Page 4 of The Other Side of the Mirror

She let out an amused huff and raised one eyebrow. “You realize we’re going to eat them, right?”

“And they will fulfill their tiny destiny.”

I picked up a bag of lumpy, ugly looking limes from my backpack to pair with the bottle of mezcal next to it, unable to stop my smile at Quinn’s ensuing laughter.

There was a knock at the door, and I frowned. Quinn flashed me a dazzling smile in response to my grumpy look before walking to open it. A few people walked in, loudly exclaiming over the “’90s witch vibes” of her home. Quinn took it in with a gentle grace I had never mastered.

These events were hard for me, even now. After I lost my family, pretending everything was fine when there was such a gnawing pit of sorrow inside me was impossible for a long while. I was forever afraid of the type of pain I knew I couldn’t endure again. Of letting someone else in only to lose them too.

Despite a few years of therapy, throwing myself into my schoolwork, and seeking out every reckless extracurricular activity I could find, I was still learning to live again instead of merely passing time. But even as I learned to compartmentalize that grief, the reminder of it was always waiting in the pit of my stomach, making me wonder if I could ever hope to have a normal, carefree life.

I had come close this summer when Quinn and I traveled abroad after graduation, backpacking through the European countryside. When I moved back home last month with the intent to stop draining my inheritance and put my degrees to use, she helped me find an apartment nearby after I refused to take a room here. Thankfully, she hadn’t pushed the issue after I had quietly explained that I needed to be on my own for the first time in my life.

Quinn had been my college roommate too—though she often joked she had barely seen me. I had thrown myself completely into my course load, adding two years to my already overfull schedule to complete my master’s degree along with my baccalaureate. I hadn’t deluded myself into thinking that the summer classes, endless textbooks, and homework weren’t a distraction against the silence that descended every time I paused to breathe. That they weren’t a diversion from the crackling flames that haunted my waking dreams, the screams that intruded upon even the most innocuous quiet moment.

A log cracked in the fireplace and without so much as a blink, I was back there—seventeen and terrified. My home was burning, flames leaping from my favorite spot on the couch, surrounding the family photos on the mantle. My mother was screaming, her voice hoarse from the smoke. And then there was that searing, blazing pain as I fell, reaching blindly behind me. As my hand closed unthinkingly on the brass rosettes gilding the mirror, a partially unfurled bud burning onto my palm?—

“Eva?”

Quinn’s voice broke through my cruel reverie, and I blinked up at her. She grabbed my right hand from where it was stroking the old burn on my opposite palm—the rose now white and stark against my skin.

“Where were you?” she asked softly. “Just bad memories? Or did you have that dream again…?”

I was so tired of trying to escape the horrors inside my own mind, forever reliving the moment that had been seared into my memory, along with my skin.

Some memories fade. Like the tiny little details of my family’s faces, now a static amalgam of old photos and blurry recollections. Butthatmoment would be forever frozen in time. The moment before I lost her, the absolute anguish in her screams. The fear mixing with the guilt on my mother’s face.Guilt. Like somehow it had been her fault.

And I would never, ever be able to ask her why.

I gave Quinn a shaky smile as I tried to swallow against my suddenly dry mouth. I had, in fact, dreamed of the golden-haired man last night, his blue eyes like a dawn sky—the sight of him filling me with paralyzing dread. As always, he had been just out of reach, his voice beckoning, my name on his full lips. And, as always, I had woken up screaming in terror.

“It’s nothing,” I said quickly, plastering on a fake smile despite the cold sweat sliding down my spine.

Quinn’s full lips pursed, knowing me too well not to sense the evasion. “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

She always knew when I was avoiding the truth, even when we were little. Quinn played absently with the silver amulet around her neck that, like me, she never took off. Though hers was in the shape of a sunflower dotted with pale yellow diamonds.

I shook my head in a steady no. “Just old memories.” I attempted a reassuring smile. “Please don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” she said warily, obviously not entirely convinced. “Always forward?”

“Never back.”

We had repeated that mantra far too often in the years following our shared losses. Quinn knew the pain of being orphaned as much as I did, though I often thought she had done a better job of moving forward, of living her life freely as if in spite of what happened.

But letting go of my grief was hardly as easy as wishing to do so. Despite my work on myself, my past was a perpetual specter that haunted me despite my best intentions. I could no more rid myself of it than I could change what happened. As much as I wished I could.

There was a loud knock, then the door swung open. Quinn’s friend walked in wearing a corset top that my chest would bust right out of, and I sighed enviously. A guy I vaguely recognized walked in behind her with two packs of pumpkin beer in his hands and a lazy smile on his face as he brazenly looked me up and down.

“I’m fine,” I murmured to Quinn, grabbing the bottle opener from the table and walking toward the new guests—mostly to get away from this conversation. “Don’t worry about me.”

Her answering look told me she knew exactly what happened but was willing to let it go now that I no longer looked possessed by the ghosts of my past.

“Come on,” Quinn said, following me. “There are about ten different types of foods that shouldn’t be pumpkin flavored waiting in the kitchen.”

Chapter2

Eva

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