“I’m hungry.”
“You’ve just eaten. How was school, by the way? Anything interesting happen?”
“Alan and Cathy broke up.”
“Are either of them anyone I should care about?”
“Not really.”
“Well, OK then.” He narrowed his eyes. “How about you? Do you have any … romances I should know about?”
“Nope. Not a one.”
“Well, good. Excellent. There’ll be plenty of time for boys when you leave college and become a nun.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you have such ambitious dreams for me.”
“Well, I am the father figure. So, anniversary present?”
“How about a weekend away? Spend your anniversary in Paris or somewhere? You can book it tomorrow, head off on Saturday.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea. That’s a really good idea. You’d have to stay with Beryl though. Are you all right with that?”
The lie came easily. “Sure.”
He kissed her forehead. “You’re the best daughter in the world.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“You know the way I love you so much?”
“I do.”
“Will you go out and get some more milk?”
“No.”
“But I love you.”
“And I love you. But not enough to get you milk. Have some toast.”
He walked out of the kitchen and Valkyrie sighed in exasperation. She went to put on some toast, but they were out of bread, so she took some hamburger buns and slid them into the toaster. When they popped up, she covered them with freshly microwaved beans and took the plate up to her room, closing the door behind her.
“OK,” she said, putting the plate on her desk, “you can go back in the mirror.”
The reflection slid out from beneath the bed and stood. “There are a few homework questions still to do,” it said.
“I can do them. Are they hard? Never mind. I can do them. Anything else happen today?”
“Gary Price kissed me.”
Valkyrie stared. “What?”
“Gary Price kissed me.”
“What do you mean? Like, kissed you kissed you?”
“Yes.”
Her anger made her want to shout, but Valkyrie kept her voice low. “Why did he do that?”
“He likes you.”
“But I don’t like him!”
“Yes, you do.”
“You shouldn’t have kissed him! You shouldn’t be doing anything like that! The only reason you exist is to go to school and hang around here and pretend to be me!”
“I was pretending to be you.”
“You shouldn’t have kissed him!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m supposed to!”
The reflection looked at her blankly. “You’re upset. Is it because you weren’t around for your first kiss?”
“No,” Valkyrie shot back.
The reflection sighed and Valkyrie looked at it sharply. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“You sighed, like you were annoyed.”
“Did I?”
“You did. You’re not supposed to get annoyed. You don’t have any feelings. You’re not a real person.”
“I don’t remember sighing. I’m sorry if I did.”
Valkyrie opened the wardrobe to show the reflection the mirror.
“I’m ready to resume my life,” she said, and the reflection nodded and stepped through. It stood there in the reflected room, waiting patiently.
Valkyrie glared at it for a moment, and then touched the mirror and the memories came at her, flooding her mind, settling alongside her own memories, getting comfortable in her head.
She had been at the lockers, in school, and she’d been talking to … No, the reflection had been talking to … No, it had been her, it had been Valkyrie. She’d been talking to a few of the girls, and Gary had walked up, said something that everyone laughed at, and the girls had walked off, chatting. Valkyrie remembered standing there, alone with Gary, and the way he smiled, and she remembered smiling back, and when he leaned in to kiss her, she had let him.
But that was it. There was the memory of the thing, of the act, but there was no memory of the feeling. There were no butterflies in her stomach, or nerves, or happiness, and she couldn’t remember liking any of it because there was no emotion to accompany it. The reflection was incapable of emotion.
Valkyrie narrowed her eyes. Her first kiss and she hadn’t even been there when it happened.
She left the beans on toasted buns on the desk, her hunger fading, and sorted through the rest of the memories, sifting through to the most recent. She remembered watching herself climb through the window, then she remembered sliding beneath the bed, waiting under there, and then crawling out when she was told.
She remembered telling herself that Gary Price had kissed her, and the argument they’d just had, and then she remembered saying, “You’re upset. Is it because you weren’t around for your first kiss?”, and the sharp “No” that followed. And then a moment, like the lights had dimmed, and then she was saying, “I don’t remember sighing. I’m sorry if I did.”
Valkyrie frowned. Another gap. They were rare, and they never lasted for more than a couple of seconds, but they were definitely there.
It had started when the reflection had been killed in Valkyrie’s place, months earlier. Maybe it had been damaged in a way they hadn’t anticipated. She didn’t want to get rid of it and she didn’t want to replace it. It was more convincing than ever these days. If all Valkyrie had to worry about was a faulty memory, she figured that wasn’t too high a price to pay.
