Chapter Fifteen
I was twenty-one years old, a senior at Fresno State. I was also a Sunday school teacher. I had been contemplating quitting that gig to become a pastor. They were building a new Calvary Chapel on the other side of town, and there wasn’t yet a pastor allocated to the position. I had been salivating at the thought of taking that station, and eventually would.
I had finally gotten up enough courage to ask out on a date Rebecca, a girl who sat in front of me in one of my Gen-Ed classes, Art History. We had gotten together to study one evening, and it was at the end of that study session that I invited her to the Fresno State Fair. She said yes! She was a tad on the chubby side, with a face of pure joy. I had to wait three long days for Friday night to arrive, and when it did I was nervous and excited. I picked her up at the address provided (her folks house) and drove us to the fair. It was early evening when we arrived, midnight when we’d leave. I spent probably a hundred and fifty dollars that evening, not just on rides and food, but playing games to win her a stuffed Yosemite Sam that she had to have. What made the evening special wasn’t anything I’ve mentioned thus far, and it certainly had nothing to do with Rebecca—who went on two more dates with me before we mutually agreed that we were just too different to work out. What made it special was the Fun House.
The fair was closing shortly, at midnight, so the Fun House was to be our final ‘ride’ if you can term it that. Most people were jamming the lines of the real rides such as the Ferris Wheel and one of the few cheesy roller coasters, so we didn’t have to wait at all to get inside.
If it was empty in there I planned on giving Becca my first kiss. I actually planned on giving her the kiss on the Ferris Wheel but she was afraid of heights so that didn’t work out. The only people in there other than my date and I were a couple kids. Adorable kids, I should add. A little towheaded girl no older than eight, and her little brother whose hair was so light that it was almost transparent, like strands of spider’s silk. She lead him by the hand, very cute.
The place wasn’t rinky-dink at all. I was impressed. It was dark inside, save for the lights framing each mirror. Seemingly hundreds of mirrors in that first room, all at strange angles. Becca left my side so we could have a little fun trying to find the other. I heard a Ptaaang! and busted up: she collided with a mirror. At least she didn’t break it: she wasn’t exactly petite. Soon she was in some distant corner of the large room, giggling.
“Can you hear me?” she said from somewhere.
“No, I can’t,” I jested.
The little towhead girl laughed from somewhere.
“Jessica, come back!” cried the boy.
“Come find me!” the girl baited.
“I’m scared!”
“Fine, twerp. Stay put, I’ll get you.”
I milled around, observing angles of myself never before seen. I stopped at a spot where I could see at least two dozen images of myself. There was carnival music playing, the same song looped on a track. It’s kind of a creepy melody, for some unfathomable reason. You know the one I’m talking about, it’s in movies and TV shows, played at the circus as well.
“Jessica!” the boy shouted.
“Jessica, stop scaring your little brother,” Becca chided from somewhere. I laughed.
I explored deeper into the room, expecting to come face to face with either my date or one of those precious Nordic specimens, but the room proved to be larger than I could have guessed.
I turned around to find myself face to face with a young girl. She scared the crap out of me. My heart felt like it had been shocked by one of those hospital jumper-cables things. It hurt so bad that I touched over it with my hand. It hadn’t hurt that bad since… since…
“Maggie,” I said.
She smiled at me. She hadn’t aged a day. Same dress and long unbrushed hair, it was as if I had only left Calvary Chapel that long-ago morning just five minutes ago.
“We meet again,” she said, referencing what I had long ruminated over: Until we meet again, as if she somehow knew that I cycled that over and over again.
I looked to the mirrors, at my many reflections, and not one of them showed my old friend, who was my young friend. She only existed in the flesh before me.
“Are you really real?”
“Follow me,” she said and began walking through the maze of mirrors with me at her heels.
“Did you say something?” Becca said loudly from the other side of the room.
“Danny where’d you go?” Jessica whined.
We coursed through the mirrors effortlessly. Maggie wasn’t fooled at all by them. I saw a few reflections of the towhead girl. We passed through a door into another room. This was the room of the funny mirrors. Tall and short and skinny and fat.
Maggie turned to face me. “Good to see you again,” she said and hugged me, low on my chest.
“What are you, a ghost?”
“Yes,” she said playfully. “Boo!” She giggled. “No, I’m not a ghost, silly.”
She faced the mirror closest us. I did the same, my elbow touching her shoulder. Unlike before, her image was reflecting, and I wondered if it was reflecting because she willed it to. Through the mirror she was at least ten feet tall, and I was even greater than that. Funny mirrors.
“Then what?” I asked. “A hallucination?”
“Are those the only two possibilities?”
She side-stepped to the next mirror; I followed her. Now we were morbidly obese. I held up a fat hand and marveled at it. I probably would have humored under another circumstance.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
“A ghost or a hallucination…” she said patiently, “that’s all you can come up with?”
She stepped to the next mirror in succession. I closed the gap. My face was distorted massively, legs short, torso long. It was gross. I looked like a freak. But Maggie, she looked the same this time. This mirror didn’t distort her image.
We stepped to the very last mirror before the exit. This time it was Maggie who was severely distorted, face looking like it was imploding, chest all bulging, legs long and skinny. But I was normal.
“How can that be?” I asked.
“Perception,” she replied. “What do you see when you look at me not in the mirror?”
I looked at her little figure beside me. “I don’t know, an ordinary kid.”
“And through the mirror?”
“A creepy-looking kid. You look like a monster.”
The corners of her mouth upturned. “Yes, like a monster. Work it out, Aaron, I’m not a ghost or a hallucination; so what am I?”
“God?” Then it hit me: “An angel.”
“An angel,” Maggie repeated contentedly.
“No… you aren’t an angel, are you?”
“Look at us in the mirror,” she said. “You are Aaron, a simple ordinary-looking man not unlike any other man on earth. Look at me. I may be an ordinary-looking girl on this side of the mirror, but not on that side.”
“Distortions,” I said.
“That’s exactly right,” she said as if I had stumbled upon some arcane knowledge that she hadn’t expected me to grasp. “You are beauty, I am beast. You are of the flesh, I am not.” She looked over at me; we met eyes. “There’s a reason why I’m telling you this. I don’t intend for this to be a riddle, but more of a lesson. Maybe it’s a kind of metaphor, but not entirely. These mirrors create distortions of ourselves. There are real distortions of ourselves out there, Aaron. You, and me. Beauty, and beast. Distortions not only in appearance, but in philosophy and virtue. Your negative reflection exists, in a boy. Beauty. My reflection exists in a beast you should hope never to meet. Distortions, perversions.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“I need you to pray for guidance.”
“I do.”
“But you have not listened to Him. In your heart you want to continue teaching those children, but your mind has been at odds with this idea
.”
“You know about that, huh?” I said, dumbfounded that she should know the innermost workings of my private thoughts. I shouldn’t have been, because she proved herself to be supernatural, but I was awed just the same.
“You have done a great job guiding the children at Sunday school,” Maggie said. “They look up to you.”
“Thank you.”
“It would be a shame to give that up. Both for you and for them.”
“I’m not going to give that up,” I said, perhaps not selling it very well.
“God knows your heart, Aaron. He hears your heart, not your mouth. Ultimately it is your decision to make. All I ask is that you listen to your heart over your mind, and continue to receive God’s counsel. Don’t push Him away.”
“Why do you care so much? Why does God care so much?”
She didn’t reply at first. Her eyes so green and pretty peered at my own. “Listen to God and perhaps you’ll someday know.”
“What kind of angel name is Maggie? Doesn’t seem like a name for an angel. No offense.”
“Magdalena,” she said.
Oh that’s right.
“There you are,” Rebecca said from the door between rooms. “Ooo, funny mirrors.”
I looked at Becca, then Maggie, then Becca. I didn’t need to ask her if she could see my friend because I knew she couldn’t, just as the mirrors couldn’t see her unless she willed them to see her.
My ageless friend disappeared before my eyes.