Poison and Mirrors Read online

  Mrs. Hendry walked into the office, brushing past Sara. She had messy gray hair, and a wrinkled suit. She was tapping something into a handheld device—

  —Smartphone—

  and then she cleared her throat and looked right at me.

  Sara spoke before I could.

  "Mara didn't hurt Mr. Rain," she said. "I saw it. She saved his life. Somehow, his tie choked him and she cut it away right when you were running in. You saw that."

  "Be quiet, Sara," she said. Then she stared at me over her glasses. They were wacky pink ones today, ones that didn’t match her blue suit. "Mara, you continue to sit there. There will be a talk with the superintendent about this before we take any further actions."

  "I didn't hurt Mr. Rain!" I wanted to throw up. "You think I'm some kind of monster because of where I live but I'd never hurt a teacher. You saw so yourself. I cut the tie right off him so he could breathe. Mr. Rain would have died if I didn’t. I don't know what caused him to choke. Maybe he was swallowing a peanut, and it went down the wrong pipe. I know he was grabbing at his throat and I had to do something."

  Mrs. Hendry glared at me. She wasn't a strict woman but today she had dug down deep to bring that out. "I've heard enough. We'll sort out this story as soon as we can. Sara, you need to go to class." The principal sounded tired.

  "You're not accusing my friend of doing this," she said.

  "We'll see how false this is," Mrs. Hendry said with patience. She set her phone on the counter. "Go back to class. The two of you can catch up later."

  Sara shook her head at me and shrugged.

  "Go on," I told her. "Later."

  The word hung. There might not be a later. This could be the last time we saw each other for a long time. Who would Sara have to match her clothes with every day? To share messed up, twisted dreams with?

  And who would I have to confide in about Eric?

  Sara left, taking one last glance at me before I met my fate. I watched her walk down the hall and vanish around the corner. My mood turned as black as deep space.

  Mrs. Hendry disappeared into her office and shut the door. After a few minutes of horrible silence, I heard her speaking to someone. A man's voice came through a phone so loud I could almost make out his words. Mrs. Hendry must have her conversation on a speakerphone or something. The man sounded serious and condescending. The superintendent. Great. I was so dead. They spoke for a long time and my stomach got more upset. I'd shaken things up around here. This was a day they’d remember for the rest of their lives.

  Perhaps I should have let Mr. Rain choke.

  Then he never would have told everyone I’d tried to kill him. I could have blamed it on a peanut or heart attack and gotten away with it. Well, if they found no wounds around his neck, which the tie would have left. Scratch that, then. That would have made things a lot worse than they had to be.

  I beat myself up for the thought a second later. I didn't want people to choke. That wasn't me even if everyone said it was.

  Mrs. Hendry continued to talk in her office behind the closed door. The clock on the wall ticked. I felt like I was in some room, waiting for the torture session.

  Then I realized that she had left her phone on the counter and it was off. She must use the landline. Maybe that phone was only for major calls like this.

  The talking stopped, and I cringed, hating that I was doing it.

  Mrs. Hendry opened the door and stepped out, closing the door most of the way behind her. She took time wiping the corner of her lip with a tissue before tossing it in the trash. The door swung back open.

  I tried not to look like I was staring, but I couldn't help it. Mrs. Hendry had a mirror hanging right above her desk—a huge one that belonged in a bathroom. A bronze frame shone in the light and even though the office was bright, the mirror looked black. Mrs. Hendry gasped and moved to close the door. Right before she did, silver waved and something dark and foggy moved in the mirror.

  She slammed the door as if trying to hold something prisoner.

  I gulped and shook my head. Something about it made me think of whatever I must have been dreaming when I had first woken up in class today. And I wasn’t even sure why.

  Mrs. Hendry faced me and cleared her throat. I forgot all about the weird mirror and waited for it. My fate was decided now.

  "Mara," the principal said, letting out a breath. "You may go to class now. I believe Mr. Rain might have been fabricating some of his story."

  I sat there, flabbergasted. "Huh?" Mrs. Hendry had been ready to destroy me a few minutes ago. I wanted to ask what had made her change her mind, but no. There was no way I was pushing this. Or maybe she was just making me calm down, so I'd never suspect it when the cops came knocking on my door later.

  "I think Sara is right," she said. "There is no way you could have grabbed his tie like that and choked him. Even the superintendent agrees. Something about his story doesn’t match up."

  "One part does," I said. "Mr. Rain hates me. He always has. He hates everyone. I’m not surprised he did that. Is this the part where you tell him he’s fired?" I grinned. I could hope.

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Mrs. Hendry said.

  I rolled my eyes and stared at the wall before she could see it. The school staff were all in some big clique and they’d protect each other until the end. I saw how it worked. I wanted to ask what I'd seen in her office, but I didn't want to push that, either. Something very weird was going on here. Nothing about this afternoon made sense.

  "You can go back to class," she said. "You have Lit, correct?"

  I searched my memory. What was Lit? Then I remembered. Another huge book with lots of little words and literary stories. And no Eric. We were reading a boring thing about a kid working in a grocery store and we had to fill out a worksheet about it this afternoon. But just then, Lit sounded good. It was better than prison. Mrs. Hendry smiled at me. Things had switched. I wondered what had happened between her and the superintendent. Had Stephanie and Tom struck up a deal with him so no more kids from Haven House would get sent away? They had money. Enough to run five Haven Houses in the state. It was no wonder the call had taken so long.

  That was it, then.

  Arguing with it would be stupid.

  I yanked up my backpack and put it on. "Okay," I said. "Thanks. I didn't hurt Mr. Rain. It's a good thing he's okay."

  I got out of the office and headed to class because a big part of me wasn’t glad at all.

  * * * * *

  "They let you off?"

  "Yeah." I took a stick and poked at the dirt of Haven House's garden. Even though I had spent many, many hours here writing in my dream journal and talking to Sara, I had never felt more freedom in my life. Waiting an hour after school confirmed that no cops were coming. Maybe. The air smelled cleaner than ever. Even the scent of the dirt was amazing. I made patterns between the cabbages as Sara dug through her backpack and fished out my dream journal. "Mrs. Hendry just went into her office and made a phone call, and then she came out and let me off. I don't know what happened, but I think Stephanie and Tom might have made a deal with the school." The two of them owned the Haven Foundation, and they specialized in taking in kids who had lost their parents. They didn't want another bad situation on their hands. I was sure they might lose their funding or something if they had another kid go to jail.

  "Yeah, after Raven," Sara said. She was the famous stabber. I'd never talked to her. Raven just hung out in her own room with her curtains drawn and listened to depressing music all the time I didn't even want to touch. "If I were them, I would have done the same thing. Yeah, that's shady, but I guess you have to do what you have to do."

  "I love Tom and Stephanie," I said. I tapped a cabbage with the stick as anger rose inside of me. "Mr. Rain is such an ass." I jabbed at the cabbage, pretending it was his head. "He didn't even thank me for getting that tie off of him." I'd passed him in the hallway right before leaving school today, and all he had done was glare at
me and hurry past. Did he think I used magic to choke him or something?

  "That was weird, what happened," Sara said, turning away to look at our sunflowers. They towered over us, bright and happy. Above us, a fan spun in a window that belonged to Jeffrey, the fourth grade boy whose mother had died last year and whose father was too much of a piece of crap to take him. Vines covered the brick of the building and I wondered if they could strangle someone. I had to stop thinking of that. The image of the crawling tie wouldn't get out of my head. I'd had nightmares that freaked me out less.

  Sara put her hand on her chin and stared into space. "I was there when it choked him. I didn't know what else to do, so I ran for help."

  I tapped another cabbage with the stick. "Thanks," I said. "I'm glad you did that. Even if Mr. Rain did what he did."

  "Have you ever seen a tie just do that to someone?" Sara asked. She looked freaked out. I didn't blame her.

  "Every day," I joked. "No. I haven't."

  "No, but I bet Mr. Rain won't be wearing any more of them."

  I laughed. I tucked my dream journal in my pack. My teacher would never get it and Eric would never know what I'd written about him. Sara was the only person allowed to view the twisted contents within.

  "So this is funny?" Sara asked.

  "Come on. It's Mr. Rain. You want to see him die as much as everyone else."

  Sara picked at her black cuffs. Black cuffs like the ones I had on my sleeves. Sometimes I wondered why she pretty much copied the way I dressed. She sure didn't share my dark side.

  "Sorry," I said. "Get a morbid sense of humor sometimes. You know, to cope with stuff. Like not having parents."

  "Good point." Sara closed her own backpack up and we stood. Sara's father was alive, but he'd dumped her here at a young age and drove off, not even leaving a birth certificate behind.

  I tossed the stick down and Sara paused on the overgrown stone steps. "You know," she said. "I have some horrifying news. We have that project in Foods we forgot about. We should ask Stephanie if we can pick this lettuce and make a salad out of it or something. It'll be easy to get a passing grade with that."

  I slapped myself on the forehead and swore. The memory of our Foods assignment hit me full force, laughing at me. I'd forgotten about it all day today. Well, I had an excuse for that, right? I still felt like someone had dropped me into this life today and the gremlin was feeding me the memories I needed to function. This project was a quarter of our Foods grade and we had to have a dish ready by tomorrow—a heart-healthy dish. If salad didn't fit that bill, I didn't know what did.

  I left Sara in the garden and walked around the house.

  And saw Mr. Rain standing on the sidewalk across the street, watching me.

  I froze. The guy was still without his tie and just standing there with his hands behind his back. But as soon as I saw him, he kept walking. I watched him to make sure he wasn't coming back to talk to Stephanie. Mr. Rain turned the corner and vanished around a house.

  I shook my head. Maybe Mr. Rain walked home, and I hadn't noticed before.

  Or maybe he'd been watching Sara and I sit in the garden. You could see it from across the road where he'd been standing.

  I passed the office, then climbed up the stairs and walked down the linoleum hallway to dump my backpack in my little room. Haven House was quiet since the boys hadn't gotten off the bus yet and all of them were elementary age. Sara and I were the only two girls, period, and the only two in high school. We had the automatic duty of helping watch the boys sometimes. Not having a car was a good thing here. If either of us did, we'd be the taxis, too. Stephanie was way too busy to run kids around all the time.

  I turned my window fan on to funnel in some cooler air from outside and headed back downstairs. It was a rule in Haven House that older kids got rooms on the upper level while the younger ones had to be on the ground floor, near Stephanie's office. At least we had that. And when the boys ventured up here, it wasn't pretty.

  This was my last year in the House. I'd miss the graffiti in the stairwell, painted there by years and years of kids. The hearts. The giraffe drawings and the zoo animals. I'd drawn an apple there years ago, and it was still there near the bottom step next to Sara's birds and squirrels.

  Or had I drawn it? Something about my memories felt displaced. Warped.

  Stephanie was in her office. She faced me through her spectacles and smiled. Her expression gave away no secret deals with the superintendent. No trouble. I relaxed for the first time since I'd woken up in Algebra this morning. I'd always liked Stephanie. She was fair and understanding and you could tell that she didn't hate what she did for a living.

  Unlike Mr. Rain.

  "Is it okay if Sara and I pick veggies from the garden?" I asked. "We have to whip up a salad. We'll need lettuce."

  She nodded. "Just don't take all of it. I want to show the younger kids how to cut vegetables later on tonight. You can stick with the radishes and carrots as long as you leave at least one full row. I think all we have is crisp head lettuce."

  "Thanks." I trekked back outside, and the sun warmed up my black shirt and skirt. It didn't seem like she knew about anything that had happened at school today and I would keep it that way. My weird day would get left behind soon enough. On the other side of tonight it wouldn't matter.

  I walked back around to the garden. Sara had already vanished. She must be waiting for me. I turned down the dirt path and found her standing there, leaning over the lettuce.

  "Mara," she said in a voice that told me my weird day wasn't over yet. The color drained from her face. Not that there was much.

  I took a long, deep breath and stepped around the cluster of sunflowers. "What happened now?"

  "The lettuce. It wasn't like this before."

  Sara backed away to show the two rows of it.

  She was right.

  One row of the lettuce had turned purple. Not just dark, reddish purple but angry purple—the kind I had painted my nails with a few weeks ago. The heads of that entire row had grown larger and the leaves bigger.

  And the other row of lettuce had gone from regular green to acid green. The plants had shrunk as if they were trying to hide.

  I turned and walked right back out of the garden again. "I need to lie down."

  "Mara, are you all right?" Sara was right behind me. "You're not yourself."

  I whirled around on her. "I've just had a long day. Now's not the time to get into it. I'm just going to go stuff my head under my pillow, go to sleep, and wake up and pretend none of this ever happened." The lettuce had been normal when I left the garden. It should still be normal. Or maybe I just imagined all this crap.

  But Sara had seen the change.

  "You never get upset like this." Sara paled even more than usual, almost to where she looked dead.

  "I've never gotten accused to choking a teacher before," I said. "And now our garden's changing."

  "You didn't choke the teacher. They let you off."

  "Still," I said. Behind her, the lettuce stayed as strange as ever. "Sara—did you see the lettuce turn color like that?"

  She swallowed. "No. I was looking at the sunflowers and the when I turned around, it was like that." She shook her head. "We need to get our project done. I'm sure the lettuce is fine. The sun must have caused it to change color or something. Or the soil. I'm sure there's a rational explanation for it. Maybe Stephanie used some kind of spray on it that made that row turn purple."

  "Maybe. Or we're losing our minds." At least I wasn't alone in this.

  Sara gave me a funny look. She had never seen me lose anything before.

  I was the one who was there when she was having a bad day. We were the closest thing to sisters we'd ever have. Sara was twenty days younger than me and I always joked that all authority belonged to me.

  I couldn't afford to break down. Stephanie and Tom were great and all, but they had twenty-two kids to manage and some younger ones needed it. I'd take care of whatever
was going on. I always did.

  "We're not," Sara said. "It's just lettuce," Sara said. "I know it's weird, but I've seen purple lettuce before at the store. The sun must have made it ripen. These must be two different varieties."

  "Stephanie just told me she only planted crisp head lettuce."

  "She must have been wrong," Sara said.

  "Just lettuce," I repeated. I could finish this salad. I would. Maybe we'd get bonus points for having more color in ours. Mrs. Landry from Foods always said more color meant more nutrients, or something.

  I picked some purple lettuce. Sara grabbed the green kind. It might be luck we could use two different types. This wasn't a partner project.

  Sara and I borrowed the Haven House kitchen, which Stephanie had painted in a warm yellow with flowers on the walls. I'd helped bake cookies here lots of times. Or had I? In one way, I felt like I never had, that I imagined the whole thing. But the memory felt real at the same time.

  We went to work cutting up the carrots and adding the last of the croutons that Stephanie had stocked. The bus rolled up and let the elementary kids off, who flooded the kitchen looking for snacks. Tony stopped in the kitchen doorway and stared at me as if I had just grown horns. I flashed him my biggest smile and waved. What was with him? He'd seen me a million times.

  The kid turned and walked up the steps to the second story, his orange Adventure Time backpack hanging low on his back. He stole one last glance at me and vanished up the steps. That was strange. Tony liked to stop and tell me about his day and about how good he was getting at his music lessons.

  I wouldn't think about it.

  I'd finish this project and then none of this would follow me into tomorrow.

  Chapter Three

  I held the reddest apple I had ever seen.

  Cradling it in my hands, I looked around the forest to make sure no one was spying on me. The apple was heavy, heavier than it should be, but its color was so alluring that it seemed to glow in the sunlight. It was free of all spots and of all other color. My mouth watered just looking at it. I stood not too far from a castle that loomed dark and foreboding in the distance. Birds chirped and a lone rabbit ran away through the trees.