Prologue

 

I’m Nancy—

I do not own my reflection

 

—

 

Chapter One

 

Bess says  the lake is haunted

 

Come on, Nan       let’s leave

It’s awful here

& George jumps out from the reeds

 

Don’t be a child Bess         they’re just rumors

 

just thimble words  tiny gusts    seventeen in a pretty town of nothing

No trouble we can get into that our parents can’t help us out of

 

What about all the reports    I say as we head back to my car     blue shine & slice of neon in the dark

 

Oh, gosh. Forget it. We’ll never get on Twilight Zone.

 

I plug in my keys to a growl      & in the rearview mirror     I see her for the first time

 

—

 

Chapter Two

 

I believe     there is an answer to every question

 

Teenage sleuth strawberry blonde cornflower blue widowed father

I am a question                     My reflection is the answer

 

She is nine or twelve or sixteen      rewrites my hair black

blue eyes lying brown         Chinese girl who does not like me very much

 

or coffee

I drink dark roast      she scowls from the silver coffee pot

 

Why are you there and not me

 

—

 

Chapter Three

 

Our English teacher is having an affair

 

Bess gets a secret admirer

 

Ned asks for my help finding his father’s missing Rolex

So many mysteries in the gleaming dull town I live in

 

Used to wish    something would build & build & then blow up here            god please   just let something happen

 

to me            for once

 

—

 

Chapter Four

 

Relentless, is she

 

in windows            on the backs of spoons

in rain puddles     the bathroom mirror

anywhere glass     cuts shadow in half

 

Are you light are you imagination are you optics are you me

 

She blinks bottomless pits

 

Where are you from

You’re not from around here are you

I just mean I mean

You don’t look it

—

 

Chapter Five

 

Test run:  I light candles

Place a mirror at the end of my bed

Watch her watch me watch her until I fall asleep

 

What are you doing         George thinks I’m going mad

 

What I’m good at

I write it all down in my casebook

 

Test run: I take a photograph of my reflection       My face strange now

a few shades too light    Hair a dapple of faded gold

 

Eyebrows thinning to air                          A half-erased girl

 

—

 

Chapter Six

 

An Oriental?            

 

Maybe she doesn’t know English          Bess suggests

 

The windows rattle              She is glaring      I look to the floor

 

I think she does Bess

 

We should never have gone ghost hunting          George says  She swings           down from the

top bunk        Puts on a record

 

Who knew one of us would get possessed 

 

I’m not possessed I protest

 

I told you we should have left              Bess fumes

 

Look, now Nan’s    stuck with this                      

this

—

 

Chapter Seven

 

No recent deaths

No Chinese

No Oriental girls disappeared

Nothing in the news

 

She’s caught in every shine & glimmer

stares at me in the library as I dig through old newspapers

 

I’m sorry       I crump my fingers into a ball & pull them apart

 

I’m so sorry you died

 

There is an answer to every question            It’s too late to go back now

 

—

 

Chapter Eight

 

The day after I discover Chelsea B. stole Ned’s watch

I push the mirror against the wall & sit in front of it

 

Mine’s Nancy      What’s yours

 

Her head tilts       I stay still        She looks away when I do     She walks when I do     Her face doesn’t budge    She wears my skirts   She plaits her hair like I do    She gets up to a house still asleep to make coffee & toast the same time as I do     She dallies with her friends like I do     She solves cases like I do   She hunts mysteries     Is a mystery       Lives in everything gleaming     Does not speak Stares endless              Rewrites everything of mine

What’s yours

 

—

 

Chapter Nine

 

The Watsons ask me to track down a family heirloom

My father says there are robberies happening in town

 

& I see George kiss Martha M. under the bleachers they pull apart & blink, dazed, as if from sunshine

 

When people die do they learn everything?

 

Don’t you get tired of having all the answers?

 

Silence

I will find you   I say

 

In my world no one        is ever careful enough       to not get caught

 

Silence

Is my mother there with you?  Is everyone dead with you?

 

For the first time        she smiles a little

 

Triumph blooms

You’re a puzzle aren’t you

 

—

 

Chapter Ten

 

Why my mirrors, though

Why me

 

A series of robberies: the ice cream shop the record store

& the local diner

 

After school I go to dust for fingerprints in the kitchen

 

The space between my skull & my brain is infinite

& that is how she speaks             filling up the empty

 

IT WAS THE GRANDSON

THE GRANDSON OF THE OWNER

 

I knock over a platter of forks       She speaks from

the razored mess on the ground

 

I AM NOT DEAD.

I AM YOUR REFLECTION.

 

IT IS NOT YOURS.

 

IT IS ME. I AM.

 

—

 

Epilogue

 

In the bathroom I ask       What are you

She points a finger to our chin      our musculature

 

WE

 

she says

 

There is nothing else