The giant floating crystal was so high up off the ground that Mabel could walk underneath it. She stood there, strangely unafraid of it falling on top of her, as she flipped through the Journal to find the page on the Crystalline Cavern. Where did it go?

A slip of paper fell from the Journal.

Mabel watched it drift down, dancing on impalpable winds, and settle on the ground face-up. Her breath caught in her throat. No. . . no, no, no. . .

It was a shadowy drawing of her.

Mabel didn't remember putting any of her sketches from the last couple of days into the Journal, but that didn't matter now. All the memories — all the flashing images that had been absent from her mind for the past hour or so — came flooding back in full force. Mabel cried out, dropping the Journal and putting her hands on the sides of her head. "No," she said out loud. Her voice didn't seem to echo anymore. There didn't seem to be any air at all anymore. She couldn't breathe; she couldn't think; there were voices, sounds, screams—

"Stop! I don't want these!"

Silence.

A split second of silence, and then Mabel could hear the faint echoes of her outburst. But the voices were gone. She could breathe again, and she sucked in a few gulps of air. There were a few moments of peace.

Then the room exploded with blue light.

Mabel thought she felt a scream leaving her throat, but she couldn't hear it. Her vision was filled with nothing but scalding blue light, until a sudden curtain of black replaced it, and Mabel realized she had closed her eyes. Whooshing sounds were responsible for her saturated hearing, and she could feel gusts of air whipping about her. "What is going on!" she tried to yell; but, again, she couldn't hear the words after they left her mouth.

She wasn't sure how long this strange whirlwind lasted; but eventually the light dimmed, and the wind stilled. Mabel cracked open an eye.

And saw crystals, just like before.

"What just happened?" she breathed, opening her eyes all the way. Had she imagined it? Was it all part of some kind of trauma reaction?

"There she is!" a voice yelled. Something hit Mabel from behind, knocking her to the ground.

"Hey! Get off of her!" another voice said. Except. . . it sounded exactly the same as the first one.

"Are you the original?" demanded the person on top of Mabel. Why did that voice sound so familiar?

"I said get off!" The pressure on Mabel's back lifted, and she pushed herself onto her elbows.

A hand took Mabel's arm. "Are you okay?"

"Wh-who are you?" Mabel asked, turning around to look at whoever was touching her.

She found herself staring into her own face.

"Aah!" Mabel scrambled away, her eyes widening in horror as she saw herself standing over her. And then. . . another Mabel stood there with folded arms, glaring at the other. There was another behind them, and another, and another.

The entire Crystalline Cavern was filled with Mabels.

Nine pairs of brown eyes stared back at Mabel, framed by brown hair and bunched-up orange hoods. White shirts with dark blue symbols showed through the hoodies; but instead of pine trees, each symbol was a different shape. The Mabel standing closest to, well, Mabel, had a pine tree on her shirt, except it was upside down. The Mabel standing a few feet away had her arms crossed over a dark blue lightning bolt.

"Wh-wh-wh. . . what is going on?" Mabel asked. Her head whipped back and forth between all the Mabels. She couldn't make out any of the other symbols, but she was hardly concerned about that right now.

"You said you didn't want these," said Lightning Bolt Mabel, gesturing to the other Mabels. "So here we are."

Mabel recognized the voice now. It was the voice she had on recordings of herself: that weird camera voice that people hate but that sounds normal to everyone else. "That. . . that didn't help," she replied, slowly getting to her feet. Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel rushed over, looking like she wanted to help, but Mabel shook her head violently. She didn't want to be touched again by. . . whoever these people were.

"We're you," another Mabel said, stepping up. Her shirt bore a star. "You didn't want all those feelings, and the crystal heard you. It made us."

"Still making no sense." Mabel put a hand on the wall behind her to steady herself. So. . . these were a bunch of copies of her? What did the Journal have to say about this? She spotted the book on the floor of the Cavern, where she had stood a moment ago before scrambling away from her clones. She wasn't sure she could walk through all these other Mabels to get it.

But she didn't have to worry about it. Two other Mabels followed her line of sight and spotted the Journal. "There it is!" one yelled. Was that a hand on her shirt? She started running forward, but a Mabel with a cloud on her shirt held her back. The other Mabel that saw the Journal, who also seemed to have a hand on her shirt, was held back by a Mabel with a broken heart on her chest.

"Guys, stop it!" said Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel. The Hand Mabels stopped struggling against Cloud Mabel and Broken Heart Mabel, but they still glared at each other from across the Cavern. "Original Mabel still doesn't know what's going on here!"

"That's accurate," said Mabel under her breath.

Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel stepped forward. "You had so many conflicting and horrible feelings, right? When you said you didn't want them, the crystal heard you." She pointed up to the giant crystal that floated in the middle of the Cavern. "It created all of us to take those feelings away. There are ten Mabels now, including you. We each have opposing traits. You didn't want those feelings, but you have them, so I don't have any of them." She pointed to the Hand Mabels, still held back by Cloud Mabel and Broken Heart Mabel. "She, with the six fingers on the hand, wants to tell Ford about the Journal and learn from him; but she, with the five fingers, wants to hide it from him. One of us is infatuated with Robbie—"

"He's so dreamy," said a Mabel with a heart picture on her chest.

"—but another one is terrified of talking to him."

Broken Heart Mabel suddenly shied back; she let go of Six-Fingered Hand Mabel, who rushed to the Journal, only to be caught by yet another Mabel.

"So," Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel continued, "we'll take care of all of your feelings for you."

Mabel's eyes widened. "Wh-what does that mean?"

"It means I'm gonna take care of that rat Pleasure!" Lightning Bolt Mabel shouted.

"I'm gonna tell Robbie how I feel about him!" Heart Mabel added.

"I'm gonna tell Ford about the Journal!" Six-Fingered Mabel yelled.

"No, you're not!" shouted three Mabels at once.

"No, wait, you can't do any of that!" Mabel protested. She was getting extremely confused. "I'm me! I can take care of my own problems!"

"But you can't," Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel countered. "You can't take care of it, so we're going to do it for you. And whichever Mabel is successful in each pair, that's the feeling that gets to stay inside of you."

"Successful?"

"We all want to do our jobs as Mabel, but we all have another Mabel opposing us. Whoever is stronger deserves to be a part of the real Mabel." She stated this like it was obvious. Well it wasn't obvious to "the real Mabel," not in the least.

"So. . . if you're my opposite. . . what's your job?" she asked Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel carefully.

"To keep you trapped in here so you don't interfere, of course," UDPT Mabel replied, almost cheerfully.

"What?!"

"All right, everybody, go ahead! I'll make sure Original Mabel stays here!" UDPT Mabel shouted.

The Crystalline Cavern erupted into chaos as eight Mabels scrambled for the entrance. Five- and Six-Fingered Hand Mabel stopped to grab the Journal; Five-Fingered Hand Mabel snatched it first and ran off, with Six-Fingered Hand Mabel close behind.

"Wait! Stay here!" Mabel lunged forward, but UDPT Mabel grabbed her by the hood and pulled her back. "Let me go!"

"Can't. It's my job to keep you here." As she said it, the crystals in the Cavern started to move. They rumbled and shifted, covering up the opening to the Cavern.

"No! Wait! You can't trap me in here!" Mabel slipped her arms out of her sweater and ran for the entrance, but the opening sealed just as she reached it. She pounded her fists on the crystal. It didn't budge. "Let me out!"

UDPT Mabel sauntered up behind Mabel, unworried. "You and I will be in here for some time, while the other Mabels do their thing. Since we're waiting, I think I should give myself a name."

Mabel wasn't paying attention. She had her forehead on the cool crystal blocking her way, trying not to cry.

"Your middle name is Elizabeth, right?" She didn't wait for Mabel to reply. "I think I'll go by Lizzie. It has a nice ring to it."

Mabel suddenly whipped around to face Lizzie, the tears breaking through and trailing down her face. "You've trapped me in here, and you're talking about names like it's nothing? Y-you're just as bad as — as her!"

Mabel's words echoed through the Cavern as she sank to the ground, drawing her knees to her chest.

"Ouch. I hope not," Lizzie replied, not sounding too concerned about being compared to her. She regarded Mabel with a discerning eye. "Well, you look comfortable. That's good, because like I said, we're going to be here for quite a while."

Mabel moaned and buried her head in her knees.