Free Mirror in the Sky by Aditi Khorana

Meg leaving, then the dog. If the past forty-eight hours were any indicationof what this school year was going to be like, I was really in for it. And yet there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t move away, or stop going to school, or get out of any of it. I was stuck.
    â€œThat was really nice of you to stay with him,” she said quietly. “Most people, they wouldn’t have done that. They would have just kept walking.”
    I opened my eyes, surprised at this revelation. “Most people are horrible.”
    â€œNo doubt.”
    â€œI can’t stop thinking about it. He was this cute little Lab . . . just a puppy. He was running—you know, the way puppies run. All enthusiasm, not even looking. And then that stupid car came out of nowhere and . . . He had no idea that the day would end like that, that his life would end like . . .”
    â€œBut you were there with him, Tara. He was lucky to have you sit with him those last few minutes of his life.”
    â€œWhy do people keep saying that? He was all alone.”
    â€œThat’s not what Nick said. He said that you sat there in the middle of the street for close to an hour. That when the ASPCA came, they told you to leave, but you wouldn’t till they had euthanized the poor thing.”
    â€œIt was heartbreaking . . . the way his big eyes kept looking at me like they were asking me to help him, begging me to take away the pain. He could barely breathe. He just . . . he wanted to die,” I told her. “I’ve never . . . that’s never happened to me. I don’t have any pets; I’ve never watched someone or something die.” I closed my eyes, trying to pull it together. I couldn’t believe it was Veronica, of all people, whom I wasrevealing everything to. I was rarely this open with people. Not even with Meg.
    I thought she’d jet out of the hallway as quickly as possible, make a run for it while she still could. Smile that false smile of hers and tell me her family was waiting, but instead, she continued to linger in the hallway with me, her head leaning against the wall.
    â€œLook, all I’m saying is, you were there, not like that horrible Sarah, who just zipped off in her Porsche. And I think Nick was glad that you were. You were so thoughtful. You’re a sensitive one, I can tell.”
    I had barely spoken ten words to Veronica in the five years I had known her. She thought I was sensitive? And yet when I looked at her now lingering in the hallway, I had to wonder if in another world, in another dimension, we might be friends.
    â€œSeriously traumatic first day of school. Listen, come by and say hi to my parents. They heard what happened. I think they’d want to see you. And . . . there’s a party at Halle’s on Saturday. You should come,” she said before she walked away.

    When my father came out of the kitchen, he wanted to know why I looked like I had been crying. “Is it about Schrödinger’s cat?” he asked. I shook my head. I was still sad, but some of the sadness had left me, and I felt oddly grateful to Veronica. But after I said hello to her parents and her younger brother, after Amit nodded goodbye to my dad, promising he’d close up, after we had loaded my bike into the back of the car and merged onto the Post Road, I had to wonder about a fire drill,a tiny dog, Nick Osterman in his Jeep, Veronica in my father’s restaurant . . . was this what my mother meant when she talked about the fluttering of wings, the migratory patterns of small creatures? A series of events—large and small—that seemed to be creating a new path for me, too fast for me to understand how or why.

NINE
    I T reminded me of the “spot the difference” game we used to play as kids, the one in the back of
Highlights
magazine. Two images side by side, and you circled the things that