The voice belonged to Felix. He grabbed Max’s hand in his giant fist, his eyes filled with rage as he dragged Max by the arm over to a foggy corner of the meadow. Suddenly the fog lifted, and a mountain of bones appeared. The boys were wrestling at the edge of the hill, Felix’s strength winning out, threatening to add Max’s corpse to the grotesque heap.
“Please, Felix,” Portia tried reasoning with her friend. “It wasn’t his fault. It was me, Felix. It was all me…”
Leucosia traveled out of the dream and back to the nurse’s office, jolted by the vision of the bones. She petitioned Morpheus, once again, to grant Portia some selective amnesia. It would be better for the young girl not to remember the details of this dream. They had enough to deal with.
“Portia, wake up, dear. Come on, Portia. No more sleeping…”
♪
“We have our work cut out for us,” Leucosia murmured.
“What do you mean ‘we have our work cut out for us’? Why does everything you say always sound so mysterious?” Portia signed. She couldn’t help but notice that Ms. Leucosia looked suddenly rattled.
“Um, I’m sorry, my dear. My thoughts were elsewhere for a moment. Tell me, did the monster reappear in your sleep just now?” Leucosia seemed distracted and nervous as she began to write out a permission slip for Portia to be readmitted to class. In her haste, she accidentally dropped her pen, and when she bent over to pick it up, a bloodstain seeped through her crisp white shirt.
Portia thought that maybe she was hallucinating again, but as Ms. Leucosia bent down further to the floor, the bloodstain expanded, evolving into a bright red streak that stretched from her shoulders down to her waist. The wound was painful to look at, and Portia could only imagine how much more painful it was to actually sustain.
The nurse was oddly indifferent to it.
Portia motioned to get Ms. Leucosia’s attention and signed, “Are you OK? Your back is bleeding!”
Leucosia hesitated for a millisecond and then offhandedly dismissed Portia’s concern.
“Oh, did that scab open up again? Darn. My cat gave me a whopper of a scratch the other day when I wouldn’t get out of bed to feed him. Nasty feline.”
She avoided Portia’s eyes and carelessly stuffed a wad of paper towel into the collar of her shirt. “Now—where were we? Oh yes, the dream. Did the monster come back to you in your dreams just now?”
“I don’t know—I don’t think so.” She was still a bit queasy from seeing the blood that had seeped out of the nurse’s back and was overcome by an odd sense of déjà vu. “I can’t seem to remember having a dream just now. But I still feel like when I sleep, I can’t really get a good rest. It’s hard to explain.”
Leucosia came back at Portia with something completely unexpected:
“Portia, at your age it’s very common to go through changes—changes that you didn’t ever anticipate. I want you to know that you can come to me about anything that you are going through, no matter how um—” she cleared her throat, “how supernatural your symptoms might be.”
Portia looked up in shock. How did she know? The beautiful school nurse seemed to have a sixth sense devoted entirely to diagnosing the mysterious maladies of Portia Griffin.
She decided to dip her toe in the water. It would be so nice to gain a little bit of insight into her sudden change by someone who had a medical background. She told Ms. Leucosia about the stretching feeling she had been having at the base of her throat, which, thank goodness, had subsided over the last few days.
“Now it’s more like a weird feeling. My throat doesn’t really hurt, but it keeps having, like, an occasional vibration. It hasn’t been as bad the past couple of days, but I don’t know, I feel like I went through some kind of change.”
She signed out the confession hesitantly, scaling the wall of truth, wanting so much to take a leap and reveal everything to Ms. Leucosia, to anyone who could help her make sense of it all. Something was holding her back, though. The wall felt stable, but what was on the other side was terrifying.
Leucosia extended her slender hand to the base of Portia’s throat. Portia could feel the nurse’s fingers rest on a certain spot—a dense spot.
“You know, I’ve heard stories about girls like you, Portia. Girls who couldn’t speak for a long time and then suddenly started going through changes. It’s possible that these changes might even result in the acquisition of a voice.”
Portia looked away. She had been caught red-handed.
“Well, anyway, I’m not a doctor or anything,” Leucosia continued dismissively. “I’m sure you’ve just been experiencing general ‘growing pains.’ It’s part of life. I do think, though, that you should probably get as much rest as you can in the next few days.”
Portia thought about the week ahead of her.
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I only have plans for Wednesday night. Otherwise I’ll definitely take it easy.”
Leucosia asked with a casual indifference “Anything exciting on Wednesday?”
“Just Open Mic Night at the café,” Portia signed. “Shouldn’t be too late of a night, don’t worry.”
But the nurse did look worried.
“Don’t worry, Ms. L, it’s not like I’m going to be drinking or anything.”
This brought a smile from the nurse that was not altogether convincing.
“No, of course not. OK, well then, Portia, I’d like you to come back and check in with me later on this week. Gotta keep my eye on you…”
Once again Portia sensed that Ms. Leucosia’s words were layered with innuendo. She nodded her head, agreeing to visit again soon. When she got up to leave, she suddenly remembered the tune that Leucosia was humming before she fell asleep.
“By the way, what was that that you were humming before? It was so familiar.”
Ushering Portia toward the door, Ms. Leucosia mumbled something about an old lullaby that her own mother used to sing to her.
But when Portia walked out into the busy hallway, something was still agitating her.
I know that melody from somewhere.
The bell had just rung, and everyone was clamoring to get to their lockers. In a cloud of thought, she floated over to her own locker, where Felix was waiting.
“Were you in Ms. Leucosia’s office again?” he questioned her. “What’s going on with you?”
“I fell asleep in Rathi’s class,” she signed back. “So unlike me, right?”
“Seriously. You would think you had Mrs. Crebbs.”
She exchanged a few more idle words with Felix but was still distracted by the frustration of not being able to place the tune. As she and Felix walked into their next class together, it suddenly dawned on her where she had heard it before.
It was the melody she had sung when she had almost killed Harold Trotter.
At lunchtime Portia asked Jacqueline and Charlotte if they wanted to do a little shopping after school that day. She wanted to explore her fashion options for Wednesday night. Charlotte begged off, claiming too much homework. Portia suspected, though, that really she wanted to go home and be with her mom—the tough love stage had kicked in, and Charlotte had been remarkably diligent about it.
Jacqueline, on the other hand, was always up for some retail therapy. Portia loved going shopping with Jacqueline, who had that French knack for making everything she wore, including the RPA uniform, look like couture.
When school was over, the girls walked the short distance into town and decided to kick off their expedition in Jacqueline’s favorite boutique, Haute. Perusing the many racks of edge-of-the-envelope ensembles reenforced Portia’s gratefulness that RPA had uniforms. She hated to have to make fashion decisions.
“How about this, ma cherie?” asked Jacqueline. She was holding up a black stretchy tube that Portia guessed was meant to be a dress but really looked more like a leg warmer.
Portia took out her phone and started typing:
“R u crazy? If my parents saw me in that they’d lock me up! A little more subtle pls.”
The girls continued to scan the shop, Portia fending off Jacqueline’s racier suggestions until they came across a blue silk charmeuse halter top. The blousy shirt had a slight ruffle at its high collar, above a distinct absence of fabric in the back. More comfortable showing off her back than her front, Portia held the shirt up for her friend’s approval.
“That could work—it’s very YSL.” She said the letters in French, and it took Portia a minute to realize she was referencing Yves Saint Laurent. “With a pair of jeans and some strappy heels, it will be parfait!”
Portia grabbed a pair of tissue-thin jeans and headed for the fitting room, delighted to find that the outfit was a perfect call. The blue of the shirt brought out the blue of her eyes, and the drapey fabric fell across her torso perfectly. The three-way mirror afforded her a great view of her shoulders and back, all of which took quite well to such flagrant exposure.
As Portia admired her reflection, she felt an unwelcome return of an odd warmth flowing through her body. She placed her hand in front of the vent on the wall and was relieved to feel some cool air flowing in. But still, she felt a heat—a heat that was alarmingly similar to the one that had attacked her on those first days of school. Her mouth was suddenly dry and pasty, and her palms were slick with sweat. The lights in the fitting room were obscenely bright, blinding her momentarily.
She blinked her eyes purposefully, trying to clear them. When she regained her vision, she was terrified at what stood before her.
Portia touched the glass with her hand and when the mirrored image reached out its hand in time with hers, she knew that it was indeed her own reflection staring back at her.
Only this was not Portia Griffin.
This was Delilah coming at Samson with shears in her hand.
The reflected Portia was taller and shapelier. Her hair seemed twice its usual thickness and fell long onto a chest that could only be described as ample. Her eyelashes formed mascara-laden question marks, which brought out the jewels of her eyes.
Portia stood before the mirror, expressionless from the shock of seeing this alter ego of herself. She wanted to look away, but the image held her transfixed. Exhausted from her sleepless nights and convinced now that she had officially gone crazy, she began to cry. But the tears were not reflected in the face looking back at her.
Instead her alter ego grinned from ear to ear.
Feeling faint, she tried steadying herself by grabbing hold of the chair in the corner of the dressing room. Despite her movement, her reflection remained still except for the widening of its evil smile. Regaining control of herself became out of the question. Portia could feel her heart pounding as the tiny mirrored room spun around her. She wanted to run from the dressing room but couldn’t take her eyes away from her reflection. She thought about screaming out for help but in a fleeting moment of lucidity knew that this was certainly not the way she wanted to debut her new voice.
She was helpless. There was no escaping the smiling specter.
Portia had never fainted before, but that record was about to be broken. Right before she went down, her reflection spoke in a voice that was an uncanny clone of her own:
“The stage is set, Portia. Are you ready?”
She hit the floor of the fitting room with a loud thud.
♪
Jacqueline Rainier was sounding off all kinds of French expletives when Portia began coming to. She was tapping her unconscious friend’s cheeks, not without force, and blowing on her face.
Portia’s eyes flung open. She was still lying on the floor of the dressing room. Somewhere on the periphery, she heard the salesgirl telling an incoming customer that the shop was closed for an emergency and would reopen again soon.
She reached for her phone.
“Did u call 911?”
“No, not yet,” said Jacqueline, “you were only out for
un moment
. What happened?”
Portia was not about to describe the bizarre apparition to her friend. She quickly scrambled through a list of plausible excuses in her head and decided that lack of food would probably appeal most to Jacqueline’s model-thin sensibilities.
“My stomach was bothering me this morn—I haven’t eaten all day. I think it just caught up with me.”
Jacqueline asked the salesgirl if she had any juice or something, and miraculously the waif-like brunette produced a banana from her bag.
Portia wolfed the fruit down quickly, taking great care not to smear the silk of the halter top, which she was still wearing. She noticed for the first time that Jacqueline was wearing a black strapless bandage dress. Though it barely reached mid-thigh, somehow her friend’s interpretation of the dress was chic—merely teetering on the edge of trashy.
“You should def take that,” Portia typed out. Luckily Jacqueline was easily distracted by any talk of fashion.
“It’s a great copy of a Leger, don’t you think?”
Portia had no idea what her friend was talking about but nodded her agreement anyway. Jacqueline started telling her about a pair of shoes she had her eye on that would go perfectly with the dress.
“Are you feeling better? Do you think we can go to the shoe store now that you ate something? We can stop first for a café, no?”
Portia rose to her feet and made a great show of brushing herself off. Her breath had steadied, but still she didn’t dare look in the mirror again.
She nodded her consent to Jacqueline with a weak smile.
The girls paid for their purchases at Haute and thanked the shell-shocked salesgirl for all of her help. They walked in the direction of Footnotes, Jacqueline’s head filled with thoughts of mules and pumps while Portia’s thoughts were consumed by all things that go bump in the night.
♪
On Wednesday morning Portia woke up feeling queasy. She was completely stressed about the day to come. Well, not so much the day as the night. So much was riding on this one silly night at Café on the Ridge. With all the tension between Felix and Max, she felt like a spider caught in a web of male testosterone.
After the events at Haute, though, the cockfight between the boys was the least of her problems. ‘Portia the Vixen,’ who had spoken to her from some hellish hallucinatory universe, was hovering over her shoulder.
“The stage is set—are you ready?”
Are you ready?!
Of course she was ready. OK, OK, so there might be a little teen drama in the backdrop, but that was no cause for her to be suffering hallucinations.
She considered telling Helena that she wasn’t feeling well but knew that if she stayed home from school, there would be no way she would be allowed to go out that night. Deciding to suck it up, she forced herself out of bed.
That morning, though, she did not look in the mirror, and Charlotte seemed puzzled when Portia quietly whispered to her on the bus to school.
“Do I have any, like, pimples or anything I need to know about on my face?”
Charlotte started rummaging through her bag. “No. But I definitely have a mirror in here some—”
Portia grabbed her friend’s hand, and Charlotte looked up at her with terror in her eyes.
“Don’t touch me like that, Portia.” Her voice was loud but shaky.
Portia dropped Charlotte’s hand. Other kids on the bus looked over at them, and she quickly took out her phone.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I just don’t wanna look in the mirror right now.”
Charlotte had turned pale and moved as far away from Portia as the window seat would permit.
“I’m sorry.” She typed the words again.
“It’s OK.” Charlotte smeared away tears with the back of her hand. “It’s just…I can’t let anyone ever touch me like that again…you know—in any kind of harsh way. God, I don’t know if I’ll ever even be able to let someone touch me in a non-harsh way.”
“Even Caleb Samuels?” Portia tried lightening the mood by mentioning the senior who was the object of every RPA girl’s high school crush.
Charlotte smiled. “Well, I don’t know…maybe Caleb. It depends if he’s wearing his rugby jersey.”
Relieved that the moment had passed, Portia decided to try convincing Charlotte once more to come to Open Mic Night. Surprisingly this time her friend agreed.
“Yeah, my mom told me that if I don’t start going out with friends once in a while, she’s going to ‘take matters into her own hands’—whatever that means. I guess tough love can go both ways, right? So I figured I’d go. Wanna come get ready at my house?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Portia typed out, and suddenly a text popped up from Max.
“Hey—on train back from NY. My aunt drove me out at midnight last nt—we got an urgent call from his nurse. Not sure how much longer I can do this…”
After passing out yesterday, Portia had failed to notice the absence of a customary late-night chat with Max. Now she felt guilty for not being more plugged in.
“Sorry, didn’t realize—was feeling a little sick yesterday, but all OK now. As for your dad, I’m sure your visit meant a lot to him.”
She was saddened by Max’s response:
“I don’t think so. I’m not even sure he knew it was me.”
“I don’t know what to say, Max. I’m so sorry.”
“There’s nothing to say,” he wrote back, “I just wanna get back…and see you.”
She couldn’t help but smile.
“R U still planning on going to the café tonight?” she wrote back.
“Def. Need to blow off some steam. First I’m gonna go home and sleep—I hope the boys are not all hyped up when I get there.”
Max was referring to his little cousins. His aunt and uncle had two rambunctious sons, five and six years old. Max usually referred to them as “the Irish twins” until one day the O’Reilly boys thought he was talking about them. In a moment of frustration, Max had declared, “those Irish twins can really be a couple of pains in the ass!” Luke and Lance had their fists balled up immediately until Portia quickly signed to them that Max was talking about his cousins. Ever since then, Max ditched the “Irish twins” nickname and started referring to them innocuously as “the boys.”
“I’m sure you could use some R&R,” Portia wrote back. Then she added, against her shy judgment, “I can’t wait to hear u perform tonight.”
“And I can’t wait to sing to you, Portia. C U later.”
“C u.” And then an “XO” for good measure.
She must have still been smiling to herself after the exchange because Charlotte suddenly broke out into a rare grin and said with great flair, “Ahh—ain’t love grand…”
Portia nodded in agreement and took a chance by whispering when she was certain nobody was looking. “Yes, Charlotte, it really is…”
♪
Portia spent the whole day trying to keep all her balls in the air. Yesterday’s hallucination, the incident with Charlotte that morning, and the knowledge that she would be seeing Max that night were enough to keep her on her toes. But the toughest part of the act was the walking on eggshells she had to do around Felix. She almost wished he wasn’t going at all tonight.
That’s pretty selfish, Portia. Where the hell are your loyalties?
But why did it have to be a question of loyalties? Putting her tray down on their usual lunch table right next to Felix, she elbowed him playfully.
“What’s up?” he said. He seemed like his usual self.
“Nothing much,” Portia mouthed. “Stressing from that chem review.”
“Lucky you’ve been studying so hard with Charlotte.”
Was there a cynical edge to his tone?
She attempted a change of subject:
“So what time are you going to pick me up tonight? I already told my mom that I’d be skipping dinner. I’m assuming Wendy will hook us up with all kinds of food—”
“Yeah, about that,” Felix said, “Why don’t we just meet there? This way it will seem less like a date. I might actually pick up Gabrielle on the way.”
His words stung, but frankly Portia was too tired to deal with one more unpleasant assault.
“Fine,” she signed. With that she grabbed her tray and stormed away from the table.
She wished he would come after her, tell her that nothing had to change just because Max had entered the picture. Or Gabrielle. She wished that he could hear her. Really hear her, not just her voice, but the stuff she was unable to say by signing or speaking.
But when she turned back he was facing the other way, joking around with Luke and Lance. He shot her a quick glance, his eyes mirroring the confusion they were both feeling.
And then that mask he wore returned and Felix turned away again, focusing all of his attention on the antics of the true Irish twins.