Free Eyes in the Mirror by Julia Mayer

usually see. Like if you shined a black light or an ultraviolet light on everything for a second. But those colors were in addition to the colors I see every day. I saw them, all of those colors, when I walked through the mirror.
    By the time I stepped out into Dee’s world, she was already on my side of the mirror. We stared at each other for a moment, I think both realizing that we had taken each other’s bodies and wondering if we had just done something really, really dumb.
    We tried to give each other last-minute tips, but Dee’s tips scared me more than comforted me because, as it turned out, I hadn’t even known Dee’s real name before we switched. I immediately began wondering what else I didn’t know about her. And what else she didn’t know about me. But I could hear Dee’s mom calling me, and I knew I didn’t have time to really worry about it right then. I had to go be Dee. Or Lorna.
    â€œTurn off your light on the way out of the room,” she called to me. I walked into the kitchen and stopped dead in my tracks.
    â€œMs. Herwitz?” I blurted out before regaining my composure.
    She looked at me strangely for a moment, and I was afraid she would remember where the name was from or when people had called her that. But I recovered.
    â€œSorry…I had a weird dream last night. Anyway. Good morning—” I felt the name choke in my throat. I hadn’t said it in so long that it hurt coming out. “Good morning, Mom.” She perked up and smiled, placing a bowl of cereal in front of me before cutting up a banana into some yogurt for herself.
    â€œAnything special going on at school today?” she asked me.
    â€œUmm…” I didn’t want to lie to her. “Not that I know of?”
    â€œSweetheart, don’t bring your voice up at the end of your sentences. It gives you less conviction when you talk.”
    Conviction was the last thing I had right then but I nodded, not wanting to risk accidentally asking another question when I responded to her. We sat in silence for a few minutes while Dee’s mom read the paper and I poked at my cereal. I wasn’t very hungry. I tried to think of something to say, something that would start a conversation with her, just to hear her voice. This was Dee’s mom, but it was my mom’s reflection too. This was the woman my mom saw when she looked in the mirror. But all I could come up with was, “Anything special going on at work today?”
    She laughed. Her smile was so beautiful. “One of the things about being a nurse is that you really don’t know if there’s anything special going on until it starts.”
    I smiled, thinking it must be an exciting job. I had forgotten she was a nurse. I still thought of her as an English teacher. I looked at the faded tablecloth and wondered what it was like to work for a doctor you could never afford to go to.
    â€œYou don’t seem like yourself,” she said, looking over the paper at me for a moment. “Is anything wrong?”
    â€œNo,” I said, and I meant it. I was sitting at breakfast with Mom, having—or trying to have—a full meal before I left for school. Dee’s mom knew her well enough to realize that I wasn’t acting like Dee’s self. I sat thinking about Dee’s mom and about my mom. I wondered if they were similar or if they were exact opposites, like me and Dee. There were so many questions I wanted to ask my own mother, but I couldn’t. This could be the closest I would get…
    â€œTell me again, Mom, what were you like as a teenager? You grew up here, didn’t you? Was the neighborhood still the same?”
    â€œLorna, you’ve heard these stories a hundred times,” she said, looking up at me. “Why are you asking again now?”
    â€œI just like picturing you as a kid…like me.”
    She looked, folded her arms, furrowed her eyebrow, and licked her