#3 Mirrored (2 page)

Even at home, Abbey didn't really have anyone to talk to.

Her parents acted like she wasn't there.

Her older brother, Pearse, treated her like a little kid because he was in high school and knew how to do algebra and speak Spanish.

So Abbey read lots of stories. Stories about princesses and acrobats and pirates and explorers.

And she was a really great painter. Big, colorful pictures of jungles and oceans and castles.

But mostly, she liked to play make-believe. She was a sorceress or a liontamer or the queen of a country where all the boys were slaves.

One time she invented special night goggles and made wings out of ostrich feathers, and she flew all over the world, looking into the houses of rich people and film stars.

But Abbey had no one to play with. I was her only friend in school, and at home she had no sisters or friends in the neighborhood.

So, when summer came, she was by herself.

One day Abbey was playing in her bedroom. She was an astronaut, Abbey Armstrong, on the surface of Zortek, a strange and dangerous planet.

Suddenly she thought she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. She spun around. It was only her reflection in the mirror.

Oh, this make-believe. Now her own reflection was giving her the spooks.

But then something
really
weird happened. Her reflection smiled at her.

Abbey
wasn't smiling.

And her reflection began to talk!

“Hello, Abbey.”

Abbey couldn't believe it! She opened her eyes wide.

“Abbey, don't be scared. My name is Bee. I'm just like you.”

Abbey finally stuttered, “No—you
are
me.”

Bee grinned. “That's what you're
supposed
to think. I follow your every move so quickly, you think it's your own. I look like you, I change when you change, I blink when you blink, I speak when you speak. But I'm not you.”

Bee was whispering, and
her
eyes were wide open.

“I live in an
entirely
different world—the world of mirrors. We copy people so they never know we're here.”

Abbey's heart was beating really quickly. She was curious. Another world!

This was like a fantasy come true!

“What's your world like?” she asked.

Bee sat cross-legged on the floor. She told Abbey to sit down, too.