We tumble into each other, half-collapsing into the familiar buzzing science lab I have grown to miss in the short time we weren't even in the same dimension.

"What now?" Milo asks.

I don't want to answer.

Mirror me is poised and intentional and can do cartwheels and, as I hear, gives good blow jobs. I don't know if I do or not. That's a lot of pressure. Meanwhile, I accidentally opened a portal. That's the kind of person I am. I can open portals by accident. I can break up with boys by accident. How am I supposed to compete with somebody who knows what she's doing?

"Follow the sound of trouble?" I ask, "where would you go if you wanted to make it rich and get your alter ego into trouble?"

Milo considers this. "The office? Our Ms. Isaakov opened the portal. Maybe portal Ms. Isaakov needs our Ms. Isaakov. She could be trying to clear her name."

That's an excellent point. Actually, that's a really good point. The portal was created from this side. Maybe that means something. It has to mean something.

"That's really smart," Emma adds, "It would be a pretty good idea to have someone on their team on this side of the portal."

There must be a paper trail of Ms. Isaakov's crime. It doesn't end at the school records, but it starts there.

We spill out of the science lab and into the hall. My heart pounds in my chest as we head down the hall, trying to be quiet while all this adrenaline is pumping.

Milo skids to a stop. "I just thought of something. I'll catch up."

I want to reach for him. "Remember what happened last time we split up?"

He grins. "Yeah, we got tricked. But this time, we can lay the trap."

Milo runs off in the other direction before I can protest further. It's just me and Emma now. We bound through the portal together, but now that there's no Milo, Emma has remembered her distance policy. She looks everywhere but at me. My stomach sinks, but we keep moving.

"This way," Emma points, leaning in a little to hiss closer to my ear. She leads us through a door into a narrow hall I didn't know existed. I knew it. I knew she got special access to teacher-only areas. There is clearly a door to the teacher's lounge, and around a corner, a gigantic printer where she no doubt hears all the faculty gossip. Praise for Emma's secret passageway.

We slink. Our breathing feels too loud, loud enough for the voices around the corner to hear us, but they keep talking.

"Do you have the replacement files?" Ms. Isaakov asks.

"Right here," mirror me replies.

Emma touches my shoulder, getting my attention so I look at her. Finally, she looks me in the eye, mouthing words as she gestures me closer. I tilt my head to bring my ear nearer. Emma's lips are so close I can feel her breath on my skin.

"If I circle around, we can force them back toward the science lab. Like your original plan," she whispers. Goosebumps rise on my skin, my body tingling as she speaks.

I nod my speechless agreement. It's a good plan, as long as they don't try to kidnap her again.

Emma slips back the way we came, as feather light as an angel as she creeps out. I follow, but only as far as the first door she took us through. My heart races, threatening to beat right out of me. If a doctor decided to press a stethoscope to me right now, they'd go deaf.

Waiting kills me. Part of me is deadly afraid to hear another one of Emma's earth-shattering screams. I don't breath in the meantime, in case me breathing is so loud it keeps me from hearing the smaller, more important sounds.

There are footsteps. They reverberate off the floor and I imagine them full-on vibrating like a stampede coming toward me.

It can't be a stampede of two people, though. Still, my whole body vibrates. I spring back, waiting for them to burst out of it. I scan the hall, panic bursting in me. This hallway is too wide. There is no way I could effectively cattle rustle them back toward the science lab. They would just run past me, right? I am one girl standing in a hall, hoping that I can spook them in one direction like dumb calves being driven across the great ol' plains.

I panic. There's no other good word for it. I twist around, spotting a glass case on the wall.

That'll do. That'll do, right? I yank the case open, reefing the fire extinguisher off its hooks. As soon as I do, an alarm sounds over me, something beeping. If there's a fire extinguisher, is there supposed to be fire, after all.

Nearly as soon as the alarm starts blaring, mirror Isaakov and mirror me burst through the door, wild-eyed and stricken at the commotion. I jerk the pin out of the fire extinguisher, pointing it in their direction and spraying.

It works! Instead of running toward me and past me toward a myriad of exits, they run back toward the science lab. My hands are so cold, too close to the nozzle and the foam spewing out the nozzle of the extinguisher.

Emma rushes out of the door and I drop the extinguisher before I accidentally hit her with foam, too. It's everywhere and I slide through it to reach her, darting after the alien interlopers from another dimension. Cold foam clings to our shoes and our jeans. We follow the trail of it down the hall.

Where is Milo? What happened to him?

My stomach clenches, waiting to hear a yell for help as soon as I think about it, but it doesn't come.

We take the corners, spotting the white-frothed figures in front of us.

Milo springs from a broom closet across from the science lab, a hand raised like he's about to try to force-choke the both of them. In the span of an afternoon, he already fancies himself a warlock.

"Abite!" Milo shouts and both mirror imposters are thrust backward into the wall. Except, they don't smack flat into it and crumple to the floor. They fly right through it and the closer I get the clearer the ash outline is.

"Wooh! Milo!" I raise a cold hand and smack Milo a hard high five and Emma and I run to meet him. Emma runs to the door, searching her pockets for the key. She thrusts it in, locking it.

They're contained. Now, it's just a matter of getting them back through the portal.

"I'm going to hop through there. You have to erase the portal behind me," I say. It's not a very good cage if there's a big gaping door in it.

"What! You're not going in there alone," Emma protests.

"Just give me like, five minutes, okay?" I say, "I've got a plan."

I don't have a plan. My plan is like, not dying. That's not even a plan, that's just a really loose goal. That's not even a goal that accomplishes anything, it's just a defensive position. If I mention this, I'm pretty sure it will not help my point, though.

Before Emma or Milo can come up with a good argument, I jump through the portal. I don't even think the jumping is all that necessary, but it feels like an important part of getting through a portal. It feels more video game-y this way.

The second I get through, a hard thwack cracks into my ribs and I smack into a set of cabinets. I blink up at mirror me from the floor, clutching my side. Mirror me wields a heavy textbook, presumably the one she just tried to strike a home run with.

Ooooowwww. I moan dramatically, for nobody's benefit but mine.

"Nice try," mirror me says.

I pull myself to my feet awkwardly. Try? It was a pretty good try. I mean, I didn't really contribute that much, honestly. All I really did was douse the mirror imposters in a bit of fire extinguishing foam. It's pretty satisfying to see it still dripping out of her hair. 

"I love what you're doing with your hair. Is that mousse?" I say, showing her all of my teeth in what I sort of mean to be a smile, but what is very probably just a jack-o-lantern impression.

"Delaney, can you just deal with this?" mirror Isaakov sounds so bored. It's strange for a science teacher to be so hands off. Seems to me like she should be elbows deep in guts or something. That's what science teachers are supposed to be like. Not afraid to get their hands dirty.

Mirror me gives a pained expression and I take the opportunity to hunch over and charge her, headbutting her right in the stomach. An 'oof' escapes her and knocks her off balance, both of us tumbling to the floor.

Above us, Ms. Isaakov lights the bunsen burners.

Mirror me yanks my hair and I bite her, sinking my teeth into her arm until she shrieks. This is how I know she's nothing like me. I would not shriek in a girl fight. I cuss like a proper lady.

Mirror me struggles to get free of the tangle of us, all dark hair and pale skin. I almost can't tell where I stop as she begins, nearly grabbing handfuls of my own hair. One of her elbows thrusts into my face and I can taste the blood in my teeth immediately.

The door rrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees open urgently, shoes slapping against the floor so I know Emma and Milo are on the scene, but I can't see them past the flurry of hair and skin and wrestling on the floor.

"Abite!" Milo shouts again, sounds like Harry Potter Expelliarmusing his way to victory while I'm busy trying to WWE my way to it.

"You don't mean anything," mirror me hisses, jabbing her elbow into my shoulder, "you're just a clumsy, dumb, immature loser. I'm so much better. I'm the real Delaney. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you're the reflection?"

My reflection wants me to think that. Maybe on some days, she's wanted me to believe it all without the luxury of saying it to my face. She just blinks back at me in glass, pointing out my flaws which aren't usually so personal, more like, my eyebrows aren't symmetrical or maybe I wouldn't be so bloated if I didn't try to eat a whole cheesecake at once.

"Yeah, if you're so much better, how come you can't make portals from your own side of the glass?" I ask.

That's the thing. They needed me to cut myself up super gross snake juice glass to complete the ritual. If they're so good at magic, why didn't mirror Isaakov just open a portal for herself? Why not turn any old puddle into a mirror portal and terrorize whatever neighborhood she wanted?

We're the real ones. This is the true side. Everything on the other side is something else. Reflecting, but not completely accurate.

The truth gets me my hair pulled again. Mirror me scratches wildly because mirror me apparently is no good in a real fight. Sure, she talks big game, but it's me who struggles out of her grasp to stand up, pulling her with me.

Emma hangs back near the cabinet, mirror me's back to her. I step toward her, forcing mirror me back.

"Patentibus! I shout with my best imitation of Milo's fancy casting hand gestures. 

Mirror Isaakov, shocked turns to me. Maybe I'm not as stupid as she thinks I am, but her low-low expectations of me give me the benefit of surprise and Milo shouts before Isaakov has a chance to deflect. 

"Abite," he says, like he's shouting goats off a cliff in Skyrim, but instead, shouting the mirror science teacher back from whence she came. 

Mirror me pounces, crying to force her nails into my neck, or her fingers around her throat. I twist around, the two of us locked into on mass, all limbs and pasty skin. Her claws scratch down my throat, but I hold myself upright, fighting until her back is to the portal. 

Emma crouches down, doubling over. I get it. I figure out what she's going for and give mirror me a good shove off me. 

She stumbles back over Emma, falling backward right through the glass and vanishing.

"We have to do the ritual in reverse," Milo says and I know what that means. I completed the ritual last time and I start it now. I spit blood into the center of the pentagram.

"Go for it," I say. I have contributed my part in this little incantation.

Milo reads off the paper, a version of it now written in his handwriting. The portal spell, but backwards. "Facis omnem accipiam non quia intellectualis iter si"

The bunsen burners puff out all at once, smoke wisping up from them.

Emma leans in close to me.

"She kissed me," Emma whispers, "before detention. I thought it was you..."

She pulls her sweater tight around her and this time, I'm the one who blushes.

"No wonder you wanted a minimum foot between us at all times," I say.

She shrugs sheepishly, but the way she hurried into the classroom wasn't the look of someone disgusted.

My heart is still pounding and I still feel like a reckless idiot so I lean, in pecking her on the cheek and I can practically feel her skin warming under my lips.

In the flurry of it all, the door flies open and there stands Mr. Dennison.

The three of us, Milo, Emma, and me, stand in a mess of foam, smoking bunsen burners, and from the hall, there is still an incessant beeping alarm going off.

The poor man is at a loss.

"What on earth happened?" he asks.

"Spiders," I say.

"Bunsen burner fire," Milo says.

"Emergency," Emma says.

None of it is very convincing.

Mr. Dennison just signs. "I'm writing you all up for another detention."

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A/N sorry this took forever and a day to finish, dear readers. This was a real quick adventure, but it was so much fun and hopefully you think so tooooo <3