Chapter 4

After spending the day doing good, helping in a hospital in the morning and at a girls’ club in the afternoon, I returned home. With the hairs standing up on the back of my neck and my heart racing, I tiptoed to my bedroom and peeked around the wall to see inside. Everything looked normal. But I knew it wasn’t, unless I had imagined the doppelganger in the mirror that morning. I stuck my head into the room before leaning in.

“This is stupid,” I said out loud.

My eyes shot to the mirror. Expecting an answer, I held my breath. Complete silence. I entered the bedroom, strode to my dresser, and stared at the mirror. I waited. All I saw was me—the real me. Not the monster from the morning that looked like me.

I studied my reflection in the mirror. All day, I had wanted to talk to Father Nico, but couldn’t bring myself to call him. For the first time in my life, I was afraid to see my priest, the person I had been so open with. The person I trusted more than anyone. The person who guided me, absolved me when I sinned. Talking to him was always safe. He was caring, not judgmental. I had always felt free to tell him anything. But I couldn’t tell him about an evil spirit in my mirror that looked like me, that talked to me, that had some kind of power over me. I always had two confidantes for getting things off my chest—my priest and my mirror. Now I had none and, without them, I felt more alone than I had ever in my life.

I shook my raised fist at the mirror. “You’re not real!” I shouted. “I will see Father Nico tomorrow and talk to him. He’ll help me through this. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but he will help me. He always does.”

I glared at the mirror only to have my reflection glare back. It was like playing the game where the person who blinked first lost. But nothing happened. It must have had all been in my mind. Father Nico would help me. I decided to go to the church and see him first thing in the morning.

“Dinner’s ready.”

I jumped at the voice.

But it wasn’t the mirror. It was my mother shouting from downstairs. I realized how tense my body was. I subconsciously wiped the perspiration off my upper lip even though it was not warm in my bedroom. After releasing a deep sigh, I walked out of my bedroom. In the hall, I stopped, expecting the mirror to call me back. But there was nothing but silence. Of course there was nothing but silence. Doppelgangers didn’t exist. It was all in my mind.

I went downstairs to dinner.

While Mom and I were eating, a thought came out of nowhere. “Did Father Nico baptize me?”

“No, he wasn’t the priest back then. He’s too young. He couldn’t even have been a priest then. He’s a lot closer to your age than mine. Don’t you remember Father O’Malley?”

I shook my head. “The only priest I remember is Father Nico.”

“Father O’Malley was a wonderful priest. He helped me through a tough time.”

“What happened?”

My mother gasped and started choking on the piece of lamb in her mouth. She coughed and choked, pounding her breastplate with a fist until the food flew out.

“Mom! Mom! Are you okay?!”

My mother took a few deep breaths and then sipped some water from her glass. She looked at me with an expression I had never seen. Had she almost died?

“That’ll teach me to talk with my mouth full,” my mother said with a forced chuckle.

“I’m sorry I made you choke.”

“It wasn’t you, dear. It just went down wrong.”

“So what did the other priest help you with?”

My mother smiled. “That’s between me and my priest. I don’t ask you what you talk to Father Nico about, do I?”

“I didn’t mean to pry. I understand. There’s something I want to talk to Father Nico about that I wouldn’t talk to anyone else about.”

One of my mother’s eyebrows raised. “Really? About Corbin?”

“Corbin? No! What about Corbin?”

My mother looked flustered. “You’re all grown up now and ... Well, I’m your mother. You can talk to me if you have questions about boys.”

I looked at my plate and shuffled the food around with my fork. “It’s not about Corbin. It’s something else. I’ll talk to Father Nico about it.”

After dinner my mother and I watched a movie and then went to bed. I didn’t tiptoe into my bedroom this time. The demon in the mirror was a figment of my imagination. It must have been brought on by guilt. Guilt caused by the way I had felt with Corbin at the movie theater and later on the porch, and especially what I had done in bed afterward. Father Nico would help me deal with it. While changing into my pajamas, I tried to figure out how to tell Father Nico about my frantic masturbation incident. I had previously confessed using the pillow in general terms, blushing emphatically all the while, but what happened last night eclipsed that.

I got into bed and reached for the lamp on my bedside table to turn it off.

“You should have asked your mother more about Father O’Malley.”

I snatched my hand back before it reached the lamp and ducked underneath the blanket. Who said that? I thought. It must be the mirror. But the doppelganger isn’t real. I lay in the darkness of the blanket, trembling.

“You can’t hide from me,” the voice said. “Get out from under the blanket.”

I brought my knees up and hugged them to my chest, making myself as small as possible by lying on my side in the fetal position. The voice couldn’t be real. It had to be in my mind. If I ignored it, it would go away. I simply had to make it through the night so that I could talk to Father Nico in the morning. Maybe he could do an exorcism on me.

“So you want to see whose will is stronger,” the voice said. “Okay, I’m up for the challenge.”