The lights come back on, and giddy people dash off to their favorite carnival activities and rides. They look like children, eager and almost innocent despite their priceless jewels and costly clothes. Maybe it is money well spent if it makes their jadedness vanish for an hour or two.
“What do you want to do first?” Lark asks. Her eyes are shining. This feels so right. I’m so grateful I’ve foiled Pearl’s plan so we can just enjoy ourselves.
“Maybe the roller coaster?” I suggest. But when we head that way we see it is clearly the most popular, and way too crowded. “Later!” we agree in the same breath, and dash back across the room at random. We end up at the bounce house, hurling ourselves against the squishy walls with reckless abandon until we’re panting and sweaty. We collapse on top of each other, laughing, and crawl out again into the party.
“Having fun?” a cool voice asks from behind us. It’s Pearl, holding tall icy drinks. “Here you go,” she says, thrusting the drinks at us. She leans close to me, and I notice her eyes are a little wild, her pupils dilated. She must have taken an extra deep inhale of that bubble powder. “Peace offering,” she whispers into my ear.
I’m so hot from all that frenetic bouncing that I grab the glass and drink down half the red, fruity liquid right away. Lark takes hers, sips, and makes a face.
“Bottoms up!” Pearl says as she sails away again.
I gulp thirstily at the rest of my drink, and when I start cracking the ice cubes Lark laughs and hands me hers. “I don’t like it much. You take it, and I’ll find some water. Be right back.”
I work on hers more slowly, scanning the crowd over the crystal sugared rim. (Sugar is one of the easiest things to synthesize here in Eden. No more sugarcane, but string a few carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules together the right way and there you have it.) It’s strange how even though I’ve been going to parties all my life, tonight I feel like an outsider. Like I shouldn’t be in a huge, crushing crowd. Like I belong alone. It’s not a feeling of inadequacy. It’s just that all of a sudden I feel like my proper place is by myself. Or maybe with one special person.
Where did Lark go? Far across the huge room I think I see a flash of lilac, and I lurch in that direction. The drinks must have been stronger than I thought. All I could taste was cloying sweetness and the same artificial fruitiness that all “fruit” things have here. I dreamed of strawberries the other night. Small and plump, warm from the sun. I woke up just as I was biting into one. No one will ever know what a real strawberry tastes like.
I lose the lilac streak in the crowd, and whirl in the other direction. I’m so mad at the world all of a sudden. At stupid humans for bikking everything up. At the Earth itself for dying. Couldn’t it have tried a little harder? We’re just one species crawling on its surface! How did we win out over tigers and wild horses and germs and tidal waves, and all of the things so much more powerful than us?
How did we lose?
I think I see Lark, and shove past the partygoers toward the back of the ballroom. It’s quieter here, but now I’ve lost sight of Lark, if that was even her in the first place. I turn again, and I’m looking at a strange dark-haired girl. A girl with a strong jaw, clenched tight. A girl with silvery eyes that look flat and wrong. A tall, strong girl who is being weak for some reason.
It’s my own reflection. I’m in the mirror maze.
I don’t want to look at that girl in the mirror. Something is off about her. So I turn back to the crowd I can see reflected behind me . . . only to find that they’re all me. I’m surrounded by mirrors. They cast back a million images of infinity, with my face bouncing back and forth from mirror to mirror, smaller and smaller the closer I look, until I seem to shrink away to nothing at all.
I stagger backward, but the mirrors are all around me. Prickles of nervous sweat dot my neck and face. I start to run, but there’s nowhere to go. Everywhere I turn, I’m heading toward myself. Like I’m dashing into the arms of a lover, I run to an image of my own outstretched arms, only to crash into cold glass. I turn, and turn again, and there’s only me, me, me. My panicked face looks grotesque as I stumble, feeling with my hands against the mirrors, trying to determine what is real, what is lifeless image. My sweaty palms leave smears on the glass.
I try to force myself to calm down, but my heart goes at such a furious pace it feels more like a buzz than distinct beats. I keep thinking I see reflections of people behind me, even though I’m sure I’m alone right now in this mirror maze. The light, the mirrors, my addled brain are making me see things that aren’t there, molding horrific people out of tricks of light. For a second I think I see a flash of lilac, then it’s gone. I whirl, and think I see a young man, tall and strong, with chestnut hair and shadowed features. You, I see him mouth as he points, steps closer. You.
“Leave me alone!” I scream.
Gasping, I whirl away, but I’m caught by another mirror. I feel powerless to tear my gaze away.
I see people in masks. Not the exotic animal masks the people at the party are wearing. These are people dressed all in green, like temple priests almost, but these are more like surgical scrubs. Their faces are covered in white masks that cover everything except flat dark eyes. They bend over someone strapped to a table, and I see the prone figure writhe. Then they look back at me and point. This time with scalpels.
They break from their surgery and come closer behind me. I’m frozen. I want to turn, to see that they aren’t real. They can’t be. I want to run, but my legs are leaden.
When they get closer, they start to strip off their masks. And oh, great Earth, what’s beneath is hideous! Twisted, misplaced features. Wounds and sores. They look like lumps of clay trying to be people. Like figures created by someone who has heard of but never seen a human.
With a startling moment of clarity I think: I’m seeing our souls. That’s what we humans really look like, twisted and ugly and horrible.
And the worst part is that they’re smiling with their twisted mouths. I can see from their gestures as they creep closer that they’re trying to calm me. There, there, they seem to say. Don’t worry. Everything is just as it should be.
But it’s not! I’m surrounded by monsters!
What is happening to me?
Finally, I can break away. I leave those horrifying visions far behind me. I can feel my heart racing frenetically. I get that same feeling I had when I first saw Lark, that dizzy nausea, that strange roaring that seems to surge through my body with the flow of my blood.
The drink, I realize. There was something in the drink Pearl gave me and Lark. Something strong. And I drank both of them.
I’ve got to get out of here. Out of this mirror maze, and out of this party. But there is no escape, and my thoughts mutate with each weird image of myself that I see. The trick mirrors expand me to enormous proportions, puffed out like a balloon, fat but empty. Another stretches me out long and thin, attenuated until my entire existence is no more than a narrow line bisecting the world into two halves. Which side do I choose? Do I have any choice?
I stumble desperately, calling Lark’s name. Why doesn’t anyone help me? I hear other people at the party, a distant rumble, but no one comes. I’m lost! I’m alone!
I scream, and run blindly though the maze. Suddenly I crash, and I go down with two mirrors on top of me. They splinter into a million fragments, and it feels like the Snow Festival, the cold pieces slithering down my skin. No, it feels like something else. Like sand, swallowing me up. Eating me alive.
I leap to my feet, shaking off the shards, and feel trickles of blood down my arms where some of them have pierced me. My blood is warm and alive, and it reassures me somehow to know that I have such vibrant, vital stuff inside me when the outside looks so false and dead. The wounds don’t hurt, which is strange. In fact, my whole body feels numb, while my mind alternates between dull and sharp.
I have to get o
ut of this maze! But everywhere I look now it is just me, me, me, endless me.
Wait, there’s a mirror with only one image of me. None of that mirror-within-a-mirror infinity. I shuffle toward it, and the image stays true. No other mirrors are endlessly reflected in this one.
Feeling my way like a blind person, staggering under visual overload, I grope over to the next mirror and timidly peer in. Just one of me. I sigh. I’m out of the thick of the maze. Just a few more steps, and I’m home free.
But now the images shift from endless repetitions of myself to other people. Everything looks unnatural to me now, strange and otherworldly. Their faces look like animals that never existed, parodies of the life our planet lost. Paint and glitter, gilding and artifice—that’s all that is left to us in Eden.
Instead of mirrors, I crash into people now. They seem to shatter, too, fragmenting into slivers of flesh. There are so many eyes on me! I can’t stand it! I want to be alone, behind a high wall where no one can see me, where no one even knows I exist. No, I want to be with Lark.
I see a flash of pale bright hair across the room. Is it lilac? Colors are pulsing under shifting strobe lights and I can’t tell. My eyes feel like they’re pulsing, too. Like they’re about to pop out of my head. Is the hair silver? The pale pink-purple of a flower? I follow the bright hair as it slips in and out of the crowd. The person always seems to be in shadow. They duck into an alcove and I think I’ve caught them at last. But I’m thwarted. There’s a door, and when I open it, stairs heading up into increasing darkness.
I hear footsteps, heeled shoes clicking unseen above, and I start to run after them.
The darkness closes around me. The walls close around me. What have I done? I’ve run right into the dragon’s mouth and it is swallowing me! The walls, the air itself presses on me, forcing me to my knees. I’m so small, so weak! I’m being crushed! No! I grab onto my head with both hands, pressing against my skull. I’m terrified my head will explode.
I hear a voice, soothing in tone but terrifying in meaning. Die, it coos gently at me. Give up everything you have, even yourself. The voice is like a caress, making me want to yield to the terrible things it is saying. Forget, forget, it whispers, enticing me closer to a void that seems to loom before me.
And then, the pain! Oh, great Earth, pain like I’ve never known. It’s not from my wounds, not from my body at all. My body is still numb, hard and cold like a block of ice. The pain is from inside, from my brain, a memory of pain so exquisitely devastating that I start to weep, helplessly. Needles piercing my veins. Electrodes sending bolts of pain through my body until I scream. But worse than that are other kinds of pain. Pain of loss. Pain of powerlessness. Pain of the truth.
I see you, a voice says. The same voice? I don’t know. I don’t think so. This one is sharper, less soothing, more challenging. The other voice was a memory. This one is speaking now, another self within me. What are you going to do now? The voice sounds intrigued, studying me.
Stay here, die here, I moan. But no, whoever that is in my head, they’re watching me cynically, expecting me to fail, but curious, attentive, in case I do not.
Whoever they are, I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me give up.
I gather my numb legs beneath me and try to rise, but I can’t quite manage it. I crawl instead, ever upward, clinging to the one thing I can think of to give me hope.
“Lark,” I whisper. There are other names I want to call out, but they elude me now. So I call her again, louder. “Lark!”
Finally, I drag myself to the top, and use the doorknob to drag myself upright. If I can just find Lark, I’ll be okay. I know, dimly, that whatever Pearl gave me is bikking up my brain. These things I’m feeling can’t be real. Lark will help me. Like I helped her.
I’m on the rooftop. Faintly, a flash of reality comes back to me. The party. The roller coaster. But the roof is deserted. Why? Oh, I see now. There are yellow and black striped barricades around the ride station. It must have broken down. The roller coaster car sits lonely, a useless hunk of machinery now that some key element is awry. I feel like that roller coaster. A broken creation. But how can I fix myself if I don’t know which part is broken?
“Lark?” I call, and the breeze takes the word away. I’m sure she came up here.
A figure emerges from the darkness. A girl, tall and elegant, with long hair reflecting faint light. I can’t make out her face, but who else could it be? Smiling, relieved, I start toward her, my arms outstretched. It isn’t until she is very close that the dim starlight reveals a face.
It’s not Lark.
I don’t know what it is.
It looks like Pearl, but her flesh writhes and pulses as if there were maggots crawling underneath her skin. I blink hard, and her face is normal again.
“There you are. Where’s your new best friend?”
“I’m looking for her,” I gasp. “I can’t find her anywhere.” Please please please stay normal.
“Well, it’s time for Lark to get what she deserves. Did she finish her drink? I put enough synthmesc in there to have her hearing colors and seeing sounds. She’s got to be pretty messed up by now.” She chuckles and tosses back her silvery hair, and suddenly she is in slow motion. Her hair has become long strands of bloated worms. I shudder and back away. “I put a little in yours, too. Hope you don’t mind. Just sit back and enjoy it. Let this weird world wash over you.”
Her smile is just a little too broad. As I watch, it gets bigger and bigger until her face splits in two. Maggots stream out of the gash in the middle of her face. No matter how hard I blink, this time it won’t go back to normal.
I pinch myself hard on the arm, bringing a moment of clarity. I remember now what this night was all about. “What do you mean? You’re charging everything to her credit chip, right? Isn’t that her punishment for . . .” For what? For being from the outer circles? For her family rising through skill and determination? It slips out before I can censor it. “For being a better human than you?”
Pearl recoils as if I struck her. She has fangs now, long and sharp like a tiger. She’s drooling blood. “That’s just the drug talking. But you better watch yourself, Yarrow. You’re a little more interesting than those other predictable blanks, but don’t push me too far.” Her eyes glitter dangerously in that hideous face. “Now go and fetch Lark. Bring her to the roof. We’ll see if that little birdie can fly.”
I feel my stomach lurch. “What do you mean?”
Pearl winks at me. “It’s amazing what you can achieve with enough synthmesc, and the power of suggestion. If you whisper the right words you can make anyone think they don’t deserve to live.” She throws back her head and laughs.
I say one word. “Cinnamon.”
She nods, and with every bob of her head she grows in stature. She’s a giant, a monster. I cower away. I want to run, I want to cry, to scream for help. But something makes me stay. Lark? Am I staying for Lark?
“Of course,” the huge slippery horror that is Pearl says. “She thought she was queen of the school. Now, I ask you, what kind of queen can’t take a little criticism? But after I told her a few choice things about herself, she found she just didn’t have the will to go on. Poor Cinnamon.” She tries, but can’t keep a straight face. “That was only the second floor. How high up would you say we are?” She strolls to the edge and peers over, giving a long, low whistle. “It’s a long way down.”
Vertigo hits me, and I look up, away from the edge. Above me, the stars seem to pulse, then slowly start to swirl. There’s something about the stars. Something about the stars and Lark . . .
My mind reels out of control, at the mercy of synthmesc. Lark flying through familiar constellations of stars. Lark falling, her arms wheeling, her eyes locked on mine.
“No!” I shout. I storm up to Pearl, actually grab that disgusting monster by the filmy front of her dres
s. Maggots pour out of her mouth, erupt from her skin, but I hold on to all that corruption for Lark’s sake. It’s not real, I tell myself. But I don’t believe it. “You leave Lark alone, do you hear me? You’re not going to hurt her!”
But the drug has made me weak. Pearl shrugs me off easily. I’m not even sure if my words have come out clear or garbled.
“Get your hands off me. That’s the second time you’ve told me no today. It better be the last. Do you remember who I am? Who you are?”
No. That’s the problem. I am in pieces, a shattered mirror.
“You can’t hurt her,” I insist. My voice sounds small.
“Can’t?” Pearl’s voice has risen to a hysterical pitch. “Can’t! How dare you!” She takes me by the shoulders and shoves me backward. “I own you!” she shrieks. “You’d be nothing without me.” She shoves me back again. “Without me, you’d be alone!”
Alone! That word tears at me. Alone! My comfort, my safety . . . my fear. Being alone.
“No, not alone,” I mutter. “I have friends. I have brothers, sisters. A huge family. A family tree. They love me . . .” My voice rises. “They love me! You don’t matter—they do!” My hands reach for her throat, and her eyes go wide. I don’t squeeze, but I hold her there. She’s plainly terrified. “Everyone hates you, Pearl! Do you really think you have any friends? They’re afraid of you, so they pretend, but every single person in Oaks despises you. Even Copper and Lynx. Even me.” I squeeze a little harder. “Especially me!”
“You idiot!” she shouts as she fights me. “You have no family. You have no one! You’re a lab rat, a test subject!”
The shock of her words makes me loosen my grip. She looks shocked, too. Her mouth is open in a perfect O. Then she gives me one more shove, and I stumble backward. One foot lands on the edge of the rooftop. The other lands on nothing. My arms windmill as I try to catch my balance, and I see Pearl’s mouth again become a perfect shocked O. Her hand reaches out for me. A clawed demon hand. I twist away . . . and I’m falling.