The Girl Behind the Glass Read online

  “I don’t think Mr. Muffin should lick that,” Hannah said.

  “Why not?” Anna said. “Cats lick dirt all the time.”

  “Not that dirt,” Hannah said.

  “Isn’t dirt dirt?” Anna said.

  Hannah knew this dirt was different, although she didn’t know why.

  After dinner, the twins went upstairs. Tomorrow was the first day of school. Both twins were so excited, their thoughts bounced around too much to read as they filled their new backpacks. Anna’s was lime green with blue stitching. Hannah’s was orange with red stitching. All the pens and notebooks were brightly colored too. School must be much more fun now—if one was allowed to go.

  “I’ll sharpen the pencils.” Anna grabbed both boxes.

  “I’ll help you,” Hannah said.

  “There’s only one sharpener. I’ll be right back.” Anna ran downstairs.

  Hannah stood in the doorway. Why was she nervous about staying in the room? She thought that was silly. It was even sillier to feel nervous about school. School was school—even if sometimes the teachers arranged the desks in a circle. She always liked school, especially if there were decent books. But she couldn’t help thinking that when she walked into the classroom tomorrow, she wouldn’t have Anna.

  She turned away from the door. The dark outside made a mirror out of the window. There was her face behind the glass. Now she could see how anxious she felt.

  Beyond that face was the field. She couldn’t see it. She didn’t need to—she remembered the ditch where someone used to walk and the tree with red leaves and the golden grass growing on top of stinky muck.

  She wondered why the field was so mucky. She wondered if it was a wetland. She reminded herself that wetlands were good. Wetlands were supposed to be saved and protected. She had learned that at school. So why had the cat been so frightened?

  It must have seen a snake or a fox or an alligator escaped from a zoo. Hannah would have believed a sensible explanation, if she hadn’t been standing in a room in the house on Hemlock Road.

  Hannah couldn’t sleep until she got out one of her old favorite books to read. Charlotte’s Web was really “terrific”—ha! The critters in the house would have been very impressed that someone had written a book whose heroine was a spider.

  When morning came, Hannah put the book in her backpack. It would hardly make up for not having Anna.

  “No one will even know we’re twins,” Hannah said.

  “Duh.” Anna pointed to their faces. She was wondering why Hannah was so anxious. She never used to be.

  “They won’t know if they don’t see us together and we won’t be together. We should show them we aren’t ashamed of being twins,” Hannah said.

  “How?”

  “We’ll dress alike.”

  Hannah was so insistent that Anna agreed, even though she remembered what Selena had said about first first impressions.

  After Selena left for her school, the twins came downstairs in identical crimson dresses with white lace collars. Another girl wore a dress like that, once upon a time. Except the twins’ wrists stuck out two inches from the ends of their sleeves and their skirts came nowhere near their knees. Whenever they breathed, small rips sprouted around their waists.

  “Why on earth are you wearing the dresses your grandma bought you three Christmases ago?” Mrs. Zimmer said.

  “Twins dress alike,” Hannah said.

  “You never wanted to before,” Mrs. Zimmer said.

  “You never split us up before,” Hannah said.

  “You should have told me. I could have made you something cute,” Mrs. Zimmer said.

  “We did tell you,” Anna said.

  “We wanted to be together,” Hannah said.

  “You never listen to us.”

  “Just to Selena.”

  Mrs. Zimmer sighed. “I’ll make you identical tops you can wear tomorrow. Run upstairs and find some clothes that fit.”

  Anna thought that would solve the problem. She hurried back up the stairs. Unfortunately there wasn’t time to change. One of the big yellow buses that always zipped past the house on Hemlock Road screeched to a halt at the end of the driveway and opened its door. Someone in the back of the bus shouted, “Why did we stop at the house with green eyes?”

  It was a boy. Boys were the ones who usually bothered the house, especially at Halloween. A long time ago, the green eyes appeared when those boys threw rocks. The shattered glass hurt so much. Like another insult. Another injury. Didn’t those boys realize that things were bad enough? They didn’t know or care. Then years passed. Broken windows became a nuisance. The green eyes faded into a joke. Had this boy with round cheeks been to the house? Had he made a mad dash to touch the glass where the eyes used to appear? Perhaps.

  The branch of the hemlock waved. The boy kept right on talking. “What kind of kids would live here? Nobody would—except insane people.”

  The driver honked the horn.

  The house’s front door opened. Hannah and Anna came out and walked side by side toward the bus. Hannah was nervous, but she knew better than to hold Anna’s hand.

  The round-cheeked boy howled when he saw them. “Those are loonies from the loony bin. I bet they dress alike because they belong to a cult. They’re disciples of the green eyes.”

  As Hannah and Anna climbed the steps to the bus, they were met by the roar of children laughing. This had never happened to them before. They were so shocked; they stood frozen by the driver.

  “Sit down, disciples!” the round-cheeked boy yelled. “Don’t make us late for school.”

  “You sit down, Hubert. You talk too much,” said a girl with too many red curls. “Hey, new girls. Come sit by me.”

  Hannah slid into a seat across from the redheaded girl. Anna sat right next to the girl. Anna thought this was only right because the girl had stood up for them. Anna smiled at the redheaded girl. Didn’t she care that Hannah was sitting by herself?

  Maybe Hannah wouldn’t have to stay alone.

  The bus was parked right at the edge of the driveway. The window next to Hannah was open. It looked like a crack into a new world. It looked like anyone could slip through the gap, into the bus and away.

  It hadn’t been possible to leave yesterday. It had been too near the potent place. Today was different. There couldn’t be anything wrong with going to school with the girls. Maybe after all these years …

  But the bus drove away. No one could follow it. No one.

  It hurt a little more this time, because there had been hoping. And now Hannah would have to be alone.

  The branch of the hemlock tree waved good-bye, good luck. Hannah was going to need it.

  Inside the house, Mrs. Zimmer sketched a shirt with a diagonal neck. She muttered as she erased the lines and drew again.

  “They should have told me they wanted to dress alike. A designer’s daughters can’t go to school in rags.”

  She chose a piece of bright turquoise cloth from the shelves built into the walls of the dining room. Once upon a time those shelves had been crowded with good china used only on Christmas and birthdays. Bit by bit, the china had disappeared. Had it been sold when the father couldn’t find work? The parents never said. The cake plate was the only thing left. Then one day, the father banged the dining room table with both hands and shouted for silence. The plate wobbled off the shelf and smashed on the floor. The mother never made cake again. Not even for birthdays.

  Mrs. Zimmer shook out the cloth. It billowed up and then fell across the table.

  “This will be nice,” she said.

  The phone rang.

  “Hi, Samantha,” Mrs. Zimmer said.

  Samantha, whoever she was, urgently needed something to wear to an opening, whatever that was.

  “I know just the thing.” Mrs. Zimmer hung up the phone and made a new drawing. Just like that, her daughters’ tops became a stranger’s dress.

  Hannah and Anna were the ones who needed to be admired. W
ho cared about that other woman?

  Mrs. Zimmer cut the cloth. Snip, snip, snip. She held the scissors in her right hand. She steadied the cloth with her left. A strange wind made the cloth billow up.

  “Hey!” She struggled to uncover her face.

  It was too late. The cut had been made. The fabric was ruined.

  When she saw what she had done, she said something very rude and crude.

  That was no way for a mother to talk. Who knew Mrs. Zimmer had such a temper?

  She wadded up the cloth and threw it at the dressmaker’s dummy. Ha!

  Outside, in the only sunny spot in the front yard, Mr. Murderer was licking himself with his rough pink tongue. His gray fur was still tinged with brown. If he hadn’t been a cat, some might have felt sorry for him. Every few moments, he gagged and tried to cough something up.

  It wasn’t pleasant to watch. There was nothing else to do while waiting for the yellow bus to bring back the twins. Even though it was just a few hours, time passed much more slowly than it had for years.

  Finally the bus stopped at the end of the driveway. Hannah ran down the steps. Anna followed more slowly. She turned back to say, “See you tomorrow, Georgia,” to the redheaded girl.

  Hannah flopped down on the front yard. School had made her so unhappy, she was glad to be back at the house on Hemlock Road. “The longest day of our lives.”

  It had seemed that way for others too—but not for Anna. In fact, Anna looked cool and refreshed. The sleeves had been cut off her dress. Her arms were bare.

  “Why did you let Georgia do that to your dress?” Hannah said.

  “Isn’t it a fun idea?” Anna thought she was lucky to have Georgia in her class. “I got so hot at recess.”

  “Playing kickball,” Hannah said bitterly.

  “Why didn’t you play?”

  “I was waiting for you by the fence.”

  “I was waiting for you to come and play.”

  Hannah plucked at the lawn that was more dirt than grass.

  “Did you make any friends?” Anna said.

  Hannah shook her head. She thought how everyone in her class seemed to have friends already.

  “How’s your teacher?” Anna said.

  “Ms. Debaremdiker doesn’t think we can pronounce her name. She wants us to call her Miz D. She talks in a loud, cheerful voice like a kindergarten teacher. She got mad at me because when she made us write our goals, I wrote, Not to go back.”

  Anna laughed, until she saw that Hannah meant it. “You have to go to school.”

  “I’d rather die.”

  Of course people always said that. Until they were dead.

  The hemlock branch waved, shush, shush, shush. That didn’t change Hannah’s mind. More than anything, she wanted to go back to Brooklyn.

  “That’s not all. She called me up in front of the whole class to say I had a bad attitude. And having a bad attitude was a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Hannah said.

  “You mean if you think bad things, bad things will happen to you?” Anna said.

  “Yes,” Hannah said.

  “That might be true,” Anna said.

  It was wrong to blame the victim. How could Anna say that? Everyone else could see how unhappy Hannah was.

  Hannah couldn’t forget how she felt at school without Anna, surrounded by children but utterly alone. Like nobody could see her or hear her. Like she watched them from behind a window.

  So now she knew what that was like.

  Another school bus stopped at the end of the driveway.

  “Maybe Selena had a wonderfully horrible bad day too.” This cheered Hannah up. If she had been mocked, she could imagine what must have happened to her silly sister.

  Selena floated dreamily down the steps and drifted toward the house without even seeing the twins.

  “How was your day?” Anna called.

  “The high school kids are probably really mean, aren’t they?” Hannah said.

  Selena came over to the twins. “What are you wearing? Are those the dresses Grandma bought you three Christmases ago?”

  Anna sighed. She knew she shouldn’t have let Hannah talk her into wearing it.

  “What happened to the outfits I helped you pick out?” Selena said.

  “So we changed. So what? We want to hear about your day. Your teachers probably gave you stacks of homework,” Hannah said.

  “I get to read The Diary of Anne Frank again,” Selena said.

  “You won’t learn anything,” Anna said.

  “You’ll be bored,” Hannah said.

  Both twins thought that was the worst thing possible.

  “No, I won’t. Since I already know it, I’ll be smart,” Selena said.

  “You won’t ever be smart,” Hannah said.

  “At least I’m smart enough not to wear an ugly dress to school,” Selena said.

  Now the sisters would quarrel and Hannah’s misery would spread to Selena.

  But Anna said, “What else happened?”

  Selena sat down with her sisters and flipped her long golden hair back over her left shoulder and then her right. “I was on my way to my last class. I had to hurry because I didn’t want to be late again.”

  “Wasn’t that embarrassing?” Anna said.

  Selena smiled. “It’s one way to get noticed.”

  “For having a big butt,” Hannah said.

  Selena ignored that remark. “Someone was hurrying more than me. When I stopped to check the room number, I got knocked down.”

  “Don’t you hate being stuck in a boring school with bullies?” Hannah said.

  “This bully has dark eyes and a gap between his bottom teeth that you can only see when he smiles.” Selena sighed and flung open her arms like she wanted to hug the whole world. “I can’t wait for history tomorrow.”

  The pretty ones always got all the joy. Poor Hannah in her hot dress fell back on the grass and groaned.

  The week went by. Every night at dinner, Mr. Zimmer said, “Today was better, right?” And every night Selena and Anna would say yes, because it was better for them. Marcus sat next to Selena in history class. Georgia gave Anna a book she said Anna had to read. Marcus smiled at Selena in the cafeteria. Georgia and Anna got to take the attendance card to the office. Better and better for everyone in the whole world—except Hannah and those who truly cared about her.

  Why didn’t she go back to the attic? Others also found the bats scary at first, but being lonely was much worse than being afraid. Besides, the bats only ate insects. They couldn’t harm anything else. They were misunderstood too.

  Night after night, Hannah just lay on her bunk. Her ceiling was the attic floor. She was so close to that precious hidden thing. So close to the dance. She never even looked at the dark window now. Tonight she played with a dried noodle she wore around her neck.

  “Hannah?” Anna said. “Are you mad?”

  “No.” Hannah wasn’t mad at Anna. Not even just a little. Hannah blamed that girl Georgia. She thought Georgia was making Anna care about strange things like being popular.

  “Why were you wearing that piece of pasta?” Anna said.

  Pasta was what the Zimmers had called those pink and green noodles shaped like wagon wheels. Mrs. Zimmer had unpacked them from one of the boxes they brought from Brooklyn. When Hannah saw the noodles, she had nearly cried as she said, “From the Food Co-op?” Whatever that was.

  “How could you even ask me? It’s the last piece from Brooklyn. Mom cooked the rest. So there isn’t any more and there won’t be until we move back.”

  Anna sighed. She thought Hannah wasn’t even trying to get along here.

  “It did look cool. You thought so—until Georgia said, ‘What’s your sister wearing around her neck? We made pasta jewelry in kindergarten.’ ” Hannah tried to make her voice sound like Georgia’s.

  “She was teasing you. We made pasta jewelry in kindergarten too,” Anna said.

  Hannah didn’t say anything more. She knew Georgia
looked for ways to make fun of her to drive her away. Then Georgia could have Anna all to herself at recess. Hannah didn’t want to be with them either. Anna had dragged her over to the kickball game. Hannah knew Anna was trying to help. But being there made Hannah feel worse. It showed how Anna had made friends and she hadn’t.

  Hannah was wrong. She did have friends. She just couldn’t see them or hear them. Maybe one day she would.

  Finally Saturday arrived. There was no school. The twins would be home all day. After their chores were done, they could read books and draw pictures. If they climbed the second hemlock, they could spy in their sister’s bedroom window.

  They didn’t do any of those things because Mr. Zimmer said, “Who needs to go to the mall?”

  “We do,” Anna said.

  “We do?” Hannah said.

  “We need more books, and batteries for our flashlights,” Anna said.

  Anna didn’t say what else she was thinking. She also wanted to buy cute tops so that Hannah would stop wearing the shirt with the words PARK SLOPE. Anna was also thinking they might run into Georgia.

  Didn’t Anna know that Hannah wouldn’t like that? Obviously Anna didn’t care about her twin. So Hannah shouldn’t go with her. Hannah should stay.

  Stay.

  Hannah put on her shoes and walked down the stairs. She saw something reflected in the hall tree mirror. That glimpse didn’t make her change her mind. It just made her fuss with her hair.

  Then they were going. They were leaving. Mr. and Mrs. Zimmer were already in the car.

  Wait.

  Hannah didn’t wait. She didn’t understand. She was shutting the front door.

  “Make sure it’s locked,” Mrs. Zimmer called.

  Did they want to keep something out? Or something in?

  The phone rang. Selena practically knocked her sisters over as she ran back into the house. The call was for her.

  Marcus asked her to go to the movies with him that night.

  She said yes and hung up the phone.

  There hadn’t been so much screaming in the house on Hemlock Road since the first day—when Selena went in the closet.

  All that screaming gave Hannah an idea. It wasn’t a good idea. It was a dangerous idea. However, it did make Hannah change her mind.