Rouge: A Novel

Mira wakes in her mother’s apartment, again disoriented. She begins organizing Noelle’s skin products and keeps thinking she sees her mother in the mirror instead of her reflection. Mira speaks to Noelle in the mirror as she tries her products. Tad enters and startles her. He looks afraid and asks Mira what happened to her, asking if she is sick or gave blood. He tells Mira she looks just “like her […] just before” (235). She kisses him, but he tells her it’s too weird. Mira finds a bracelet among the jars: A gold Eye of Horus bracelet that she remembers from her childhood. It was a gift from her father that her mother made her wear.

Mira goes to Belle of the Ball, observing that she can “think clearly.” She sees her mother in the glass front of the shop. The shop assistant, Esther, tells Mira that she is not supposed to let her in, but Mira pushes through, again thinking the shop belongs to her. Mira continues to talk to her mother’s reflection. She sees Noelle in a garden within the mirrors, picking red flowers. There are gray, headless