The mirror hung obsequiously amid the peeling streaks of wallpaper. I watched the dusk drip down the wall from the cot, wondering why of all the furniture missing from the room, they had chosen to leave such an obliging-looking mirror in such an awful place. The whole basement apartment reeked in a way that you almost didn't notice it and you almost couldn't stop noticing it. It made my lungs feel stiff and my head blurry, not in any way easing my fever.
The mirror was the only reprieve for a soul seeking clarity. It was the only clean article in the room, a polished, glinting sheet of ice to cool a hot brow, the back of a hand.
I think I slept a bit, but it only made me more restless. A dribble of sweat rolled sideways down my forehead as I lay with my cheek being scratched by the coarse, fraying cot.
I had the sudden notion I was thirsty.
The mirror began to look better and better. Finally, I pressed myself up, overcoming the waves of nausea and vertigo, and stumbled to the mirror.
Standing before it, I instantly cooled. There I was, gazing curiously out at myself, with a cool, dry face and sharp eyes green as the hills in April. The clear me smiled wryly.
"Poor sick fool. If only you knew what you really wanted."
I felt my eyes move, examine the unfinished edges of the mirror. "I do know what I want," I said.
"Then why are you waging a war you know you won't win?"
I stared at the clear me. He stared icily back.
"Not the war. The battle. It's the battle we won't win. Gambit."
"Fool of a Johnson," spat the boy in the mirror. I realized with a jolt he looked exactly like my father had in his middle grade pictures. "You know it's already been lost. Give it up while you still have a chance and reap the rewards of joining the winning side. He'll still take you, and you know it."
My head started to hum with the dull preludes of migraine. "So what if he still wants me? He chose the wrong side as soon as he made himself Mr. Corbett's enemy," I snarled. "I stand by my Director."
He glared at me coldly, calculatingly, and I knew— I knew— what he was going to say. Just to prove it, I said it with him.
"Will he stand by you?"
Pain shot through the left side of my skull.
"Chose the winning side," he told me quietly. I ground my palm against my left eye, the other hand against the wall.
"It's what your parents would have wanted."
I choked, "No."
"They didn't give their lives for you to waste yours."
"No," I growled, aware that sobs were rising up in me somewhere. "No."
"If you fight now, what will you have to show for it? Their blood is on your hands."
The air splintered with the shatter of a thousand tiny fragments of someone's soul. I collapsed against the wall, clutching my bleeding knuckles.
There were people around me. Someone tender, pulling my arms and ordering me in her tornado-ish way to stand. I was pushed up stairs, which I tripped over more than once, and felt more than saw Judy's wide grey eyes not laugh at me.
"We shouldn't have left him alone."
"He's worse off than I thought."
"What happened down there?"
"I think he shattered the mirror."
"Deuce take the boy, we can't guard him every second of the day!"
"Shut up, all of you, give him room to breathe."
There were soft fingers on my cheek and something pressed to my lips.
"Drink," the siren told me, and I obeyed. It burned my insides until I realized it was water.
I blinked, with effort, eyelids feeling weighed down and achy.
My back was against a wall. I was sitting, with Judy across from me, holding a cup in her hand.
"Do you want more?"
I extended a hand to take the cup and found it bandaged. My hand froze between us, as I examined it with uncertainty, and Judy took it. She held my disabled hand palm up, and rubbed her thumb over the un-bandaged area of my palm.
"What happened?" she asked quietly, like she already knew but wanted me to say it anyway.
I squeezed my eyes shut and let my head fall back against the wall. My throat felt drier than before the water.
A fly buzzed nearby, and I couldn't help but feel soothed by the sound. Such a quiet, oblivious sound.
"Do you think this is the wrong choice?"
Her thumb froze along my palm. She didn't reply until I finally opened my eyes to challenge her to.
"It may not be the right choice, exactly," Judy answered carefully, "but it sure as heck isn't the wrong one."
I swallowed, and it hurt.
"You stand by Corbett?" I demanded, even though I knew the answer. Even though I'd heard it a million times.
Judy gripped my hand precisely, in just the right place to not hurt me more, but to make a point. It was a I tell you truly kind of a squeeze.
"He stands by us."
I inhaled. I exhaled, shakily. Then nodded. "Okay."
Judy's head tilted and she smiled by way of a frown. She pressed loyal fingers to my face. Fingers that would always catch me when I fell.
"My poor sick fool. If I have to remind you of it every day, if I have to . . . to whisper it in your ear every night when you're sleeping," Judy said laughingly, "I will do whatever it takes to keep it in your ever-doubting mind—" She paused, and exhaled out her nose.
I rubbed the knuckles of my undamaged hand against my eye. "What's that?"
"You are not alone."