Chapter 1
Staring Back
Meow. Gena stirred in her sleep, dreaming of cotton candy sticking to her chin.
Meow.
More cotton candy. She just couldn't seem to keep it in her mouth. It grew
wetter and stickier and . . . meow.
She woke up to a pair of shiny mismatched eyes staring into hers. "Shhhh,
Twilight!" she said, cuddling the cat close. "We'll get busted for sure."
The cat continued to lick her chin. "Okay, okay."
Meow.
She heard stirring in the next room. "Shhhh!" After opening the window, she
picked up the cat and lightly dropped him outside. "Bye-bye, Twilight."
She watched as he stretched, then moseyed off for the day. Quickly, she sprayed
the room with the "Freshness of Mountain Air," then hid the air freshener in a
drawer. Another night without getting caught. Great! She headed off to
breakfast.
"You're up early again," her dad said as she entered the kitchen.
"Yeah. Well . . . you know." She walked around him to get the cereal from the
pantry.
"It's just that you're not usually an early riser. Are you really my daughter,
or is this one of those Invasion of the Body Snatchers scenarios?"
"Trust me, Dad, it's me. I only let the aliens take over when I'm bored in
class."
He snickered as he poured another cup of coffee. "I'm off to work."
Gena looked at the clock. Wow, it was early, even for a school morning. She
relaxed as she ate her breakfast, then went to the bathroom to brush her teeth.
She wet the brush, squeezed on some toothpaste, and grinned toward the mirror.
What? Her heart jumped a high hurdle, and she stumbled back, dropping the icky
toothpaste off her brush. The reflection in the mirror wasn't hers.
She stared forward, taking a moment to catch her breath. Was she still asleep?
That had to be it. She was never up this early anyway, so it must be a dream.
She pinched herself hard. "Ouch!" Okay, not a dream. She inched forward and so
did the reflection. Gena looked down at the green tee shirt she wore with the
words Girls Kick Butt on the front. Peeking up, she saw that her reflection had
been staring down at a neatly pressed white shirt. Gena touched the mirror. Who
was this? For a moment she thought she'd faint.
She clamped her eyes shut, her heart pounding wildly. I'm not crazy. I'm not
crazy. She slowly opened her eyes. I'm not cra . . . uuuuuuuughhhhhhhh!
The strange reflection still lingered. Long blond hair in braids, tiny nose,
uni-brow. Yuck! Buy some tweezers, girl!
This was clearly not Gena, but the reflection moved as though it was--
every single, teeny-tiny maneuver.
There's a logical explanation. This is too freaky to be real. It's a trick! "Ah
ha!" Gena shouted. She scrambled around, looking for a camera. "You don't fool
me. This is really just a glass window, and I'm on one of those lame hidden
camera shows. All right, where is it? And where's the microphone. Come on, I
hate reality TV!"
Gena used her peripheral vision to watch as the reflection looked for the camera
too. And the girl's mouth moved with every word Gena spoke. "Not cool," Gena
said, tapping on the glass.
She left the bathroom, walked back to her bedroom, and felt a ripple of shock
when the girl occupied her dresser mirror too. "This is impossible. I look like
one of the preppy girls at school, only with one eyebrow." Her heart still
raced, but she was determined to stay calm.
Gena went into her dad's bedroom, his bathroom, and even found an old hand
mirror to check herself out. All the same.
She wilted across her bed, shivering, afraid to look anymore. This had to be
some sort of joke. No, the joke came when she looked at the alarm clock. 7:45.
Great, only fifteen minutes to get dressed and off to school. She kept her back
to the mirror and brushed her teeth. She stumbled out of the bathroom and
avoided the bedroom mirror as she got dressed.
Even though she was alone in the house, she felt like that reflection, whoever
she was, was watching her. She shuffled all her books and papers into her
backpack and headed for the front door. Wait! Gena stamped her foot as she
remembered that she hadn't brushed her hair. So what else is new? she thought,
running her fingers through it. But the ends were plastered together from being
too close to her chin while Twilight had given her a tongue bath. "Arrrrgh!" It
had to be brushed.
I can do this without looking. She threw her hair up in a ponytail, but felt a
cowlick sticking up near the side. She pulled out the elastic band and tried
again.
"It would help if I could see what I was doing!" Gena hoped the reflection could
hear that. Another cowlick. Yuck! She pulled the ponytail down and brushed her
hair hard. This time it went up smoothly. As a natural reflex, she glanced
toward the mirror. Ick! Maybe Dad was right. This must be a case of the Body
Snatchers.
