Prologue

As with any good story, this one begins with a woman.

I won’t call her a “girl”, as that would be an insult to the memory. While she definitely didn’t have that

mature-age look about her that everyone seems to crave – in fact, she was almost baby-faced – but

there was something about the way she carried herself that won’t let me see her as anything else.

Chapter 1

I was just a college student then, a junior, stuck in a rut about what classes to take next semester and

how the hell any of it was going to help me in real life. I had papers to finish on topics I wasn’t even

studying for a degree, teachers who graded harder than they led us on to believe, and someone was

always trying to explain that college really meant something, you know? or that I should live it up, these

were the best years of my life.

God I hope not.

And to top it all off, it was all so terribly boring. Nothing new, nothing terribly interesting, all monotony

and routine. That is, obviously, until I saw her.

I was walking in the stacks in the library, third floor, looking for the single study room I’d just checked

out the key to. I glanced at the sickly green plastic tag again, the paper taped to one side proclaiming the

rules of the rooms (no drinks by the computers, etc.) and on the other side, in bold print, the number I

was looking for: 311.

The library on our campus was ridiculous, built around an off-center tube containing a large circular

staircase wrapped around the outside edge. People on campus called it the Star Destroyer, named after

the giant labyrinthine ships of Star Wars origin, and it was easy to see why. It was a huge, triangular, red-

brick block just dropped in the middle of an otherwise stately outdoor plaza. It had all these ridiculous

antennae sticking out the top – probably set up by this or that teacher from the some-science-or-

another department for whatever kind of data collection – a “tower” containing the film collection

(lovingly called The Bridge by the students), and everything in the building was arranged around that

same circular staircase. As could be expected, absolutely nothing was where one would logically expect

it to be. Finding something as simple as a study room was a chore on a good day, and whatever afterlife

you adhere to save you should you actually need a book.

I wandered around, passing numbers that were far too large (341, 342), working my way around the

outside edge until I reached the side of the building (I’m sure this time) that I was looking for. Back

among the shelves, somewhere between “BD 171 to BF 23” and “BF 319.5 to BF 441” was the room I

needed. The genius architect behind this massive monument to the 70s has simply dropped a large

block in the middle of the stacks, and the room I needed was one of the 12 placed there to fill in the

empty space. I meandered through the shelves, reading random titles as I went along (Women’s

Reflections on the Complexities of Forgiveness by Wanda Malcolm, The Official Catalog of Psychological

Tests, 2nd Edition) until I found the door on the corner of the block. I put the key in the lock, fully

intending to turn it and sort-of get halfway down to “business”, but something held me back. Even as I

look back now, it’s not something I can really explain, not a feeling or experience that would be defined

by terms in an everyday dictionary. It was almost like that moment of sudden clarity that hits you right

as you realize you’ve left the oven on and won’t be home for hours, or that feeling during an essay test

when the answer swings around and hits you so hard you almost start from the shock of actually

knowing it at all.

I turned on the spot slowly, looking, hoping there was some physical source of this feeling. The only

thing around the doorway was library shelves stretching off into the distance on either side and straight

down the row in front of me were two empty study carrels up against a brick wall. I couldn’t hear

anything from nearby, so there was no one perusing the books. I took a step to the right, looking down

the next row, slowly panning the area and around the corner, but saw nobody in the carrels lining the

walls. Slowly, I stood back up straight, still scanning the surrounding area, but hearing and seeing

absolutely nothing. I leaned to the left, looking down the next aisle. This one ended in more carrels, but

these were lined in front of a large bank of windows…only there was something wrong with some of the

reflections. The carrels were empty save one, they and their single red-haired inhabitant mirrored in the

rain-marbled panes. Panning down the row, I noticed that the reflections got fuzzier the closer to the

edge of the window I looked. The one nearest the edge of the window was physically empty, but the

glass told another story.

A dark-haired young woman sat with the back of her left shoulder turned towards me, cross-legged in

the hard wooden chair. She was leaning on her left elbow, placed squarely in the middle of the desk

surface, her hand supporting the back of her head. A noticeable tattoo on the back of her neck and

shoulder peeked out of her purple boatneck sweater – a quote of some sort, but I couldn’t make out the

script through the rain. Her hair was bundled up high and loose on the back of her head, chin tipped

down as if she was looking intently at something in her lap. As I got a little closer, I noticed that she was

reading from a brown-leather bound book, one with the kind of replacement cover used in public

libraries after the originals have fallen off from overuse. She shifted her head on its pedestal a little,

flipped to the next page, then suddenly looked up, as if someone had just called her name. As she slowly

closed the book in her lap, the image became less clear, until finally disappearing as the book itself

finally shut. I blinked, trying to come to some sort of understanding as to what had just happened,

reached out and touched the glass pane. Obviously, I was just overtired, hallucinating a dream girl –

although I’m not sure how I could tell from just the back of her neck. Obviously, this college thing was

taking its toll on my sanity. Good thing I only had 2 semesters left.

***

“Pratima!”

She snapped her head up to look at the blond girl standing in front of her.

“What you reading, love?”

A smile inched over her face, slowly closing the book on her lap.

“Nothing, just this old thing someone recommended to me. It’s pretty good, a little odd though. Makes

you feel like you’re being watched.”

Dakota tipped her curly head a little to the right, looking intently at her bookish best friend.

“You are so into the weird stuff, I don’t even know how I’ve managed to stick around this long. You’re

lucky I have at all.”

“A comforting thought, that. To know my best friend would be able to just walk away after all this time.”

Dakota’s eyes widened, looking hurt. “You know I’m only kidding! As if I could ever do that to you!”

When she noticed the smile hadn’t left Pratima’s face, Dakota dropped her insulted act and held out her

hand with a pointed shake of her curls.

“Come on. Let’s go get some overpriced coffee. I hear they’ve got this great blonde roast now!”

Pratima reached up and allowed Dakota to pull her to a standing position.

“Sure.”

Dakota turned and practically flounced away as Pratima bent to gather up her bags, dropping the book

into her purse. She straightened suddenly, her brow furrowing, and raised her hand to the back of her

neck as she turned to look out the window behind her. She was absolutely positive something had just

touched her.

-----

Chapter 2

The glass was cold under the palm of my hand, unsurprising given the almost unrelenting rain over the

last three days. I don’t know what I was expecting, really. After all, it’s not like I lived in a Lewis Carroll

novel and was liable to fall into an upside-down acid-trip world through any vaguely reflective surface. I

shook my head and turned around, intending to head back to my study room, only to almost run face-

first into that red-headed boy who had been sitting down the way. Now, it’s not like I’m short for a guy

my age (21, thanks for asking), but this guy was huge. I definitely did not expect him to be this tall from

what I saw of him sitting down.

He just looked down at me, cocked his head to the right a bit, and took a small step back. He eventually

spoke, never taking his eyes off me the whole time.

‘Sorry. Didn’t expect you to turn that quick.’

I apologized, said it was my fault because I hadn’t been paying attention, tried to edge past him and get

on my way. I had gotten around him and was heading back to my room when he spoke again.

‘I take it you saw someone.’

I turned, asked him what he meant as he was obviously the only person who had been sitting there.

There’s no way I could have seen the reflection of a person who wasn’t there in a college library

window, right? When I look back, I should have noticed that he didn’t seem confused by my suspiciously

specific denial like a normal person would have been. Instead, he just nodded – never taking his eyes off

me – then turned back to his previous seat and picked up his textbook as if nothing had happened. I

eventually shook the whole thing off and finally got around to start doing some work.

***