Mirrored by Alex Flinn Page A

school to talk some more tomorrow.”
    “That would be great. I usually sit with Jennifer at lunch.”
    “I know.” How I knew.
    “We could sit together until she gets back.”
    “And talk about birds. Get your mind off things.”
    I hung up and went to bed happy, Grimalkin purring at my feet. Jennifer would be gone for weeks. Weeks! I had Greg all to myself. And now, I wasn’t the frizzy-haired, hook-nosed loser I’d been. I was beautiful, talented, confident—at least on the outside. And, onthe inside, I was the girl he’d liked all along, the smart girl. At least, smarter than Jennifer.
    The next few weeks were the happiest of my life. Greg and I ate lunch together, studied together, I drove him to school. Even Jennifer’s friends were nice to me. They’d seen me pull the dog off her. At first, Greg and I mostly talked about Jennifer, how amazing she was, but soon, we branched off into less-annoying topics, subjects like life, college (we both wanted to be environmental lawyers), current events, subjects an idiot like Jennifer couldn’t possibly talk to him about.
    We planned to see the movie Dead Poets Society, which was playing at the mall. “It wouldn’t be a date,” I told Greg. “We could just go as friends.”
    “I guess it’s okay. Jennifer didn’t want to go to that movie anyway. She said it looked stupid.”
    Jennifer’s stupid. But I didn’t say it. I didn’t want Greg mad at me. I wished there was some magic I could work to make Greg see how awful Jennifer was, how we were meant to be together. I couldn’t use magic to make bad things happen to people, at least not directly. But what about making someone fall in love with me?
    I stopped by Kendra’s house the day of our movie non-date. School was out now, and Greg was visiting Jennifer. I put the question to Kendra.
    “Tell me again why I can’t cast a spell to make Greg love me?”
    Kendra winced. She hated the word spell . Said it smacked of mystical books and the silly TV series, Bewitched , about a housewife who made magic by wiggling her nose. Magic, she said, came from deep within. It was a matter of harnessing it, rather than learning it.
    “You can’t make someone fall in love with you. Love comes from within too.” She reached out her hand, an awkward gesturefor her, and touched my shoulder. “Unfortunately, you had several opportunities to work your magic, so to speak, with Greg. It hasn’t worked.”
    “It’s so unfair.” I bit my cuticle. “I have magic powers. I should be able to have anything I want. But this is the only thing I ever wanted.”
    “Is it really? The only thing?”
    I thought about it, shredding my cuticle as I did. Of course it wasn’t the only thing. But Greg was the main thing. Had I gotten him easily, maybe I’d be satisfied, but, as it was, I wanted more. I wanted to be beautiful, more beautiful than Jennifer, than everybody. I was. And powerful. I was that too. But that wasn’t enough, or hadn’t been. I was so sick of people making fun of me that now I wanted to be better than everyone, at everything. And obliterate my enemies. “Okay, maybe he’s not all I want, but he’s the main thing. That and world domination.” I waited for Kendra to laugh, but she didn’t. “But without Greg, I’ll never be happy.”
    “Oh, dear.” Kendra pressed her finger to her brow.
    “What?”
    “I’m just worried you’ll never be happy.”
    I took another bite of my cuticle. This time, it bled, but I immediately stopped it.
    Great. I could save money on Band-Aids. What an astounding ability I had.
    Greg and I did go to the movie, though, which was about this boarding school teacher who encourages his repressed students to pursue their dreams, write poetry, seize the day. Then, one boy kills himself because he wants to be an actor, but his parents don’t see it that way. Of course, the teacher gets fired.
    “So that was a downer,” I said to Greg as we walked through the mall afterward. “The