*** June 18, 1994 – 2:41 pm ***

Bethany and her brother stepped out of the theater and into the main hallway of the cinema, Bethany as giddy as she had ever been. She had not only seen her first movie, but more, she had seen her first animated movie: The Lion King. At the time, she didn't realize that this would be the last movie that she ever saw; she only knew that it had been more than she ever could have dreamed.

The colors had danced across the screen, the cartoon animals and the vistas of far off Africa overwhelming her young imagination. In that moment, Billy was the best brother any girl could have had. She even forgot about all the times that Billy had told her that she was a mistake. He hadn't done that since she was six, anyway, and that didn't matter, cause Billy had just shown her a world that she didn't even know existed.

Plus, in the theater, she didn't have to worry about the girl in the mirror. The projection screen cast no reflection that she could see, and until the movie began on it, the screen itself had been hidden behind a large red curtain.

"What'd ya think?" her brother asked. It was the wrong question. He should have asked where she had left her blindfold, or better yet, he should have made her put it back on. Yet Billy had never seen Bethany so happy, and so as they left the theater he let his guard down. Today seemed different, and besides, you can explain sneaking a girl in with a blindfold, but how do you explain sneaking her out in one?

It was amazing, Bethany thought, but all she could say were two words: "Thank you."

"That's not what I asked," Billy began, but Bethany tugged at his arm, as she pointed to one of the posters on the wall. In it, a boy in silhouette walked across a globe, beneath pinkish-white clouds. The tag line read: "Ever wonder what your life would be like with different parents? A boy named North did."

"Can we see that?" Bethany asked.

"It's not out yet," he said.

"What about when it comes out?"

"Maybe," he replied, but he doubted it.

"What about that one?"

This time Bethany stopped in front of a huge poster with the bright blues and reds of the American flag draped across the shirt of a black and white Harrison Ford. They had a flag flying outside of their house. Dad had always been careful to bring it in when it rained, never letting it touch the ground.

"None of these are out yet," Billy said, but Bethany had stopped listening.

She stared at the glass encasing the poster. She had never seen unpainted glass before and it was one of many firsts that day. Yet this first mesmerized her in a way none of the others had. In the glass she finally – and hadn't she wanted this her entire life - saw her reflection. She grinned and the reflection grinned back. She stuck out her tongue, and her reflection stuck out its tongue.

Billy moved on, not noticing Bethany paused before the glass. She frowned and her reflection frowned as well. The experience felt as magical as the film and it held her more than mesmerized but hypnotized. She couldn't have moved even had she wanted to do so.

She stayed locked in that final expression, a perpetual frown frozen on her face. Seeing herself now, she realized that she was a fair girl, with freckles across her pale face, but that she was not as pretty as she had hoped. Her hair was sandy, and the ends of her pigtails were frayed. Perhaps her dad wasn't as good at cutting her hair as she had believed. Though when you thought about it, Bethany never left the farm and she had no friends, nor could she see herself in a mirror, so what did her dad care how she looked?

He doesn't care. That wasn't her thought, but it was in her head, nonetheless. Bethany began to feel the first true tremor of fear. This wasn't fear of lying or of strangers. This fear had claws that dug deep into her entrails and held on.

He doesn't care about you at all, the voice continued in her head, and she knew that this was the voice of the girl in the mirror, or more appropriately then, the girl in the glass.

Billy pulled on her arm. "Sorry, Bethie but we have to get back," he said. He saw her staring at the poster, but he saw only that. He did not yet notice that she was staring not at the black and white image of Harrison Ford, but her own reflection. "Even if that movie was out," he continued, "it'd probably be too violent for you."

Bethany heard none of this. She followed after her brother simply because he pulled her along and she could but move with him or be dragged across the carpet in his wake. So she walked after him, but as she did her eyes darted to each coming attraction poster that they crossed, and to the girl within the glass encasing each. Bethany's reflection glared back at her, but it was off. The expression no longer matched, and as she moved from one poster to the next, the reflection of the girl always stood still in each, as if waiting in glass case after glass case for Bethany to arrive.

With each new poster, the reflection looked less and less like her. The hair turned dark, and the freckles vanished. The fear on her face became replaced with a cold smile, and hatred burned inside her eyes, a hatred that Bethany could never feel.