Backward Glass Read Online Free PDF Page A

took the flashlight, grasped her hand, and let myself be dragged along as she stepped up onto the low surface of the dresser and, with some effort, pushed through the mirror. I could see her, like a fun-house effect, going from two girls, to one-and-a-half, to one, to just a double arm, shortening as it pulled me in.
    If she hadn’t warned me about the heat, I might have let go. As it was, I flinched. On the skin of my wrist I could feel first the freezing surface of the mirror, then the pore-opening fire of whatever lay beyond. It was like sticking your hand into burning Play-Doh.
    Up to my elbow disappeared. The tugging from the other side grew stronger. I felt Luka’s other hand encircle my wrist, and almost stumbled as I got both my feet onto the surface of the dresser and ducked my head.
    As my eyes moved toward the mirror, I turned my head and closed them. The cold mirror flattened my ear at first, then my head went through a heat that felt like it would burn my eyebrows off. I had taken a breath and closed my mouth, and now I imagined I was in some kind of burning, molten silver. We moved through that hot blindness for just a step—
    Then I was falling—out of the other side of the mirror and into something soft that went “Ow!” and punched me hard in the shoulder.
    I opened my eyes to darkness, then brought the flashlight around to Luka’s face.
    She put a finger to her lips. “Don’t talk loud or you’ll wake my mom up. Welcome to 1987.”

Fo u r
    The Rules
    4. When you go uptime to your home, you can bring the chosen kid from the past with you.
    My first impression of the future came from a small room that must have been decorated by someone with a great interest in horses and someone called Bon Jovi. I shone my flashlight beam all around. I guess I had been spoiled by the distant walls of my converted attic, because it seemed claustrophobic.
    “This is the future?” I whispered.
    “What did you expect, space ships and flying cars? Come here, I’ll show you.” Luka dragged me to the window. “Does that tree look familiar?”
    “Kind of.” To me, one tree pretty much looked like the next, but there was something in the way its lowest main branch jutted almost straight out, then changed direction and thrust upward. The street itself was just a quiet suburban subdivision. Did the cars look different? In the dark, I couldn’t tell. Maybe that one’s bumper was a little more rounded, and the same with the roof on that other one two doors down.
    It was the weather that convinced me. “You’ve had more snow,” I said.
    “You’re right. It’s been cold since New Year’s.”
    I lingered a moment at the window. I could see now the fascination she had felt just a few minutes ago on my side of the mirror. That whole world out there was the same, but not the same. I was out there somewhere, ten years older. My parents, too. Every problem I knew about in the world had moved and changed into something else. All because I had stepped through with Luka. I pointed my flashlight back at the dresser. “How did you get it?” I said.
    “My dad bought it at a garage sale just before you moved. I was, like, nine. The mirror won’t break, you know. I once threw an ashtray, full force. Not a scratch.”
    “Do you know me?” I said. “I mean—me now?”
    “Like I said, you moved. Just after we moved in. I don’t really remember you.”
    We were by this time sitting in front of her bed, the flashlight between us. “So what’s cool about the future?” I said at last.
    She shook her head. “It’s not the future, dummy, it’s just 1987. What do you expect, jetpacks and flying cars?”
    “No, just—do you have anything cool?”
    Luka gnawed her lower lip, then came to a decision. “Fine. Come with me. But once we get outside this room—no noise. I don’t want to know what would happen if my mom found a boy here at night.”
    She insisted on turning the flashlight off for our journey downstairs, so I