Black Mirror

Guilt

Daniel was my best and only friend. He had meant so much to me. And yet, after we began at The Pettengill School, two years ago, I hadn’t been able to stop our closeness from slipping away, until it was irretrievably gone.

I used to blame Pettengill for that. I used to blame Saskia. Saskia, and Daniel’s friends in the Unity Service charitable group at school. I’d blamed Patrick Leyden, the entrepreneur who’d founded Unity. And, of course, I’d blamed Daniel himself.

I used to blame anyone but myself.

But now that Daniel is gone, I know better. My brother is dead of a massive, self-injected dose of heroin, and the only note he left behind was for Saskia. My brother was in pain, and I noticed nothing.
Nothing.

OTHER SPEAK BOOKS

Morning Is a Long Time Coming
       Bette Greene

On the Fringe
       Donald R. Gallo, ed.

The Outsiders
       S. E. Hinton

Rules of the Road
       Joan Bauer

Speak
       Laurie Halse Anderson

A Step from Heaven
       An Na

Summer of My German Soldier
       Bette Greene

That Was Then, This Is Now
       S. E. Hinton

Time Stops for No Mouse
       Michael Hoeye

BLACK MIRROR

NANCY WERLIN

speak

An Imprint of Penguin Putnam Inc.

F
or my editor, Lauri Hornik,
with appreciation, and continued
astonishment at my good luck

H
ave you ever been in a state of pain so intense, it was like a living creature wound tightly around your rib cage and shoulders and neck? Getting into that place requires not just one thing that’s wrong, but instead a whole tangled
knot
of wrongness. It requires wrong things you’ve done, along with wrong things that have been done to you. It requires both good and bad intentions, doubled and tripled back upon themselves until they’re so distorted, you can’t see clearly where they began. It requires wrong decisions, but no vision of what other choices you might have made. It requires you to see every inadequacy, every failing, every weakness you possess, magnified to horrific size. It requires bad luck. And then, when you reach this place and look around, you see only blackness. And only one possible route to travel: downward, and inward, into more blackness.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Acknowledgments

S
even years ago, when I was only nine and we had just moved into her house, Bubbe stood me in front of her. Seated in her chair, she could still look straight into my face, and then her eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. “Frances,” she announced sternly, “you may have her delicate face and bones, but you are
not
going to be a dainty Japanese woman like your mother. You’re going to be a typical voluptuous Leventhal.” She put her hands measuringly on my hips and added disapprovingly: “And soon.”

Bubbe, my father’s mother, was of course a Leventhal only by marriage. Her statement felt to me like the curse of an evil fairy. Within weeks I menstruated for the first time, and also discovered that I was one of those women plagued by vicious monthly cramps. And naturally, it didn’t end there. My waist nipped in; my hips rounded; and my breasts
swelled suddenly and painfully, so that for a while I had to clutch them to my chest with one arm when going up and down stairs.

Even before this I’d known myself to be somewhat strange in appearance. Yes, there was a strong facial resemblance to my mother. But other things about me made people blink, or frown in puzzlement. I’d seen the discreet double takes. I’d been asked countless times: “Where are you
from
?” I certainly didn’t appear Caucasian—that is, typically “American”—and I didn’t fit a single stereotype of what a Jew ought to look like. All would have been well if I had just looked Japanese, but there was also something about my looks that didn’t fit what people expected from a child of Asian ancestry. Something that seemed a little … off.

My premature maturity made things worse. It wasn’t just the uncomfortable weirdness of my changing body, or Bubbe’s patent disapproval, or even the fact that my father abruptly stopped being able to hug me. There was also an incident that I could not forget.

It happened a few months after we’d moved to Lattimore. I was waiting in a grocery line, holding our place while my father ran back for orange juice, when I noticed two women in the next line pointing. And then whispering.

“What
is
she? Some kind of Asian?”

“Yes, I guess—although, that hair? A mix? I don’t know. But, oh, look at the breasts. I could cry.”

“I
know
! She’s so tiny, they make her look like a dwarf.”

“Poor freaky kid.”

“Yeah.”

As soon as I got back to Bubbe’s, I locked myself in the upstairs bathroom. I had planned to take off all my clothes, stand on the step stool, and look at myself, naked, in the mirror above the sink. But I didn’t. Instead I sat on the closed lid of the toilet and cried. In my mind I could hear those two women. And after that I began wearing big, baggy clothes and avoiding mirrors.

It was also around this time that my brother, Daniel, and I began to suspect that our move from Cambridge to rural, dying Lattimore was permanent, and that our father honestly didn’t have a clue if our enigmatic mother would ever decide to come back from her Buddhist monastery in Osaka.

More importantly, that was when I began to draw.

I drew anything. Everything. Doodles at first. But I had a knack for reproducing what I saw, and soon my paper and pencil—and then later, my paints and charcoals—formed a strong, protective wall around me. They stood between me and everyone else in the world. I liked it that way. I liked being quiet, letting no one know what I thought, or how ferocious those thoughts were.

I let no one know, that is, but my brother. Just ten months older than me, and in the same grade at school (and, through some genetic freakishness, tall and mostly Caucasian-looking), Daniel was my best and only friend. Daniel was the only person with whom I was willing to share my real self, the Frances who was behind my wall of art, my habitual quiet mask. The real me. Me, Frances. Frances, who was
screaming and angry inside. Frances, who was just … waiting, although I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for.

Yes, when we were first living with Bubbe, I had been able to talk to Daniel. He had meant so much to me. And yet, after we began at The Pettengill School, two years ago, I hadn’t been able to stop our closeness from slipping away, until it was irretrievably gone.

I used to blame Pettengill for that. I used to blame Saskia. Saskia, and Daniel’s friends in the Unity Service charitable group at school. I’d blamed Patrick Leyden, the entrepreneur who’d founded Unity and who Daniel longed to emulate. And, of course, I’d blamed Daniel himself.

I used to blame anyone but myself.

But now that Daniel is gone, I know better. My brother is dead of a massive, self-injected dose of heroin, and the only note he left behind was for Saskia. My brother was in pain, and I noticed nothing.
Nothing.

E
veryone who was anyone at The Pettengill School showed up at Bubbe’s house on the last night we sat shivah for Daniel. Some had come earlier in the week as well, but they seemed to think it was important to return on this final night. I helped with food and drinks. I was, in fact, nearly crazed after the empty days in which neither my father nor Bubbe had anything to say. Crazed with my own ceaseless circling anguish. It was a relief to have people around. “Cookie?” I asked person after person, quietly. “Chocolate chip? Mint Milano? Peanut butter? Please have another.”

In the hall I let my eyes rest on the black-draped mirror. I had a fleeting wish that it, and all mirrors, could stay that way always. I didn’t want, even by accident, to catch a glimpse of myself.

I kept looking for Daniel’s girlfriend, Saskia. I was girding myself to approach her tonight, even though I knew she would be surrounded by her friends. Unity, the charitable group. Daniel’s friends too, of course. I had never liked Saskia, and I knew that she despised me. But now … now.

I took a deep breath. I continued to circulate as I waited for her to arrive. I nodded; allowed myself to be gently hugged; to have my hands pressed and my face examined minutely. It felt odd, everyone being so nice. I didn’t know if I liked it. I had become accustomed to being ignored at school.

When would Saskia arrive?

I listened while Brenda Delahay told me at length how much she would miss Daniel. How kind he had been; how caring; how unusual that was. She washed down seven mint Milano cookies with Diet Coke. Then she excused herself. I watched her stick legs mount the stairs toward the bathroom and wondered if what I’d overheard about her was true. It had been Daniel who’d said it, under his breath to Saskia as our class waited for history to start. After Brenda had come running in, looking very pale, and slipped into her seat.

When’s she going to figure out that it’s easier to do speed than throw up? Maybe somebody should ease her in with some diet pills.

Not so kind; not so caring; in fact, a rotten, mean joke for Daniel to make. But I knew no boy could possibly understand the importance of being slender. Not the way girls
understood. And Daniel had liked thin girls—you had only to look at Saskia.

I realized I’d put my hand tentatively on my own round hip. I snatched it away. I swiveled. “Cookie?” I said randomly to the group of kids behind me.

“Sure,” said James Droussian. I noticed he was drinking milk, of all things. He took two cookies, said, “Thanks, Frances,” and grinned appreciatively right at me. And I felt my cheeks warm uncontrollably in response.

James just … well. There was that adorable brown ponytail, and the cheekbones so defined that they looked like they could cut paper. He talked easily to anyone, as if he didn’t have a clue that there were groups and cliques. On top of that, there was the way he smiled. For an instant his eyes looked directly into yours and said silently:
You
.