Backward Glass

It was the note that guided me. He said he was leaving it, and there it was, a new piece of paper sitting on the top of that same low dresser I had noticed before. I picked it up, but couldn’t read it in the dim light.

I looked at the mirror, then down at where I had been standing. Yes, this was the thing the kid would have ducked around. I squatted to open its four stubby drawers. Nothing. I ran my hands over a surface that looked to have been finished and refinished several times. The wood framing the mirror at the top was scroll-cut in fancy loops, but everything else was square and functional. I guessed the idea was that the lady of the house would sit in front of it to put on her makeup and jewelry. But if that was so, why did the mirror need to be so tall? It rose a little more than four feet above the dresser. Had it been tacked on later? Maybe. As near as I could tell, it didn’t have single scratch on it, and it threw back the dim light perfectly.

No kid hiding. No ghost jumping out.

“I just wanted to talk,” I said again, but my voice sounded stupid to me in the empty place, so I went back down and into the light, feeling the paper between my fingers as I went.

As soon as I got outside, I closed the door, sat down on the step, and looked at it.

The first thing that struck me was the lettering. Clean, like letters printed in a book, not punched into the paper the way a typewriter does.

The Rules

The mirror works January to December, on years ending in seven. It takes you backward from eleven until midnight. If you’re in an even-numbered decade (like the eighties or the sixties), it opens for you on an even-numbered day. Odd decade (seventies or nineties), odd days. Once you’ve gone backward, you have to wait until after midnight to return. The mirror picks one person every decade, and never picks older than sixteen. But you can turn seventeen and still use it.

There are other rules, but I didn’t say them before, so I shouldn’t this time.

Good luck,

Your friend for all time,

Kenny Maxwell

Two

The Rules

2. From an even-numbered decade, you can go back on even-numbered days. Same for odds.

What do you do when you’re confronted with something that’s obviously crazy?

You don’t talk about it, that’s for sure.

I put the note and the orange hat with the list under my mattress, and spent the day thinking about how nuts I was for not throwing it all away and telling my dad I had seen some kid trespassing.

It was the twenty-third of January, so don’t think it wasn’t lost on me that at ten-thirty that night I was supposed to be half an hour away from … something. Odd day. Odd decade. Takes you backward.

My parents are strict early-to-bedders, so the house was quiet. I sat by my window and looked out, though not at the hedges and the carriage house, since my window faced the street. A new snow was falling.

I continued the argument I had been having with myself for hours, one voice insisting that there was a rational explanation for all of this, the other pointing out all the irrational and unexplainable elements. Whenever that hopeful voice, the one that wanted something magical in the carriage house, finished with its best arguments, rational me would simply shrug his shoulders and say, Then why aren’t you out there? It’s because you don’t want to be disappointed, isn’t it?

And that was it. All these weeks I had been keeping the list secret, telling myself stories about what it was, how I fit into it all. I didn’t believe in ghosts that needed to be saved or set free, but I wanted to. If I went out there, and nothing happened, my ticket into the story I had been living in my head would turn out to be a forgery I had made myself. But if I stayed here, I would always have the ticket to look at.

I stayed.

Eventually I fell asleep.

School the next day was hell. Every moment irritated me. Normally, I just did as I was told, and tried to finish my work quickly.

But not today. I failed a math quiz, fumbled at marking another kid’s when we were supposed to take it up, stumbled when I was called on, and actually grumbled slightly when Mrs. Bains told us to take out our grammar exercise books. Why hadn’t I gone out there? An odd-numbered night. It takes you backward. It opens for you.

Once home, I had time to myself. My mother got off work at five, and my dad after that.

I dropped off my backpack and squeezed through the hedges. There were no new footprints. The door was still unlocked. I spent my hour and a half of freedom rummaging through the old furniture, but there was nothing there. When I figured I was in danger of Mom getting home, I took some balled-up newspapers from the wall and headed up to my room.

Nothing interesting. It was amazing how few pictures they had in those old newspapers, and how long they took to say anything. One of them had a variation on the local Prince Harming skipping rhymes scratched in faded pencil in a margin: “Lover sweet, bloody feet, running down the silver street. Leave tomorrow when you’re called, hear the wisdom in the walls. Crack your head, knock you dead, then Prince Harming’s hunger’s fed.” I tore that part of the paper off and stuck it under my mattress. Why did it matter to me? Why did I shiver every time I heard that name? The kids at school had thought it all had something to do with my house, but for them it was just a game. They didn’t have a note signed, Your friend for all time, Kenny Maxwell.

A call for supper. Interrogation about my day. Merciful escape back to my room. Homework. My dad calling lights out. Tossing. Turning. Sleep.

Tink. Clatter.

I looked to the ceiling and rubbed my eyes.

Something hitting one of my skylight windows and falling down the roof.

I went to the window and opened it. “Hello? Who’s throwing that?”

A figure came into sight. “Who do you think, retard? Where’s my hat?”

My mouth hung open. “You’re a girl.” The hat had hidden a huge mane of curly hair, and she wasn’t trying to disguise her voice now.

She folded her arms. “And you’re an airhead. Are you going to give me my hat, or what?”

“Who are you?” I said.

“I’m Luka.”

I frowned. “Luka?” It didn’t even sound like a real name.

Luka threw up her hands in annoyance. “My real name’s Lucy, but my mom took me to Star Wars on my seventh birthday, and I kind of made her change it. It’s not my fault. I was a spazzy kid. Go figure. Are you coming down or what?”

I had no idea what she was talking about, no idea what half of her words even meant. Airhead. Go figure. Spazzy. Star Wars. But one thing she said stood out. “Lucy?” I said. “Lucy Branson?” She nodded. “I’ll give you your hat if you tell me where you disappeared to,” I said.

That stopped her. “But—didn’t you say you’re Kenny? Didn’t you—oh, I get it. You didn’t do it yet.”

“Do what?”

“Write the note, genius. Okay, fine. Come down. I’ll explain. But you’ll never believe it.”

Three

The Rules