Page 68 of The Last Special Thing

She gripped Art’s hand tighter with her right hand. He was the only thing that could save her from this disintegrating world with its plum skies and angry squirrels and too many fucking people.

She opened her mouth to tell Art they needed to run, to find a side street. If they could find the alley where they had set off fireworks, or stolen chalk, or kissed against the chain drug store wall. Somewhere that happy memories would surround her.

Despite her mouth agape, Amelia was voiceless.

She couldn’t remember how to form words. She snapped her mouth closed, desperate for the trip to end.

When things couldn’t get worse, Art’s hand slipped away from hers. He brushed his dark locks out of his face, then let his hand fall to his side. Forgetting all about her. The physical separation was equivalent to an emotional separation. Her heart corroded at the rejection.

She tried to understand why they were no longer in sync. The best she could come up with was that she was a train, rushing straight ahead, wanting to be anywhere else. He was a boat. Bobbing along as the current moved him. They were both modes of transportation. Momentum was the shared goal. But they were too different.

He was a boat, and she was a train, after all.

The door to Art’s apartment was in front of her. Were they back?

He opened the door, and she barged past him to the bathroom with an urge to splash water on her face. If she could cleanse the whole experience, she could wash away the paranoia, fear, and guilt of being a train.

She jerked the door closed behind her, the slam deafening. Turning on the faucet, she counted to ten, held her breath, then counted down to one.

Water swirled down the drain, each droplet on its own path.

Conceptually, she understood that what she had seen hadn’t been real. Numbers, though, those were real. A flicker of amusement pulled at her lips as she recalled Art’s earlier comment about how she could apply math to her acting. The absurdity that now, while tripping on acid, she could use something she had deemed to be pointless, made her laugh manically, silently. Air pushed out of her mouth, but still. There was no sound.

Cold water splashed over her face, then she toweled dry.

Her reflection was in the mirror. Wasn’t there a rule not to look in the mirror while you’re on hallucinogens?

She remembered too late.

The mirror latched onto her.

“It’s a cruel world. Only the best will make it,” Mirror Amelia said.

It was harrowing. The exact words she had been shamed for saying to her stage director, now being hurled at her.

“You could be better,” Mirror Amelia said. “You’re pretty enough. You’re smart enough. You could manipulate people. Distort their emotions like putty.” Mirror Amelia smiled like a vixen, her eyes an emerald green.

Her hands flew over her face to protect herself from the mirror bitch, tears blurring her vision. She pretended not to know the girl in the mirror, but what if she was her? What if there was an evil side of her locked away, demanding to escape?

Squeezing her eyes shut, she turned the bathroom knob.

“Accept your destiny! You’re too great for that pathetic world!” Mirror Amelia yelled.

One step in front of the other, she inched out of the bathroom and slammed the door closed behind her. Locking Mirror Amelia in.

The door crashed into its frame, but Art didn’t flinch from where he sat on the couch. Vacant eyes fixed on the TV. Not the black eyes from ecstasy, but a new sort of emptiness.

Weston’s eyes were bloodshot whenever he got high. Her eyes had threatened her in the mirror. Art’s eyes were hollow. Had the person who coined the phrase “eyes are windows to the soul” partaken in drugs? Surely, you could determine what drug someone was on by their eyes.

How many drugs had she done?

For the second time in twenty-four hours, she told herself that she needed to slow down. Take a break. Be herself.

Amelia sat beside him as tears rolled in quiet agony, dampening his shirt. His arm limply rested on her shoulder. She wished both trips were over and that they would return to normal. There was an unshakable terror of Mirror Amelia escaping, and Amelia being the one trapped inside the glass.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Afew days later, Madisson’s feet were kicked up on the dashboard as she scrolled through the Spotify playlist she had curated for their day. The window was open, sunlight casting a light shadow on them.