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glanced around at the various tents. “There’s a sign thatsays, ‘Watch a teenager make his own bed.’ That’s something I just have to see.”
    He stared at the only sign in view. “It doesn’t say that. It says, ‘See Dog Boy, the Only Living Canine Kid.’”
    “Your sense of humor must be on life support,” she said, nudging his ribs. “Better get going before Hammer Girl comes around with a security guard.”
    Nathan pulled open a flap and ducked into the tent. Sunshine filtered through the canopy allowing him to see well enough to walk. After passing through an unmanned turnstile, he entered a wide hallway lined with mirrors on both sides and old-fashioned lanterns that colored the reflections with an eerie yellow glow. The first mirror widened his middle into a football shape. Another stretched him vertically into a wavy ribbon. A third shortened his body into that of a squashed midget.
    Ignoring the rest of the mirrors, he hurried to the end of the hall and entered a large, circular room. A pole at the center reached to the apex of the tent, supporting the tent’s canvas structure. Temporary partitions encircled the chamber, hinged between each fabric-covered section. A mirror hung on every partition, some circular, some square, and some full-length vertical rectangles.
    He jogged around the room, glancing at the reflections, each one warped in some fashion. It seemed like a lame attraction, fun maybe for five-year-olds but not really exciting enough for today’s kids who yawn at the special effects in
Star Wars.
    In one of the full-length mirrors, a squatting man appeared. The moment Nathan stopped and stared, the man vanished. Now everything in the reflection seemed normal, the central pole behind him, the other mirrors all around, and his own image. This had to be the mirror his father mentioned in his note.
    The accordion theme drifted in, not loud, yet quite audible. Nothing else unusual appeared in the mirror, but the dimnessunder the canopy made it hard to tell for sure. He scanned the perimeter wall and spotted a switch near the entry corridor. After hustling over, he flipped it up.
    Instantly a barrage of lights beamed down from a ring of high-powered bulbs at the midsection of the center pole. Flashing every fraction of a second, they transformed the chamber into a surreal digital video with half the frames removed. As he walked back to the normal mirror, everything seemed jerky, out-of-sync, hypnotic. Now the other mirrors took on a more dazzling aspect. The warped shapes looked like grotesque monsters, mutant images of himself on an alien planet. This was definitely cool.
    As he stood several paces away from the undistorted mirror, he stared at the ground in front of his reflection. How could something show up that wasn’t really there? That would be crazy.
    The accordion music played on. The lights continued to flash, making Nathan feel like he was blinking his eyes rapidly. After almost a minute, something appeared during one of the flashes, but it vanished in the next. What was it? Something brown and solid, maybe knee high?
    The object appeared again, this time remaining for two flashes before disappearing, then for three flashes, then four. Soon, it stayed put, a rectangular box about the size of a small trunk, like a treasure chest from a pirates’ movie.
    Keeping his eyes on the mirror, he leaned over and guided his reflection’s hands around each side of the trunk so that his fingers could support it underneath. As he straightened, the Nathan in the mirror lifted the trunk. With lights blinking at a mind-numbing rate, the scene felt like a nightmare — disjointed and unearthly.
    Although he couldn’t feel the panels or the weight, he pretended the trunk was there, imagining it in his mind as heturned toward the entry hall and strode out, his gaze fixed on the lantern light straight ahead.
    As soon as he entered the hall, a sudden weight burdened his arms. He looked down. The trunk