My parents told me the girl in the mirror was an imaginary friend.
I was four. I called her Other Me. She lived in the mirror in my bedroom — not in every mirror, just that one, an old oval mirror that had come with the house. She looked like me but the details were different. Her hair parted differently. She held things with the wrong hand. When I was sad, she was happy. When I was happy, she looked worried.
I talked to her constantly. My parents thought it was sweet. Normal child development. Creative imagination.
When I was seven, we moved. I didn't say goodbye to Other Me because we took the mirror with us. She came too. I introduced her to my new room like she was a person being shown around.
When I was ten, I started being embarrassed by her — by the habit, by the way I'd talk to the mirror. I stopped looking at her directly. I turned the mirror to face the wall.
I forgot about her, mostly, through my teens.
When I was twenty-four, I moved back to my parents' house for a few months between apartments. The mirror was in the basement. I brought it up to my old room. Old habit.
She was still there.
Not the same age as when I'd last seen her — she'd aged too, the same years I had. She looked like me, twenties, but still with the small differences: wrong-hand, opposite-parted hair, expression slightly mismatched to mine.
And something else different. Something I didn't have a word for until I looked at her long enough.
She looked like she'd had a harder version of my life. Same face. Same age. But worn differently, more worried, carrying something behind the eyes that my face didn't have.
I asked her where she'd been.
She mouthed something. I watched her lips. I think she said: "Right here."
I turned the mirror back to the wall. I moved out two months later.
The mirror is still at my parents' house. I haven't been back.
I keep meaning to ask them to get rid of it.
I can't quite make myself.