A newscaster on TV said, The senator denied the allegations; an independent investigator has been appointed. Sprawled on the hotel bed with the remote, Daniel changed the channel. Melissa watched a zombie tear a juicy red tendon from its shrieking victim’s neck, then returned her attention to the full-length mirror bolted to the closet door.
She turned in a slow circle. The floor was littered with tissue paper, and Melissa was like the centerpiece of a snow globe. Her new Aketha leggings would be ideal for fall semester. In her mind she was pairing them with a knee-length cardigan and maybe her suede boots.
Revolution completed, she turned her phone back on. 754 new followers since they’d gotten back to the hotel. She wondered if this place had a rooftop. A nighttime picture of the skyline would be like catnip for her followers. She could go up there alone. That was a good plan. It would buy her some time to call Ash.
“Can I wind you up?” Daniel asked.
On TV, two men in lab coats restrained a woman from attacking a chained-up zombie with an ax. Daniel was watching her from behind half-lidded eyes. He’d been extremely—almost obnoxiously—attentive during the first half of their shopping trip. But right around boutique number six, she felt his attention slipping. She knew him well enough to gauge the drifting of his mind by the shift in his body language. It was like watching ink slowly disperse into water.
Her silent answer to his question was to assume an overly stiff position, like a mannequin with its head slightly bowed. In the mirror she watched him appear behind her and felt his hands on her back. He slid them around an imaginary axis as if turning a stubborn crank, making grinding noises. After the third “turn,” Melissa popped her head up with an eerie vacant grin. Arms at her sides like penguin flippers, she began to waddle stiffly, changing direction at random, a windup toy gone rogue.
“You’re good at that,” he said. “A little too good, if you ask me.”
“I come from a long line of mechanical dolls. What do you think of these?” She patted her leg.
“The pants? They make you look like candy.”
She frowned, trying to figure out the angle of the compliment. It would make sense for bright Harajuku style, but this was an earthy Aketha outfit. In the mirror she saw a look of consternation—maybe even horror—flash across his face. It was an expression she’d been noticing more and more lately, especially after he said something a little strange, as if regret were distilled and broadcast from his eyes. It made her feel guilty, like she was forcing him to say things he didn’t mean.
She lifted a hand with fingers splayed. “What do you think for nails, if I wear the leggings with that charcoal sweater I have at home?”
Daniel brightened. He took her hand in his and pretended to examine her nails with the attention of a jeweler. “Hmm. I’d say we’re gonna have to go with a clear gloss and let the outfit do all the work.”
She made a face.
“What I meant to say was, I think we’re going to do something very intricate and colorful and labor-intensive. Perhaps an entire galaxy in each nail.”
“Now it sounds like I’m getting my money’s worth.”
Without letting go of her hand, he straightened up. A TV scientist gurgled as she drowned in her own blood; the captive zombie had apparently broken its chains. “I was thinking,” he said. “We can keep doing this over Skype when we’re at school. You can model stuff for me, and I’ll hit you with my legendary suggestions.”
“Yeah,” she said. The word came out flatter than she’d intended.
“I don’t mean we have to do it every day,” he said quickly. “I’m not gonna be a psycho long-distance boyfriend. And anyway, our distance isn’t that long when you think about it. New York to Princeton. Boom.”
He grabbed her other hand as if reaching for a lifeline. She felt ill-equipped to have the conversation she’d been trying to tease out for several days. Her mind cycled through excuses. This would be easier in a public place, easier tomorrow, easier to talk it out over the phone once they’d moved into their dorm rooms.
If only he’d been more ambivalent! If only he’d been the one to say something like, So, what do you think about trying to stay together? To stroll sensibly up to the subject, arm in arm, and poke around its edges before diving in. But of course he was envisioning them charging blissfully into college without skipping a beat. She’d always known how he felt. And she’d always known what this conversation would mean and how it would end.
“I think we should break up,” she said.
The hotel room—maybe the whole world—reshaped itself around these words. Melissa found herself standing in a bizarre corridor where the mirror hung aslant and the wallpaper pulsed with bad energy and the tissue paper at her feet crinkled without being touched. She had done it. Six little words had transformed the room into a nightmare place, and she wished she could put everything back the way it was with a magical finger snap.
Daniel looked over her shoulder at their reflection in the mirror, as if he were watching them act out a scene in his internal movie. His face was alarmingly blank, but his eyes registered the frightened disbelief of a small child getting his mind blown by special effects in IMAX 3-D.
She wondered if she’d ever hear him rattle off one of his movie lines again.
