Free Backward Glass by David Lomax Page A

all have our own stories in the mirror. She was running away from her own uncle, and he didn’t sound too nice. Just because they’re stories doesn’t mean they’re not real, and you know it. The mirrors are around here, and so is Prince Harming. Everybody talks about him, all the way back to Rose. There’s even that skipping rhyme.”
    “Lover sweet, bloody feet,” Melissa chanted.
    Jimmy continued it from where he lay on a couch by himself. “Loudly yelling down the street.”
    Then it was Luka’s turn. “Holler loud, curtsey proud, you shall wear a coffin shroud.”
    Jimmy finished it. “Go to mass, go to class, you’ll go down the backward glass.”
    Melissa turned to him, mouth open. “What did you say?”
    “What, go to mass? Are you Catholic? I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
    “Not that,” said Melissa. “The whole last bit together.”
    Jimmy frowned. “Go to class, go to mass, you’ll go down the backward glass. Oh, wow. Backward glass. Like the mirror?”
    We all stayed silent for a long moment to let this sink in. Our mirror? Our private story? Our secret tunnel? Connected to something in the real world, something other kids knew about? It was like reading the name of your imaginary friend in the newspaper.
    I broke the long silence. “Mine’s different.” I opened the double diary Rick had given me. Inside, at the page with the skipping rhyme, I had tucked the piece of an old newspaper with the first variation I had found a few weeks after moving in. “‘Lover sweet, bloody feet, running down the silver street. Leave tomorrow when you’re called, truth and wisdom in the walls. Crack your head, knock you dead, then Prince Harming’s hunger’s fed.’ Then there’s this one from the book: ‘Lover sweet, bloody feet, running down the lonely street. Leave tomorrow when you’re called, truth and wisdom deeply walled. Crack your head, knock you dead, then Prince Harming’s hunger’s fed. Head will hurt, death’s a cert. A dead man’s sentence should be curt.’ There’s a bunch of these in here.”
    “Silver street?” said Luka. “As in the Silverlands?” Her name for that growing space between the mirrors had caught on. Jimmy reported that even Margaret and Anthony were using it. “We should be figuring this stuff out,” said Luka. “We just have to—” Her head snapped up. “Oh crap.”
    “What?” said Jimmy. “Is someone breaking in?”
    “Worse,” said Luka. “That was my mom’s car door. All of you—upstairs, now!”
    She snatched chip bags and glasses out of our hands and began pushing us in the direction of the stairs.
    “Go,” she shouted several times.
    Jimmy and Melissa crashed through Luka’s bedroom door together, but it was Melissa’s hand that touched the mirror first.
    Melissa had just a moment to shrug apologetically at us before she pushed out of sight.
    “Lucy Branson, what is all that noise?”
    Jimmy hesitated before the mirror. I knew what he was thinking. If he pushed it in now, the mirror would be hot. Until Melissa pushed through the ever-expanding Silverlands and cleared the mirror, it was open uptime to 1997.
    “Go,” Luka mouthed.
    “Do you have people in here?” Her mother’s voice was quieter now, but full of menace.
    Jimmy looked like a thousand volts of pure terror was sizzling through his fearful body. “Oh, man,” he whispered, barely audible. “Oh, man, Kenny, we gotta go.”
    Further into the future? With my mother coming home soon? And Cindy Branson possibly guarding her daughter’s mirror. “Just wait,” I mouthed. “She’ll clear the mirror in a second.” It couldn’t take much longer.
    Jimmy gave me a look that might have had some kind of apology hidden under the fear, then pushed into the mirror and was gone. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Luka squaring her shoulders and straightening her back the way she did before doing something scary. I realized it probably hadn’t even registered with her why