Mirrored (21 page)

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P
ART 3:

Goose

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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I decided yesterday in chem that I was going to stop being in love with Celine.

Okay, that sounds a little arbitrary, but life is arbitrary. It was arbitrary life that put her in my path, that made her audition for that play, that let me fall in love with someone so completely unattainable.

And I need to butch up. My grades are sucking wind. I’m getting a C in pre-calc because I can’t stay awake in class. Every day, I sleepwalk through school, just waiting for the time when I can go home, when I can see her, talk to her, stay up all night watching John Freaking Hughes movies with her, hoping our hands will meet across a bowl of cut-up mangoes or teaching her piano just so I can sit next to her on the bench.

And every night, I crawl into bed an hour before I have to be up for school, wondering why I haven’t told her how I feel.

But really, I know.

I’m afraid. Who wouldn’t be? What guy wouldn’t be scared to declare his love to the most beautiful girl on the planet—a girl who could have anybody, even a rock star? Why would she want
me
?

But maybe she could. Maybe she appreciates my intelligence, my talent, my sense of humor, my low center of gravity. Maybe she’s special enough to see who I really am.

So, yesterday, I made my plan. I would walk in there, find her, and say, “Celine, I love you.” No. Too bold. Maybe I’d say, “Celine, I was thinking I’d like to make you dinner. No, not mac and cheese, but something special, a special dinner for the two of us, like spaghetti with crumbled-up hamburger in the sauce, like my mom makes. Okay, maybe my mom will just
make
it for us, but then, she’ll leave us alone so we can have dinner together. Like a date? Yes, like a date. Actually, a date.” I could say that, couldn’t I?

Maybe.

Yes. Yes, I could ask her out. Or in. I’ve asked girls out before. That wasn’t scary. And they’ve accepted. I didn’t have to declare my love for her and ask her to marry me. In fact, that would be creepy since I’m only seventeen, and it’s not 1940. I could just ask her on a date. What was there to lose? I was, after all, saving her life by hiding her from her wack job stepmother. That had to be a point in my favor, a way out of the friend zone and into the end zone. And, if I asked her out, and she laughed at me, I could just pretend I was kidding. I’m a super-big kidder.

I decided that’s what I would do.

The experiment about acids and bases, the pre-calc class, and the reading of
The Kite Runner
all sort of ran together after that because I was contemplating the possibility, the impossibility that she might
actually love me. It wasn’t so crazy, was it? I was a great guy. And she had said herself that she thought that Andie should have ended up with Duckie. I was confident that I was at least as good-looking as Duckie.

I mean, if Duckie was four foot five inches tall.

But, except for that, I was actually better looking than Duckie. I didn’t have that 1980s bouffant hairdo that you could tell had been weird even then because the cool guys in the movie didn’t have it. And hadn’t Celine herself said I had beautiful eyes? I do have beautiful eyes.

A year after
Pretty in Pink
, John Hughes did another movie,
Some Kind of Wonderful,
about a guy who falls in love with the popular girl, ignoring his tomboyish female friend, who adores him (and who was actually hotter than the popular girl, but I digress . . .). But in the end, he realizes it’s the nerdy friend he wants.
Some Kind of Wonderful
ends the way
Pretty in Pink
should have, with the hero, Keith, running after Watts and giving her “a kiss that kills.”

That’s how I wanted my story to end too.

I was actually semi-confident, but when I went in to talk to her, she was babbling about how much she loved Jonah Prince, how she wanted to go to the concert so she could meet him. I pictured his eyes (under one of his stupid backward baseball caps), meeting hers across a crowded stadium, and I remembered one universal truth:

Girls like hot guys.

And a second truth:

I’m not one.

So I sort of freaked out on her, which was stupid because it wasn’t her fault. But we made up this morning, and everything is fine. But then, I had to leave that stupid poem in the bathroom. I thought it would be easier than telling her how I felt, but now, I realize it’s worse. Because, if she doesn’t feel the same way, there’s no way I can
back out, no way I can laugh it off and say I didn’t mean it. It’s there, in black-and-white. I wrote a
poem.
About her. And if she thinks I’m a pathetic loser, I can never go back.

So the question is, what kind of drugs was I on when I thought leaving that poem was a good idea? Like, did Stacey spike my cereal milk with absinthe? What other explanation could there be?

So, even though I
need
to go to school to keep from actually failing math, I turn around and head back home. I consider calling my mom. I could ask her to find the poem, to rip it up before Celine sees it. But I don’t want her to read it either, don’t want her to know about it and think,
Isn’t he cute
. So I wait at McDonald’s until it’s time for her to take my brothers and sister to school, and then, I head home. Hopefully, I can pick up the poem before Celine wakes up.

And then, I’ll tell her in person or maybe just walk up to her and kiss her, which somehow works for guys on sitcoms.

Sure, maybe. Ten years from now.

But, when I get to the house, something is different. The front door is open. It’s raining and the rain has come in. There are mangoes, red and gold, scattered down the steps.

Then, I see Celine.

She’s spread out across the entranceway, her feet against one wall, her body slumped against the other, like she’s just asleep. But no one sleeps getting rained on.

“Celine!” I run toward her through the driving Miami rain. “Celine!”

She doesn’t move.

I grab her wrist and at the same time, put my head against her chest, hearing her heartbeat, feeling her pulse. She isn’t dead. She isn’t dead!

Yet, she isn’t moving.

“Celine!” I start to shake her hand, furiously. I get closer to her
ear. “Celine, wake up! Wake up!”

She doesn’t move. I have to call my mother, or maybe 911. I take out my phone. My hands are shaking as I dial it. I look around as it rings.

A shiny red-gold mango lies by Celine’s bare feet. It has one crescent-shaped yellow bite missing, just one. How did it even get there? She must have opened the door to someone. Why did she open the door? She knew not to!

“You have to help me,” I tell the 911 lady. “I think she’s been poisoned!”

“Who’s been poisoned?”

“My . . . friend. She was lying on the floor when I got home. Send someone quick.” I can barely remember my own address. It’s like everything that’s happened before this moment has been a dream.

“Okay. Is she breathing?”

“Yes! Yes, but she’s not conscious. She’s lying on the floor. Send someone quick!”

“Someone is coming, sir. Did she hit her head?”

“I told you. I think she’s been poisoned. Hurry!”

“What do you think she ingested?”

I look at the mango. It’s crazy to say I think she had ate a poisoned mango, but what else could it have been?

“This is going to sound crazy, but there’s a mango here, and I think it might have been poisoned.”

“A mango?” the lady says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Does she have allergies?”

I hadn’t thought of that, but I say, “She eats them.”

“Is it stuck in her throat? Did you attempt to remove the obstruction?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know if there’s an obstruction.”

She tells me to sweep my finger through Celine’s throat to see if
there’s something stuck in there. I slide Celine’s head onto my lap, then ease my index finger between her lips and into her throat.
Shit, please don’t die.
She gurgles a little, but there’s nothing there. “Please hurry!”

“They’re coming, sir. They’re on their way. Don’t hang up.”

“No, there’s nothing there. I’m sorry.” I hold Celine tight.

“It’s okay. They’re coming. She’s still breathing?”

“Yes. Yes.”

She asks me some other stupid questions, who Celine is, who I am. Finally, I hear the siren in the driveway. I watch as they take over, then take her away.

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Accidental overdose. That’s what the paramedics and, later, the doctors at the hospital, think it was, and that’s how they treat it. I know it was neither, but they won’t listen to a kid. They do all the stuff I already did, then check her vital signs and hook her up to a bunch of tubes, then take her to the hospital. They pump her stomach, give her charcoal. The whole time, I feel like it’s
me
they’re hooking up to all these machines, me that can’t speak or move, that’s clinging to life. They ask me questions I can’t answer. They want to know what I think she OD’d on. Nothing, I tell them. I tell them to test the mango. I brought it with me. They act like that’s crazy.

They also want to know where her parents are. “She doesn’t have any,” I tell a nurse for the fourth time. He’s a burly Cuban guy twice my size. They’ve wheeled Celine out, away from me, into some curtained-off area where I can’t see her anymore. I wonder what they’re
doing to her. “Her parents are dead. She lived with her stepmother, but she was abusive. She took her out of school. If she came to my house, she was probably running away.”

“Do you know where she lives?” the nurse asks.

“No, um . . . I was at her house once, but I don’t really remember.” Not that I drove by there twenty or a hundred times or anything. But I’m buying time. If Violet comes, maybe she’ll finish her off. She could tell them to unhook her oxygen. Or unhook it herself. Or put something in Celine’s tube. Or use magic to kill her and make it look like an accident. I’m hoping maybe if I say she was abusive, they won’t let her in. And it’s not a lie anyway.

The nurse turns over the clipboard he had all ready to write the information. “Okay, let me know if you remember. The police will probably want to talk to you too.”

The police? Maybe they are taking this seriously. “Then I should probably wait until my parents get here.”

My mom shows up soon after, then Dad. Dad says they can try to file papers to become Celine’s guardians. He says I did good, even though I was skipping school and what’s that about. He also says we probably have to tell them about Violet.

“But she’ll kill her, Dad.” I picture Celine, before they took her away, so white and still. “She already almost died.”

“We won’t let her,” he promises.

I give them Violet’s name and address. I actually don’t know if they have a landline, or any phone number. Celine would know, but she’s suspended in some still, white place with too-little air. “She’s a really bad person, though. Celine was afraid of her.”

That’s completely true.. I remember something Celine showed me once, that first day we played the piano.

“Violet burned her. Celine showed me the scar. It’s on her ring finger.”

And that’s when Violet walks into the emergency room.

And starts crying.

And begs to see “my darling, darling Celine.”

I try to follow her when they take her out, but the nurse stops me. “Family only,” he says.

But Violet says, “It’s all right. He saved her, didn’t he? He was like a brother to her.”

I stare at her. She knows why, and she stares back. As she does, her eyes turn from blue to brown, then back again.

Kendra.

Kendra with Violet’s ID and insurance cards . . . and her face.

I breathe in, a shaky breath, and follow her into the curtained area where Celine lies. “We’re going to admit her to ICU,” the nurse says. “We don’t know what she ingested.”

“Try everything,” Violet/Kendra says. “It might be something you don’t suspect. May I speak to a doctor?”

“Yes, ma’am. Just a moment.” He excuses himself and is gone.

I stare at Celine. Her face is white as her pillowcase, and she doesn’t look sick, only sleeping. She is so beautiful, her dark hair fanned out beneath her, a frame for her doll-like face. Celine hates being called beautiful. She says people judge her for it as much as they’d judge someone else for ugliness. But her beauty is so undeniably . . . there. Of course, it’s the first thing you see. But, gradually, as I’ve gotten to know her better, I’ve forgotten it, forgotten how frightening that beauty is. She’s become just Celine, a girl I know, the girl I love, Celine in motion, talking, singing, playing with my sister, lusting after Jonah Prince.

Now, a motionless shell, the outer beauty is all that’s left. It crashes over me like a wave, taking me down into it. I’m choking, drowning.

Celine’s beauty isn’t what I love about her. It’s what I hate about
her because it’s what makes her so unattainable. I love the girl inside, but I’ll never have her.

Now, it’s more than her beauty that makes her unattainable. What if she never wakes up?

When I first noticed her, it wasn’t because of her looks. Well, not
just
because. It was because she was really brave, really fierce. She stood up to a roomful of sophomores who were picking on this stuttering substitute. She shamed us all, including me. I should have done what she did, but I didn’t want to stand up to my friends. From that day on, I wanted to know Celine Columbo. It took a year, but when I finally did, she was everything I’d imagined. She was beautiful on the inside, like those ABC Family shows say you’re supposed to be.

And now, she’s dying. I reach out my finger and touch a little peach-colored freckle on her arm right above where the tube goes in.

“Ahem.” Violet/Kendra interrupts my drooling reverie. I look up at her.

“Why is she like this? I thought Violet wanted to kill her. I mean, not that I want her dead, but this . . .” I jut my hand toward Celine.

I hate that Kendra looks like Violet.

“Violet did try to kill her. She didn’t die because I used enchantments to protect her as best I could. But I couldn’t defend her completely, and I can’t wake her.”

“What can?”

“Violet, of course, but that isn’t going to happen.”

No, it’s not. “Anyone else?”

Violet/Kendra shakes her head. “I don’t know. Usually, with spells, there are hoops to jump through. The feather of a golden bird, the scale of a dragon, but until someone tells you . . .”

“You don’t know.” I look back at Celine. Her chest rises and falls with her breathing. She’s still breathing, but for how long? “Is there a
time limit? How long will she stay like this?”

“Indefinitely, as long as she’s nourished and hydrated. I assume they’ll feed her intravenously.”

“So someone could just tell them to disconnect it.”

“Someone could.”

We exchange a look. We both know who that someone is.

Earlier this week, I was playing the piano with Celine, sitting beside her on the bench, our hips touching, her hand so close to mine. Why didn’t I take her hand? Why didn’t I beg her to run away with me, someplace where no one would find us?

Because I’m just a kid. I can’t do anything.

I have to do something.

“I have to talk to her,” I say.

“Talk to . . . ?”

“Violet. The real Violet.”

Violet/Kendra shakes her head. For a moment, I see a glimpse of her real self. “You’re getting overconfident, talking to me disguised as Violet. The real Violet won’t speak to you, much less do what you ask.”

“Maybe she will.”

“Maybe all the world’s children will join hands and sing ‘Kumbaya,’ but it’s unlikely,” Kendra says. “I’ve been trying to talk to her for weeks. You see where that’s gotten me. And she likes me.”

“What do you think I should do then? Just leave Celine here to die? Or stay in a coma for the next fifty years?”

I look at Celine again. I remember that day she came over, right after her father died. She fell asleep almost in my arms. I’d watched her sleep for over an hour, and it gave me hope. She felt that comfortable around me. Maybe I’ll never have what I want, but just knowing that Celine is alive on the planet makes the world better. At least my world.

Kendra’s smile is sad. “No, I guess not. You love her very much, don’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“I saw it that first day at Target. That’s how I knew you would help her.”

“I’d do anything for her. I mean, I’d prefer not to die for her, but if that’s the risk in talking to Violet, I’ll take the risk.”

“Don’t take unnecessary risks, though,” Kendra says. “Talk to her in a public place, her office building or the train station.”

I hate the Metrorail station. It’s an elevated train with views of the city, and I can’t stand on the platform without holding on to a wall the whole time. Even then, it’s terrifying. “Where does she work?”

“I’ll show you. And take this with you.”

From nowhere, she produces a silver mirror with a handle. It’s about a foot long, and when she hands it to me, it weighs maybe ten pounds.

“What’s this for?” I ask.

“If you look into it, you can see whoever you want. We can stay in touch that way.”

“You don’t have, I don’t know, a phone?” I turn the crazy thing over. It looks like Marie Antoinette might have owned it, all curlicued and fancy. And I’m supposed to talk into it?

“Sorry. I can’t make that kind of technology. Mirrors are easier. If you get in trouble, let me know. Otherwise, try not to let Violet see it.”

“Why? What will happen if she does?”

“Bad things.”

She doesn’t elaborate any more than that. I probably don’t want to know.

I take Celine’s hand. It’s tiny and white, with little, pink nails like shells. And it’s cold. I clutch at it, warming it up. Finally, the
orderlies come to wheel her to ICU.

“What’s your plan?” Kendra says as she leaves.

I laugh. “I wish I had one.”

But it’s really not funny because my whole plan is just to talk to Violet. What else can I do?

And yeah, I’m terrified. But I’m more terrified of what will happen if I do nothing.