The glass crunched loudly under my boots.
Boots. I wasn't wearing boots a minute ago. I was wearing wet canvas sneakers that squeaked on linoleum. I stared down at my feet, or rather, his feet. They were large, covered in scuffed, heavy black leather shoes that smelled a little like motor oil.
My brain ached, sending me into a wave of vertigo so violent I had to reach out and grab the edge of a nearby wooden desk to stay upright. My center of gravity was entirely wrong. The weight sitting in my shoulders, the unfamiliar shift in my hips, it was like operating a heavy machine that I had never been licensed to drive. Everything felt too broad, too dense.
"Are you going to answer me, or just stare at your damn shoes all day?"
The dark-haired guy—the fierce version of Tori—stepped closer, his heavy footsteps shaking the floorboards. His voice was a low rumble of deep irritation, but underneath it, I could hear a thread of genuine, reluctant concern. He reached out, his thick fingers grabbing my bicep to steady me. The grip was firm, but what shocked me more was the solid muscle he squeezed.
My arm. I had actual biceps.
I swallowed hard. The Adam's apple bubbled in my throat. It felt foreign.
"I..."
I started, but the deep baritone of my own voice startled me into silence again. It vibrated in my chest. I cleared my throat, the sound resembling rocks grinding together. "I'm sorry. I just... I tripped."
He raised an eyebrow, a gesture so distinctly like Tori, that my heart gave a painful DUN DUN against my ribs.
"You tripped. While standing completely still," he said. "And then you dropped the mirror, shattered it, and started whispering about being a guy." He leaned in, his eyes searching my face with intense scrutiny.
"Oliver, are you high? Because if you dipped into that stash before the chem exam, I'm going to kill you myself. I am not carrying your GPA this semester."
Oliver. He called me Oliver.
That confirmed it. The name, the face, the obvious gender swap. But why was I in his body? When the government propaganda preached about the horrors of mirrors, they never mentioned quantum body-snatching. They talked about madness. They talked about vanity. Not crossing dimensional planes and hijacking your male counterpart's existence.
"I'm not high," I managed to say, forcing my heavy vocal cords to cooperate. "I just... I feel sick. Really sick. Who... who are you?"
The question hung in the air, heavy, absurd, and seriously stupid sounding. The guy dropped his hand from my arm and took a slow step back, his expression shifting from annoyed to deeply alarmed.
"Not funny, man," he said, his voice dropping, losing the playful edge. "Seriously, stop messing around."
"I'm not messing around," I insisted, panic clawing its way up my throat. I needed to know. I needed an anchor in this impossible reality. "Please. Just tell me."
He stared at me for a long, agonizing moment, his jaw tight. "It's Victor," he finally said, the words slow and intensely cautious. "Victor Scott. Your best friend since we were in diapers. Oliver, what the hell is going on with you? Did you hit your head?"
Victor Scott. Victoria Scott. It was Tori.
A male, aggressively protective, six-foot-something version of Tori. The familiarity was a double-edged sword. It meant I wasn't entirely alone, but it also meant I was actively lying to the one person who might actually know this body and this life better than I did.
"Yeah," I lied smoothly, grasping at the excuse he handed me. "I hit my head. Hard. Everything is just... fuzzy. Blurry."
Victor sighed, running a hand through his messy dark hair. It was a nervous habit Tori had when she was stressing out about finals. "Alright. Sit down before you fall down. You're pale as a ghost. I'm getting you some ice."
He turned and walked out of the bedroom, his heavy footsteps echoing down the hallway.
The moment he was gone, I practically collapsed onto the edge of the unmade bed. The mattress creaked loudly under my new, heavier weight. I needed to think. I needed to process. I looked back at the cast-iron frame leaning against the far wall. It was identical to the one hidden in my dad's basement, right down to the grotesque, swirling patterns that looked like screaming faces.
But here, it was empty. Just an ornate frame showing the peeling wallpaper behind it. The silver glass, the gateway I had violently fallen through, was simply gone.
I walked over to it, my large hands tracing the cold, rough iron. No glass. No mirror. How the hell was I supposed to get back? My dad's coded notes flashed through my mind like a neon warning sign.
Entry point unstable. The silver is bleeding.
What did that mean? Was the way in closed behind me? Was I trapped here, stuck paying rent in a male body with a roommate who thought I was having a psychotic break?
"Here," Victor's voice snapped me out of my spiraling thoughts. He tossed a blue gel ice pack across the room. My hand shot out entirely on its own, catching it mid-air with reflexes I definitely didn't possess. Oliver's reflexes.
"Thanks," I mumbled, pressing the freezing plastic against my forehead.
"Hold it to the back of your head, idiot, that's usually where people hit it when they fall backward," Victor muttered, leaning heavily against the doorframe. He crossed his thick arms over his chest. "You're acting weird, Ollie. Weirder than usual. And considering you've been a mess since your dad got locked up, that's saying something."
I froze. The ice pack slipped from my hand, landing with a soft thud on the floorboards.
"Locked up?" I whispered, my blood turning to ice water.
Victor frowned, his annoyance returning in full force. "Yes, locked up. In Blackgate. Are you sure you didn't concuss yourself? You're talking like you have amnesia."
My mind raced. In my world, my father vanished without a trace three years ago. The police said he walked away. He abandoned us. Here, in this twisted reflection, he was in prison? Blackgate sounded like a maximum-security nightmare, not a county jail.