“From?” I barely utter. My heart contracts like it’s hiding.
“The duppies,” she answers with a dramatic urgency that makes my hairs stand on end. Summer wind whips her nightdress, wraithlike, around her calves. “The spirits who roam at night. They have to count all the grains before they can enter the house. I’ll put down so many they can’t finish counting before sunrise.” The lines in her face are etched into a map of determination as she flings my mother’s restraining hand off her arm.
Joe throws up his hands. “I was totally wrong. That makes perfect sense.”
I stomp on his foot. “Is there a dimmer switch on your blurting button?” I whisper back to him. “Gran, are you afraid there are bad spirits trying to get into our house?” I attempt to keep my voice as steady as possible.
At my question, she stops sprinkling rice against the base of the house and shuffles toward me. Her hand arcs in a half circle around each side of me. Rice pellets my sneakers. She answers with her dead eyes fixed on me. “Child, I’m afraid they already have.”
Shivers roll down my arms. An exasperated sigh escapes my mother. “Go on in,” she tells Joe and me. “It’s no use. I’ll stay with her until she’s finished.”
Joe grabs my hand and we jog to the front door. Gran’s absolutely right: spirits have already penetrated these walls. The first thing I see upon entering the hall is a mirror. Shining back at me is the tortured spirit who haunts my reflection. Her face undulates in the glass, rippling against an unseen wind. Her eyes bore into mine with ferocious determination.
I’ve had enough. Joe calls after me as I run down the hall to the linen closet. I heap sheets and towels into my arms, run back to the entryway, and fling them onto the floor. I take one white towel and drape it over the mirror, covering her malicious face.
How will you stare at me now? I ask her in my mind. She’s clever, though. Mirrors are just one way she imposes on me. It’s like she’s tethered to my body by an invisible cord, following me, part of me, always. I want to cut her out, excise her forever.
“Ryan?”
Joe’s voice sounds far away. I run to the couch and stand on it to reach the upper corners of the mirror above it, carefully covering it with a large sheet. The world is a maze of carnival mirrors with her face always watching. I’m sick of it. Now my father’s voice funnels in from behind me. He’s asking in the same panicked tone as my mother about my shorn hair. I ignore both of them, because I’m sure if I don’t find a way to stop her from stalking me, I really will go crazy.
“Did something else happen?” I hear my father ask Joe.
“No. I mean, she got dizzy when we were out, but . . .”
I run to the piano and throw a blanket over the varnished, black surface.
“Why is she covering the mirrors? Is she seeing things again?” my dad asks.
“I?—?I didn’t know you knew about that,” Joe stammers.
“Of course. She’s been seeing things ever since she overdosed. That’s when this all started.”
There is a pause, substantial enough to stop me. I remember telling Joe about seeing the faces before the LSD. He can’t tell my father that. It’s the only thing keeping them from medicating me: the idea that, with time, the effects of the drug will fade away and I’ll be normal again. I give Joe a warning look and toss a tablecloth over the glass dining table. Joe will keep my secret.
“No, sir. No, that’s not right.”
I swing around. “Joe!” When he looks at me, I know I can’t stop him from saying what he’s about to say. “Please.”
“She was hallucinating before the LSD.” He’s speaking to my father, but his eyes never leave mine. “She told me about it before she ever did the drugs.”
I mouth the word Why?
“Because I love you. And because you taught me how to be brave, and sometimes that means that I’ll have to piss you off. It doesn’t help you for me to lie. Your parents should know the truth.”
“I’m not crazy! A ghost is stalking me, trying to possess me!”
“Oh, ’cause that’s sane!” Joe yells.
“You’re only doing this because I tried to kiss you!”
My father rubs his face with both hands. “Why would you try to kiss Joe?” he asks as if this is the craziest thing he’s heard all night.
I’m whirling with thoughts, some mine, some from an unseen place I can only assume she inhabits. “I don’t know!” I scream. “I thought, I mean, love . . . I’ve been numb to every good feeling, but I feel love with him.”
Nolan takes a big swig of his drink. “You want to love a guy romantically who loves guys, Ryan? That doesn’t make sense. He’s gay.”