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That annoying Apple girl was standing in front of her mirror again. I could tell, because I was that mirror. Or, I would be that mirror, and that left me with an uncomfortable awareness of every single mirror in the vicinity.
The point is, she was standing there, and she was singing. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”
Look, just because I’ll have to tolerate you doesn’t mean I want to talk to you in the morning. I made a rude gesture, and her mirror echoed it.
“Oh, good morning, Mirror! And how are you this fairy wonderful morning?”
Wow, Apple, it’s almost like you don’t know your own classmate who you’ve seen every day for the last several months.
I flipped her off again and decided ignoring all the mirrors around me sounded like a great idea, actually. Easier said than done, but I managed. Having an input from every reflective surface within… however large my radius was by now, who knew, sounds a lot more fun than it actually was.
I didn’t get to avoid people altogether, however, because my roommate came back from breakfast, all smiles. “Good morning, Mirror, how are you?”
I glared at her. “Fine.”
“Alright, I’ll leave you alone.” Mensah smiled at the side of my head. “Just give me a minute and I’ll be out of your hair.”
I liked her, probably more than I liked anyone else at this school except ART (no, that’s not actually its name, it’s a ghost ship, it’s an anagram for Annoying Reshapable Transport, don’t worry about it), but she was a morning person and I wasn’t. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a choice in roommates; being shoved out of a mirror six weeks into the school year doesn’t usually lead to a good roommate assignment.
That’s how I ended up with Mensah Makeba, kid of some minor folk hero, as my roommate. How I met ART is another story entirely, but it involves a class so stupid that I don’t even want to name it, one of the ones for people that are destined to become objects.
No, I did not want to be a sentient network of mirrors for the rest of my life.
So, yes, I was a Rebel, in this stupid ideological conflict. ART was on the edge; it didn’t want me to have to “fulfill my destiny” any more than I did, but it really wanted to become the all-powerful ghost ship it could already transform into on a permanent basis. Mensah was a Royal, but she wasn’t loud about it like some of them were. She just got kind of quiet when the subject came up and didn’t answer anyone’s questions. (I only knew because it’s really hard to hide something from your roommate, especially if it can see you almost anywhere with a reflective surface around.)
Somebody was insistently poking at the surface of a mirror, and as always, it was ART, who didn’t have any concept of boundaries. I sighed and let myself be pulled into just that mirror. “What, ART?”
“The new Sanctuary Castle episode dropped yesterday.”
“I know, I watched it. Pretty easy when you’re part of the network that distributes it.”
“I require assistance explaining to Iris how yesterday’s plot twist means the prince is absolutely the wrong suitor for the lawyer. Her opinion is completely incorrect.” Iris was ART’s future captain, and they’d been raised as siblings. Which was nice for them, I suppose, but ART always dragged me into their arguments, which happened way too much, given that they were roommates.
But I actually did want to talk about this, so that’s what we did.