The Town with No Mirrors: Part II

So there may be some nerve damage. But her
airways all appear intact, luckily.

Well, we'll do another assessment today when she
wakes up. Check her vision too.

And skin grafting surgery
would be the next consideration, after the bandages come off.

There's something wrapped around my upper left
arm. And my head—my face—feels scratchy and stifled. As
if something encases it.

The
picture that, I remember with a twinge, was tucked inside my
burning sketchbook.

I thought there was no way
out until I was eighteen. After years of glimpsing the gates
open and close once a week for imports, all of it carefully
monitored, I'd resigned myself.

It feels cold and
smooth, sort of like our blue lockers at school, only it's grayish
and shinier—shinier than any surface I've seen before. But I
don't have time to dwell on it.

I step out of the trees and start walking down the cul-de-sac, gazing at the houses on either side of me.

I think of Grandma's
purple paradise bedroom that no one would ever guess was
in our bungalow just by looking at the plain brown outside
with its chipping paint, which isn't too inviting if I think
about it. Kind of like Grandma herself: narrowed eyes and
a straight mouth seem to be her default setting, but she can
make you laugh so hard during a game of charades.

A whirring sound rises behind me.

There's a sudden lull in the traffic—no cars—so
I scurry across the intersection.

A picture of a
girl on the cover surprises me. A bright smile, red hair in two
long tails, cheeks with light-brown specks—all rendered in a
colorful drawing.

I turn the book over and read the blurb on the back.

"Yep," I say, trying to act as if I didn't just have a revelation about water.

Beryl's bedroom is a
cabinet of curiosities. Strange objects lie scattered on top of
her dresser.

"Wait. Oh my god. Today's your first time seeing your
reflection, isn't it?"
I shrug, as if it's not something I'd been anticipating for
years.

"This must be so weird for you.
I mean, I know you have the bandages on, but still... Is it
weird to see yourself?"
"A little," I say—the understatement of the year.

As she flips through more channels, I try to wrap my
head around this new information. Even Noah's guess of
thousands of faces seemed unfathomable to me.

What does she look like
now? No one has seen her since she moved to Gladder Hill.
That place is paparazzi-proof, or so my mom says.

After Beryl tries to explain the "internet" and answers
my deluge of questions—"Wait, what's a Google?" and
"Hold on, you can ask it anything?”—she helps me look up
directions to 6 Creekside Road.

Welcome to Gladder Hill, a safe space where
residents live free from physical ideals and concerns
about their appearance.

Here, adults already exposed
to such influences can heal, and young children can
uniquely develop without them.

...several measures in place to diminish mirrorlike
properties in liquids. For example, the water supply is
pumped with extra oxygen.

...pots, bowls, and other receptacles must have
light-colored interiors.

A niggling feeling builds up inside me, one that's been
there since I saw the water in Beryl's sink. What else have
adults lied to us about?

...and therefore, 107 words and their derivatives
have either been omitted entirely from our dictionaries or amended to omit certain definitions and usages.

I hover on the window ledge before taking a deep breath and clambering down the drainpipe.

I start at the bottom, just under
my chin, tugging gingerly. The bandages resist at first, but
once I tear and peel back the edges, the rest comes off freely.

I wait for
the cool relief of air on my face, the sudden exposure of my pores, but the feeling isn't as noticeable as I expected.

I continue like this for a bit, trying not to touch my face
again. Or worry about the dark spots still shrouding part of
my vision in my left eye.

Spray-painted graffiti tarnishes the outside walls:
LIZZIE LOVES GRAHAM.

"Apparently she's at the Joneses' house, in their daughter's
room. Doesn't know we're coming, so get in intervention mode."

On the flip side, her betrayal is creating a diversion—buying me more time to find my mom.
I crouch there for a few minutes, watching through the
crack in the door to make sure the police officers don't come
back.

I've put too
much weight on this address, on assuming someone, if not my
mom, would be here to at least tell me where she went.

I squint
and distinguish the shape of a hallway. A staircase.

Something rustles; I jump.

The floor
whines as I move across it and survey the area: The yellowing bed. The tipped-over nightstand. The dresser with the drawers
pulled out and empty. The open doorway beyond, perhaps a
bathroom, with a wooden threshold and octagonal floor tiles.

"Help," I call
out. A scraggly croak emerges.

I align
my good eye with a slat in the fence.

Tears fuddle
what little I can see.