Diaries of an Urban Panther (12 page)

“Not smart enough to know better.”

“The shifting. The brushing. I see you, Violet. You’re the right girl. Now you’ve just got to step up to the plate.”

“Step up to the plate? Are you giving me a motivational speech? Is this about to turn into
Hoosiers
?”

He grunted. “If you’ve been called, then it’s here. Whatever They’ve got planned,” he pointed to the sky. “And you’re helpless to stop it.”

“I’ll see about that,” I said. “They’ve never gotten on my bad side.”

Chapter Eleven

T
here once was a little girl who was very lonely. All she had were her books. She read everything she could at the library, so she started to read everything at the local bookstores. She read adventure, and horror, and literature and how-to manuals and self-help books. By the time she was twelve, she had read every book in every store down her block.

Until one day there was a new store on the block. And when the girl found out it was a bookstore, nothing filled her with more joy. She threw open the door and relished the sound of the bell on the handle.

The owner, a small old man, pushed his glasses up his nose and looked over the counter.

“These books aren’t for little girls,” he said. “Get out.”

“But your’s are the only books I haven’t read, sir,” the girl pleaded.

“Go read
Alice in Wonderland
.”

“I have. All of them.”

“Go read
Moby Dick
. That’s safe enough for a little girl.”

“I have, sir.”

The man grunted. “
War and Peace
?”

“Twice sir, once in Russian.”

The man leaned down from his perch behind the counter to get a better look at the girl. “No. No Children.”

I interrupted my mother’s story. “Mom, this one is the
Neverending Story
, I’ve already read this one.”

My mother frowned and stopped rubbing my back. “Don’t you want a story? Isn’t that what you begged for? ‘
Mom, I’m sick. Can you come tell me a story
?’ ”

“Okay, but you’re teaching me plagiarism.”

My mother sighed and started back with her story.

So the little girl pleaded and pleaded, day after day until the man finally said yes. “Only the children’s section.”

“You won’t even know I’m here.”

She skipped back to the section under a small lattice archway that read ‘Childrens.’

The section was colorful and chaotic and she loved it. It was like a garden of books. And they were all for her.

She decided that she needed to be organized about her approach. She would start at one end of the top shelf and work her way down to the stacks on the floor.

Everyday after school she would walk to the bookstore, sometimes bringing an apple or brownies left over from her lunch to the grumpy man behind the counter and she would read for two hours a day until it was time to go home for dinner.

One day she was sitting in the middle of the section, cross-legged on the floor, hunched over one of her books when something flashed in the corner of her eye. She looked up to find a floor-length mirror with only her reflection looking curiously back at her.

She went back to reading.

But the next time it happened she swore that the reflection was slower than hers.

The third time it happened she freaked out and was out the door before the book from her lap had even hit the floor.

The next day, she peeked into the section and only saw herself in the mirror. There was a book in the middle of the floor. It was the only one there, as if the section had been cleaned.

She approached the book with great apprehension. It was the book that she had been reading yesterday. The page was marked with a red ribbon.

She watched the mirror as she sat cross-legged in the middle of the section. Slowly she put the book on her lap and opened it. Her reflection in the mirror did the same.

She pulled the ribbon out and put it on the floor. She’d read about a page when she looked up at the mirror to see her own reflection playing with the ribbon. She sat frozen for a moment as she watched the girl of her reflection smile and wave and then lean forward to press her hand on what looked like her side of the mirror.

The girl slowly leaned forward to touch the surface of the mirror.

“Hi,” the reflection her chirped. “I really like this one. Can you keep reading it?”

The girl just sat in awe. When she touched the mirror, her own voice echoed inside her head. “If you are reading it, then it appears on my side and I can read it.”

“What are you?”

“A mirror.”

“But you look like me.”

“I look like lots of things.”

The girl pulled her hand away from the mirror and thought for a moment. This was crazy. But she had read crazier things.

Her reflection smiled and patted the surface of the mirror again. The girl reluctantly put her hand back against the cool surface.

“Do you think that you could show me the pictures from your side?”

The girl pulled the book to her lap again and flipped the book around to show her the picture at the beginning of Chapter 12, where they were in the book.

As the girl watched the reflection clap silently, she saw that the picture was different in the mirror. On her side it was just a girl and a horse; in the mirror, it was a raging steed and a princess.

“Why? What?” the girl said as she kept looking between the two pictures.

“The truth of everything is reflected in a mirror,” her reflection said.

I
woke up in the middle of the field in back of Iris’s property. Stark naked, I gasped and covered myself. It had to be close to morning, the moon was low in the sky and the birds had begun to sing.

“Iris!” I called out. Surely she would be here somewhere and it wasn’t like my pale ass skin was hard to lose in this light.

“Hold your horses.”

The woman shuffled through the high grass and launched my terry cloth robe at me. I quickly shoved my arms through the sleeves and tied the belt around me.

“Chaz hasn’t taken the book back yet has he?”

“No, tomorrow.”

“Good.”

It was insane. I knew that it was insane. My mother wove stories almost every night before I went to bed. Some were simple; some would take whole weeks to tell me and every night I would lay on my stomach while she rubbed my back and created the most beautiful worlds for me.

But me standing in front of a mirror with an ancient book was insane. But then again, so was what was in the book—and my current life. Maybe walking on the crazy side was just what I needed to do.

“When you say you dreamt the answer, was it like a prophetic dream?” Iris asked as she shuffled behind me in white slippers.

I chewed on my lower lip as I got everything into place. “It’s just a story my mother told me.”

“So, why do we need to do this at 5 a.m.?”

“Fine. Go to bed then. But you’ll miss my descent into madness.”

Iris put her hands on her hips and snorted. Just then, Chaz stuck his head in the doorway. His hair splayed out in all different directions and his lips were swollen with sleep. “What’s the commotion?”

“In my world we call it ‘Crossing the Threshold.’ To everyone else, I’ve just officially gone insane.”

Chaz rubbed his eyes and then ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m going back to sleep.”

But he walked into the room and helped me with the full-size mirror in Iris’s bedroom. I’d sat cross-legged on the floor and put the book in my lap. I flipped open to the page, my page, and took in a deep breath as I turned it around in the mirror.

I didn’t realize that I had squeezed my eyes shut until I had to pry them open to look at my reflection in a mirror.

Nothing. There was nothing new about the text. Now it was just gobbledygook backwards. There was no Jabberwocky here, just an Alice on the floor looking like an idiot.

“Anything?” Chaz asked. He lifted up his too tight T-shirt and scratched at his hip, nudging his sleep pants a little too low on his hips.

I diverted my eyes quickly and rested my head on the binding of the book.

“I’m sorry, honey.” Iris said with a warm hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t we work on it tomorrow?”

My head stayed on the book. That was it. That was all I had. I finally looked up to see Chaz watching me in the mirror.

“I’ll see what I can hunt down,” Chaz said as he turned to go. There was a glint of moonlight off his watch that threw light onto the mirror.

I knew that I was tired, but not tired enough to hallucinate the quick flash of something across the pages of the book.

“Moonlight!” I jumped up and tossed the book on the bed. “Get the mirror into moonlight.”

Chaz helped me pull the mirror in front of Iris’ bedroom window. There was just enough light left to reflect back a puddle of light on the floor beneath the window.

I hoisted the book again, turned to the page and again sat cross legged on the floor.

This time when I opened the book and turned it around to be read in the mirror, it was an epiphany. Like when you’re at the eye doctor and he clicks that last monocle down and everything suddenly comes into focus.

In the blink of an eye, the text went from unreadable to clear as day. The English letters swirled beautifully and I was able to see my name in the middle of the verse.

“Daughter of Jourdaine,

Oh Daughter of Mine

Born of the ides will fall on two and rise on four

And will protect crown and Veil from her dark reflection.”

The light faded and the last line went back to being unreadable again. I dropped my head back against the wall with a heavy thud. “The light’s gone.”

“Good thing moonlight is a renewable resource,” Chaz said as he put the mirror back where it belonged.

Iris stood, her hand folded at her waist. “How do you feel?”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand it.”

“Some never do,” Iris sighed. “But there you have your proof. You were able to read it when you accepted who you were.”

“Because I was able to handle the shift?”

Iris simply shrugged.

“What gave you the mirror idea?” Chaz asked as he offered a hand to pull me up off the floor.

“A story my mother told me.”

He pulled a little too roughly and I flew up and almost landed in his arms, the book acting as a padded shield between our bodies.

“Is it you?” he whispered.

My eyes began to water. Something in the back of my head had said that if I could prove to them that I was the wrong girl, all of this would just go away. But I wasn’t the wrong girl. I knew it. Like I had written those words myself. The words seeped into my head, my heart and I knew. “My birthday is March fifteenth.”

I let go of his hand and took a step back. I pushed my hair behind my ear and looked over at Iris.

“When my family came over from France, they changed our name to Jordan. It was originally Jourdaine.”

“What about that second line?” Chaz asked. “The daughter of mine?”

I licked my lips. “Do we know who wrote the book?”

Iris shook her head. “It’s ancient.”

“I’ll find out for you,” Chaz offered quickly. “When I return the book to Balzac.”

Slowly, I handed the book to Iris. “Never gonna sleep now. Thanks a bunch.”

“Always here to please, your highness, now get out. I need my beauty sleep.”

P
acking is not my strong suit. Somehow I had managed to get all this stuff in here to begin with and was glad for my compulsive overpacking, but I just stared at the pile of clothes on the bed and the little bag in my hand. It just didn’t seem physically possible. Could I just leave the stuff here? Seemed that I would be back in twenty-eight days.

Stuffing everything in the nylon bag, I decided to just wash everything when I got home. I was dallying and I knew it. I didn’t want to leave here, to face the real world, because this was the first place that had felt like home in a long time.