Work Text:
Midnight, Halloween.
The bathroom window rattles with a gust of wind, but Pacifica doesn’t notice. She’s busy setting up two candles on the bathroom vanity, on either side of her bathroom mirror. All she could find at Expensive Things, her mother’s favorite boutique, were glitter-candles, and the wax is weirdly gritty as she sets the candles into pools of melted wax so they stand up.
Madison and Taylor are so wrong. There’s no way the legend of Bloody Mabel is true, and Pacifica is going to prove it.
Setting her shoulders, she faces the mirror. Lights out and candles lit, check. Midnight, check. Halloween, check. Door shut to keep her parents out: always.
There’s no way this is going to work. It’s so obviously an urban legend. But if this doesn’t bring Bloody Mabel, her school friends will have to shut up about it.
“Bloody Mabel,” Pacifica says.
There’s a faint sound from behind her, in the darkness, and she tries not to jump, tries not to look. The light from the candles steadies her. “Bloody Mabel,” she says, and then, before she can lose her nerve, “Bloody Mabel.”
The third time. Nothing happens. Nobody appears.
“I knew this wasn’t real,” Pacifica mutters, and she’s reaching out to turn on the bathroom light when the candles suddenly flare, impossibly large flames reflected in the mirror for an instant before they snuff out.
Frozen in place, in the darkness, Pacifica can only watch as an eerie blue light fades in from the bottom of the mirror. The light it reflects is from — somewhere else. Somewhere filled with horrors. Pacifica doesn’t know how she knows, just that she does.
As she watches, a head slowly rises into view. It’s —
— a teenage girl, about her age, with long brown hair and braces.
“Hi!” the girl says. She waves.
Pacifica takes a step back and switches on the bathroom light.
It doesn’t work. The girl is still there. The mirror reflects Pacifica’s bathroom, with its familiar shell-pink walls and mother-of-pearl sink and golden swan faucets, but there’s that girl standing there, in a hand-knit sweater with a book on it. Pacifica looks behind herself, but the girl isn’t there in the real bathroom. Only in the mirror.
“Who are you?” Pacifica whispers.
“Bloody Mabel.” The girl grins. “Duh. You called me.”
“I didn’t — I didn’t think —”
“That I was real?” Mabel rushes the mirror, startling Pacifica, and then steps back and laughs. “Shyeah. That’s how most people react, if they hang around long enough to see.”
Pacifica asks the only thing she can think of to ask. “Why aren’t you covered in blood?”
“Because I’m not a ghooooooooooost.” Mabel waves her arms at the mirror. “Oooooooooooh!”
Pacifica just stares at her. “This is weird.”
“Yeah.” Mabel cocks her head. “Most people run away by this point.”
“So… yeah.” Pacifica backs out of the bathroom, shutting off the light on her way out. She’s not going to think about this. It isn’t real. It’s a hallucination caused by too much chocolate. Cook isn’t supposed to let her eat the candy for the trick or treaters, and for once, Pacifica wonders if her parents’ restrictions have a point.
She shuts her bathroom door behind her and tries not to think about it. This never happened.
And if Taylor and Madison ask her to play Bloody Mabel, she’s saying no.
Pacifica stumbles into the bathroom the next morning. She slept badly, tossing and turning through nightmares of her father ringing the bell and asking for impossible things, and a girl trapped in a mirror — it must have been a nightmare, she tells herself. All of it. Even though the glitter candles are still on the vanity, crusted with melted wax. She breaks them off and puts them in the vanity drawer.
Her hair’s stuck up at the side, and she’s brushing it when Mabel suddenly pops up into view.
“Hey there!”
Pacifica staggers back. “What? How —”
“We didn’t meet properly last night,” Mabel says. She’s wearing a different sweater. This one has a mermaid on it. “I’m Mabel, and you are….?”
“Not talking to my hallucinations,” Pacifica snaps. She keeps her eyes averted from the mirror as she brushes her teeth and performs the eighteen-step skincare regimen prescribed by her mom’s dermatologist. It’s hard getting through all the steps without looking up, because Mabel keeps making weird noises, but Pacifica manages it. She stalks out of the bathroom without looking back. She can shower in the guest quarters. As long as her parents don’t find out, it’ll be fine.
Pacifica expects Mabel to be gone that night, but she’s not. She stays and she stays and eventually, Pacifica gets busted using the bathroom in the guest quarters and has to go back to her own bathroom. Mabel’s polite about it — she always turns her back to let Pacifica shower and use the toilet. But she’s not going away.
“You look nice,” Mabel says, one evening when Pacifica’s touching up her makeup in the mirror.
“It’s my parents.” Pacifica sighs and puts the cap back on her lip stain before tucking it into her tiny, mostly-for-show purse. “Rich-person party.”
“Oooooooh, fancy!” Mabel jumps up and comes to the mirror. “You look amaaaaaaaazing.”
“I look adequate,” Pacifica says.
“What? No!” Mabel’s face is all scrunchy. “Who told you that? You look incredible, girl whose mirror I live in.”
“It’s Pacifica,” Pacifica says, and she gives Mabel a half-smile before she turns to go downstairs.
Somehow, she doesn’t want to tell Mabel that “adequate” is the nicest thing her mother ever says to her.
Pacifica shuts the bathroom door behind herself. She’s already got tears in her eyes, but as soon as the door’s closed, she starts sobbing.
Preston and Priscilla Northwest are terrible people, Pacifica knows that, but then the little bell comes out and all she can think is that it’s her fault. She’s not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough — no matter how she works, she’s never going to be good enough. The bell’s always going to be there.
“Your parents are pretty messed up,” Mabel says.
Pacifica doesn’t look up. Of course Mabel’s here, witnessing her shame. She curls into a tighter ball, the hard tile at her back, the marble of the floor cold and unyielding.
“I know it’s not okay,” Mabel says. She sounds — sympathetic, maybe? Pacifica’s not sure. She sniffles, hating herself for it.
“Just forget it,” Pacifica says. She unrolls some toilet paper and tries to dry her eyes. “I’m weak.”
“What?” The light flares up behind Mabel. “You’re not weak. You’re strong.” She leans in towards the mirror. “You’re not even afraid of me,” she whispers. “You know how many people run away the first time I show up?”
“You’re not that scary.” Pacifica tries to take a breath in, unsteadily, but she’s feeling a little better. “Thanks, though.”
Life goes on. Pacifica starts talking with Mabel. She tells the other girl about her days, her school, her friends. Taylor and Madison have moved from urban legends on to fancy nail art, which Pacifica’s parents say is vulgar. Mabel takes a look at the manicure Pacifica gave herself and pronounces it “like, the most amazing nail art I have ever seen.”
It’s nice. It’s weird. Mabel doesn’t judge her — not about anything. Sometimes Pacifica wonders if she could say I’m moving to the Amazon to live my true life as a leopard and Mabel would say “That’s awesome!”
She learns about Mabel, too. Not everything — when Mabel tries to talk too much about herself, she fades away. It’s like there are topics she’s not allowed to discuss.
The mirror is one of them.
Pacifica doesn’t realize how important Mabel is to her until she comes home one afternoon, goes into the bathroom, and realizes Mabel’s not there.
She freezes, heart pounding, realizing that she never planned ahead — not that they could, when Mabel fades out every time she tries to talk about the mirror or why she’s there. But I could have planned ahead, Pacifica thinks. My parents are right. I am stupid.
She digs through her the vanity drawer frantically, digging down through old slap bracelets and mostly-empty perfume bottles until she finally finds the two glittery candle stubs. There isn’t enough wax left to use as a candle base, so she steals a pair of candlesticks from the Northwest dining room and brings them back to the bathroom.
The left candle won’t light until Pacifica melts the wax and frees the wick. Finally, they’re both lit.
“Bloody Mabel,” she says, looking directly into the mirror and hoping, hoping so hard it hurts. “Bloody Mabel, Bloody Mabel — Mabel, please —”
It feels like an eternity before the candlelight flares, and Mabel appears in the mirror. She’s draggled, like she’s been outside in a storm, her hair wet and tangled and her sweater askew.
“Pacifica?” She rushes up to the mirror and puts one hand on the glass surface.
“Are you okay?” Pacifica raises her own hand to press against Mabel’s, but the only thing she feels is cold, hard glass.
“I’m okay.” Mabel fades and then comes back. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk about it.”
“I understand,” Pacifica says. She leaves her hand on the mirror. “I know.”
Mabel smiles, weakly. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want me back.”
“Always,” Pacifica says.
In that moment, Pacifica makes a decision. She’s getting Mabel out of the mirror. No matter what.
She tries researching on her phone, on her laptop, but her parents tell her research about curses is morbid and unbecoming and limit her access for a month. They were tracking my internet history? Pacifica thinks. They cared enough to pay attention to that? And then she realizes how messed up that is, that she’s thinking of that as proof that maybe they love her after all.
So she can’t use her own computer. She’s got a free period at school, so she starts looking there. She uses the computers in the science lab, going down a rabbit hole of questionable web pages and online question sites that ends with a deal in a dark alley, one evening when Pacifica’s supposed to be at dance class. She pays her dance teacher off with a designer handbag to cover for her absence, and pays her information source with a pair of gold earrings.
The first book the illegal magic dealer finds for her is useless. The second one leads her to another, better source. She’s not there yet, but she can feel that she’s making progress.
Pacifica gets her college acceptance email and rushes home to tell Mabel, because she shares everything with Mabel. Everything but her research on the mirror-curse.
“I can get away from them,” she says, leaning against the vanity. “I went to the bank yesterday. My Grams left me a trust fund for education, and she didn’t make my parents trustees.”
It doesn’t feel real yet, but Pacifica’s trying to let herself believe. Maybe she can have a life outside the golden bubble of Northwest Manor. Getting away to college, learning something — her grandmother’s money won’t last, she knows that, but the trustee at the bank says it’s enough to pay for school and keep her in an apartment while she’s there, as long as it’s nothing fancy. Might not be what you’re used to, he said, and all Pacifica could think was I hope not.
In Pacifica’s secret dreams, Mabel’s there with her. Not in the mirror. With her for real, living with her and telling her everything, even the hard parts, the stuff she can’t talk about now.
“I’m so happy for you,” Mabel says, in a quieter voice that makes Pacifica’s heart hurt. Pacifica knows Mabel’s happy for her— she grinned ear-to-ear when Pacifica told her the news. But Mabel’s been quieter lately, like there’s something eating away at her, bit by bit.
“Don’t worry,” Pacifica tells her. “You’re coming with me if I have to pry that mirror off the bathroom wall myself.”
Mabel smiles, and it’s like the old Mabel is back. “Count on it.”
When Pacifica finds the answer, there’s a part of her that isn’t ready to believe it.
It’s too easy. Pacifica’s not used to things being easy. She was prepared to travel halfway around the world and do terrible things to get Mabel out of the mirror, so learning that the secret to freeing Mabel might be something they could have tried that very first night — it hurts.
She’s nervous when she gets home. She catches herself checking how she looks in the dining room mirror, the one that shows her to herself while she tries to perform to her parents’ expectations. That mirror has never been a friend, but tonight —
I’m stalling. Pacifica smooths down her hair one last time and goes upstairs.
Mabel pops into view as soon as Pacifica opens the bathroom door.
“I need you to do something for me,” Pacifica says, before she can lose her nerve. “No questions and I can’t explain why. Okay?”
“Anything,” Mabel says, immediately, and Pacifica can tell she wants to ask, but she doesn’t.
“Kiss me.” Pacifica feels herself blushing, but she doesn’t let herself look away. “Through the mirror. Just — don’t ask, okay?”
“Really?” Mabel cocks her head sideways, and then shrugs. “It’s just going to feel like glass, but I’m in.”
Pacifica’s heart is beating hard as she climbs onto the vanity, legs tucked underneath herself so she’s Mabel’s height. She can see Mabel’s mirror-form ghosted over her own reflection as they lean in and try to touch their lips to the same point on the mirror.
She closes her eyes, and she hopes.
All Pacifica can feel is the cold glass against her lips. She wants to believe, wants to think —
“You look pretty silly kissing your own reflection.”
It’s Mabel’s voice, and it’s from behind her, not from the mirror, Mabel is free. Pacifica jumps down from the vanity and runs to her, throws her arms around Mabel. Her hand-knit sweater is scratchy, just like Pacifica thought it would be. She smells like fresh peaches.
“You’re here!” Pacifica’s not crying. It’s just that her eyes are a little damp, she’s not — fine, she’s crying. “You’re really here.”
Mabel just holds her, warm and real and present.
Pacifica doesn’t know what to say. There’s so many plans she made, when she knew they might never be together in the real world. Now Mabel’s here with her, and it’s overwhelming.
“I — do you want to — I don’t know what to ask,” Pacifica says, stumbling over her words.
“I need to go home and tell my bro-bro and my parents I’m okay,” Mabel says. “I’ve been trapped in a mirror for five years. And I probably have, like, school to catch up on or whatever.” She shrugs. “But I’m with you. As long as you want me.”
“I want you,” Pacifica mumbles, her lips on Mabel’s hair.
“You can come with me,” Mabel says. She pulls back and she’s so beautiful like this, her hair streaming down her back, her eyes wide — Pacifica can’t wait, she leans in and kisses her, softly at first and then, when Mabel kisses back, more deeply.
“I’ve been waiting years for that,” Mabel says.
“I think I was waiting years for you.” Pacifica leans her head against Mabel’s. “All that time before I met you —”
“Yeah.” Mabel shivers. “The mirror witch told me I had to scare someone to death in order to get free, but I — I couldn’t do it.”
Pacifica strokes Mabel’s hair. Her heart aches, thinking of Mabel, sunny happy Mabel, trapped in the mirror and told she had to kill someone to break free. “She lied to you,” Pacifica says. “All the research I did trying to get you out — she probably told you that so you wouldn’t get close to anyone.”
“And then I met you,” Mabel says. “You freed me.”
Pacifica holds her closer. The truth is, they freed each other. And now they’ve got lives, real lives, together. Pacifica’s never letting go.