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Rehearsing for the spring concert. I’m only in the chorus, but I still have to go to every rehearsal.<br />
I saw Erin and April in school a lot. But neither of them mentioned the mirror. I guess maybe it<br />
slipped their minds, too. Or maybe we all just shut it out of our minds.<br />
It was kind of scary, if you stopped to think about it.<br />
I mean, if you believed what they said happened.<br />
Then that Wednesday night I couldn’t get to sleep. I was lying there, staring up at the ceiling,<br />
watching the shadows sway back and forth.<br />
I tried counting sheep. I tried shutting my eyes real tight and counting backwards from one<br />
thousand.<br />
But I was really keyed up, for some reason. Not at all sleepy.<br />
Suddenly I found myself thinking about the mirror up in the attic.<br />
What was it doing up there? I asked myself. Why was it closed up in that hidden room with the<br />
door carefully latched?<br />
Who did it belong to? My grandparents? If so, why would they hide it in that tiny room?<br />
I wondered if Mom and Dad even knew it was up there.<br />
I started thinking about what had happened on Saturday after my birthday party. I pictured myself<br />
standing in front of the mirror. Combing my hair. Then reaching for the chain. Pulling it. The flash of<br />
bright light as the lamp went on. And then…<br />
Did I see my reflection in the mirror after the light went on?<br />
I couldn’t remember.<br />
Did I see myself at all? My hands? My feet?<br />
I couldn’t remember.<br />
“It was a joke,” I said aloud, lying in my bed, kicking the covers off me.<br />
It had to be a joke.<br />
Lefty was always playing dumb jokes on me, trying to make me look bad. My brother was a<br />
joker. He’d always been a joker. He was never serious. Never.<br />
So what made me think he was serious now?<br />
Because Erin and April had agreed with him?<br />
Before I realized it, I had climbed out of bed.<br />
Only one way to find out if they were serious or not, I told myself. I searched in the darkness for<br />
my bedroom slippers. I buttoned my pajama shirt which had come undone from all my tossing and<br />
turning.<br />
Then, as silent as I could be, I crept out into the hallway.<br />
The house was dark except for the tiny night-light down by the floor just outside Lefty’s<br />
bedroom. Lefty was the only one in the family who ever got up in the middle of the night. He insisted<br />
on having a night-light in his room and one in the hall, even though I made fun of him about it as often<br />
as I could.<br />
Now I was grateful for the light as I made my way on tiptoe to the attic stairs. Even though I was<br />
being so careful, the floorboards squeaked under my feet. It’s just impossible not to make noise in an<br />
old house like this.<br />
I stopped and held my breath, listening hard, listening for any sign that I had been heard.<br />
Silence.
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