How long had it been? I glanced up at the clock, for maybe the thousandth time. Three o’clock. It had been two forty-five when I looked last. The seat under me was too hard, made of little rocks all crammed into a fabric covered trash bag. That’s what it felt like anyway. The lights were way too bright, whiter than I remembered. Then again, I had never been in this room. 

A few hours ago, the same man who had picked me up several weeks ago led me down the longest hallway of my life and into this room, which was marked as a “Waiting Room”. Despite the fact that Headquarters looked like a giant hospital from the outside and inside, this was the first “waiting room” I’d never seen. 

“What am I waiting on?” I had asked, sitting down on the boulder chair. 

“I’m going to pick up a girl who has just recently lost her reflection. She’s not been handling it very well, according to our agents in the field. Our research says she would be a good match for you to go in, but we have to calm her down first,” he answered, holding that book under his arm. I’d thought one too many times about stealing it from him and reading it. 

When he first picked me up, he had used the book’s hand drawn diagrams and pictures to tell me about the other world which had no name, the world where our reflections were disappearing to. I remember that it looked ancient, yellowing edges and hand binding. He’d never let me touch it, only pointing at it with his pencil fingers, neatly trimmed nails. Every time I saw him he was in a suit, one of three colors: navy, gray, or black. He changed it up by wearing matching ties and cuff links. Every day, I wanted to ask where he went suit shopping. 

“Good, it’s getting sort of lonely in here,” I said to the empty walls, listening to the sound of the clock. When Harris, the old man, had picked me up, I hadn’t went back to my house. There were rooms in the HQ, and no one had noticed I was gone yet. After a few days of being here, Harris decided to let me stay. I was an adult; my parents could get over it. 

I looked around the room, noticing the pictures on the wall. Landscapes, all of them. It was a collection of beach scenes. I didn’t remember the last time I went to the beach. As wealthy as we were, my family didn’t have time for vacations. My family didn’t have time to do anything together. At least here I ate dinner surrounded by way too many people in the cafeteria. While people complained about how loud it was, it was like music to my ears. 

There was a knock at the door, and it swung open without a sound. Like a hospital, everything around here was eerily quiet. A woman in a black dress stood in the door, holding a clipboard. She had blonde hair, pulled up into a high bun. She looked at me with a smile. 

“Will you come with me, Logan? There’s someone Harris would like you to meet,” she said, a voice smoother than cream cheese on a bagel. It gave me goosebumps. I simply nodded, standing up. She took off at what felt like a sprint, the sound of her heels a sharp drumbeat against the marble tile. These hallways were much more familiar, since they were the same first hallways I had seen. Blank white walls, white floors with little black flecks in the marble. Each door was black metal, numbered in silver paint on the front. At the end of the long hallway there was a set of frosted glass french doors. I remembered wondering if there had been something to hide over here when I was on the other side. 

The woman stopped when I did, her hand on the door handle. 

“What’s her name?” I asked, not wanting to be rude or scare her. I’d been told that my blue eyes were intimidating. 

“It’s Olivia,” she said with another smile.