Alexandra Gray looked out the back window of her father's BMW and into the rain-slicked streets. People and cars scurried about, heedless of the torrential downpour that had filled the gutters to overflowing. Standing under the awning of a hobby shop, a man in a gray pea coat struggled to open his umbrella as the wind threatened to turn it inside out. Across the street, a mother and her two children raced from a storefront to their car, shopping bags held over their heads in a vain attempt to keep dry.

"I can't believe we're out in this weather," she grumbled.

Her father did not respond right away, his attention focused on the road. They were downtown, where the streets were small and crowded. There was only one lane going in each direction, and cars parked along both sides, making traffic here miserable, even on the weekend.

"You're not missing your appointment because of a little rain," he said, giving her a brief glance before returning his eyes to the traffic. He had been living in the Arcadia City area for over twenty years now, and regarded even the heaviest rainfall as little more than a nuisance. He finally gave up on finding a parking space, and just stopped in the middle of the road. "Hurry on out—I'll be back to pick you up in an hour."

Alex pulled up the hood of her jacket and opened the car door. She tried to be quick, hopping out and swinging the door closed behind her in one fluid motion, but immediately stepped into a huge puddle in the middle of the street that soaked her feet straight through her black tennis shoes. She sprinted between the parked cars and up the sidewalk, but it was already too late. By the time she reached the front steps of the old brownstone building, she was completely drenched.

There was a jingle as she opened the front door, and a blast of heat as she stepped through into the office. Compared to the cold rain outside, stepping into Margaret Bernstein's office was like stepping into a sauna after a cold shower. She did her best to wipe her feet off on the mat just inside the door as she took off her sopping hoody, then took a seat in the small waiting area.

The secretary—Alex thought her name might be Theresa—looked up from the front desk and smiled at her. "Hello, Alex. Ms. Bernstein will be with you in just a moment. She's just finishing up with another patient right now."

Margaret Bernstein was not a real psychologist. She was a mental health counselor, although as her Alex's father was quick to point out, she had a master's degree in social psychology and was really quite qualified. She specialized in behavioral issues and social anxiety, which Alex supposedly suffered from. She had been coming here on a monthly basis for almost as long as she could remember.

She glanced over the scattering of Time and People magazines on the coffee table, but found nothing that interested her. Instead, she retrieved her smartphone from the pocket of her jeans and resumed reading an online article about a serial killer who, around the time of World War I, had murdered a number of people, drained them of blood, and pickled their bodies in barrels of wood alcohol. It was fascinating.

After a few minutes, a thirty-something year old man walked out of the office behind the front desk, and Margaret called from inside. "You can come on in now, Alex."

Margaret's office hadn't changed much in the nearly ten years that she had been coming here. It was still small and cramped, with too many book shelves and potted plants, and not enough floor space. The only furniture was her old oak desk, the accompanying chair, and a cracked leather couch for her clients to sit on. There was a window behind the desk, but the curtains were always drawn, so that the only light came from the dim florescent bulb on the ceiling.

"How have you been, Alex?" Margaret asked, her hands folded neatly on the desk in front of her. She looked very businesslike as usual, her graying blonde hair tied back in a bun, her expression perpetually neutral like the poker face of a professional gambler. She wore a maroon blazer and matching skirt, along with a white blouse. She was actually a couple of years younger than Alex's father, but had not aged quite as well, and the dim lighting of her office did nothing to help conceal it.

"Good," Alex replied as she took a seat on the couch. When she said nothing further, Margaret prompted her again.

"How is school?"

Alex was now in the second semester of her sophomore year of high school, and Margaret had stressed that it was an important, formative time in a person's life. Of course, she had also insisted that middle school was an important, formative time in a person's life, as well as grade school.

"School is fine," Alex replied. Margaret looked at her expectantly, so she added "I'm getting A's and B's in all my classes."

"And how are you doing socially? Have you made any other friends?"

This was, in large part, the reason that Alex still had these monthly visits with Margaret. When she was six years old, her mother had passed away, and it had affected her deeply. She had become extremely withdrawn, and would rarely speak to anyone. At least, not anyone real. She had held long conversations and played with imaginary friends. Sometimes, she would go on "adventures," which eventually prompted her father to have her start seeing her counselor after she disappeared from their house for several hours one afternoon. Although she had come a long way since then, she still had a hard time making connections with other people. This was the primary reason her father continued to bring her here even now, at the age of sixteen.

"Uhm," Alex said, ineloquently. "No. Not really. Just Cynthia."

Cynthia Lopez was Alex's only friend at East Point High School, a tall and intimidating girl with a bad reputation. They had been friends since middle school. Most of the other girls in her class avoided Cynthia at all costs, but Alex got along with her extremely well. Cynthia was the only person in the entire school that Alex was comfortable holding a conversation with. Perhaps they were simply kindred spirits, or perhaps it was the bond of them both being outsiders. Whatever the case, Alex's father did not care for Cynthia. He felt she was a bad influence, since she was prone to getting in fights and skipping classes, and Alex suspected Margaret felt much the same way.

"I see," Margaret said. She wrote something down on the yellow legal notepad in front of her, then adjusted her thick glasses and looked Alex directly in the eyes. Alex tried her best not to visibly squirm under the counselor's gaze.

"Well then, I think that's a good goal for you to work on for this next month," she said. "I want you to make a concentrated effort to make one other friend before our next session. Just one."

"Okay," Alex said as nonchalantly as she could, trying her best to conceal the sudden wave of dread that had washed over her at the suggestion. She hated trying to talk to new people. Despite what Margaret and her father thought, it wasn't social anxiety, not really. It was just that nothing that her classmates talked about ever interested her. All their conversations seemed to center around who was dating who, complaining about their parents or teachers, or if she was lucky, the latest episode of whatever TV show was most popular at the moment. As a result, she had developed a reputation as the small, quiet girl that kept to herself all the time and carried around a backpack full of books the way most girls her age carried a purse. For the most part, everyone left her alone, and she left them alone.

Margaret moved on to the next subject. "How are things at home?"

"Also fine." She knew it wasn't much of an answer, but there wasn't much to say about her home life. Her sister, Sarah, was nearly her exact opposite. While Alex was quiet, reserved, and perhaps a bit standoffish, Sarah was a bright and cheerful social butterfly with a constant need to be the center of attention. Her father, a business analyst for a major electronics company called NeoTech Ltd., was something of a workaholic and often worked late or on the weekends. She loved her family, but they didn't have much in common. They always had dinner together, and sometimes they would do some kind of activity on the weekends, but they didn't really connect like a lot of other families did.

Alex decided to change the subject. "I've been having this weird dream lately," she said suddenly.

Margaret raised an eyebrow at this. "Oh?"

"Yeah," she said, leaning back into the cushions of the sofa as she closed her eyes to visualize the scene that had been playing out in her sleep for the past several weeks. "It's late at night, and I'm all alone in the city. Like, really alone. There's no cars, no people, nothing. Just me. And I'm just wandering the streets all by myself in the dark."

Margaret said nothing, but continued writing on her notepad. Alex continued. "The moon is full and big—too big. It dominates the sky. Everything looks silvery in the moonlight, almost like an old black and white movie. And everything is quiet. Not just quiet, but entirely silent. It's so surreal."

"And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see my reflection in a store window, so clear you'd think it was a mirror. But my reflection looks...wrong."

"What do you mean, 'wrong?'" Margaret asked.

Alex saw herself in her mind's eye, staring at the reflection in the glass before her. She was a petite girl, short, with pale skin and freckles. She had large, brown eyes, and dark brown hair cut in a simple bob that came down to around chin level. The reflection's skin was too pale, however, almost white, with a sheen like that of polished marble or porcelain. The eyes were dark and hollow, almost as if they had been painted on. She could feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in the cold night air, but her reflection was utterly motionless. It looked like her, and yet was completely alien.

"It looks like a doll," she said, "or maybe a mannequin. Like...it's not really me, exactly. It's a... a copy of me. A different version of me."

"And then what?" Margaret asked.

"And then," Alex said simply, "I wake up."

"And how does this dream make you feel?" Margaret asked, without looking up from her notepad. Alex couldn't help but feel the question was a bit cliché.

"Weird," she replied. "It feels weird, but..." she trailed off.

"Yes?"

"I don't know, it also feels kind of peaceful, I guess."

"Peaceful?" Margaret repeated, finally looking up from the notepad to see Alex's face.

"Yeah, I don't know," Alex said. "It's not scary. I sort of feel like I belong there."

"I see," Margaret said, then fell silent.

Somehow, this was infuriating to Alex. "Well?" she asked, trying not to sound too impetuous.

"Well what?" Margaret asked, as though she felt Alex's dream merited no response whatsoever.

"What do you think it means?"

Margaret chuckled at her, a derisive sound. "I don't put much stock in dream interpretations," she said. "You probably just saw something like that in a movie or TV show, and it got stuck in your subconscious."

The explanation was so simple it was almost condescending. It wasn't satisfying at all.

"I guess," she grumbled unhappily.

Margaret returned to asking her questions about her interactions with her family and teachers, and Alex returned to giving brief and impassive answers. By the time their hour was up, Alex was as exhausted as usual with the counselor, but at least the rain had let up. She sighed with relief as she trudged out into the wet streets and into the passenger seat of her father's car. At least it was over. She wouldn't have to see the woman again for another month.

Her relief was short-lived, however, as she suddenly remembered the ridiculous promise the counselor had extracted from her to make another friend before their next meeting.

Damn.

((Thank you for reading Eidolon! If you enjoyed it, please be sure to vote and leave a comment to let me know what you think.))