,” said Trent aloud. He became thoughtful. The phrase had potential as a song lyric. He reached under his bed and pulled out his huge book of potential song lyrics, opened it to a fresh page near the back, and looked for a pen or pencil in his trash-filled room. He found a lime-green dye marker and used that to write:

 

 

You bulldozed through the forests of her primeval life

Knocked down the proud trees and gave her wilderness strife

Your engines roared loud, your poison everywhere spread

And her soul was like a chipmunk squashed beneath your cruel treads

 

 

       “Treads” was a close enough rhyme to “spread,” but Trent worried that the lyrics didn’t properly convey the soul-searing angst of the situation. That could be fixed with more lyrics, of course. He would leave the “you” in the song undefined, so it could be male or female, and also so Penny wouldn’t suspect the song was written about her, which would be troublesome, to say the least.

       He dithered for a few moments over a title, and settled on the provisional name, “Toxic Waste Love,” because he liked the phrase “toxic waste.” Perhaps he could work the word “deforestation” into the song and make a comparison with the plight of the rainforests, which—if Monique was clever enough—she might associate with Central America and the Amazon, which she would then associate with Penny, which would then reveal her predicament and allow her the chance to free herself from Penny’s relentlessly abusive nature.

       Trent nodded with growing excitement. He loved it when a song came together. He’d have to call Jesse and get some music going for it.

       It was still a shame about Monique, though. He tried to rid himself of the image of Monique and Penny in bed together, and he shivered in revulsion and horror. When his mind cleared, he bent over the book to make up the next set of verses.

 

 

* * *

 

 

       Neither Penny nor Monique ever again thought of the smoking mirror. It was still gone from Penny’s room when they returned. The customs officials who peered at it only a week earlier had forgotten it. Trent never knew about it. It was as if the obsidian mirror had never existed.

       Almost.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Part Two

 

The Secret History of Jane Lane

 

 

 

O tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a woman’s hide!

 

       —William Shakespeare, The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth, I, iv, 137

 

 

 

La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid.

(Revenge is a dish that is best served cold.)

 

       —Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

 

       The towel-covered mirror was heavy in Jane Lane’s hands as she walked back to her own room from Penny’s. After setting the obsidian disc on her bed, she went back to the door and listened, but Penny and Monique were still asleep. She shut her door and locked it, then walked across the room and looked down at the towel on her blanket—and the round outline of the object beneath it.

       I don’t want to do this, she thought, her nerve eroding. I don’t want to know who I really am. I don’t want to see the hidden me. It’s going to hurt, I know it, it’ll hurt like freaking crazy. I know that kind of pain. I’ve known it all my life.

       The fingers of her right hand strayed toward the towel. They pulled back.

       “But I do want to know,” she said with limited conviction. “I really do. I don’t know what’s inside me, but I want to know for sure. That self-knowledge is there sometimes—it was there when I started the fish picture—but then it went away and I can’t get at it now. I have to know.”

       The obsidian mirror under the towel did not respond.

       It’s going to hurt bad, like it hurt Monique and Penny, and it’ll probably be the thing that hurt me the most, which would be what happened with Daria and Tom. I still think about it a little, now and then, when I can’t sleep or I’m stuck in traffic or I’m painting or sculpting or doing anything. I remember how it felt to be so betrayed, to lose my heart and everything else inside me in one moment. Even after I forgave them and we got on with our lives, and even after I acted like nothing was wrong and everything was fine, it has never left me. Not for a second.

       Her fingers stroked the towel over the mirror. So, what would I see? She shook her head, blocking, more confused and nervous. I’ll see how I was part and parcel of it, how I played into the triangle and fed it. I’m as guilty as they. Her fingers pulled back and drummed against her thigh. I left Daria to be with Tom, didn’t I? Aren’t I as guilty as they? Should I not have done it, then, not looked for a lover? Should I never have dated anyone, so Daria could always have access to me? Or didn’t she ever get it, that I wanted a lover, that people have to grow up and change, and you have to flow with it? Was I wrong to want a guy who would be my own, as well as wanting Daria as my true friend for life?

       Well, I know I did other things to bring it on. I was so paranoid, accusing Daria of wanting Tom—well, that part was right on target. Can’t blame me for that. The hell with it.

       A friend and a lover, that’s all I wanted. Now that hope is gone, lost and gone and dead and buried. Daria and I have a shade of what we once shared. She still turns to me, like when she called me to that diner after she almost had that accident; she still needs me. I’ve done everything I could to keep the friendship going, I’ve hidden almost every bit of bitterness I’ve ever felt about her betrayal. I’ve pushed down and buried my rage and sorrow and everything, just so Daria could still be my friend, because I wanted it to work, I wanted it to work, I wanted it to go back to the way it was—

       But I’m talking about it in the past tense. I shouldn’t do that. I should keep going and not think or do anything about my secret plan to—

       —BLOCK—

       She shook her head to clear it. “Es irónico,” she said aloud, as if nothing had happened. “I’ve always wanted to see how I looked in the world around me. That’s why I was painting this fish, me, swimming through my world but unable to see anything but the water around me. I can’t see me, what I really am. I don’t know what’s eating me. I don’t know if I want to know.”

       Her fingers stretched out and once more ran over the cotton towel over the obsidian mirror.

       Coward.

       She nodded absently. It was true. She was terrified. If she looked, it would tear away everything she had tried so hard to be for over a year now. It would be the end of the old Jane Lane.

       And what was so great about the old Jane Lane? Hasn’t there been enough of her already?

       It was difficult to argue against that. What the new Jane Lane would be, she could not say. Or dared not.

       She straightened and squared her shoulders. “Am I a seeker of truth?” she asked softly. “Am I an artist, or am I a coward? Am I going to look? Am I just killing time so I can talk myself out of this? What harm could it do to look, really? What happened to Monique and Penny could have been autosuggestion, self-hypnosis, or just drunkenness. They saw inside themselves because they believed they would, but I don’t know that I believe in it, so it might not work. I’ll just be looking at myself, feeling stupid and—”

       The phone rang. Startled, Jane swiftly walked over and picked up the handset, hoping to keep Penny and Monique from waking up. “Yo. Hey, Daria. What time is it? Yeah, I didn’t know it was so late. No, everything’s fine. No one’s killed anyone else. So far, I mean. No, he’s not back yet. I don’t expect him until late, as usual. Yeah, I know. It’s been weird. It wasn’t what I thought earlier, what’s up between them. It was . . . it’s been really weird, really really weird. Look, can I call you back? I can’t . . . I need a break. I have a lot to think about.” Her gaze went to the towel on her bed. “Lemme call you back tomorrow. Will you be in? Sure, whatever. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to talk about.” She kept staring at the towel. “A lot to talk about. What? No, I’m fine. Just . . . messed up. Yeah. Bye.”

       She put the handset down and looked at the towel. Raising her head, she listened for half a minute. No one else in the house stirred.

       It was time.

       I have a tiger’s heart, she thought. For years she had repeated this phrase to herself, during the worst moments in her life. She had no idea where it came from, but this simple phrase was all that had kept her alive some days. She nodded once. I have a tiger’s heart.

       Jane undressed and put on a black nightshirt and black short pants, throwing the rest of her clothing in a pile by the bed. After turning on two bedside lights so she could see her reflection, she gently climbed onto her bed and sat near the center. Swallowing, she reached for the towel and the thing under it and brought them to her lap. The cold plate balanced on her thighs and shins. After a moment, Jane pulled off the towel and tossed it aside on the floor. She stared at the TV set on the stand at the foot of her bed, her face blank. Closing her eyes, she then lowered her head and faced the plate.

       She did not open her eyes. Not yet.

       “What will you show me?” she asked, her voice low. She waited, then opened her blue eyes. The smoking mirror was below her face. Her reflection stared up at her from a well of infinite darkness.

       “Show me what I fear,” she whispered. “Show me who I am. Show me for the sake of truth, or for the sake of art, or just for the hell of it. Do your worst, oh god of the smoking mirror. Show me. Do your worst.”

       Into the darkness she looked.

       And the darkness opened its eyes and looked back.

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

       A little girl with coal-black hair in a topknot ran a magenta crayon over a large sheet of paper. Six-year-old Jane was drawing a picture of the Mother Goddess. Jane’s own mother talked a lot about the Mother Goddess after going away for a week to a women’s art workshop, far from home in a place called Seattle that was all ups and downs and lay by to an ocean. The Mother Goddess came in all shapes and sizes in the many pictures of her in the books Jane’s mother brought home, but she always had huge bare boobies, which made her interesting. Jane wanted to get that part right, so she made the boobies extra big.

       The girl drawing next to her gasped. “Oh, my gosh!” Melissa cried, hands on her cheeks. “What are you doing?”

       Jane looked at her best friend, puzzled and concerned. “Drawing,” she said defensively. “This is a Mother Goddess.”

       “You liar!” shouted Melissa. “God doesn’t look like that!”

       “It’s not God!” Jane snapped, getting upset. “It’s a Mother Goddess!”

       “That’s your mother?” yelled a boy in front of Jane, who had turned around to see what the matter was. His eyes popped out of his head when he saw the giant boobies. “You’re drawing a dirty picture! I’m telling!” He turned and raised his hand. “Miss Price! Jane’s drawing a dirty picture! It’s her mother!”

       Jane threw the magenta crayon at the boy, bouncing it off the back of his head. Children across the room shrieked. The boy threw his crayon at Jane but missed. She snatched up her whole crayon box, furious that anyone would insult her mother, and flung it overhand. The plastic box hit the boy in the forehead, crayons flying everywhere. Staggered, the boy grabbed his face and burst into tears. The classroom went into howling chaos, worse than when the chimp tried to escape on its tricycle at Jane’s fourth birthday party.

       “What is wrong with you?” shouted Miss Price, stalking to the back of the room. “Quiet, everyone! You’re supposed to be good first graders! Jane and Brant, stop fighting!” She grabbed Jane by the wrist and seized her picture, folding it up immediately. “I’m calling your mother!”

       “Good!” shouted Jane, red-faced. “Call her!”

       Miss Price did. The talk did not go well. “Mrs. Lane,” Miss Price snapped into the phone, “we’re not talking about letting butterflies go free! We’re talking about your daughter throwing crayons in class! And she’s drawing sexually oriented pictures that I can’t decently describe! I want you to have a talk with her about this when she gets home!”

       Jane was sent home early with her drawing.

       “Is this the Mother Goddess?” Amanda Lane asked, looking the picture over.

       “Yes,” said Jane in a sullen tone.

       Amanda raised her eyebrows. “Wonderful!” she said, which she said about everything, even if Jane was sick and had thrown up in the living room. “I’m so glad you have an interest in drawing people, and the Mother Goddess is an excellent subject for the mature mind.” She pursed her lips. “The breasts certainly are in keeping with male cultural expectations, but they could also be symbolic of fertility and parenthood. Some people have strange attitudes about drawing the unclothed body. Enforcing rules like that in schools is like trying to cage a butterfly!”

       Though unable to follow most of her mother’s artistic analysis, Jane grimaced as if she’d bitten into a bad peanut when she heard the word “butterfly.” Her mother used the word “butterfly” in most proverbs she knew. It was overkill even for a six-year-old.

       “My, and she has such a lovely face, too,” her mother went on. “Good job!” She gave Jane a look that was meant to be wise. “I suspect the actual problem is that your classmates are jealous of your artistic ability.”

       Jane nodded, though she knew that was not the case. No one had ever said he or she was jealous of Jane’s artistry. She understood that her mother was being comforting and nothing more. Jane wished her big sister Penny was here instead of trekking around in Arizona. Penny took things seriously and had an intuition about Jane’s life that their mother lacked. Her brother Trent, in middle school, was a fair replacement for comfort. However, he was usually off listening to rock music with his best friend, Jesse Moreno.

       “You know it’s not a good idea to throw things in class,” her mother went on, looking over the top of Jane’s picture. “Self-expression has its limits. No violence, all right? Throw something against a wall if you must, or you can borrow one of my foam baseball bats. Better yet, just draw out your darker impulses on paper. Use your anger to fuel your creative powers—but no more throwing things at people, okay?”

       Jane nodded again. She could afford to be agreeable, as Brant had lost the fight.

       Her mother looked at the picture once more. “Is your Mother Goddess supposed to be naked?”

       Hesitantly, Jane said, “Yeah.” Was that a problem? Nudity was hardly uncommon at the Lane home.

       Amanda Lane smiled, assuming her teacher face. “Remember,” she said, “if she’s naked, she needs pubic hair.” Amanda sketched it in quickly with a pencil she took from behind her ear, then handed the picture back to her youngest child. “You’ll love life model drawing later on. Good work!” With that, Amanda Lane went back to brushing glaze over her latest work of pottery.

       Jane took the drawing and frowned, angry that her mother had drawn on her drawing, messing it up even more. It was bad enough that it had big folds and wrinkles in it from Miss Price’s handling of it.

       And what the heck was pubic hair? She studied the mutilated picture, then got it. Her mother and older sisters sometimes wandered around the house without any clothes on when they got out of the shower, if her father or brothers weren’t home, as usual.

       Jane’s level of confusion rose. Was she supposed to draw pubic hair on all her pictures of people? Would the teacher and her classmates get mad about that, too? She suspected they would. What was she supposed to do? Who was she supposed to please? Who would yell at her next?

       Nice as her mother was, Jane knew she didn’t get it. The problem was, Jane was not like the other kids, and she knew it. The other kids knew it, too, and they didn’t like it. Whenever Jane reached out to be friends with someone, disaster always struck. It had been like this all through kindergarten, too. Jane wanted nothing more than to fit in and be accepted and have friends like everyone else. Why wasn’t it working out like that? Why couldn’t anyone accept her for who she was?

       That evening, Jane went outside and threw her picture of the mother goddess in the garbage can. Better that no one ever saw it again, which would get her into more trouble.

       It was too late to avoid trouble, however. When Jane got back to school the next day, her best friends Melissa and Robin wouldn’t talk to her. They turned their backs and pushed her away when she tried to sit beside them at morning snack. Neither would tell her why they didn’t want to be her friend anymore. Someone later took her jacket from her cubby and threw it on the floor and stepped on it, leaving big shoeprints on the back. The shoeprints looked like Brant’s. And her lunch wound up in the trashcan in the back of the room, the veggie sandwich and granola bar flattened, the apple too bruised to eat.

       The next day, even more classmates shunned her. By Thanksgiving, Jane had no friends left in first grade, or anywhere in Lawndale Elementary. She sat alone in the back of the classroom or at the end of the lunch table. No one but the teachers spoke to her.

       She stopped wearing her hair in a topknot, too. Wherever she sat, she lowered her head and let her long bangs cover her face, so no one could see her cry.

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

 

       “Couldn’t Jane’s parents be with us tonight?” asked Mrs. Melrose as Jane and her blonde oldest sister Summer took their seats in the Lawndale Elementary School conference room. Jane, tall and lanky, sat by her sister, glowering at the tabletop before her and swinging her legs in the air. Her shoulder-length hair was in bangs except for a strand of braided hair on either side of her face. She wore faded jeans, mismatched sneakers, and a bright blue sweater with holes in the armpits.

       “Man, I wish,” said Summer testily. “I had to leave my baby at a friend’s house. Dad’s in India this week, taking pictures of stupid wildlife for the Smithsonian, and Mom’s in San Francisco at some idiot rug-weaving conference or something like that. I’m stuck with Short Stuff here.”

       Jane glared up at her sister. Her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Melrose, got a weary look on her face. “Okay, Miss, um—”

       “Summer, just call me Summer,” said Summer. “My divorce isn’t over yet, so my last name it up in the air.”

       “Okay, um, Summer, I’d like for us to talk about Jane’s performance in English this semester. She started out—”

       “Mom says Jane’s always been better at visual stuff. She doesn’t get the verbal thing, you know? I mean, it’s not like she’s stupid or anything, but she doesn’t get it.”

       Jane glared at the floor. Go stuff it, Summer, she thought. Like you ever get anything, except pregnant.

       With a pained look, Mrs. Melrose leaned forward. “Jane was actually doing quite well the first couple of months,” she said, pulling papers from a binder in front of her, “but in October her performance dropped considerably.” She handed the classwork to Summer. “See, she went from making A minuses and B pluses to making Cs and Ds, and she’s not turned in her homework for two weeks.”

       Summer squinted at the papers, shuffling through them. “I hate this,” she muttered. “I don’t know dog crap about what’s she’s doing in school. I tell you, I don’t see what good grades do, anyway. Can’t you just pass her or something? I mean, she shows up, right?”

       “Well, this is a school,” said Mrs. Melrose, fighting down her irritation. “Grades are one of the ways we use to measure progress and performance. Summer, the point is that I’m worried something’s going on that’s causing Jane’s work to suffer. Do you know of any problems in her life that might be contributing to this drop in grades?”

       Summer groaned and turned to her little sister. “What’s wrong that you have to get me dragged in here like this? Spill it, would ya? I can’t be coming in her all the time, all right?”

       Jane would not look up. It was typical of Summer to think only of herself. Summer bragged about how good she had it in school, despite her low grades. Summer never had any problems getting friends. She always had good friends, unlike Jane. Jane thought of Clarissa, who once said she was Jane’s best friend before it turned out she was telling all of Jane’s secrets to Marissa and Janet and Paige and Bernadette, who had told everyone else, and they were laughing at Jane behind her back every day of the week. She thought of the boys who liked to push her down on the playground when no one else was looking, which always caused the other girls in her class to clap their hands and cheer. The girls were getting the boys to do it.

       “I’m talking to you, squirt!” Summer said, getting testy again. “Is anything wrong?”

       “No,” Jane said, her lips barely moving.

       “Well, hell’s bells!” growled Summer. “Then, why are we here?” She turned to Mrs. Melrose. “Look, I’m sure it’s just some kind of phase or something. Like my mom says, everything works out for the best in the long run. Are we done now?”

       Mrs. Melrose glanced at Jane and looked uncomfortable. “We’re not done yet, no. I’m afraid there’s more to it. Jane doesn’t seem to be herself lately.” She stopped and addressed herself to Jane directly. “Dear, are you having problems with the other children in class?”

       Jane glanced up, then looked down again without an answer.

       “I found your missing workbook,” said Mrs. Melrose softly. She pulled an oversized paperback book from the below her binder. Jane looked up again and started to reach for it, but Mrs. Melrose showed it to Summer instead, opening it to a random page. Written crudely across the pages in red dye marker was the announcement, “JANE IS INSAIN!” Mrs. Melrose flipped through a few more pages, revealing more of the same, each page in different handwriting and with various spelling approximations of “Jane” and “insane.”

       “Someone apparently took your workbook and defaced it,” said Mrs. Melrose to Jane. “I’ll get you a replacement, no charge.”

       Jane felt her face burn. It was Clarissa’s work, she could tell. Only Clarissa would have the gall to plan something like this. The changes in handwriting from page to page meant most of her fourth-grade classmates had secretly helped.

       Summer sighed, dismissing it with a wave of her hand. “Kids are like that everywhere,” she said. “They’re just being kids. They don’t mean it.” She turned to Jane. “Look, don’t take it personally, all right? They don’t mean anything by it. If you just pretend it doesn’t bother you, they’ll stop. That always works.”

       Jane’s face hardened. She already acted like nothing bothered her. It didn’t help. Notes appeared in her locker claiming that she was insane, retarded, and a “prevert.” Girls whispered and giggled when she came around, and boys acted in crazy ways, pretending they were Jane having a mental breakdown.

       The harassment was getting worse, too. Jane had learned not to bring anything of value to school, as it would be stolen or destroyed in short order. Even her personal sketchbooks were at risk. In fact, she suspected it was the theft of one sketchbook that had started this whole mess several weeks in early October, because she had drawn portraits of several fellow students when they weren’t looking. The pictures weren’t meant to be insulting, but someone had taken offense to them anyway. One of the pictures had been of Clarissa chewing on the ends of her hair, looking meditative. Bingo.

       “Jane.” Jane looked up, her reverie broken. “Jane,” repeated Mrs. Melrose, “I know you can do the work. You’re one of the brightest pupils I’ve ever had. If there’s anything I could possibly do that would help, please tell me.”

       Jane kept her face blank, but she knew the offer was worse than useless. During the previous summer, she had tattled on a girl who pulled her hair at an overnight party for local Brownie Girl Scouts, and the girl got all of her friends to pull Jane’s hair whenever possible. The lesson was learned. Rat on a rat, and all the rats will bite you.

       Mrs. Melrose sensed her offer was rejected and shook her head. “I wish there was something I could do,” she said sadly.

       “Don’t worry about it,” said Summer. “Let the kids work it out for themselves. My mom always says we have to trust kids, and she’s had enough of them, so I guess she would know. Kids aren’t devious and rotten like adults are. It’ll all work out.”

       “Hmmm,” said Mrs. Melrose, who clearly didn’t believe a word Summer had said. “At any rate, Jane is far behind the other students, except in art. She’s a marvel there. If she could maintain even a C average in her other studies, I’d feel better, but I’d still like for her to bring back those As and Bs.”

       Jane considered this. If she kept a C or low C average, Mrs. Melrose would stop bothering her. She decided she would try, but she made no promises.

       That night, Jane went to her brother Trent’s room. Trent was in high school now, a tall ninth grader who had taught himself how to play grunge music on a battered guitar he’d borrowed from Jesse. Jane knocked on the door for half a minute before Trent woke up and told her to come in.

       Jane walked in and stood by his bed. Trent liked practicing while sitting up in bed, so if he fell asleep, he could wake up and start playing again. “I’m sick of school,” Jane said.

       Trent nodded solemnly. “Hmmm, yeah.” He plucked a few strings on the guitar. “It’s hard,” he added.

       “Everyone hates me,” she went on. “I want to go somewhere else for school, or stay home.”

       “Hmmm.” Trent scratched his chin. “They hate you, huh?”

       “Yeah. They steal my stuff and put notes in my locker and call me names, and I’m sick of it.” She wiped her eyes, not wanting to cry but being unable to stop. Trent put down the guitar and helped her up on his bed. They sat beside each other, Trent’s arm around his sister, until her cry was over. Trent then put his guitar in Jane’s lap and showed her how to play a few chords.

       “I want to run away,” Jane said after a while.

       Trent thought about this for a long time. “Then they’d win,” he said.

       It was the worst news Jane could imagine, but it was true. If she ran away, she would lose, and Clarissa and the other girls would win. In order to win, she would have to stay and take whatever came her way, proving she was stronger than her enemies.

       If she was stronger. If she wasn’t, her enemies would destroy her.

       Jane went back to her room after playing a few more chords. She decided to stick it out. There was always the small chance that she might win, and she’d survived this long. Her sister Summer had already told her that because public schools were technically free and private schools cost a ton of money, Jane would never be able to go anywhere else but where she was. There hadn’t been a choice, really.

       She went back to school the next day. Two weeks later, Clarissa’s father was transferred to a job in Alaska, and her family had to move one month after that. With no driver to the anti-Jane campaign, it fell apart—but the damage was done. No one wanted to be Jane’s friend. She was too weird, too artsy, too smart, too sarcastic, too much of a loner, and none of her clothes were in style. Jane would never be popular, never fit in, never have friends.

       At least the cruel notes stopped appearing in her locker. Her things were no longer stolen, too. Jane began to tell herself that it was better to be alone. The other kids were so obviously stupid and mean, so why should she want to hang around them, anyway? It was weak comfort, but it was all she had.

       In bed at night, she wiped tears from her eyes. More than anything, she wanted a friend, someone she could trust, someone who would never betray her. She imagined that somewhere on the Earth, there really was a person who would be her friend and hers alone, forever. They would stand up for each other, defend each other, and share secrets no one else would know—loyal and true forever. And they would never again be alone.

       Where are you? she whispered into the darkness above her bed. I’m waiting for you, my amiga! Where are you?

 

 

 

Chapter Four

 

 

       The sun wasn’t up at seven a.m. in early January, but eight-grader Jane had been awake for over an hour, fueled by the pot of instant coffee she’d made herself for breakfast. No one else was home except Trent, who was of course asleep. Chewing forbidden gum, she headed for her locker in the halls of Lawndale Middle School, bearing a light backpack and the knowledge she’d done only half her homework. Thank heavens for a first-period study hall. Her hair had a stylish layered cut, which she’d had done at a beauty salon with her own allowance, and she wore a bit of eye makeup and bright red lipstick. Both her ears sported large, dangly hoop earrings. Of late, she liked skintight pants. And black showed off her slim figure quite well.

       Jane had discovered boys. And boys—though not one of them would dare admit it in public—had discovered her.

       When she reached her objective, she twirled the locker’s combination dial, ignoring the word “SLUT” keyed into the paint on her locker by a nameless student in November. She hummed a tune Trent had been playing on his guitar the night before, a song tentatively entitled “Refrigerator Woman.” Though he’d graduated the year before, Trent still lived at home, mowing the yard once a month between jam sessions with Jesse and the other members of his alternative band, Mystik Spiral. He kept the house going, more or less, while their parents hopped over the world in pursuit of their respective artistic Muses.

       A knot of eighth-grade girls passed behind her as Jane opened her locker. “Whore,” one of them said in a loud whisper. Jane gave no sign that she had heard. Whore was mild compared to some epithets she’d heard. She snapped her gum and took out her math and English books, preparing for the first half of her school day.

       In years past, a passing girl was also likely to reach out and shove Jane into her locker, smack her on the back of the head, or throw a paper wad at her. That ended in seventh grade, when the girls who tormented Jane found their lockers had been doused with substances such as cheap perfume or ammonia, sprayed through the grillwork. Though Jane was suspected, nothing could be proven. In fact, she always had excellent alibis. The source was never traced. Retaliation of this nature swiftly followed each physical attack until the other girls got the message: Anything more than words invited costly revenge, and sometimes words did, too. Jane was playing far outside the normal rules for adolescent female conflict, and everyone knew it, but no one could stop it. It was easier to retreat, throw insults, and keep Jane locked out of the other girls’ social mainstream. It was her eighth year alone, through two schools. She sometimes wondered if it was a record, being an outcast that long. She suspected it was not.

       Today was going to be an interesting day. A lacrosse team from Westlake Middle School was coming by for an after-school game against the Lawndale Leopards. One of the Westlake Wildcats was a tall blond guy named Chet, full of sarcastic humor and an easy, confident manner. He also had big, gentle hands and was a dynamite kisser. Jane knew that for a fact. She thought of him and smiled.

       “Slut butt,” sneered another passing girl. “Insane Jane Lane.”

       The smile held, though it grew cold. Hey, Jan. Think your locker’s going to smell funny tomorrow? Payback is a bitch, isn’t it?

       “Hi, Jane,” said a different voice, deep but feminine. “Cold enough for you?”

       Jane turned. Her smile grew warm again. “Yo,” she said to the African-American girl who had the locker next to hers—Jodie Landon. “Did you mean cold outside or inside?”

       “Inside, I guess.” Jodie opened her locker and looked down the hall after the last girl. “What was that all about?”

       “Beats me,” said Jane. “Something in the beer, maybe.”

       Jodie snorted in amusement. She began pulling books from the neatly organized stacks in her locker. “You going to the lacrosse game after school?”

       “Mmm, I might.” Jane’s smile turned secretive. “Depends.”

       “Ah,” said Jodie, but she didn’t smile. “There’s been a bad flu virus going around Westlake. Some of the team won’t be here. Mack said Chet was pretty sick.”

       Jane deflated. She swallowed and tried to look interested in her locker contents.

       A warm hand pressed against her back for a moment. “There’ll be other times,” Jodie said. She knew about Chet and Jane.

       “Not many,” said Jane in a low voice. “Chet’s folks are moving to back to Montana in June.”

       “Oh,” said Jodie after a beat. They silently got their books and shut their lockers.

       “See ya,” mumbled Jane, turning to go.

       “Jane,” said Jodie. “Wait a second. Let’s walk.”

       “Sure.” This was odd. Jodie was usually too busy with schoolwork to have time to be a real friend, but she cared. “What’s up?”

       Jodie thought for a moment as they walked, then began in a soft voice. “When I was at my last school, back in Chicago, there were some mean kids there. One of them was this really nasty little white kid who didn’t like black kids, and I knew one day he was going to say something about me to my face. He was like that. I didn’t know what I was going to do about it, but then one day we were passing each other in the hall, and cheerful as you please, he called me the n-word, right to my face.”

       Jane’s blood ran cold. She could not imagine what life would be like, having to deal with people like that. It made her own problems look small.

       “So,” Jodie went on in an even tone, “I stopped and looked at him, and he stopped and waited to see what I would do, and as I looked at him I thought, ‘This is the sorriest excuse for a human being I have ever seen in my life,’ and all of a sudden I started to laugh. That’s the truth, I really did. I laughed so damn hard I could hardly walk. All I could think of was, ‘This is the sorriest human being I ever saw,’ and it just struck me as funny somehow. He got mad, but he walked away and he never said a thing to me again. He knew he couldn’t hurt me.”

       Jane thought about it.

       “I don’t know,” said Jodie. “Thought it was worth saying.”

       “It was,” said Jane, grateful. “Thanks.”

       “Sure. See you around. Oh, and spit out your gum before—”

       “Right. Thanks.”

       After school, Jane walked home by herself as she always did. Laugh it off? That was an interesting way of looking at it. She already had the most sarcastic mouth in school. It wasn’t a stretch to see the twisted humor in her situation, and go with that instead of her rage.

       Jane frowned. She couldn’t laugh at her situation, really. It was too miserable, even if she told herself every day that everything was fine as it was. Still, she did have bright spots—Jodie, Chet and the other boys willing to trade spit on the sly, and most importantly her artwork. Jane felt something inside her come to life when she painted or sculpted, and it made the world worth bearing for one more weary day, even if her art sometimes got her into trouble. Too bad most art teachers wanted her drawings to be less violent and painful, and more like what Jane called “Mister Happy Squirrel” art.

       And there was Jesse Moreno’s younger brother, Danny. He was a high-school senior who worked part-time at Lawndale Middle School for the janitorial service. He knew Jane, and their mutual interest in Mystik Spiral and alternative rock gave them common ground. Danny’s real value, though, was that he was always willing to make a little extra money in exchange for spraying noxious substances into the lockers of aggressive girls who bothered Jane. He hadn’t been caught yet, and Jane had paid him well for a year now, using funds left by her parents for buying food and paying for utilities.

       Jane sighed. She couldn’t exactly laugh at her life, but she could get a new perspective, one with a bit more humor in it. It would give her sarcasm a gentler edge, but her life would be more fun. Jodie was right.

       It was a shame about Jodie’s life, though. She would have been the greatest of friends, but her parents were smothering her with pressure to be the best student in Lawndale’s history. I don’t even have time to play tic-tac-toe, Jodie had complained. Jane hoped Jodie’s boyfriend Mack would be transferred from Westlake to Lawndale High next year. He sounded like a great guy. Jodie deserved him.

       I wish I had a great guy, Jane thought, snapping her gum once more before she spit it into a garbage can. Girls are hard to trust, but if I could, I’d like to have a great guy and a great girlfriend. Two people I could trust with the real Jane Lane, with things I really think and feel. If I had that, everything in the world would be perfect. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

 

 

 

Chapter Five

 

 

       “I kissed your boyfriend.”

       Eleventh-grader Jane came to a wide-eyed stop in the corridor behind her best friend, her amiga for life. “What?” came out of Jane’s mouth—but she knew in her horror that she had heard right. The end of the world was upon her.

       “I kissed your boyfriend,” Daria Morgendorffer repeated. She stopped in the hallway, looking miserable as she faced Jane. “I kissed Tom. I didn’t mean to.”

       The earth was slammed out of its orbit by the impact. Stunned and disoriented, Jane swayed on unsteady feet. In moments, though, she focused on Daria’s face. Her blue eyes filled with tears. You betrayed me. You, my best friend ever, you actually—

       She could take no more. Daria had blurted out her confession in front of dozens of other students in the Lawndale High School corridor. Word would spread like wildfire. It was humiliation on a scale undreamed of.

       Jane ran. Getting out of the high school was hard because she kept crashing into people on the way out. The legs that had won school sports trophies and set countywide track records could not propel her fast enough. She hit the exit doors, almost knocking down a teacher, and was across the crowded parking lot like a shot.

       “I’m sorry!” someone shouted behind her. “I’m sorry!”

       Streets flew beneath her. People were blurs. She knew she looked bad and had tears and sweat and snot running down her face and was making strange embarrassing crying noises. It could not be helped.

       Why did she do it? God, why did she do it? Didn’t she care about me? Didn’t he care? He and I were having problems, but we were fixing them, weren’t we? He even said he loved me! And wasn’t Daria my friend? Didn’t I mean anything to them? Why did they do it? Tell me, God! Please tell me, why did they do it?

       A long time later, she slowed and stopped at a street corner she could not cross because of midmorning rush-hour traffic. The urge to keep running and let a speeding car solve her problems came—but went. She was breathing heavily but was a long way from being winded. Wiping her eyes and nose with the heels of her palms, she looked around and realized she had circled around the northwest side of town. She was only five blocks north of the exclusive Crewe Neck subdivision. . . and Tom’s house.

       Her now ex-boyfriend might still be home. Fielding Preparatory Academy started later in the day than Lawndale High did. It would be worth hearing the truth from his lips, before she beat the living crap out of him. It was impossible to believe that two weeks ago, he had taken her to that lovely Italian restaurant and had her favorite song played, that he had told her he loved her and had held her and kissed her, and now he was sucking face with Daria. She had to hear it from him, had to see all they had shared laid out dead and cold between them. It would not hurt so much to hear it. She could not be hurt any worse than she was now.

       Hell, after this, they can go ahead and have each other. She wiped her eyes again, this time on her red jacket. Screw ‘em both. I’ll even tell them to go out with each other. That would be perfect. Everyone at school knows by now what they’ve done. Let everyone see their shame, let the whole world know their treachery and let the Furies of their guilt haunt them day and night, if they know what guilt is. Daria does; Tom might not. Funny that I liked that about him, Mr. No Regrets. Hell, they don’t care what I think, anyway. They’ll still get a blank check from me—a parting gift from the bleeding victim, as it were—and if they cash it, I’ll know how low I really rated with them. I’ll know for sure, as if I didn’t already.

       She was calmer, though sobs still broke through. Embarrassed, she turned her back to a crowd of curious onlookers waiting for a bus. Her bangs fell forward and covered her face, as they had done in first grade.

       Oh, Daria, I’ve got to hand it to you. You really got me good. I almost admire you for it. You really taught me something today. I can’t believe I let someone that close to me, after all I’ve been through. I can’t believe I was so stupid as to think I could have a friend and be so completely open with her. I forgot everyone who came before you, and you brought them back to me, every damn one. You opened my eyes, Daria. Thank you for that. Thank you.

       She wiped her face on her jacket one more time, then closed her eyes for two seconds. In those two seconds, she made herself a promise.

       No one will ever hurt me like this again. No one, ever.

       The traffic cleared for several seconds. She ran across the street and headed south for Crewe Neck.

       No one, ever.

 

 

* * *

 

 

       Jane sat alone on her bed, in her room at the Ashfield Community for the Arts. The lights were turned off. Some art students were partying in the room above hers, playing loud dance music. At least they weren’t dancing. It was hard to tell what they were really doing.

       Jane did not care. She thought of Alison. Her elbows rested on her knees as she sat, bent over and staring at the darkness where the floor was supposed to be.

       How funny. I might to be able to laugh at this one day. I come to art camp to get away from Daria, and I meet this really great girl and we hit it off and I get this funny idea that she might be my new best friend, and—bang! She doesn’t want my friendship. She wants to get laid. All the time we knew each other, all the nice things she said and the fun we had, all that and a smuggled bottle of wine and some underage drinking just in the hopes that she could sleep with a high-school kid. I must be giving off the most intense slut vibes ever. Now she’s off banging that asshole Daniel Dotson and God knows who else in this stupid camp. She didn’t want my friendship at all. This whole freaking place sucks. My whole freaking life sucks.

       She turned the palms of her hands toward her face, hidden in darkness. I haven’t seen Daria in two months. I wonder if she and Tom are doing it, crossing their physical as well as intellectual foils. He wanted it from me. Thank God I held back. One less thing to regret.

       Buffing the bed sheets or not, Daria and Tom were meant to be. I admit it. They do make more sense as a couple than Tom and I ever did. Wonder what he really thought of me. Huh. It must have been a hell of a mutual pull for them to get started before Tom and I called it quits. Must have been both an intellectual orgy and a raging-hormone thing all mixed together. How could it miss? Whatever it was, I hate it.

       Her hands lowered again. What do I do now? I didn’t want to see Daria again, not ever, but after two months here, I find that I miss her—and I hate myself for it. I miss her wit, her sarcasm, the way she says what she thinks, damn the consequences. I always admired her for that. I liked that about Tom, too, though he didn’t face any consequences if he said what he thought. Being rich means screw being sorry about anything. Sometimes being with Tom was a little like being with Daria, though with her, it didn’t feel bad when I was just being me. She liked me as me. When I tried that with him, he didn’t like it. I guess I really wasn’t his type after all. Wrong socioeconomic class of art chick. Damn, I kind of miss him, too. I—

       Oh, Jesus, I must really be the saddest thing in the world. What am I, some kind of dog that goes back to everyone who kicks it, whining for more? This is so pathetic. How can I be friends with someone I can’t ever trust? How could I possibly be a friend to Daria after this? And Tom, what am I supposed to do about him? He’ll be around. He likes slumming in alternative-rock bars, and if I see Daria, I’ll see Tom, too. Can’t run, can’t hide, can’t deal with it.

       She slowly shook her head. I am the saddest thing in the world. I should do performance art. Jane Lane, Feel My Pain. Nah, I was never that good at theatre. Besides, I have my pride.

       The ghost of a smile came to her lips. I have my pride. I won’t crawl. If I want to see Daria, fine, I’ll do it. If I have to face Tom, I can. I can go back and be a friend—a “friend” in quote marks, the kind of friend who’s there because she has to be, because she and her ex-best-friend are stuck in the same school for one more year. What happens after that, I have no clue. Doesn’t matter right now anyway.

       I have to go back to Lawndale, so I’ll go back and make peace. I can do that. I’m big enough. I can make peace with them both, watch them go out, watch them kiss, listen to their love stories and love problems, even when it guts me like a knife going through a dying fish. I can take it. I’ve had nine years of being alone, two years of having a best friend, and the rest of my life to be alone once more. At least I know what it was like to have a true friend. That was wonderful. It was the best. l really miss it, I always will, but it’s gone and I have to move on.

       Jane stood up and walked over to flip on the light switch. She waited while her eyes adjusted to the illumination, then went over to her latest canvas. It was completely blank. She had to finish an assignment tonight for a class critique tomorrow morning at ten sharp. Chewing her lower lip, she studied the canvas with care.

       In a funny way, I’m grateful to Daria and Tom for what they did. All this stuff with Alison didn’t hurt that much after all. It hurt a little, but it was nothing. I’m grateful that the worst in my life is over. I owe them something for that. Don’t know what, but I owe them. I hope one day I can repay the debt.

       She picked up her paintbrush, dipped the tip in water, then dipped it in a jar of black paint. She raised the brush to the canvas and hesitated.

       I’ll be friends with them when I go back. It won’t be like it was before, but it will do. I’ll show them I’m big enough. They’ll probably never suspect that things are different, if I can keep my mouth shut. I’ll be the same old Jane, on the surface.

       But they will never know me again—only the surface me, nothing below. No one will ever know me again.

       The brush touched the canvas.

       No one ever.

 

 

* * *

 

 

       If there hadn’t been so many streetlights around, Jane would have been able to see the stars better. The moonless sky was clear that June evening as she walked home from Daria’s house, and the air was warm and dry.

       This is too much, she thought as she walked. Almost exactly a year ago, I told Daria I was going to art camp so she could get her budding social life going with Tom. Now she tells me she’s broken up with him. That explains their long faces in Pizza King today. Must have happened right before I caught them in the booth together. And tonight she has the gall to tell me she’s hurting. Mmm, hurting, yeah. I think I know that emotion. Hurting. Why, then, don’t I feel like I’m hurting?

       The aroma from an outdoor barbecue filled her nose. Steak, she loved steak. A dog barked in the distance. I’m not hurting inside tonight because they are. They so totally deserve this. And, funny thing, I sort of like them both again, even if I’m getting off like gangbusters on their pain. I even went back on my word to never let anyone know me, but it wasn’t a big thing. Daria helped me get myself together to get into BFAC, and now I’m on the road to doing something great with my life, something no one else in my whacked-out family has ever done. It was worth the risk, being open with her, but it was a tiny risk. Daria couldn’t screw me over with what little she knew about my problems, even when it was about that uptight dope, Nathan the Retro-Man. I’ve even dated a little after Nathan and I broke up, and it’s gone miserably but at least I tried. I’ve expanded my artistic skills. I’ve got my health and my youth and the possibility of a summer job to get me down to my college days. Strange to say it, but I’m doing okay.

       Her smile faded. Daria still needs me, though. I remember a few months ago when I met her at the diner after she almost had that car wreck in the rain. She ran up and hugged me and cried all over me, but I didn’t hug her back. I remember that distinctly. After she let go, we got back to normal, but I wonder if she noticed I didn’t hug her. Maybe she did. She calls me more often of late and asks to go places together, eat pizza together, and sleep over like we did. She still confides in me, tells me her anxieties and secrets like always, and I tell her a few of mine, the harmless ones she can’t use to hurt me. I can put up a good front when I have to. She can’t. She still needs me, and I don’t know if I want her or not, even when I say I do.

       In . . . one, two . . . six months, this December, I’ll move to Boston. Daria might help me, unless I get it done without her. I should think about that. I have been thinking about it, in fact—

       Her train of thought stopped at this point. She looked down at her ash-gray boots as she walked. I still can’t believe she dumped Tom. It was such a Daria kind of thing to do—cold, out of the blue, backed up with rationalizations she’s been forging for weeks without telling anyone. It’s so like her, but I didn’t see it coming. I figured they’d stay together. After all the crap they put me through, they should be together. I’m almost pissed that they aren’t. It’s funny, that mass of angst Daria went through about having sex with Tom—what a joke. She didn’t really want him after all. She got bored and gave him the boot.

       She raised her head. She was only a block from home now. So, Daria, was stealing Tom from me worth it? Was it worth stabbing me in the back so you could go out with my formerly best-of-all-times boyfriend for a few months before pulling another of those half-baked life swings and throwing him out on his ear? You really are the lady and the tiger, aren’t you? And all these years, I thought I was the one with the tiger’s heart. What kind of heart do I have, anyway? Kitten? Mouse? Mouse, that must be it. She shrugged. Like anyone cares. If I was a tiger, I would have teeth. Man, I wish I had teeth. Claws would get in the way of using a paintbrush.

       Her thoughts drifted back to the future—and the secret plan she so often tried to block, but now did not. Maybe I do have teeth. Once we get to Boston, things will be different. If I know Daria, she’ll want to stay close to me. She doesn’t get out much. She’s one of those one-friend-for-life types, even if she screws that friend over once in a while, and I’m the friend she’ll be counting on. If she has a rough first semester at Raft College, she’ll be glad to see Jane Lane around town . . . assuming, of course, Jane wants to see Daria. Perhaps Jane won’t. There is that secret plan, and— She did not block her thoughts this time —and the plan says Jane might have her own life to lead, and Daria might just have to eat her pizza alone. We’ll be in the same town, but different schools. Shutting her out will be easy. That payback thing is a real bitch, isn’t it?

       She smiled, enjoying the plan’s cold, bitter taste. It was cruel, for sure, but that was okay. What goes around, comes around. It’s a thought, anyway. What was good for me could be good for her. She told me she’s afraid of becoming a lonely spinster in an apartment full of old newspapers and too many cats. And that she might. That she might. I wonder if I’ll really do it. Man, it’s fun to think about it. It feels wonderful.

       Eh, a final decision can wait. No matter what happens to her, I’ll always be alone—but I’ll be okay. One-night stands, sure, got to fill the calendar, but otherwise on my own. It sure beats the hell out of being betrayed again. She taught me well. Being alone is fine.

       As long as I have my art, that is. If I lost my art, I’d be nowhere. Thank God no one can take that from me.

       No one ever.

 

 

 

Chapter Six

 

 

       Jane blinked and pulled her face back from the smoking mirror. She was back in her room, it was the August after she graduated high school, and Penny and Monique were sleeping at the other end of the hall.

       Show me what I fear, said a voice inside her head. Moments later, she heard another voice, repeating her thought from several months earlier: If I lost my art, I’d be nowhere. Thank God no one can take that from me. No one ever.

       Unnerved by a rush of terror, Jane stared at the black disk in her lap. My art! Holy Christ, it’s talking about taking my art!

       Show me who I am, she heard inside her head, her second question to the mirror.

       A different voice spoke, a bestial voice vast and deep and not from any human throat. Let us find out, it said.

       The surface of the obsidian mirror rippled under her fingers. Jane gasped, paralyzed with fear.

       In a second, the blackness in the mirror dropped out. A well opened in her lap a thousand miles deep and more. Out of the well came a breath of arctic wind that seized and shook her. Every bone and muscle rattled in the icy grip of death. Pain stabbed between her eyes and burst through her head—

       —and the wind let her go. The pain in her head vanished. She shivered on her bed, hyperventilating, gripping the cool, smooth sides of the black plate. The heavy mirror reverted to normal in her lap.

       Yet, something was wrong. She sensed it at once. Oh, God! What did it do? What did— She looked around her room. The paintings on the walls—she couldn’t understand them. The sculptures—they made no sense. The photographs, woven images, models, armatures, notebooks, sketches, scraps of paper with jotted ideas—what the hell were they about? They had been hers, but why had she done them?

       And she knew. She looked down at the black mirror in disbelief.

       You took my art!

       She shoved the mirror off her lap and jumped to her feet by the bedside.

       YOU BASTARD! YOU TOOK MY ART!

       Without thinking, Jane plunged her right hand through the surface of the mirror. Her arm went through the blackness all the way to her shoulder. The inside of the black mirror was colder than Antarctica in winter, colder than Pluto, colder than the lowest floor of Hell. Every nerve in her fingers, hands, and arm was stabbed, flayed, and burned with frost. She screamed until her throat was raw—but she kept reaching.

       GIVE BACK MY ART! IT’S ALL I HAVE! GIVE IT BACK TO ME, DAMN YOU, GIVE IT BACK!

       Her arm was raked and torn by unseen claws of fire. She screamed and writhed in agony, blind and deaf to all but her reaching.

       GIVE IT BACK GIVE IT BACK GIVE IT BACK GIVE IT—

       Her mangled fingers touched and closed over a formless, nameless thing. With a shriek, she jerked her arm out of the smoking mirror, expecting to see blood and bones.

       Her arm came out of the mirror looking exactly as it had gone in. Nothing was wrong with it. In her right hand was a ball of light—

       It is yours, said the bestial voice.

       The light in her hand flashed.

       Jane collapsed on the bed, then slid off and sank to her knees on the floor, then fell on her back, still trembling. She looked up at the painting near her bed, the picture of the fish in the deep ocean.

       She knew then what the fish in the painting was missing.

       Teeth.

       I got it back, she thought in a daze. I got it back. My art is mine again, forever.

       And her art was far greater, it seemed, infinitely so, art without limits of any kind. She felt she could create anything from microscopic paintings to metal sculptures the size of skyscrapers, and her work could speak to anyone and its voice would be heard. Her work would be immortal.

       Hers, forever.

       She put her hands over her eyes and wept in unspeakable joy.

       Down the hall, Penny and Monique slept on, undisturbed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

       A long while later, Jane got up from the floor. She was tired but unharmed. Her imagination churned with a galaxy of ideas, concepts and ideas and images she had never known before. It was as if the library of the universe were inside her head, always open and ready. Even a glance around her bedroom triggered thousands of possibilities for works she had never conceived until this moment.

       Mine, forever. Her gaze lowered and stopped.

       The smoking mirror lay silent on her bed. She watched it for a long while. It did nothing.

       That was not a dream, she thought, though of course part of her wondered about that. What am I supposed to do with this thing next? I should move it back to Penny’s room, but should I touch it? What if it does that thing to me again? Do I dare?

       She straightened. What could it do to me now? Take my art away for good? She shook her head no. It wouldn’t do that—something else, maybe, but not that. I hope not, anyway. I shouldn’t look directly at the mirror, though. Now I know why Penny handled it as gently as she did. That was brave. Maybe I should put gloves on before I pick it up. Better yet, I should keep my mind blank when I touch it. If I don’t have a question or need in mind, it probably won’t respond.

       A pair of rubber gloves lay on the floor of her closet, under a mound of soiled clothes. Jane found them, then recognized them as the same rubber gloves Daria had used when she once attempted to color Jane’s hair with tiger stripes as a surprise for Tom. She left them on the floor.

       Oh, why not risk it? she though, standing by her bed again and looking down at the mirror. I’ll just pick it up with my bare hands and let it read my mind. What’s the worst that could happen? Aside from making me cut out the living hearts of Daria and Tom as an Aztec sacrifice, I mean. Her lips twisted to one side as she pictured that. Eh, nah, I guess not. I’d have to clean up afterward. And more to the point, I don’t care about it anymore. It’s over.

       To her astonishment, she knew the old triangle was over. She wasn’t angry with either of her old friends. The past was done. Her secret plan to abandon Daria in Boston was discarded. It wasn’t worthy of her, and vengeance wasn’t what she wanted, either. Did the mirror do that? Jane wondered, or did I? I think I did. I grew beyond it. She felt free and light on her feet, the weight of her anger gone. Daria and Tom weren’t evil; they had done something thoughtless and stupid, but they were sorry for it. Their lessons were learned.

       “I don’t care if I see Tom again,” she said aloud, still looking at the mirror. “I’m not angry with him anymore, but he’s in the past and I want to move on. I’ve so much to do now. At the same time, I don’t want to leave Daria behind in my life. We’ve had great times together, and being alone gets old after a while. I still want her as my best friend—but can I be absolutely sure that she wouldn’t hurt me again in some way?”

       A sad but wise smile came to her lips. “I guess I can’t. I’ll have to be like everyone else and just have faith that she won’t hurt me on purpose. I don’t like that, having to go on trust alone, but there’s no other way. I kind of wish she knew what I’ve been through. Eh, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know everything she’s been through, either. Everyone has baggage to carry around. I’ve sure got mine, she’s got hers. That’s life.”

       She shrugged and reached down for the obsidian disk. What would be the best course for us, then? she thought as her hands grasped the stone. How can Daria and I go back to being as close—

       She then realized she had not blanked her mind.

       Would you have reached into Tezcatlipoca to save her, if she had been taken instead of your art? interrupted the bestial voice of the mirror, speaking in her mind.

       Jane held the mirror, less frightened by the voice than by its query. Yes, she answered without hesitation. I care about her. I would have done that.

       Would you have traded your art for her life? said the mirror.

       Would I do WHAT? came out of her thoughts faster than she could suppress it. Filled with dread, she waited to see if the mirror said or did anything more.

       It did not.

       Her breath came out in a long, relieved sigh. She sensed that it was done.

       Man, that was a crazy last set of questions. So, what do I do with this now? She turned the mirror over in her hands. Her thoughts went back to her earlier questions. And is there anything I can do to erase the damage that’s been done to our friendship?

       A second later, she came up with the answer to both questions.

       It was right in front of her, of course.

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

 

       The sun was not yet up when Jane left the house. She wore her hair pulled back and her usual running outfit of gray shorts, a red T-shirt, and battered red track shoes, but with a heavy backpack strapped on as well. Out of consideration for Penny and Monique, she left a pot of fresh coffee to brew—and a pointed note about her dirty towels. She liked those towels.

       I hope Penny won’t mind my borrowing her artifact, she thought on her way out. It’s just for a few hours. Or days. Whatever. Mom always said butterflies didn’t have private property, so why should we? Boy, that was a stupid saying if there ever was one. Like she would have given up her kiln to anyone who asked. She got to the sidewalk and began her run with a steady, easy rhythm. The backpack was pulled snug against her shoulder blades. She headed west up Howard Drive, in the direction of Glen Oaks Lane.

       Running was different today. Her earphones and clip-on tape player stayed behind in her room. The world was alive in her senses, its artistic majesty displayed in Jane’s ears and eyes for the first time. The subtle symmetry of a tree, the curves described by the tops of blowing weeds, the cry of a mockingbird—she absorbed it in awe and wonder. She was astounded to see how the human part of the world blended in and interacted with the natural, how it all formed a seamless whole in unity with the sun and sky and clouds. Scents and odors and tastes flooded her. She was becoming drunk on sensations.

       Even her running was fresh and new: the myriad changes in three-dimensional perspective as she ran, the rhythm of her feet on the sidewalk, the feel of her legs in motion and her body vibrating. I had no idea such a grand world existed! she thought. It’s a cathedral, so great an architecture and so vast, all the parts moving according to laws beyond understanding. How can I capture such glory? How can I begin to show this in my art? Her mind piled up plans for hundreds of works, though she did not despair for time to finish them. She was grateful to be as aware of creation as she was.

       Her thoughts drifts back to her current situation. Is this revenge, my taking the mirror to Daria’s? Or is it the healing she needs? Does it matter what I call it? I am paying her back, I admit it, but it’s not revenge. That’s like saying a surgeon is evil because he’s got a knife in his hand and is going to cut you open. A serial killer does the same thing, but it’s the intent and the final result that count. I’m not getting any jollies thinking of what might happen to her. I think. She’s admitted her shame to me, how it has never left her, and this is the only thing that will bury the past for good, for her. It did it with Penny and Monique, it did it with me, and it can do it with her. At least she won’t look back with so much sorrow and regret. The less useless pain, the more gain, I say. I would know.

       She reached a corner and turned right, moving at a good clip on the sidewalk. Of course, there is one problem. I don’t know exactly what the effects of the mirror will be. I didn’t react to it as Penny and Monique did. The mirror made them no offer as it did me, and I don’t know why. Who can say? It hurts like freaking hell to lose your illusions, but it passes. I’m doing great—now, at least. Daria should be fine, too. I hope. She should know herself. I want her to see it. It would be good for her, very good.

       A few minutes later, she trotted up to the front door of a large, two-story, red-brick home at 1111 Glen Oaks. Here she stopped and took off her backpack, setting it on the concrete between her battered red sneakers. She walked around the front yard and looked in the windows of the house, but it was obvious that no one was up yet.

       Unzipping the backpack, she removed a large, square box about two inches thick, sealed with strapping tape. This she placed upright so that it leaned against the front door. From the backpack, she also removed a folded note, which she tucked between the box and the door. Satisfied with her work, she stepped back, shouldering the now-empty backpack. The neighborhood was safe enough to leave a small parcel out without fear of it being stolen, and no rain was in sight. She thought about ringing the doorbell, but Daria’s parents might answer, and Jane wasn’t in the mood to slog through a conversation with them. They were on the weird side. “Enjoy the ride, amiga,” she said. She waved at the house—and at package—before she turned and ran off.

       Relieved of her burden, Jane elected to take a long tour of Lawndale. She jogged north at a moderate pace. In time she passed Lawndale Mall (formerly Cranberry Commons), reaching the Halcyon Hills Corporate Park an hour later. Swinging around, she came south again, passing a fender bender at the Seven Corners intersection before she circled Lawndale High School. Her amazement knew no bounds; Lawndale was a place of sublime beauty, if one saw it in proper perspective. There were patterns in the chaos, randomness in the tightest order, shades of color without names, interactions between light and shadow never before displayed on canvas. Even the city’s citizens, foolish as they had always seemed to Jane in the past, were marvels of character in their own right, each worthy of years of artistic study.

       At one point, Jane looked at a passing Jeep and saw the driver was Kevin Thompson—a local football player renown for his low intelligence. She envisioned using him as the model for a two-story-high athletic statue for a football stadium. Whoa, she thought, now I know I’m not in my right mind. Though he would be perfect for it. I should get him to pose nude—oh, man, I need to get home and get some rest. I didn’t sleep at all last night, and I’m getting stupid. Wonder if I should call Daria and see if she got the mirror yet—no, leave it alone. Find out what happened tonight, or better yet tomorrow, after I get some rest.

       Her journey was on its last legs. When she reached her home subdivision, she broke her pace and began to walk, cooling down before she got into the house. The walk took her down Glen Oaks again. She saw with satisfaction that the box she had delivered was gone now, and lights were on inside the Morgendorffer home (the beautiful, marvelous, incredible Morgendorffer home, ran her artistic appreciation). She again resisted the urge to drop in. Better to let things happen as they would, and not interfere.

       Still . . . something niggled in the back of her mind. A certain element of logic was missing in the tale of what had happened over the last twelve hours or so, or even longer, per Penny’s story about her recent exploits in El Salvador. Jane’s bland expression took on an air of puzzlement. The issue had to do with Penny’s actions with the mirror, and with Jane leaving the mirror at Daria’s. Something didn’t add up. What was it? And why did thinking about it bring a pang of distress to Jane’s gut?

       She could not get to the bottom of it, so she pushed the issue aside until later, when she had time to study the problem. Artistic projects crowded her head, each begging to be brought to life as soon as possible. First things first.

       Minutes later, she opened the front door of her family’s home on Howard Drive. Her body gleamed with sweat, and she fanned her T-shirt to cool off. The smell of coffee was still in the air. She smiled, content, headed for the kitchen before going upstairs for a shower and change of clothes.

       Trent sat at the kitchen table, laboring over his familiar book of song lyrics. A cup was by his left elbow, but it contained water, not coffee. Trent was clearly planning to go back to sleep, and soon.

       “Yo,” Jane called as she entered. She took off the empty backpack, dropped it around the corner in the living room, and walked to the refrigerator.

       “Hey, Janey.” Trent glanced up before returning to his writing. “Good run?”

       “Pretty good today,” she replied, taking out the milk. She noticed it was almost empty. Time to hit Food Lord again. She shut the refrigerator and hunted for the cereal. “Penny and Monique up yet? They still here?”

       Trent exhaled heavily through his nose. Jane recognized that as a signal he was fed up with someone. “They’re up,” he said, squinting at the book.

       The shredded-wheat cereal box was almost empty, too. “What’s wrong?” Jane asked, hunting now for the sugar bowl.

       Trent sighed a second time. “Negative influences,” he said.

       “Negative influences, right. We should get a repairman to check on those.” Jane put her cereal bowl on the table and went hunting for a spoon. “C’mon, Trent, spill it.”

       “It’s nothing. Let me finish this verse.”

       She peered over his shoulder. “‘Toxic Waste Love,’” she said aloud. “Hmm. You are such a romantic. Who’s it dedicated to?”

       When Trent didn’t answer, Jane knew something was up. “Trent? Is this for Monique?”

       He looked up, mildly irked, then returned to his book.

       “It was my intuition,” she said with a smirk. Spoon in hand, Jane took a seat across the table from her brother. “This have anything to do with Monique and Penny dropping by last night?”

       The look of concentration on Trent’s face intensified. “It might,” he admitted, looking down at the lyrics. “Had to write it down as it came to me.”

       “Gotta catch that Muse when you can, I understand that.” On the pretext of getting a cup of coffee, Jane got up again and walked over to the kitchen counter, passing Trent as she did. She stopped and peeked over his shoulder again to read the lyrics of the song so far. And she got it. “Trent,” she said, “you should spell ‘deforestation’ with only one ‘r’ in the middle. And Penny and Monique aren’t hooked up.”

       Trent crossed out one ‘r.’ “Janey,” he said with great patience, “sometimes you have to stand up and say something, or else you won’t make your voice heard.”

       Jane thought that last one through, then rolled her eyes. She poured a cup of coffee for herself. “Look, if you’re trying to say that Monique shouldn’t stick around Penny, that’s one thing, but what you’re writing makes it sound like they’re doing the four-boob squash, and they aren’t. They’re buds, Trent, that’s all.” Though I admit I got that wrong when I first saw them together, too, so who am I to talk?

       It was Trent’s turn to make a face and roll his eyes. “Musicians are sensitive to emotional states,” he said, electing to say no more about what he’d seen going on in the kitchen. “I can read moods like music.”

       “Do you actually read music, Trent?”

       “It was just an analogy, Janey.”

       “Look, I don’t get why you have a problem with Penny and Monique hanging out. They’ve both seen bad times lately. Maybe what they each need is a friend, and they look like they’re really hitting it off. They might be good for each other. And, being the sensitive musician that you are, you should know that they’re friends only.” She waited a beat, then added, “They’re not fuzz bumpers.”

       Trent flinched and dropped his lime-green dye marker. “Janey!” he said, flustered, and he bent down to retrieve it.

       “Well, they’re not. Even if they were, just leave them alone, Trent. And, following up on my original question, are they still in?”

       “No.” Trent got under the table on his hands and knees, looking for the dye marker. He coughed a few times as he moved chairs around. “They went off to Monique’s place. Something about making up a concert play list.”

       “Huh.” Jane went back to her chair, but she waited to sit until Trent had found his dye marker and was back in his own seat. “Monique’s thinking about going on tour?”

       “I don’t know, Janey. Too many negative influences to be sure.”

       Jane smiled and raised a spoonful of sugar-soaked shredded wheat to her lips.

       Penny left home without the smoking mirror.

       The spoon hovered in the air, inches from her open mouth. Jane stared into space.

       She came all the way from El Salvador, smuggling a stolen Aztec artifact with supernatural powers, a mirror I know for a fact has a powerful magical being living inside it, and she left it behind. NO! Wrong! It wasn’t even in her room when she woke up! I had it! She woke up, saw it was gone, and she did nothing!

       Jane’s face turned white. The spoon quivered. A bit of milk spilled from it back into the bowl.

       And what about me? I took the damn thing and left it at Daria’s house, and here I am sitting and eating a bowl of cereal as if everything’s just peachy keen! A mirror with some kind of demigod in it! I dropped it off and went for a run to admire nature! What in the hell am I doing? What’s going on?

       The spoon fell into the cereal bowl with a clatter. Trent looked up and frowned.

       Penny finds the smoking mirror on a heap of ruins one night when she’s half drunk out of her mind. It gives her the worst nightmares she’s ever had in her life, horrors so awful that she spends all night screaming from them, and what does she do? She brings the mirror home! Why didn’t she throw it away or run from it like any sensible person? She risked arrest and imprisonment to bring the mirror here! That’s nuts! And then she showed it to Monique and me, we freak out separately—but when I get it, what do I do?

       “Janey?” said Trent. “You okay?”

       For over a year I’ve been harboring a secret desire to screw Daria over in the worst way, the first chance I get after we leave Lawndale. I don’t know if I’d actually do it or if it’s just my special never-act-on fantasy, but I’ve been building on this plan ever since Daria and Tom smacked lips, and now I decide it’s over and all is forgiven? Just like that? And I take the mirror to the one person who has been my public best friend and secret worst enemy, telling myself that it’s for her own good?

       “Janey?” Trent repeated, waving a hand in front of her face.

       “Trent,” Jane said in a hoarse voice, “did Penny say anything this morning about a mirror, before she left?”

       “A mirror?” He looked confused. “No. She said she had everything she needed. By which I think maybe she meant Monique, but maybe she—”

       “She didn’t say anything about something being missing? Anything at all? Did Monique say anything about a mirror?”

       “No. Is one missing?”

       They don’t remember the mirror! Penny’s the most possessive person in the family when it comes to the knick-knacks she gets on her trips south. How could she possibly forget the mirror?

       Unless the mirror made her forget it existed.

       The same way it made me think I was doing Daria a favor when I took it to—oh, dear God!

       “Janey?” Trent called. He got up from his chair, brushing spattered milk from his lyrics book, and surveyed the damage from his sister’s lightning departure from the kitchen and out the front door. With a sigh, he got a rag and wiped up the pool of milk and shredded wheat on the floor, threw the wet rags in the sink, and sat down with his lyrics book again.

       “Something’s really got her upset,” he said to himself. He hoped it wasn’t serious, then turned to his lyrics book again and tried to think of a rhyming word for “loathsome.”

 

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

 

       Jane was halfway down Howard Drive, running for Daria’s house at full speed, when she realized something was wrong. It took but a moment to discover the cause. Her enhanced artistic perception had ceased. The world was normal again in her senses. The mirror’s gift had been temporary only, perhaps even illusory. She had been tricked, blinded to her own activities with the mirror. She realized the mirror was moving from person to person, victim to victim, now that it had been brought once more into the living world. If the mirror had an ultimate purpose, goal, or plan, Jane could not imagine what it was, but she suspected it was not good. The smoking mirror did not heal—it used truth to cause harm, and those who used it had to heal themselves afterward. It had the hallmarks of a destroyer.

       And, thanks to Jane, Daria was right in its way.

       She ran faster. Don’t let anything bad happen, God! Don’t let it happen to Daria! I wasn’t really going to hurt her, not like this! Not like anything! Please, God, don’t let it do anything to her! I’m sorry! I was wrong to want to hurt her! I know that’s what I meant to do, but I didn’t mean it, I swear! I didn’t really mean it!

       Cars screeched to a stop as she shot across an intersection, cut through four front yards, and pounded up Glen Oaks Lane. She ran faster than she ever had in her life.

       I’ll never forgive myself for this! I’m done with my plan to abandon her! It won’t happen! I tried to forgive and forget when we talked it out a year ago, when Trent played “Freakin’ Friends” for us, but I still held on to my anger, and the damn mirror read my mind! It tricked me into sending it on to Daria, and if anything bad happens to her, I swear I will never ever—

       She saw Daria’s house and saw a car parked on the street in front. It was a light tan Jaguar, an old model with orange rust spots. Tom Sloane’s car. No time to wonder what he was doing here.

       Jane was up the Morgendorffers’ sidewalk and grabbing for the front door handle in an instant. She moved too fast, however, and slammed into the closed door instead, bouncing off with a bruised shoulder before she rushed back and opened the door properly. The stairway to Daria’s room was right in front of her.

       As she came in, Jane saw Daria’s mother Helen standing in the family room with a tray of crackers, sliced cheeses, and soda cans. She had stopped in surprise. “Jane, did you run into door?” Helen said in shock. “Are you all right? Daria and Tom are up in—” but by then Jane was already at the top of the stairs. The door to Daria’s bedroom was slightly ajar. Jane ran to the door and banged it open, then came to a stop just inside the room, huffing like a steam locomotive.

       Daria’s bedroom was as unattractive as ever. A small stack of cardboard boxes marked “RAFT” rested against the left wall, near her computer desk. The round black mirror lay face-up on the carpet in the center of the room. Wearing tan cargo pants, sneakers, and a green short-sleeve shirt, Tom knelt on the floor on the other side of the mirror, facing Jane. His hands were pressed to the sides of his head, as if in pain or disbelief.

       Daria was nowhere to be seen.

       “Where’s Daria?” Jane gasped. Sweat fell like rain from her hair and chin. Her T-shirt and running shorts were soaked through, front and back.

       Tom looked up. All the blood was gone from his face. He stared at Jane as if she were a ghost.

       Jane heard Helen coming up the stairs behind her. She quickly shut and locked Daria’s door. “Tom, where’s Daria? Come on, tell me!”

       “You did this,” he whispered in a dull voice. “You sent this to her.”

       “Yes!” She was frightened now. “I’m sorry I did it, okay? Just tell me where she is, please!”

       “Jane? Daria?” called Helen at the door. “I have crackers and cheese for you and Tom. Can I come in?”

       “Can you give us a couple minutes?” Jane shouted. “We’ll be right out!” She looked back at Tom. “Why are you here?”

       He blinked as if awakening from a bad sleep. “I was . . . I was taking her to brunch. A last pizza before I went to Bromwell, Monday.” His voice faded. His gaze went down to the black mirror. “She said you gave this to her.”

       “Is everything all right?” Helen called, outside the door.

       “Fine!” called Jane. “Don’t worry!”

       “Your note said it was a mirror of truth,” Tom continued in a low voice. He continued to stare at the mirror. “You said she should hold it and look into it, and she would see who she was. It looked like it came from Mexico. I thought it was Olmec or Aztec. It’s polished obsidian. Worth a fortune. I saw one like it at a museum, long time ago. Don’t know where you . . .”

       He stopped and looked up at Jane as if trying hard to understand something. “We were looking at it,” he said, “making little jokes about it, when it—it spoke to us. We were holding it, both of us. It spoke inside our heads, like telepathy.” He paused, his face creasing in pain. “It told us what we had done to you. It showed us everything, what we had done to you.”

       Jane’s blood ran cold. I kind of wish she knew what I’ve been through, she had said in her bedroom, a few hours ago.

       “I didn’t know,” said Tom. His voice became pleading. “I swear, Jane, I didn’t know. I didn’t think about what would happen. It was my fault. I don’t know why I did it. I’m so sorry.”

       “Daria?” called Helen in an anxious tone.

       “Five minutes!” Jane shouted. “Five minutes, okay? We’ll be right out!”

       “All right,” Helen said reluctantly. “I’ll be back in five. Is everything okay?”

       “Fine! Great! No problem!”

       When Helen’s retreating footsteps indicated she was safely downstairs, Jane looked around Daria’s room. She peered under the desk, under the bed, in the closet. “Is she in the bathroom?”

       Tom shook his head no. He let go of his head and dropped his hands in his lap, but his eyes stayed on Jane.

       “Then where’s Daria?” She walked over and looked down into Tom’s face. “Where is she?”

       “It gave her a choice,” he whispered.

       “What choice? What do you mean?”

       “It gave her a choice, when she saw what we’d done to you. She could do nothing but live with the truth . . . or she could take the punishment you wished on her.” His lips pulled back in a mirthless smile. “It showed me who I was.”

       Jane could easily imagine that whatever he had seen had undone him, at least for the moment. It was his problem, though, not hers. “And Daria? Where’s Daria?”

       He drew in a breath, looking away. “She took the punishment. It showed her who she was, too. She started to cry. She said she couldn’t face you again. She took what you wished on her, and she went away.”

       Jane grabbed Tom by his shirt, her face in his. “Tell me where she is, damn you!”

       Tom looked at her with lifeless, pale-green eyes. “In hell,” he said.

       Her nerveless fingers let go of his shirt. “No,” she whispered. “You’re lying.”

       “She’s gone,” he said, his voice fading. “She’s gone.” He lowered his head. “And I saw who I was.” He sank down and put his hands over his head. “I saw . . .”

       Jane turned to the obsidian mirror and snatched up the heavy plate in her hands. “Where is she?” she hissed. “Tell me right bloody now!”

       You wanted teeth, said the bestial voice in her head. I have given you teeth.

       “I want to know where Daria is!”

       In the future you wished for her.

       “God damn you, you rotten piece of crap, I didn’t—I didn’t—” She pulled her face back from the mirror, staggered at a thought. “You . . . no, no, no, you didn’t—”

       She chose to go where you secretly wanted her. She is in the future you wished, without you.

       “No!” she howled. “No, you didn’t! Damn you, you didn’t do it! I’m over it, goddamn it! I’m over it! It doesn’t matter! No!”

       You wanted this.

       “No, I didn’t! I would never have done this to her! You knew I wouldn’t, or else you wouldn’t have tricked me into giving you to her! If I’d really meant to hurt her, I would have done it myself without your help, and I didn’t! You know that’s true! I don’t know why I kept thinking about all the crap that happened last year, but I didn’t mean it! I was pissed, but I was getting over it! I was getting over it, and you bloody know it!”

       You have a choice.

       “I don’t want a freaking choice! I want my friend back! I want her back right freaking now, do you hear me?”

       Is she more important than your art?

       “Yes! She is! Damn it, give her back!”

       I can send you after her—but there is a price.

       “I’ll pay it! Anything! Take my art! Take my life! I don’t care! I want her back!”

       You wished to erase the damage that had been done to your friendship with her. If you find her, and she says she will return with you, it will be done.

       “Yes! Send me now! Now! Right freaking n—”

       Tom looked up. Jane was gone. She had vanished just as Daria had.

       The obsidian mirror lay on the floor where Jane had stood.

       He knew they were both gone, gone forever.

       And he knew who he was.

       Lowering his head, he wept.

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

Part Three

 

Everest

 

 

 

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

Win us with honest trifles, to betray ‘s

In deepest consequence.

 

       —William Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, iii, 123-126

 

 

 

Ah, that I had never suffered this treacherous kiss

And had been left in darkness forever to founder and fail.

 

       —Malcolm Lowery, “After Publication of Under the Volcano”

 

 

 

 

Chapter Zero

 

 

       She awoke at 4:02 a.m. The alarm would not go off for two hours more, but she knew she would not go back to sleep. Almost hidden under the blankets on her bed, she listened to the wind press against the walls, searching for a way in.

       It was the bottom of a new day. Every day for her was the highest mountain known. Every day she had to climb the mountain, knowing she would never find the summit. She always had to climb. There was no other choice. One shortcut to the top existed, but no one would let her take it. One foot in front of the other, over and over, without reason or end. She had done it all her life.

       Once upon a time, the pointless climb had not bothered her. She had found someone who was also heading up, someone who wanted to climb with her. Another face looked at her with affection and companionship. She had reason then to keep climbing, even when she had no will left to do it.

       Your mom asked me yesterday if you were depressed, her companion once said, laughing. I told her you were being realistic. She lay under the blankets and remembered her friend’s laugh. That laugh had filled an empty world with color.

       The world had long since lost its color, and the mountain was steeper and higher beyond imagining. I had everything I ever wanted. She looked into the darkness, seeing it all. I had everything in the world, everything that mattered, and I threw it away.

       I threw it away.

       4:03 a.m. The cold wind pressed against the walls. She lay in her bed below the mountain of the day to come. She had no will to move, no reason now to go on. Perhaps today she would find that shortcut to the top. Perhaps today she would be free of the pain of living. Perhaps today . . .

       No. It would not happen. It was hopeless, she knew it, but death was the only hope she had.

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

 

Faust: Where are you damned?

Mephistophilis: In hell.

Faust: How comes it, then, that thou are out of hell?

Mephistophilis: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it:

    Thinkst thou that I who saw the face of God

    And tasted the eternal joys of heaven

    Am not tormented with ten thousand hells

    In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

 

 

       Daria Morgendorffer lowered the book and rubbed her eyes, her fingers raising her round-frame glasses above her nose. The print was hard to read, sliding in and out of focus by the second. The pills were doing it, of course, but she wondered if perhaps her vision wasn’t changing as well. She’d have to ask for an optometrist appointment soon, when her mother had time to drive.

       Frowning, Daria ruffled the book’s pages, trying to focus her blurred vision on various woodcuts and costume illustrations in other parts of Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus. She gave up and let the tome fall shut in her hands. It wasn’t worth it. She looked up and searched for the proper spot where the book belonged on the shelf, but her eyes were playing tricks on her again. The titles and authors’ names of the other books wavered and faded as if they were teasing her, deliberately concealing themselves from view.

       With a disgusted sigh, Daria put the book back on the library cart beside her and took her glasses off, setting them on top of Marlowe. She put the base of her palms to her eyes and pressed in lightly, listening to herself breathe. The movement of air in and out of her lungs was the only sound in a world measuring one person wide and one person tall.

       Two more hours, and Mom will be here for lunch, she thought. Two hours from now, that’s all I have to wait. I can do it. She nodded and dropped her hands, putting her glasses back on. Sniffing to clear her sinuses, she picked up Marlowe. The book fell open in her hands.

 

 

Faust: Come, I think hell’s a fable.

Mephistophilis: Aye, think so, till experience change thy mind.

 

 

       She closed the book and squinted hard at the shelf, determined to be rid of it. M, Ma, Mar—there. She tucked the book in and reached for the next one.

       “Oh, Daria!” came a high, faint voice outside the stacks.

       Sighing, Daria left the cart where it was. She walked slowly to the main desk, wading through the long sea of the day.

       Mrs. Blaine, the white-haired librarian, smiled at her and got up from her seat. “There you are! How are things going with you?” It was the third time since Daria had been dropped off at eight thirty that she’d asked that question.

       “Fine,” said Daria blandly. “I’m not dead yet.”

       “Mercy!” Mrs. Blaine shook her head with a nervous smile. “How you come up with such things to say is beyond me! Would you be a dear and watch the desk? I have to use the ladies’ room. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

       Daria nodded. I shouldn’t have said that. Mom talked the doctors into letting me have this job only because they don’t think I’m suicidal. Let’s not push it. As she walked to the desk, she caught a glimpse of herself in the tall glass of the library’s front door: a small, slight figure in a beige vest and skirt, a white blouse, tan stockings, and sensible shoes. Her brown hair was rolled in a tight bun on the back of her head. Only her round glasses frames were the same as in high school. She took a seat at the desk and ran her tongue around her mouth, swallowing. That bad taste was back. It had been around for several years, since her second psychiatrist got her started on tricyclic antidepressants. It was a side effect and couldn’t be helped. She fought a yawn, then surrendered to it and covered her mouth.

       9:58 a.m. One hour down, almost. Six to go, not counting lunch from noon to one, then home again at five. Another day of no consequence gone.

       Perhaps an earthquake will swallow me up. Unlikely, she knew. She was sorry that Lawndale did not lie on a fault line. Perhaps an asteroid will fall on Lawndale, and I will see its flash before I am vaporized and be free at last. I can always dream.

       Her gaze wandered down to the items on the desk. A cartoon-decorated calendar noted that today was the third Saturday in December, the 17th of the month in the year 2005. A week and a day away was Christmas. She squinted at the new cartoon for the day, but it was not funny. None of them had been funny.

       I am twenty-three years old, and my name is Marian the Librarian, she thought. Her face remained impassive and expressionless. I am very lucky to have this job. It’s a good and honorable job, perfect for my small world and for me. I am surrounded by books—what more could I ask for? Other than fame or money or independence, but I can’t have those. And my sanity is half gone. That’s okay. I should focus on the bright side, like Dr. Mukamal said—or was it Dr. Lewis? Dr. Connors? Whatever. Find the bright spot and stare at it as long as you can, until you go blind. No, they didn’t say that, of course, but—

       She shook her head, clearing it. Her train of thought was not always on the proper track. The pills were not to blame, however. Where was I? The library, me being lucky to be here, actually working when no one else would have me around. I am lucky, that’s true—I can’t argue that. I could have nothing now. I could have nothing.

       I do have nothing.

       She took a breath and attempted to mount a counter-argument. Being a librarian is a good thing, though. I’m not a real librarian, but it is still an honor. It was an honor in ancient times to tend the library at the Pharos of Alexandria, so this job is honorable, too, even in Lawndale. This is my Pharos, and Lawndale my Alexandria. There is no shame in working here. I can be proud of it, be proud of me, even though I’m not. No shame in being here, none at all, except for the little footnote about being a failure at everything else—friendship, work, life, love (can’t forget that one, that’s what got me here)—but that’s okay. It’s okay to fail. Mr. O’Neill taught us that back in high school. I knew it would happen, sooner or later. It’s okay, now that it has. It’s not so bad.

       She looked down at the gold-painted nameplate pinned over her left breast, which read: D. MORGENDORFFER, LIBRARY AIDE. It did not say that she was an unpaid volunteer, a charity case.

       It’s okay. It’s a good job. I’m doing well. I could sit here at my desk and read all I want, if only my eyes would focus. Even without that, this is a good job. It keeps me busy, though it pays nothing. It’s good to be here, and one day, before too long, I will be free in death STOP STOP STOP IT stop it stop it stop it stop it— She shook her head violently, blocking, and swallowed. She could not afford to be free in thought. Too often of late, she gave voice to her thoughts without being aware she did.

       A door opened in the back of the library. Daria heard a toilet end its flush, water running in a sink, then footsteps. She looked up as if nothing had happened at all.

       “I need to make a few phone calls from the office,” Mrs. Blaine called in her high voice. “Let me know when the package truck arrives, would you, please?”

       Daria nodded without looking at the library office or the smiling old woman in the doorway there.

       “Thank you, dear!” said Mrs. Blaine. Daria heard a door gently thump shut. You trust me far more than you ought to. That relieves and frightens me. Not to worry, though. No changes will be made for now.

       The silence slipped in again. It was a slow weekend. No one was present in the library but Mrs. Blaine and Daria. It was often like that on Saturdays, when school was out and the weather was bad. Daria took a deep breath and looked around the vast, glassed-in lobby. Outside, a cold wind from a gray sky scattered leaves and waste paper across the library grounds. In the center of the lobby on a pedestal was a small bust of the library’s namesake, Alfred Joyce Kilmer, a poet killed in the First World War. For the thousandth time since her family had moved to Lawndale seven years ago, Daria wondered if anyone understood the twisted irony in leveling a small woodlot to build this particular library, and in keeping the library grounds treeless except for a struggling maple near the entrance. She doubted that anyone did but her, even with Kilmer’s most famous couplet right on the pedestal:

 

 

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

 

 

       And here was a building full of poems, with no trees but one for a hundred yards around, so everyone could see the nice pseudo-Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. It was such a Lawndale kind of thing to do.

       The phone rang, jarring her from her reverie. Mom, Daria thought. Her gaze went to her watch, which she held close to her glasses. It was 10 a.m. Right on time, like clockwork. She let the phone ring twice, then reached for the receiver and picked it up on the third ring. “Kilmer Public Library,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “Daria speaking.”

       “Hi, sweetie!” cried Helen Morgendorffer. “How are you doing?”

       Why do you even ask? “Okay, Mom, same as when I woke up.”

       “Great! Where would you like to go for lunch today?”

       Daria sighed heavily. She had no appetite anymore, even for pizza. “Mom, I don’t know if I’ll be—”

       “Why don’t we go to that new Oriental place that opened downtown, Fit to Be Thai’d? Linda says it’s wonderful, but she warned me not to try the spicy dishes until you work up to them. She heard the aftereffects were dreadful. Probably discovered that on her own, ho ho. Want to try it?”

       It was pointless to argue. The goose shielded her troubled gosling with an iron wing. “Sure. If I screw up my digestion, it will at least give me something new to think about. My treat this time.” With the money you give me for a weekly allowance, as if I were a kid again.

       “Oh, no! Let me. We’re going to celebrate! I got a bonus! It was from that wrongful dismemberment case I told you about over in Oakwood, where that young man got caught in the—”

       “Mom, Mom, it’s okay! Stop! My stomach’s not as tough as it used to be, when I was in high school. Don’t talk about work, please.” Daria put a hand over her mouth, suddenly queasy. Spicy food she could handle, but not this. Damn pills!

       “Daria, I’m sorry! I forgot! Oh, listen, Quinn called this morning before she went to classes. She had a question for you about a book, if you have time.”

       Sigh. “Sure. Just a moment.” Daria reached for a pencil and a pad of paper. Her memory was not as good as it had once been. Probably the pills to blame, but possibly—

       Whispers of the end filling my ears.

       “Daria? Did you say something?”

       “No. Go ahead, Mom.”

       “Before she comes home next week, Quinn said she needs to write a report about a book in which, um, let me remember how she said it, a book in which something goes wrong, like in that quote about the best laid plans of mice and men, however that goes. A disaster book, I guess, but one in which it was human error. She needs it for a business class. I don’t remember which one right now. Wait—oh, it’s for her business-management class. That was it.”

       “A report on a human-created disaster? Doesn’t she get the news on the TV or Internet?”

       “Oh, Daria, try to help her out. I know you’ll think of something. Do you have her number?”

       “It’s programmed into the cell phone you gave me.” She had already thought of a book that might be suitable. Working in a library did have its advantages.

       “Oh, you’re right. I can’t wait to see her again, can you?”

       “Yeah, I guess.” Quinn was supportive and caring of her older sister, but it was hard to take her abundant successes.

       “She said when she graduates Pepperhill next spring, she might do it summa cum laude! Isn’t that marvelous? I don’t know if she’ll be home for the summer, though. She says she’s—oh, I can’t tell you that yet. I was going to tell you over lunch.”

       Tell me what? “Sure, whatever.”

       “Oh! Wait, I have another call coming in. Can you wait for a few seconds?” Before Daria could answer, her mother put her on hold. Daria sat unmoving and waited. In an alternate universe, I would be in my first year as a graduate student, turning in term papers and preparing for final exams, pulling all-nighters in the library the way I did when I was a freshman at Raft until just before spring finals, when I stopped getting out of bed and my roommates took me to the campus hospital and called Mom and Dad, and I was out of school for good and couldn’t work up to talking for weeks, and the world got very small and dark—

       “Daria?”

       Daria flinched. “Wh-what?”

       “You were mumbling. I came back, and you were mumbling about getting out of bed. Are you all right?”

       “F-fine, Mom. I’m all right. Uh, someone came in and asked me something. Distracted.”

       “Oh, I’m going to tell you the good news anyway! Quinn just got her acceptance letter for graduate school in business at Bromwell, starting the summer of next year! Isn’t that great?”

       It took a moment for the news to register—and produce shock. She blinked, not sure she had heard correctly. “Mom, did you say Bromwell?”

       “Yes, dear! She got in on a first-year scholarship! We’re going to celebrate when she gets here!”

       Daria opened her mouth but nothing came out. Quinn is going to Bromwell? The school I couldn’t get into as an undergraduate?

       “Daria?”

       “That . . . that’s great. Uh, good for her.” She took a quick breath. “I can’t believe it.” It was the truest thing she had said in weeks.

       “Neither can I! Oh, your father would—” Helen cut off, too late, then gamely went on “—he would have been so proud. He was proud of both of you. He loved you so much.”

       It would have helped if he’d actually said he loved us and was proud of us before his second heart attack. I would have liked to have heard that instead of his ranting. “I know,” Daria said without emotion. I wonder if my second hospitalization brought on the attack. He died while I was on the ward. Still can’t believe he’s gone. “The, uh, Thai place is fine.”

       “Great! I’ll see if they take reservations. Oh, I have good news about your cousin Erin and little Jewel, too, and something about the divorce settlement with Brian. Do you have a moment?”

       Daria glanced around the empty library. “Some people just came in,” she said. “I have to go. Can we talk at lunch?”

       “Certainly, dear! Call me if you need me. I’ll see you at a quarter to noon. I love you! Bye-bye!”

       “Bye, Mom.” She put the phone on its cradle and sat back in her seat, looking out the windows.

       Mom’s a full partner at the law firm. Quinn’s going to Bromwell. And I’m here. God, I can’t believe that. Bromwell. How did she—I don’t get how she could—oh, forget it. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Nothing.

       She looked out the window. The branches of the leafless maple shook in the wind.

       I wonder how Jane’s doing.

       She didn’t want to think about that, but it was impossible not to. Where is she today—east coast, west coast, north, or south? Is she painting? Taking pictures? Making movies or sculptures? Will she think of me today? Does she ever? Was she glad to put the distance between us as she did, making that final break with me after she finally told me what I’d done to her when I kissed Tom after I promised I wouldn’t, how much she suffered when I betrayed her with her boyfriend? Did she ever forgive me? Does she know where I am? Does she think of me ever?

       Outside, the cold wind chased a thousand leaves across the dead grass. Daria watched them in her blurred vision. The dark leaves flew like ashes from a dead fire.

       I’ll make it up to you, Jane. I’ve lost everything, and you were right to dump me, but I’ll make it up to you when I find my way to the mountaintop. I hope it will be soon.

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

       The book she thought might be of help to Quinn was in nonfiction under K, for the author, Jon Krakauer. Daria forced her eyes to focus.

 

 

. . . attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act—a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument.

 

 

       So ran part of the introduction. Daria raised her glasses and pinched the top of her nose. Forcing herself to focus gave her headaches. Large-print books weren’t quite so bad, but this wasn’t one of them.

       The book she held was a tale of real-life tragedy from the previous decade: Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster. When her vision cleared, she closed the book and looked at the photo of the world’s highest mountain on the cover. I climb a mountain like that every day, she thought. That counts as irrational, perhaps, but it is not what I desire. I weary of it. It has gone on too long. She shrugged, knowing her opinion did not matter. So it goes.

       This was probably the sort of reference Quinn was looking for. Daria wondered what elements from it her sister would use in writing that business-management class report. She laid the volume on a low shelf and took out a pencil and piece of paper to write down the author and title. Her mind wandered. When it did, she often began to explain her life and behavior as if to a sympathetic listener. It relieved a bit of her loneliness, though ruminating drove her deeper into the blues.

       My life’s been a disaster since I left high school. It’s always been a mess, but at least I could cope with it. Things were already sliding when I realized Jane wasn’t around after graduation as much as I had hoped, always working on art projects when she wasn’t at one of her part-time jobs. I didn’t think she was pulling away from me, though, or I didn’t want to see it. Mom badgered me into that summer job as a checkout clerk at Food Lord, which sucked even if I did earn a little college money. The manager finally laid me off two weeks before I went to Raft, and I thought my troubles were over.

       She finished her writing and licked her lips. The medication left her mouth dry, and the central air system had a dehumidifier that made the library slightly less moist than Death Valley, if more livable. The scrap of paper was tucked into a pocket in her vest. She hoped she wouldn’t forget it.

       And then, right when I was ready to leave for college, the bottom fell out of everything. Jane came over and told me she didn’t want to see me when she came to Boston in January. I couldn’t believe it. It almost seemed irrational, but I could tell she’d thought about it for a long time. I had no idea she was still angry with me over Tom. Her mouth tightened. But I really had no idea how much I’d hurt her, either. She told me everything. Nothing was spared. And when I finally knew what I’d done to her, she left.

       She shoved the memory aside with difficulty. Stone faced, she again flipped through the pages of Into Thin Air and remembered reading the book years earlier, a first-hand account of the May 1996 tragedy when several climbing expeditions were caught on Mount Everest by a surprise storm. She had not thought of the book until someone returned it two weeks ago, and she had to put it back on the shelf. In this manner, she had become reacquainted with many of the books she’d once read. Library work had its advantages. If so much else in her life had not gone wrong, if she could at least have focused her vision long enough to take in more than a few pages of text per hour, the position would have been welcome. As it was, it reminded her of how far she’d fallen from her dreams, how dependent she was on the charity of strangers.

       Closing the book a final time, she tucked it into its proper place on the shelf. The task was made easier because she had marked the spot by turning the volume next to it on its side. She straightened, her mind still adrift.

       College was so hard. I thought I was as ready for it as anyone could be, but after Jane dumped me, I lost my way. It wasn’t exciting anymore. I overdid it, studied too late and tried too hard, got too upset over little things. I burned out. Friends would have helped, but I didn’t want them. It was easier to reject than open up. There would never be another Jane. I couldn’t take that kind of hurt again from a break up—and I couldn’t stand to know I might hurt someone as much as I’d hurt my only real friend.

       I’ve known for years what a pain in the ass I can be, but until that incident with the refrigerator box I never knew how destructive it was to be around me. Mom and Dad fought and separated once when arguing about the problems I was having in grade school. I was frightened by their shouting and hid in a box I used for a playhouse. When I was a senior in high school, a refrigerator box showed up and brought back all those memories, and I found out that my parents almost went nuts many times from trying to deal with me. I probably shortened my dad’s life by being so impossible. So I ran off and nearly had a car wreck, then poured out my heart to Jane and . . . oh.

       Daria grimaced in embarrassment. I wonder if that was the beginning of the end. She must have thought I was a complete baby to call her up and drag her out in the rain to talk to me. I’d never thought of that—but I never do think, do I? I remember I ran over and hugged Jane when I saw her, but she didn’t hug me back. She just stood there. I felt so stupid and ashamed. I must have looked like such an idiot, soaked to the bone, complaining about everything as I always did, and all the while she thought of how I’d screwed her over with Tom, and now this. No wonder she dumped me. She must have—

       “Daria?”

       She blinked and realized she had wandered from nonfiction into the periodicals section. Mrs. Blaine peered at her from the front desk, a pen in one hand and paperwork before her. “Daria?” she repeated.

       Oh, no. Not again. “Yes?”

       “Is someone there with you?”

       Daria shook her head. “N-no. Just me.”

       “I heard you talking and thought someone else was here. Is everything all right?”

       “Yes. I’m sorry. I was . . . thinking . . . about a story I read.”

       “Oh.” Mrs. Blaine’s face reflected doubt. “Well, would you be a dear and make sure the children’s section is tidied up?”

       “Certainly.” Daria felt her face burn as she walked away. It was mortifying to know that she could not keep her thoughts to herself. People probably thought she was crazy. Maybe I am crazy. All I really am is depressed. Duh. I have MDD, major depressive disorder, which I know because I read the copy mom had made of my psychiatric chart, after I came home from the hospital and Dad was gone. Mom wasn’t paying attention to anything and left it lying around in her bedroom. The chart said a lot of other things, too, so maybe crazy is a better word for me than depressed.

       She put a hand over her mouth as she walked, fearful she’d been talking again. Stop saying things aloud! It only makes things worse. How could it be any worse than it is? I have nothing. I am nothing. I’m at the bottom of my life. The only reason I have this job is because I used to read stories to an old woman named Mrs. Blaine at the Better Days Nursing Home, when I was a junior in high school. I came in one day to read to her and found she had died, and it hurt a lot, but I got on. Then my mom goes asking around town two months ago for a volunteer position for me, and she asks here, and the head librarian is Mrs. Blaine’s sister-in-law, also named Mrs. Blaine. She remembers me because I was the only visitor besides her that the other Mrs. Blaine had, and here I am. It doesn’t matter how grateful she is to me, though. She should fire me. She probably will. She can’t have me around scaring people, acting like a nutcase.

       The children’s section needed little attention. Daria forced herself to stop thinking for a while, and she moved the small chairs against the tables and put several books away. For a few moments she stood by the pile of pillows that the kindergarteners sat on while they read.

       I never really thought about having children of my own. Well, that’s not true. I did think about it when I was going with Tom. And I remember thinking about it when I was mooning over Jane’s brother Trent, all those years ago. I haven’t seen Trent around for ages. Not a library person, I guess. I wonder if he still plays his guitar. I wonder if he’s seen Jane around. Okay, time to stop thinking about that.

       “Daria?”

       Thinking she’d been overheard talking to herself again, Daria prepared to confess to a mental breakdown just so she could go home, go to bed, and stop embarrassing herself in public.

       “Daria?” Mrs. Blaine called again. “Do you mind if I turn on the radio?”

       The tension ran out of her. “Uh . . . no. That’s fine.”

       “All righty! We could use a little easy-listening music, I think.” The white-haired librarian got up from her desk with a cheery smile and walked off toward the main office.

       A deep sense of exhaustion swept through Daria. She slowly pulled one of the children’s chairs from under a table and sat down, staring at the floor with a hand over her mouth. I can’t go on. I’ve tried, I’ve really done my best, but I can’t go on. I’m sorry. When Jane told me what I’d done to her, I knew then who I was. I knew I’d always made my own trouble. No one else made wrong decisions for me; I made them. I built my own Everest, and all I needed was one stupid act—betraying Jane—and one block of bad luck—a predisposition to major depression—and I was down the mountainside like an avalanche. Getting back to the top used to mean achieving success. Now it means putting an end to it all, only I’m too afraid of failure there, too, not to mention physical pain. If I could only find those pills Mom gives me, the Paradizine, that would do it. Tricyclics are lethal in overdose. I’ve been good for a while now, I’ve never talked about hurting myself, and maybe she’s gotten a large supply. I looked up the pills in the library’s PDR, and it would be a hard ride, but they’d do it. Sorry, Mom and Quinn. My time is up, and I have to go.

       Paradizine, paradise. Funny, now that I think of it. They don’t seem to be working as well as they once did. I never used to think so much like this, or be this depressed. Switching me off Elavil in July probably wasn’t a good move. Or maybe it was. Depends on how you see it.

       Orchestra music, primarily strings, floated through the air. Daria recognized the song as the theme from an old James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice. She got up, almost smiling. No, thanks. Once was quite enough for me. Time for a break. Though she had done little work, the struggle to keep moving through her depression was wearing her out. She walked back to the front desk, where Mrs. Blaine was opening mail.

       “Excuse me,” said Daria. “Do you mind if I read something, over in science fiction?”

       “Oh, sure! Go right ahead, dear! Is everything going okay?”

       “Fine, thank you. I’ll be in the L section.”

       “You go right ahead. I can handle things here.” Mrs. Blaine gave her a gentle smile and a wave.

       For the last week, Daria had been working her way through an SF novel she had always wanted to read. Once deep in the stacks, in the science-fiction and fantasy section, she meandered over to the L section and bent down to the second shelf up from the floor. The book she wanted was pulled out an inch from the ones around it, just as she’d left it. With a sense of relief, she pulled it out Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. She was near the end of chapter one, where Kelvin the researcher had reached the space station above the enigmatic planet/life-form for which the story was named. Kelvin was being warned by a computer expert, Snow, about the nightmarish conditions on the station.

       Removing the yellow Post-It note that marked the page where she had left off, Daria closed her eyes a moment and cleared her head. In the background, she heard one of the library’s front doors open. Someone had finally come in. Good thing Mrs. Blaine was there. Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes and began to read. For some reason, her vision was less blurred than usual, and she got two-thirds of the way down the page. Snow was warning Kelvin the narrator that people might unexpectedly appear on the space station, and he should be ready for it.

 

 

       “Who could I see?” I flared up. “A ghost?”

       “You think I’m mad, of course. No, no, I’m not mad. I can’t say anything more for the moment. Perhaps . . . who know? . . . Nothing will happen. But don’t forget I warned you.”

       “Don’t be so mysterious. What’s all this about?”

       “Keep a hold on yourself. Be prepared to meet . . . anything. It sounds impossible I know, but try. It’s the only advice I can give you. I can’t think of anything better.”

       “But what could I possibly meet?” I shouted.

 

 

       A sound at the end of the aisle told Daria that someone was standing there, probably waiting to get her attention. She exhaled in defeat. “May I help you?” she asked, turning around with the book still in her hands. An instant later, she gasped aloud and dropped the book. She staggered back, knees wobbling and her hands gripping the metal shelves on either side of her for support.

       The tall, lanky figure at the end of the aisle wore a running outfit of a red T-shirt, gray shorts, and battered red track shoes. Her sweat-drenched black bangs framed a heart-shaped face. Blue eyes widened in shock as they took Daria in from head to foot.

       “Daria?” whispered Jane Lane. “Is that you?”

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

 

       Jane—or whoever it was at the end of the aisle—took a step closer. “Daria?” it said again.

       Daria backed up, her heart in her throat. She put out a hand to ward the apparition back. God, no! That can’t be Jane! She looks just like she did the day she told me she never wanted to see me again, in her running clothes and everything! Am I having hallucinations on top of everything else? Is the medication doing this, or am I really losing it?

       The apparition appeared anxious. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

       “I’m—” Daria began, then cut herself off. Don’t talk to hallucinations, stupid! Someone will hear you! Wait—maybe she’s really Mrs. Blaine, or a visitor looking for a book. Say something to her so she thinks you’re only startled and not crazy or—oh, hell, I am crazy. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know anything. Shivering with fear, she put a hand over her eyes. This is the end of me, the real end. My mind’s betrayed me as I betrayed Jane. I have nothing left at all. I can’t go on.

       “What’s wrong?” The being came closer. “Are you angry with me?”

       Daria’s breathing grew ragged. “I give up,” she said, exhausted. Holding a shelf to ease herself down, she sat on the carpeted floor next to the book she had dropped and put her back against the shelves. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said, looking at the hallucination’s red track shoes. “I want to go home. Please call my mom.” She closed her eyes. “Please call—”

       Someone walked over and knelt on the carpet beside her. Two long, cold arms pulled her head into a damp T-shirt that smelled of . . . Jane. It was Jane. Daria had smelled that scent a thousand times in Jane’s room, on her clothes, in her P.E. locker, everywhere. She had never forgotten it. Her heart leaped. Was it really Jane? The apparition felt and smelled and looked and sounded so real, but—

       “I’ve been hunting all over town for you,” said the being as it held Daria close. “I came to get you out of here. I want you to come back with me, right now. Just say that you’ll go, and we’ll be gone. I promise.”

       It felt good to be held. Daria reached up and put her arms around the apparition. It felt warm and real. Daria felt a thrill pass through her. She felt wonderful all the way through, holding someone like Jane, although she knew it wasn’t the real Jane. The real Jane would never hug her. The real Jane hated her—but it was still the most wonderful feeling, to be so close to someone like her after so long a time.

       “You won’t believe this,” said the being, “but I reappeared in your room a little while ago, right where the mirror was on the floor. I made it send me after you. I went downstairs, but I accidentally set off some kind of security alarm, wailing all over the place. Didn’t even know you had one. Sorry. Anyway, I ran outside before the police got there, then I froze my ass off running back to my parents’ house, only to find no one was home except some vagrants in the basement. I don’t think anyone in my family has lived there in months. My room was cleaned out, Penny’s too. The rest was a mess.” The apparition pressed her face to Daria’s forehead. “How long have you been here?”

       The remark about the mirror meant nothing. Daria had no mirror in her bedroom. It had once been used by the schizophrenic mother of a previous owner (how appropriate for me, Daria often thought), so the walls were padded and the décor was dreary, devoid of breakable things like mirrors. Daria always used the mirror in the hall bathroom, anyway.

       “Daria?” said the being again. “How long have you been here?”

       She licked her lips again. “S-since . . . two thousand two. July, three years ago.” Not counting my second hospitalization in 2003, but that was for only two months.

       “Two thousand two? The year two thousand two? Didn’t you just get here a little while ago?” The apparition pulled back and looked Daria over. “Where’d you get the suit? And your hair—” The being stopped. Its blue eyes glazed in shock. “No,” it said. “Oh, no, I forgot. This is your future. The future without me, like the mirror said. God, what did I do? What did I do to you?”

       “I’m sorry,” whispered Daria. She remembered now what Jane had said so long ago, about the hurt, and she was ashamed. “I’m really sorry.”

       “You didn’t do anything,” said the being in a strained voice. “Don’t say that. I screwed up really bad, and the mirror made it worse. Daria, tell me you’ll come with me. We’re going back to August, two thousand one. None of this will ever happen. Just say you’ll go with me. All you have to do is say it.”

       Go back to August, two thousand one. Go back to August, two thousand . . . one. Go back—she wants to go back to the day she told me she didn’t want to see me again.

       “Don’t hurt me,” whispered Daria. She laid her head against the apparition’s chest, too drained to cry. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. Forgive me.”

       “Shhh,” said the apparition. Tears ran down its cheeks. “That’s over and done, but I did the terrible thing, not you. I did a terrible thing to you, Daria. We’re going home together, you and me, and we’ll make it better. Tell me you’ll go with me, and I’ll take you home. Please tell me now.”

       It came to Daria then, what was really happening. The being was Jane—but Jane was an angel now, the sort of angel Quinn occasionally liked to talk about and imagine followed her around, taking care of her. Daria was having a religious experience, the kind in which anything could happen—and anything usually did. It was crazy, yes, but it was the only solution that was even marginally reasonable, given the facts.

       If that were true, then “going home with Jane” meant—

       Oh. Daria felt a strange sense of relief, mixed with a profound sadness. Her deepest desire was coming true. She looked up. “What took you so long?” she whispered.

       The being—the angel—burst out in laughter. The brightest of colors flew across an empty world. “That’s better,” it said, sniffing back tears. “That was the Daria I remember. Let’s go home.”

       “I can’t go yet,” said Daria. “Not yet.” She was regaining her senses. Now that she knew what was happening, she could handle it. She even felt better. Her depression was easing.

       The angel pulled back and looked down at her in surprise. “What?”

       “Let me do a few more things first, please. Mom wanted to have lunch with me today. I feel bad about leaving her, and I can’t go without seeing her one more time. Let me do that, at least.”

       The angel appeared stunned, but it nodded after a moment. “Uh, sure. Are you feeling okay?”

       Daria nodded. “I’m better. I’ll be all right.” She pulled away from the angel and got back on her feet with a little assistance. “Thank you,” she added, brushing herself off. For the first time in years, she felt in control of her life and almost . . . normal.

       “I’m sorry I did this to you,” said the angel. “God, if there’s any way you can forgive me for this—”

       “You did nothing wrong,” said Daria. “I’m glad you’re here. I thought I’d never see you.”

       “I swear, first thing after we get back, I’m going to smash that mirror into powder. I’ll get a sledgehammer and smash the freaking—”

       “What mirror?” Daria asked, straightening her sleeves and vest.

       The Jane-angel hesitated, then sighed and rolled its eyes. “Oh, right. You wouldn’t remember. No one else remembers it by this time, except me and . . . well, he won’t remember it for long, I bet. Forget it, then. We’ll go back as soon as you’re ready.”

       Daria nodded, then checked her watch. “Mom will be here in a little while. Can I have lunch with her alone? One last time? It would mean a lot to me.”

       The angel nodded. “That’s fine.” It looked around the library. “So, this is two thousand five. Looks sort of like two thousand one.”

       “Only on the surface,” said Daria. “Scratch it, and the monsters come out. It’s been a really lousy twenty-first century. Do I look okay?”

       The angel was on the verge of asking something, but Daria’s last comment caused it to give her a curious stare. “Do you look okay? Are you really asking me that?”

       “I have to look good for the public. I’m a volunteer here.”

       “Oh.” The angel blinked, then gave Daria a closer look. “Yeah, you look fine. A volunteer? What else do you do?”

       “Nothing. This is it.” Daria bent down and retrieved the fallen copy of Solaris, putting it back in its place on the shelf. She pushed the book all the way in. There would be no time to finish it. A small regret, as it had so much promise. “I should see if Mrs. Blaine needs any help. There’s still an hour to go until Mom comes to get me.”

       The angel appeared to have some trouble understanding what was going on. “Your mom brings you out here?”

       “I can’t drive because of the medication. It screws up my vision and reflexes. And I don’t have a paying job because not many people around here want to hire someone with a big-time mental illness and past hospitalizations. I’m not complaining about it—not too much, anyway. Doesn’t matter anymore.” Daria ran a hand over her brown hair, checking the bun. “I’ll be right back after I talk with Mrs. Blaine. You can wait here or do what you like.”

       “Daria?” said the angel. A frightened look was on its face. “What are you talking about, mental illness? And the medication thing, what’s with that?”

       Daria looked back at the angel, surprised that it would not know everything about her. Curiouser and curiouser, the real Jane occasionally said. She debated over what to say about it, then shrugged. “It’s been a lousy twenty-first century,” she repeated. “I’ll explain later.” She started to turn away, then looked back once more. Her face was serene. “Thank you for coming for me. I mean that.”

       The angel didn’t answer. It stared at Daria in confusion and growing fear, then watched as Daria walked away.

 

 

 

Chapter Four

 

 

       Mrs. Blaine was on the phone in the main office when Daria left the science-fiction section. No one else was in the library. It was the slowest Saturday Daria could recall in the two months she’d been there. She walked back to the office and waited outside the door until Mrs. Blaine looked up and noticed her.

       “Excuse me for a moment, would you? Daria’s here.” Mrs. Blaine cupped a hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Yes, dear?”

       “I wanted to see if you needed me for anything,” Daria said.

       “Oh, no, nothing right now. Mercy, there aren’t many people out today, are there? Must be the weather. We’re likely to fall over from boredom before the day’s through.”

       Daria started to tell her about the angel’s coming, then decided the wiser choice was to say nothing. Mrs. Blaine had obviously not noticed, but that made sense. Perhaps only Daria could see it. “I’ll be near the lobby in case someone comes in,” she said.

       “Certainly, dear.” Mrs. Blaine peered at Daria closely. “You look like you’re feeling better,” she said.

       “I am. Miracles do happen.”

       The librarian smiled. “Bless you, dear. You have a good time.” She waved Daria away and resumed her chat with a friend about a backgammon tournament at the Lawndale Mall.

       Soft music played in the background. Daria wandered back to see how the angel was doing. She had to admit that an angel in a track outfit was pretty odd, like something out of the movie Dogma. A corner of her mouth twitched. That would be great, she thought. The afterlife turns out to be Lawndale on a higher plane. Good thing I lived the adventure first and was ready for it. I hope the Jane-angel stays around. Among other things, my psychiatric chart said I had dependency issues with the live Jane. I guess I did. Nothing went right after she was gone. Mom and I got closer, which was good, but it wasn’t the same.

       The angel was in the periodicals section, leafing through magazines. “Catching up?” Daria asked as she approached.

       The angel looked up. Her face was blank with horror. In her hands was a year-in-review issue of a news magazine for the year 2001. It was open to color photos of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

       “What the hell happened?” asked the angel. “Are we at war?”

       Daria nodded, a bit puzzled herself. Maybe angels don’t have time to catch up with human news. Perhaps this one was on the other side of the galaxy for a while.

       The angel looked down at the magazine, then dropped it back among a pile of others whose covers reflected world events over the past four years: terrorist attacks in America and abroad, agonizing foreign wars, worldwide security fears, bitter political battles, everything. “I can’t believe it,” said the angel. “I can’t believe this started one month after we . . . right after . . .” It waved a hand at the magazines, robbed of speech.

       The remarks were probably the kind of sad commentaries on the human condition that angels were prone to make. Daria nodded in agreement. “We can’t believe it, either. Wish we hadn’t screwed it up. Would you like to stay for the afternoon? I get off at five, when Mom comes by.”

       The angel drew its attention from the magazines and regarded for her a moment. “Daria,” it finally said, “why don’t you come home with me now? We should get out of this awful place and be happy together. Why do you want to wait?”

       “I want to settle things out with my mom,” said Daria by way of apology. “She’s put up with me through everything, with me flunking out of Raft, my depressions, and everything. She came through for me even after Dad died. I owe her one more day together, then we can go.”

       “Flunking—wait! Your dad died?” The angel appeared more stunned than before, if that was possible.

       “Yeah, but I couldn’t go to the funeral. I was in the psychiatric ward of Cedars of Lawndale for the second time. I think that’s what gave him his last heart attack.” Daria gave a quick summary of the last four years of her life, since that fateful day in August 2001 when she lost her only friend. “So, here I am,” she concluded. “And here you are, and I’m glad this is over with. Whatever comes next can’t possibly be this bad. At least, I hope it won’t be.”

       The angel was white faced as it stared at Daria with its mouth open.

       “Will we be together, you and I?” Daria asked. “I mean, after we . . . go? If it’s not a problem, I mean. I was hoping that maybe—”

       “Tezcat set me up,” said the angel. Its voice was hard and bitter. “That bastard. The smoking mirror showed you all my pain, and now you’ve shown me yours, and what I did to you was a billion times worse than what you did to me. I can’t believe I wanted this. I must have been insane.” The angel closed its blue eyes and stood without moving. “God damn me to the bottom of hell. I deserve to suffer, not you. And God damn Tezcat, too. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to smash that freaking mirror into atoms.”

       Daria frowned, trying to follow what the angel was saying. Someone named Tezcat set this up? Why did that name sound familiar?

       “Will we be together?” Daria whispered, afraid.

       Tears ran down the angel’s face. After a moment, it wiped them away. “Sure,” it said, its voice rough. “I don’t know why you’d want to be with me after this, but we’ll be together, if you want. I’ll be with you forever. I owe you.”

       A great weight was lifted from Daria’s shoulders. This was the best news possible. She did not want to ask if the angel’s Jane form was its true shape or a guise it assumed when it came for her. She wouldn’t ask yet. Later, yes. Perhaps it wouldn’t mind keeping that shape.

       The angel opened its eyes again, but it did not look Daria in the face. “I’ll go back to the house and see if there’s any clothing left that I can wear,” it said. “It’s really cold outside.”

       “I didn’t know you needed clothing,” said Daria, curious. “Or is that outfit a disguise?”

       The angel looked up, taken aback. “What? Oh, I didn’t have time to change. I came as soon as I knew . . . that you were . . . oh, forget it.” It sniffed and smiled. “You sound more like your old self all the time. I know you won’t believe me, and I’m a fool to say this, but it’s so good to see you.”

       Daria smiled back. It was the first real smile she’d had since she could remember. “It’s good to see you, too. More than you could possibly know.”

       This last comment seemed to sadden the angel. It took a step in Daria’s direction and hugged her, burying its face in her shoulder. Daria hugged back, as light as air.

       “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” the angel whispered. “Have a good lunch with your mom.”

       “Please take my coat,” said Daria. “It might be a little small, but it’s too cold outside to—”

       “No,” said the angel. “That’s okay. I’ll be fine.” They held each other for a long moment, then let go. The angel walked to the library doors. It looked back before it left, gazing at Daria’s small figure alone in the lobby. The angel’s face worked; it seemed to be on the verge of tears. It then pushed open the door and ran out into the cold wind and was gone.

       Daria swallowed back the lump in her throat. The angel was so much like the Jane she had wanted to see for so long. It might be only the result of wish fulfillment, but she wasn’t going to complain. She was grateful that they would be together after she had left this world behind. Perhaps she would meet the real Jane in the afterlife, if this angel wasn’t her, and they could make amends. She hoped it would be so. She exhaled heavily and walked back to the checkout desk, wiping her eyes on her blouse sleeves.

       Something occurred to Daria then, and she stopped. Tezcat. Where had she heard that name before? It sounded like the shortened name of a Central American god, Mayan or Aztec. After some thought, she walked toward the reference section. The mythology books there were primarily for Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, but she knew one book that would probably have everything she was looking for—if this library had a copy. Very few did, and she had not bothered to check before now.

       To her surprise, the book was there. The old tome was thick and heavy, but she pulled it from the shelf and carried it with both hands over to a table, taking a seat before it. The dark leather cover had a musty odor to it that made Daria wrinkle her nose.

       Opening the volume with care, she flipped through the yellowed pages until she came to the T’s. She found what she was looking for in moments. Skimming over the specific details of the deity’s appearance, deeds, priesthood, and mythic relatives, she came to the commentary at the end and studied it. Odd, she thought, how the book referred to all its subjects in the present tense. And odd, too, that for a while her vision was less blurred than usual.

 

 

       Tezcatlipoca is a difficult being to assess. Possibly the most powerful of the Toltec/Aztec deities, he is a law unto himself and follows a moral code we struggle to comprehend. He is unpredictable and dangerous, yet essential to the functioning of the universe—a necessary evil, some would say. A simple summary would say he is the wicked jaguar god of the Aztecs. This is like saying the sun is bright, but it is nothing more.

       Tezcatlipoca’s nature is a maze of contradictions and contrasts. At his core, he is a symbol of change and conflict, destruction that brings about renewal. A study of him confuses more than it enlightens. How does one reconcile that he is simultaneously representative of the sun and the night, temptation and heroism, war and beauty, warriors and magic, truth and deceit, nobles and slaves, mental cunning and physical might, annihilation and creation, death and rebirth? Evil he may seem, but he befriended and protected the first humans. He is both the enemy and ally (as the moment requires) of his brother Quetzalcoatl, the god of light; they joined forces to create the world, yet Tezcatlipoca tricked his brother into performing deeds of great evil. He toys with humans as if they were marbles rolling in his great palm. He does as he pleases, yet he is not amoral; his actions bear their own logic and values.

       Tezcatlipoca might manifest himself though one of his obsidian “smoking mirrors,” for which he is named. Such a mirror is omniscient across time and space. It destroys enemies, foretells the future, reads minds, and reveals the true nature of anyone who views it. Restraining or destroying a smoking mirror is not advised, but might be impossible in any event.

       Of his interactions with humanity, it is his role as a tempter and tester that intrigues most. Though he poses horrific challenges, he does not value wickedness or cowardice. He rewards those who please him by their displays of courage, but to be caught in his machinations is not to be wished on anyone. Suffering might not be a guarantee of later favor. Ruin and desolation might serve a greater purpose than the ruined thing is capable of appreciating. A slight encounter with him will be life changing; a prolonged encounter could be more so, if it is not quickly and terrifyingly fatal.

       Your shortcut is in view, Daria.