The Town with No Mirrors: Part I

Did I stare too long? I should have known.
Mr. Huttle suspects me—senses my Superficial thoughts.

I scuttle backward until I'm
around the corner and out of sight.

“Our social studies teacher's been
dying to take us here. She's even making us miss a pep
rally—those are always super fun. But she kept saying this
trip's more important and we'll find it inspiring and stuff."

She's gone,
her face too—though in my mind it remains: a memento, a
keepsake, stored now with the other faces of Gladder Hill.

"The bleeding stopped before I got there," I tell him.
"Anticlimactic, right?"

Mick Scalini doesn't know his teeth are yellow, just like Jen
Rosenthal doesn't know she has that brown mark above her
left eyebrow, just like Noah doesn't know he has Pop Eyes. Just like I don't know if my face has any of those distinctions
or different ones entirely.

Her American Humanitarian Award
plaque used to hang on the wall facing her; now it's behind
her desk, where visitors like me can see it better.

Her poster
with our motto—"Everyone's gladder in Gladder Hill"—still
hangs on that wall, but it's higher now, above a poster of the
Nourish & Flourish food pyramid that's also in the nurse's
office and the lunchroom.

Some faces are all angles, almost pointy,
like Grandma's. Others are round, with hardly any angles at
all, like Mr. Wallus's. Principal Gladder's is somewhere in the
middle of that spectrum, and its whole surface is plain—not a
speck, not a spot, not a dot, not a mark.

Sure,
I've always liked art more than other subjects, but the class
itself is a joke—one scant hour per week with Mr. Huttle,
who seems more interested in the other classes he teaches,
like science and gym.

"Ms. Mohill said you met one of
the tourists today. Did she have anything interesting to say?" Her voice is casual—maybe too casual.

That's another thing I've
noticed about faces: sometimes they give you cues, clues
about what's being said—a lack of eye contact, a twitching
mouth, a crease between the eyes.

But other times, like now
with Principal Gladder, faces keep themselves still, straight, neutral, offering no help whatsoever.

Adults never tell us kids much, so the most we know is
that she used to be famous in the outside world, before she
founded Gladder Hill. Famous and rich—I guess that helped
her create this place. A philanthropist, Grandma called her
once.

I pet Tutu, the calico cat
that always lounges outside the dentist's office, even though
she belongs to the chiropractor.

"What about laser eye surgery?"
"And have a machine slice my eyeballs?" She shudders.
"No, thanks."
I'll admit that doesn't appeal to me either.

Heart pounding, I check my door again and rip the
page out. It looks a lot like her, in my opinion—not an exact likeness, but close.

I know from the founding story that Principal
Gladder started this place eight years ago. And that kids
had to be four or younger—just starting their "formative"
years—to move here, and adults had to be a "mature" age, at
least twenty-five.

"You want to sound as smart as
I do."
I snort. "You got me."
He folds his hands behind his head. "One can only
aspire to be as articulate and eloquent as I."

"You want to sound as smart as
I do."
I snort. "You got me."
He folds his hands behind his head. "One can only
aspire to be as articulate and eloquent as I."

On my honor, I will strive
To be kind to myself and others,
To focus on substance, not surface,
With regard to all people,
And to uphold the values of Gladder Hill.

They meet
all our criteria for new residents, so we're excited to welcome
them in a few weeks and hope you'll all be hospitable.

"Sorry about
this, by the way. Just a formality. Shouldn't take long."
"Of course. You're just doing your job. I think it's great
she's having you do this for peace of mind. Real shame about
Ed though."

He greets me with small talk, the usual
grown-up questions about how school is going and which
clubs and teams I'm part of now. After I give him the spiel,
he coughs and asks me if I'd mind letting him look around.

I don't realize who I'm about to draw
until my pencil meets the paper.
Mr. Grinwold begins to materialize; somehow I hadn't
drawn him yet.

Mr.
Grinwold was always jovial, so I add a twinkle to his eye.

The rest of the morning announcements concern boring things: a rescheduling of the annual
spelling bee, a reminder that it's hair trim day for grades six
and seven, and an update on the community college initiative.

As I tip my head, some hair clippings
slide down the front of my cape and onto the floor, joining
other short hairs in an array of colors: dark hairs mixed with lighter ones, yellowish and some orange; the orange must be
Malorie Windleson's.

They're all laughing about
something and don't see me yet; my pace wavers, as does my
excitement.

"I promise. Cross my heart or pinky swear or whatever you want me to do." Noah's gaze and voice don't falter, but
I'm still not convinced.

His sarcasm, ironically, makes me realize he's serious.

Even my drawings could never look
exactly like the real thing.
But still, Noah's drawing will have some semblance of
reality.

When was the last time someone
mentioned faces out loud? Probably not since interiority lessons, and only because it was hard to teach us the importance
of interiority—aka anti-Superficiality—without mentioning
exteriors.

“But if every face is a different
combo or permutation, that's a whole lot of permutations."

Tutu, the chiropractor's calico cat, meanders toward us.

I was worried
things would be awkward after the eye incident, but we've
been pretending it never happened, and aside from not
meeting each other's eyes, we seem to have fallen back into
our normal banter.

He studies the sketch. "Uncanny. How about Mr.
Huttle, then?"

She'd mentioned that boys and girls might start thinking about each other differently, but she didn't explain that
part well, and then she read through some pamphlet about
"relationships" and how people who love each other and get married and maybe have kids should do so because they're
attracted to each other's personalities, and she mentioned
how, when we're eighteen, we can start dating other kids in
Gladder Hill if we want to, after we take compatibility tests.

Then he places the prize at the center of the table: the fancy neon glow-in-the-dark Rubik's Cube I saw in the general store. We ogle it as he pulls shuffled Rubik's Cubes out of a bag and sets one before each of us.

"Good race, everyone," Mr.
Huttle says as he hands Malorie her prize. She offers to let
everyone borrow it, insisting in her modest way that we're
all winners.