Blind Lake

“Sometimes.”

“What were her nightmares like?”

“Well — she didn’t like to talk about them, Tess, and I promised not to tell.”

Tess looked at him appraisingly. She was deciding whether to trust him, Chris thought. Tess dispensed her trust cautiously. Life had taught her that not every grown-up was trustworthy — a hard lesson, but worth learning.

But if he was still keeping Portia’s secrets, he might keep Tessa’s. “Did my mom tell you about Mirror Girl?”

“Nope. Who’s Mirror Girl?”

“That’s what’s wrong with me.” Another sidelong look. “You knew something was wrong with me, right?”

“I did wonder a little, that night we had to go to the clinic.”

“I see her in mirrors. That’s why I call her Mirror Girl.” She paused. “I saw her in the window that night. She took me by surprise. I guess I got angry.”

Chris sensed the gravity of the confession. He was flattered Tess had raised the subject with him.

He eased up on the accelerator, eking out a little more talk time.

“She looks like me but she isn’t me. That’s what nobody understands. So what do you think? Am I crazy?”

“You don’t strike me as crazy.”

“I don’t talk about it because people think I’m nuts. Maybe I am.”

“Stuff happens we don’t understand. That doesn’t make you nuts.”

“How come nobody else can see her?”

“I don’t know. What does she want?”

Tess shrugged her shoulders irritably. It was a question she must have been asked too often. “She doesn’t say.”

“Does she talk?”

“Not in words. I think she just wants me to pay attention to things. I think she can’t pay attention unless I’m paying attention — does that make any sense? But that’s just what I think. It’s only a theory.”

“Portia talked to her toys sometimes.”

“It’s not like that. That’s a kid thing.” She rolled her eyes. “Edie Jerundt talks to her toys.”

Better not to press. It was enough that Tess had opened up to him. He drove in silence to the end of the road, to the turnaround where a half dozen other cars were parked.

The steepest slope of the snow-white hill was speckled with sledders and boarders and indulgent parents.

“Lot of airplanes around today,” Tess said, climbing out of the car.

Chris glanced at the sky but saw nothing more than a silver speck on the far horizon. Another cryptic Tess remark. “Will you help me pull the sled up?” she asked.

“Sure thing.”

“Ride down with me?”

“If you want. But I have to warn you, I haven’t been on a sled for years.”

“You said you didn’t have a sled. You said you just snow-tubed.”

“I mean, I haven’t slid down a hill for years.”

“Since Portia was little?”

“Right.”

“Well, come on then,” Tess said.

Tess was aware, all this time, of the growing and insistent presence of Mirror Girl.

Mirror Girl slid through every reflective surface like a slippery ghost. Mirror Girl wavered across the windows and the shiny blue hood and side panels of the car. Tess was even aware of the sparse few snowflakes falling from a high gray sky. She had studied snowflakes in science class: they were an example of symmetry. Ice, she thought, like glass, folded in mirror angles. She imagined Mirror Girl in every invisible facet of the falling snow.

In fact Tess felt a little ill. Mirror Girl pressed in on her like a heavy, airless fog, until she could hardly think of anything else. Maybe she’d said too much to Chris. Saying the name, Mirror Girl, was probably a bad idea. Maybe Mirror Girl didn’t like to be talked about.

But Tess had been looking forward to this sledding expedition all week and she wasn’t about to let Mirror Girl screw it up.

She allowed Chris to pull the sled to the top of the hill. There was a gentle path up the long part of the hill and then a steep slope for riding back down. Tess was a little breathless at the top, but she liked the view. Fu

She closed her eyes and saw airplanes. Why airplanes? Mirror Girl was very concerned about airplanes right now.

About a little plane with propellors and a bigger jet dropping down toward it like a hunting bird. Where? The sky was too cloudy to reveal much, though the clouds themselves were thin and high. The buzz in her ears might be an airplane, Tess thought, or it might just be the wind fluttering the collar of her jacket or her own blood pulsing in her ears.

Her fingers tingled but her body was warm under her clothes. I’m hot, I’m cold, she thought.

“Tess?” Chris said. “You okay?”

Usually when people asked her that question it meant she was doing something peculiar. Standing too still or staring too hard. But why did people care? What was so strange about just standing here thinking?

Maybe this was what Mirror Girl was seeing or wanted Tess to see: the big plane and the little one. The little one was bright yellow and had numbers on its wings but no military markings. It was bigger than the kind of airplane that dusted crops, but not by much. It was very clear to her when she closed her eyes but confusing, too, as if she were looking at the airplane from too many angles at once. It was a faceted airplane, a kaleidoscope airplane, an airplane in a mirror of many angles.

Chris handed her the rope of the sled. Tess grasped the rope in her hand and tried to focus on the task of sledding — it suddenly seemed more like a chore than fun. Snow crunched and complained under the weight of the wooden ru

Tess dropped the rope. The sled skittered away down the hill, vacant, before Chris could catch it.

Chris knelt in front of her. “Tess, what is it? What’s wrong?”

She saw his big worried eyes but couldn’t answer. The jet had come miles closer in just a few seconds. And now something flew away from the jet — it was a missile, Tess supposed — and it flashed between the two aircraft like a reflection in a fractured crystal.

Why couldn’t anyone else see it? Why were the people on the hill still laughing and sliding? Were they confused by the snow, by its millions-upon-millions of mirrors? “Maybe we’d better get you home,” Chris said, obviously not seeing it either. Tess wanted to point. She raised her arm; she extended her finger; her finger followed the invisible arc of the missile, a line like an infinitely thin pencil stroke drawn across the white paper of the sky; she said, “There—”

But then everybody heard the explosion.

Charlie Grogan met Marguerite outside his office at the Alley. “Come on down to Control,” he said tersely. “It’s only getting freakier.”

Charlie was obviously tense as they rode the elevator. The Eye was deep in the earth, an irony Marguerite had once appreciated. The jewel is in the lotus; the Eye is in the earth. The better to see you with, my dear. It didn’t seem particularly fu

“Frankly, the Plaza’s not our biggest problem right now. We had to call in both tech shifts. They yanked and replaced a couple of the interface units. Worse,” Charlie said, “and I know you don’t want to hear this, we’re having big trouble with the O/BECs.”