We took the elevator to the seventh floor. Aaron unlocked a door and I followed him down a long, dark hallway, through a cluttered living room, to a small, dark room behind the kitchen.
He held the door open and cleared his throat. “So. Come in,” he said.
His room was neater than mine, but not by much. I wondered whether he usually kept it that way. Or had he cleaned it up for me? He took off his coat and I handed him mine. He put them both down on the bed, which was made, if sloppily.
I looked around for somewhere to sit. I had a choice of the bed, a beanbag chair, and his desk chair. I chose the desk chair; Aaron leaned against the wall, his knees bent.
“Did you borrow that invisible chair from the GC? Is that what you wanted to show me?”
He laughed nervously and stood up straight.
I felt nervous too. Something wasn’t quite right in the room. Slowly I figured out what: the place reeked of magic, the scary kind. It was laced with undertones of awfulness, the way air freshener might claim to smell like strawberries, but you would never willingly put it in your mouth. It smelled like Mr. Stone’s loft or the worst items in the Grimm Collection, the murky picture or the Snow White mirror.
No wonder. There on the wall over the dresser hung the Snow White mirror.
“Is that what I think it is?”
He nodded. “That’s what I wanted to show you.”
“You borrowed it?”
He nodded again.
“Did you leave a deposit in the
“Of course! What do you take me for?”
“What did you leave? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“My firstborn child.”
“But you don’t have—”
“My
“Wow.” For some reason the thought of that gave me the shivers. I turned to the mirror. “Why did you take this creepy mirror home? Why not just talk to it at the repository?”
“It’s not safe to talk to it there. I’m not sure it’s even safe to talk to each other there. Things keep disappearing, and I don’t know who to trust.”
But he thought he could trust
I felt flattered and a little guilty—I might not have lied to him exactly, but I hadn’t been entirely open with him either. I decided to tell him about Anjali’s disappearance and our trip to Mr. Stone’s. I left out the part where Mr. Stone told Marc to steal the
“Anjali
“What do you mean? I just did.”
“But why didn’t you tell me right away? Why didn’t you call me?”
“I don’t know, Aaron. It’s not like I was hiding it, it’s just . . .” What could I say? I couldn’t exactly tell him that it didn’t occur to me to tell him, and if it had, I might have been too worried he would blame Marc.
“I can’t believe it, Elizabeth! What am I supposed to do?”
“Help us find Anjali.”
“I meant, what am I supposed to do about
“Really?”
“Yes. Watch.” He turned away from me toward the mirror. His handsome face looked sinister enough in real life; his reflection was so bitter it scared me. I wondered what he must be seeing in
Aaron asked the mirror:
His reflection listened with a little smirk on its perfect chiseled lips. It looked me straight in the eye and replied in Aaron’s voice,
“Oh, nice,” I said. “For the record, my name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth! Nobody calls me Bitsy. Did you hear that, you vile object?” I started to scowl at the mirror but quickly stopped—I didn’t want to think about how my scowl would look once the mirror got through distorting it. I turned to Aaron. “What makes you think you can trust that thing? It’s evil!”
“I know, but it can’t lie.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“No, I mean, it’s right about you being brave . . . and it does tell people the truth about their looks—you know how it told Snow White’s stepmother the minute she stopped being the fairest of them all.”
Aaron’s reflection was smiling smugly, while Aaron’s own face twisted in an awkward combination of embarrassed and angry.
“So you’re saying you agree, I’m not pretty?”
“No—I didn’t say that! I think it has to tell the truth, but it doesn’t have to tell the whole truth. It can’t just lie, but it can be as mean and difficult as it wants. It clearly likes to mess around with people and get them in trouble—remember what happened to Snow White’s stepmother.”
“I don’t, actually. What did happen to her?” I asked.
“I don’t remember either. Something bad. But that’s not the point. The point is, the mirror likes to tease and torment, but it can’t just out-and-out lie. So if I have to think about it, it’s right:
“Oh, are you calling me beautiful, then? You’re saying that’s what the mirror meant?” Did he really think he could get out of the insult by pretending he meant it as a compliment?
Aaron threw his hands in the air. “What is it with you women? There’s a magic mirror that can tell you the truth about anything you want to know, and all you can think about is whether you’re beautiful!”
“What do you mean, ‘you women’? Who’s ‘you women’?”
“You and Snow White’s stepmother, for starts.”
“Oh, so you’re lumping me in with Snow White’s stepmother now? Watch out, I might poison you with an apple.”
Aaron’s reflection in the mirror looked as if it was enjoying this far too much.
“Don’t look at me like that, you!” I told it. “If I weren’t afraid of seven years of bad luck, I would smash you to bits.” Aaron’s reflection in the mirror doubled over laughing. I picked up a shoe from the floor and held it up threateningly.
The mirror answered,
“You think you can scare me? You don’t scare me one bit!” My voice came out terrified.
Aaron gently took the shoe from me and put it down. “My firstborn child, remember? If you break it, I lose it. Let’s just ask the mirror about Anjali.”
I pulled myself together. “Okay, if you think that’ll do any good.” I considered for a while, then said,
The mirror answered:
