The little girl's name was Megan, and she became Teresa's opposite in every way. She was her identical twin, but also her reverse, her opposite.
Now whenever Teresa is left alone, or when her parents are busy elsewhere in the house, she comes to the mirror and plays her harmless fantasy games with Megan.
First she smiles and tweaks at her dress, then inclines her head. In the mirror the Meganfriend smiles and lifts the hem of her dress and lowers her head shyly. Hands stretch out, fingertips brush clumsily where the mirror glass would be. Teresa dances away, laughing back over her shoulder as Megan mirrors her movements. Everything the girls do has a reflection, an exact replica.
Sometimes the two little girls settle on the floor at the base of the mirror and whisper about the world they each inhabit. Should an outsider ever be able to overhear what they are saying, it would not make sense in adult terms. lt is a strange, erratic fantasy, endlessly absorbing and plausible to the children, but it would seem shapeless and random to an adult mind, because they make it up as they go along. For the two little girls, the nature of this contact is the rationale. Their lives and fantasies fit seamlessly together, because each is the complement to the other. They are so uncannily alike, so instinctively in touch, but their worlds are filled with diffierent names.
So the pleasant dreams of childhood spin happily away. Days, weeks, months go by, and Teresa and Megan live out their innocent daydreams of other lands and deeds. lt is a period of certainty and stability in their lives. They both have a constant friend, and they completely trust and understand each other.
Because Megan is always there, looking back at her from the other side of their mirror, Teresa draws strength from the friendship and begins to develop more ideas about herself and the world she lives in. She feels better able to seewhat's going on around her and live with what she finds, to understand what her dad is doing, and why he and her mommy had married, and what their lives would mean for her. Even her mother detects a difference in her, and often remarks that her little girl is growing up at last. Everyone can sense the growth.
In the mirror, Megan is changing too.
One day her mommy says to Teresa, 'Do you remember that I said we would be going to live in America?'
'Yes, 1 do.'
'It's going to happen soon. Really soon. Maybe in a couple of weeks or so. Would that make you happy?'
'Win Daddy be there with us?'
'He's the reason we're going.'
'And Megan?'
Her mother holds her against her chest more tightly.
'Of course Megan win be with us. Did you think we would leave her behind?'
'I guess not,' says Teresa, looking back over her mother's shoulder at the doorway, where the mirror usually stands. She can't see Megan from this angle, but knows she must be there, somewhere out of sight.
One day, while her parents are in another part of the apartment talking about the trip back to America, how close it's getting, all the things they have to do before they fly back, Teresa is alone in the bedroom. She has her toys spread out on the carpet, but she's bored with them.
She looks across to the doorway, and sees that Megan is there, waiting for her. Her friend looks as cross and bored as she feels, and both little girls seem to realize that for once their shared fantasy world is not going to' distract them from reality.
While Megan turns away, Teresa crosses the room to her parents' double bed, where the lightly padded quilt her mommy made last Christmas holiday lies in a show of muted colours across the sheets and blankets. Out of sight of Megan she bounces up and down a few times, but even this familiar physical activity is not enough to cheer her up. She's beginning to wonder if Megan really will be there, in the new house in America.
Teresa looks across at what she can see of the mirror, but because the bed is not visible she knows that Megan cannot be seen either. Already, her little world feels as if it is narrowing, that the perimeter fences are drawing in around her.
Later, after a meal, she returns to the bed, still worried and alarmed. Her daddy has been saying he will be flying out to Florida the day after tomorrow, and that she and Mommy will follow within a few days. At the mirror Megan is as unhappy as she is, fearing a final separation, and they soon move back from each other.
There's a low table beside the bed on her daddy's side, and facing into the room there's a shallow drawer which, once, long ago, her daddy had warned her never to open. Teresa has always known what lies inside, but until now she has never felt sufficiently curious to look.
Now she does, and lays her hand on the gun that lies within. She touches it once or twice, feeling the shape of it with her fingertips, then uses both hands to lift the weapon out. She knows how it should be held, because her daddy once showed her, but now she actually has a hold of it in her tiny hands her main preoccupation is how heavy the thing is. She can barely carry it before her.
It's the most exciting thing she has ever held, and the most frightening.
In the centre of the room, facing the mirror, she lays the gun on the seat of a chair, and looks across at Megan. She is standing there beside her own chair, still with the melancholy expression they have both been wearing for the last day or two.
There is no gun on Megan's chair.
'Look what I've got,' says Teresa, and as Megan strains to see she lifts it up and holds it out.
She points it at her twin, across the narrow space that divides them. She is aware of movement in the room, a sudden intrusion, an adult size,
and she moves swiftly in alarm. In that moment there is a shattering explosion, the gun flies out of Teresa's hands, twisting her wrists, and in the other part of the room, beyond the make-believe mirror, a small life of dreams has suddenly ended.
Thirtyfive years pass.
