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felt hot from the sun reflecting on its shiny surface.
    “Is it hot inside?”
    “No. There’s a cooling system. My own private air-conditioning.” She laughed, but it sounded more like a hiccup. I looked slowly now over the machine. This was her world. She was the largest thing in that world. Nothing would change within that world. This thought unnerved me plenty. I stepped away. I didn’t want to touch it. I had unthinkingly called it a beast before, but now I realized that it had with my touch become just that to me: a hideous beast. I imagined the mirrors turning into arms like those of a huge, gleaming, panting spider. I could see them reaching out to drag me into that unchanging place.
    Phyllis could turn her head a little bit to see us, but she didn’t need to because the mirrors rotated again and tipped down while the sky slid away, and now once again I could see only Emmett’s face filling one of the larger mirrors.
    “Are those Spiegelman mirrors?” Emmett asked.
    “Yes, how’d you know? No one ever asks that.”
    “I’m interested in mirrors.”
    This was so typical of Emmett! I know I was getting caught up in the machine because it was the strangest thing I had ever seen in my life. But Emmett should have seen beyond it and seen what had to be one of the most beautiful girls ever! With her shiny blond hair and the bluest eyes and dimples! She was the perfect high-school girl. She was prettier than Betty or Veronica. She could have been a cheerleader. No. She could have been a movie star! She was movie-star gorgeous. But, of course, she wasn’t going to be any of those things.
    Emmett just kept studying the mirrors and not really looking into them, where my face and Phyllis’s and some of his face were reflected. He kept trying to sort of dodge out of the mirror. But she caught him! I don’t know how. She did something with those mirrors, tilted them some way, somehow, and then bingo! There was his face filling up the whole mirror. I was out of the picture. But Phyllis had Emmett just where she wanted him.
    “An expert in mirrors. Don’t tell me you’re a narcissist! I don’t need any more narcissistic males.”
    Narcissistic? Never heard of the word. Did it matter? Not at all. I couldn’t believe how she was zeroing in on Emmett. I guess maybe this was flirting, but it actually seemed halfway between flirting and a guided missile strike. I don’t think Emmett knew that
nar
word either, but he laughed as if he understood exactly what she was talking about. And that moment, Emmett’s face creased into deep lines that ran from just below his cheekbones to his jaw, and his dark red hair suddenly flashed in the sun, and his deep blue eyes radiated smile crinkles fanning from the corners.
    But I saw all this in the mirrors, just the way Phyllis saw it. And for an instant he wasn’t my brother. He had been transformed into someone else. Someone that I didn’t quite recognize, but Phyllis did.
    “Naw,” Emmett was saying. “I just fiddle around with telescopes.”
    “He’s building a big telescope, and he’s already built three others. But this one’s going to be really big,” I piped up. I wanted to get in on this conversation even if I didn’t know what the word
narciss
-whatever meant. I sensed that something was happening, and I wanted to be in on it so badly.
    But no such luck, because just at that moment the mirrors swiveled and I was cut out of the picture. It was the two of them again.
    “I bet you’re good at math, Emmett,” Phyllis said, and narrowed her eyes as if she were thinking about something. There was a kind of sly sparkle behind the incredible blueness.
    Emmett blushed. “Pretty good,” he said.
    “Ah, come on,” Phyllis said. “I bet you’re better than pretty good.”
    “He’s great!” I blurted out. “He got 800 on his SATs, the math part.”
    “Oh, good Lord.” More hiccuppy giggles from Phyllis, and I was still not in the mirror. “I won’t even