Beyond the Reflection’s Edge by Bryan Davis Read Free Book Online Page B

can’t even remember saying something, you really need to get some rest.”
    “But I didn’t say anything, I —”
    “Your room’s this way.” Striding through the adjacent hall at a lively pace, she raised her voice. “C’mon. You’ll get lost in this house if you don’t keep up.”
    He grabbed the mirror and stepped in her direction, then halted, glancing around. “Did you say your parents aren’t here?”
    She shouted from a distant room. “Right. Dad’ll probably get back in about three hours after he gets stuff for your welcomeparty. I’m making a special dinner tonight.” She leaned out a doorway at the end of the corridor. “Why?”
    “Then we’re alone?” He edged toward the front door and reached for the knob. “I think I’d better wait outside.”
    “Wait!” Kelly hurried back to the foyer, her feet slapping against the tile. “My father told me you’d have a lot of old-fashioned ideas,” she said as she grabbed his hand.
    “Old-fashioned?”
    She pointed at herself, her brown eyes gleaming. “Don’t think of me as a girl. Think of me as your sister.”
    “But I never had a sister.”
    She pulled him toward the bedroom. “And I’ve never had a brother before. You could come in handy.”
    Nathan slid his hand away from Kelly’s but followed close behind as she turned through the doorway. He stopped under the lintel and stared. The room was enormous! With high ceilings and soft beige carpet that seemed to run on endlessly, his new bedroom was even bigger than the piano room! He blinked and looked again. No. The size was an illusion. A huge mirror covered the entire back wall and reflected the room’s interior, exaggerating its spaciousness. Still, it was bigger than most of the rooms he had slept in during his mother’s latest world tour, especially the closet-sized hovel he had shared with his parents while in Warsaw.
    Kelly knelt and began collecting books from the floor. “Sorry about the mess. I was trying to adjust the cabinet shelves, and while I was talking to you on the intercom, the screwdriver slipped, and the whole thing fell over.”
    After setting his mirror on the floor, Nathan lifted the cabinet and pushed it upright. “Don’t worry about it.” He scooped an armload of books and heaved them up to the shelves. Bending down to grab another load, he glanced back at the room’s mirror and caught the image of two teenagers collecting books from the floor.
    Although the room was brightly lit by a tri-domed ceiling fixture and a lamp on a desk near the only window in the room, the reflection darkened. In the image, looming shadows stretched across their heads and backs. The books, the cabinet, and the carpet disappeared, replaced by an endless layer of dead autumn leaves. Lightning flashed, and a breeze blew the leaves into a swirl, enveloping Nathan and Kelly, along with a little girl he didn’t recognize, in a tornadic funnel.
    He looked back at Kelly. There were no strange shadows in the room. No leaves. No storm. No little girl. He spun his head toward the mirror again. Everything was back to normal.
    Kelly grunted as she lifted an unabridged dictionary to the top shelf. “That’s where Dad wants it. ‘Got to keep Webster handy,’ he always says. ‘You never know when you’ll need a paperweight.’”
    Smiling, Nathan set a hefty world atlas next to the dictionary “Or maybe two paperweights.”
    She snatched a dusty rag from a dresser and stuffed it into her jeans pocket, then spread out her hands. “So, what do you think? Pretty cool, huh?”
    “Yeah. It’s nice. Roomy and … well …” He slid his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders, nodding toward the desk. “I like having a desk. I read a lot.”
    She stepped toward a queen-size poster bed and pulled back the comforter. “I think you’d better lie down. You’re as white as a ghost.”
    He let out a sigh and nodded. Those phantom images in the mirror proved she was right. He was so