Boy in the Mirror Excerpt
Jacqueline’s bedroom was a barren place consisting of a bed and dresser and
nothing else. The walls were adorned with framed scripture verses and a pair of
paintings, both of Christ. When she’d first arrived, Jacqueline had asked Papa
Gelick if she could hang up the only two pictures of her parents that she had,
but she’d been shot down.
It was in this room that
Jacqueline had spent most of the three months she’d lived with the Gelicks. And
while she did indeed sleep and pray as ordered, she also plotted her eventual
escape from this cruel place.
Cruel place.
Jacqueline’s guilt reared its ugly
head. She was being judgmental and mean, and she knew it. The Gelicks might’ve
been rigid and a bit odd, but neither the pastor nor his wife had ever done
anything outwardly cruel. Even when she was paraded in front of Papa Gelick’s
congregation every Sunday and made a spectacle of, the pastor had assured her
it was to show the good God-fearing folks of Colebrook that even sinners could
change if they accepted the grace of God. Even if he and his congregation were
way more fundamentalist than any other Protestant churches she’d been to, it
was really just an annoyance.
They’re trying to help you, her conscience scolded.
“I know,” she whispered.
The tears came hard and fast, and
she curled up in a ball on her bed. Her mind was a jumble of contradictions.
She’d been a girl without a family for so long that she’d started to identify
as such. Just the possibility that it
might not be true was enough to make her feel hope for the first time in a long
while, which in turn made her unravel.
“Please don’t cry,” said a voice
in the room. “I don’t like it when you cry.”
Jacqueline lifted her head, wiped
the tears from her cheeks. She sucked in the last of her sniffles and slid off
the bed, making her way across the bedroom.
Her compact was on the dresser, an
old thing with rusted hinges. The blush inside had long been used up, but it
was her most prized possession, a relic left behind by a mother she never knew.
Jacqueline pried open the case and
stared at her reflection in the mirror. Once again she marveled at how alike
she and “Aunt Mitzy” looked. The resemblance was so uncanny that she could have
been the woman’s daughter.
Downstairs, the Gelicks bid good
day to Aunt Mitzy, and Jacqueline faintly heard the woman say she’d be back in
a week so they could “clear up any confusion.” The front door then closed,
followed by the crunch of tires rolling down the driveway. The tingling in
Jacqueline’s stomach disappeared. She glanced back at the mirror.
He was there.
His eyes, gun-metal gray, gazed up
at her from behind his reflective prison. His white, slightly tousled hair
flopped over one side of his face. He smiled his perfect smile. “Hey there,
Jackie,” the boy in the mirror said.
“Hi, Mal.”
Jacqueline had first discovered
the boy who lived in the compact a week after her father’s arrest. Child
Services had escorted her home to collect her valuables before she was sent to
a group shelter in Newport,
Vermont. She’d been in a daze,
tossing random odds and ends into her travel bag, when she heard someone call
out her name. She’d followed the voice to her father’s bedroom, but saw nothing
but an unmade bed and laundry scattered everywhere. She was only ten at the
time, but she knew enough to understand that her daddy wouldn’t be sleeping in
that bed any more, that those clothes would never again hang off his slender
frame. Not after what he’d done.
Jacqueline had started crying
again—there had been so much crying in those days after the incident—when the voice called out again. “Please don’t cry.” She followed the sound of humming to the drawer
in her father’s dresser where he stored Jacqueline’s mother’s old keepsakes.
She rummaged through knickknacks and costume jewelry until her hand touched a
metal disk. The brass surface of the thing was warm. When she’d opened it, he’d
appeared, white hair, gray eyes, and all. He’d introduced himself as Mal, her
guardian angel. Jacqueline had been young enough at the time to believe him
without question. She’d been naïve enough to have faith in things like hope and
miracles.
Five years changed so much.
With each subsequent move to a
different foster home, she’d retreat further into her relationship with the
mysterious boy in the mirror. It was in moments like this, when the last of her
optimism seemed ready to crumble away completely and leave a dead husk in its
wake, that her simple, childlike belief that the unreal boy actually existed
made her sane.
She went back to the bed and sat
down, placing the open compact in her lap. She grabbed her brush and ran it
through her long, black hair, tugging at the roots, letting the pain come.
Doing so let her remember that she was still capable of feeling something. In
the mirror, Mal watched her, his ever-present smile faltering.
“What’s the matter?” he asked,
lips twisting into a thin white line.
Jacqueline sucked snot into her
nose. “I’m just sad.”
“Is it him? The pastor?”
“No. Not really.”
“Then what?”
She sighed. “A woman came. She
said her name’s Mitzy Sarin. You know her?”
“Nope. Never heard of her. Related
to your mom?”
“Yeah. Says she’s her sister. I
didn’t know I had any family left. But we look alike. A lot alike, so it’s gotta be true.”
“Gotta be, or you hope it is?”
Jacqueline shrugged. She had no
answer for that.
“What does she want?” asked Mal.
“To take me away from here.”
Tears again rolled down
Jacqueline’s cheeks. One fell from her chin and landed on the mirror. The bead
of salty fluid immediately vanished.
“I don’t like it when you cry,”
Mal said. “This is a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” Jacqueline sniffled.
“Well, where does she want to take
you?”
“Connecticut, I think.”
Mal’s smile widened. “That’s good.
That’s very good.”
“Is it?”
“Yup. Have faith, Jackie. These
things always work themselves out in the end.”
She sat there in silence for a
while, the beautiful boy in the mirror gazing up at her. She wanted to believe
him, but her life had been one catastrophe piled on top of another, from her
mother’s death when she was three to her father’s horrible acts to the
countless love-deprived homes she’d found herself in afterward. It was
dangerous to think anything would change. She just couldn’t set herself up for
disappointment again, no matter what Mal told her.
“You’re right,” she finally said,
placating him. “Just think positive thoughts.” A sad smile crossed her lips.
“At least I have you.”
“That you do,” Mal said with a
wink.
“Thank you.”
“Of course. You’re the most
beautiful girl in the world, Jackie. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mal.”
Jacqueline peered out the window.
The sun was setting, and she suddenly felt dead tired. She closed the compact,
placed it beneath her pillow, then took off her clothes, slipped on her
nightgown, and climbed beneath the covers. The residue of Aunt Mitzy’s cookies
still lingered in her mouth, and when she licked the back of her teeth, she
felt a strange, calming sensation come over her. Jacqueline succumbed to the
feeling, closing her eyes, wondering about Mal. Was he floating through space,
drawn back through the fabric of existence whenever she opened the mirror? Or
did he exist purely within the confines of the compact, his soul trapped for
eternity like a genie, waiting for her to rub the mirror in the right way to
release him?
Or maybe he wasn’t there at all.
While she pondered this, Mal’s
sweet voice, muffled by her pillow, sang her to sleep.
“Pretty little lady with a heart of gold. Poor pretty lady, without a
dream, without a home.”
