Glancing down at her feet, she caught sight of her name scrawled across the scattered papers, written in an unmistakable hand.
She wrapped her arms around herself, gripping her sides when she saw that the ink wasn’t violet but red.
Bloodred.
Close by, one of the fluorescent lights popped, going dark. Then the intercom system cut on with a shriek of feedback.
“-ode red,” a man’s voice echoed through a blast of static. “I repeat. Th-s is a -ode r-d.”
In unison, the classroom doors slammed shut with a resounding bang.
Another light popped, echoed by the tinkle of glass. Then another, and another—getting closer.
She shut her eyes just before the final light, the one right above her, snapped off with a smash.
“Wake up,” she told herself out loud, wanting to open her eyes and be in the real world—her world. Someplace where she could hide from this person she didn’t know anymore. Who had forgotten who she was. And who he was too.
Lost. Lost. Lost. The word echoed in her head.
Then the far-off sound of door hinges creaking long and low startled her, and Isobel’s eyes flew wide again. She wasn’t at home, though, and she wasn’t back in her bed. She was still in that awful hall, facing windows filled with black tree trunks back-lit by a violet glow.
“Cheerleader.”
She felt his breath stir the hair by her ear and, whirling, suppressed the urge to scream, covering her mouth with a quaking hand.
Varen’s black eyes bored into her.
He took a step toward her, forcing her back. Her heels crunched over the shriveling papers bearing her name, and they crushed to powder.
As he advanced on her, Isobel continued to retreat, hypnotized by that all-consuming stare, yet still aware that the walls surrounding them had begun to transform, drawing in tighter, shooting taller.
The floor beneath their feet became carpet and the ceiling smoke.
One after the other, clinking chandeliers dropped through the murk, falling to hover just overhead. Their dim violet flames cast Varen’s wan face in an alien glow, rendering him unrecognizable.
On either side of them, a thousand golden frames bled through purple-papered walls that might have belonged to a Gothic palace, each filling with the liquescent surfaces of shining mirrors.
Isobel’s gaze darted from left to right, to that angry face the glass multiplied to infinity.
But she wasn’t in any frame. Not a single one.
Snick. Pop. Crack.
The mirrors began to fracture, each sprouting its own spiderweb pattern, splintering Varen’s repeated image into countless more.
“Paper girl,” he whispered, and she flinched when he touched her cheek, “in a paper play.”
She placed her trembling hand on his sleeve, but no sooner did she touch him than her fingers disintegrated, flaking away to nothing in the same way the false versions of herself had.
Isobel tried to speak, but she felt her throat cave in.
His lips came close to hers, almost touching.
“I thought I wrote you out,” he whispered.
Then, like a reel of old film eaten through by heat, his face, the mirrors, the smoke, and everything else dissolved into the bright white glare of her bedroom’s ceiling light.
4
Dust to Dust
Sitting up, Isobel clamped her hands around her throat. She gasped while her fingers climbed the contours of her face. Even though she could see the walls around her and the shadowy tips of her searching fingers, she still half expected to find her eye sockets empty, hollow as broken eggshells.
Releasing the breath she’d sucked in, she pushed off from her bed, retreating from the warmth of her covers as if that would help her escape the images that clung to her like cobwebs.
She snatched her alarm clock, hands fumbling as she read the blue numbers. The time twitched to read 6:30, and the sudden drone of her alarm sliced through her escalating panic.
She was awake now. She knew for sure because the digital numbers weren’t scrolling. The interior of her room wasn’t in reverse, and she didn’t see her own body lying in her bed.
Isobel clicked the off button, silencing the alarm—but the rhythm of her heart still echoed its urgent bleating.
She glanced over her shoulder at her dresser and the dark-blue sheet she’d thrown over the mirror to hide it from view. And to shield herself from anything—anyone—who might be watching from the other side.
Setting her alarm down again, she kept her fingers on its casing, allowing the coolness of the hard plastic to ground her while the voltage of the dream ran its course through her system.
Pins and needles prickled her cheek in the place where he’d touched her—the scar.