The Boy Behind The Glass • Stydia

3. change in pressure

C H A P T E R • T H R E E

"Why aren't your family in the mirrors with you?" Lydia asked one afternoon. She was standing at her window, looking out over the back garden were her mother was weeding some of the overgrown flower beds.

"I don't know," Stiles replied from behind her. She didn't need to look to see where he was. "But they're not here. No one is."

"So where are you when you're not in my mirror? Is there like a whole world over there?"

"No. If I'm not in this mirror, then I'm in the mirrors around the house," Stiles explained. "I like the ones in the attic the most."

Lydia turned around, facing the mirror in the corner of her room but not moving from her window. "Why?"

Stiles shrugged. He was sitting on the floor beyond the glass, just as he had been when they first talked. He was wearing the same ragged clothes, covered in dirt.

"What's your mum doing out there?" Stiles asked, nodding over to the window where Lydia was standing.

"Weeding, I think," Lydia replied. She spared one last glance out the window down to her mother before she pushed off the wall and crossed the room. "What did all the past house owners think of you? Surely someone must have moved in before us."

"You're the first person I've spoken to, if that's what you're wondering," Stiles replied.

"Why? Why didn't you speak to anyone else?"

"Only two other families have lived here before you. The first family thought the house was haunted when they saw me. They brought in priests and church members to 'get rid of me'," Stiles added the quote marks with his fingers. "They moved out not too much later. The only others was a old couple, and they didn't seem to enjoy having a child living in their mirrors. They left too, and that was years ago."

"Must have been a long time," Lydia said. "This place was awful when we moved in."

"Hey! It's not like I can keep up the house cleaning from in here," Stiles snarked.

"You're awfully sarcastic for an eight year old," Lydia mused, and Stiles flashed her a wide grin.

"I've been told. My mouth was always getting me in trouble as a child," Stiles said.

Lydia was silent for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip. She looked up and at Stiles, face open and emotions exposed. "My parents don't believe in ghosts," she said, and the moment the words tumbled off her tongue, she felt like she'd ruined the entire friendship they'd built. She felt like what she said was a insult, like blasphemy or racism.

Only, Stiles didn't looked surprised or insulted. If anything, he looked accepting, and Lydia found that was worse.

"Most adults don't believe in ghosts," Stiles murmured. "Don't take it personally, Lydia. You're the only one who can see me, so it's no surprise they don't believe. Would you believe in something you've never seen before?"

Lydia chewed on that thought for a moment, but found herself unable to answer.

*

Having Stiles around in the house, knowing his presence and existence, made the whole move somewhat easier on Lydia. She had been rallying herself up for months prior to the move, finding and promising ways to release annoyance and wrath on her parents for moving her across the country, away from her friends and their family.

Having Stiles in the house made the whole thing seem more of a bonus than a punishment. Lydia liked Stiles, a lot. He was funny, creative and smart, smarter than any of the other boys Lydia had ever met - they were all smelly, ugly and constantly picking their noses.

Lydia still had a few weeks before she was starting middle school in the town, but the fact of her lack of friends or knowledge of the towns community hit Lydia like a daunting dread. She went into town with her father the next day, joining him on his errands and looking out to see if there was anyone around her age.

She had no luck. The only new people she met were the young blonde lady in the post office, who had become very chatty with her father, and a stranger on the street handing out flyers for a missing dog. The town was dead and ghostly.

"Was it so boring when you were a child?" Lydia asked Stiles that night, sitting in front of the glass mirror with her legs crossed.

"I didn't really go into the village much. I spent most of my time in the woods with my brother and the Hales," Stiles answered. He was fiddling with a loose thread on his sleeve, seeming distracted. "The only time I really went into the village was to go to the Sheriff Station with my father."

"Your father was a deputy?"

"He was the Sheriff," Stiles replied. "What does your dad do?"

"He's a botanist," Lydia answered. "He studies plants and writes reports on them for magazines and big science companies in New York."

"Woah," Stiles breathed, and he sounded genially interested.

"Yeah, that's why we had to move out here. There were no plants in the city. Well, there were but nothing like this. We didn't even have a very big garden," Lydia explained, feeling a pang of bitterness in her chest at the reminder of how she was moved from her cosy home to this hell hole.

"My brother used to like watching birds," Stiles said quietly, voice so small and gentle it took a moment to realise he'd actually spoken. "I used to make fun of him when he'd come to the woods with me just to sit down for hours and watch birds fly from tree to tree."

Lydia smiled, chin resting in her cupping palms while she wedged her elbows in the folds of her knees. She liked listening to Stiles talking about his family. He sounded so happy and peaceful when he did, like he was physically feeling them again. Lydia can't imagine what it's like to lose her parents, or her whole family. She knows she hates her parents sometimes, but they're flesh and blood, and you only get two.

"What did you like?" Lydia asked. "If Scott liked birds, what was your thing?"

"Wolves," Stiles said. The single word dropped like a penny.

Lydia frowned. "Wolves? Have you ever seen an actual wolf?"

Stiles laughed. "Yes, of course. There was loads in the Preserve when I was a child."

"Really?" Lydia sat up straighter. "Didn't they attack you?"

"Of course not," Stiles replied. "They were just like. . . really big dogs."

Lydia was about to speak when her bedroom door opened.

"Who are you speaking to?" Her mother asked, standing in the threshold and leaning her hip against the door frame.

"Oh, uh-" Lydia looked back at the mirror where Stiles was still sitting, looking back and forth between Lydia and her mother. "No one," she said, eyes meeting her mothers. "I was talking to myself."

Her mother hummed, almost disapprovingly. "Dinners in a few minutes. Stop staring at yourself in the mirror and come set the table."

And with that, she was gone, the door still left wide open.

Lydia looked back at the boy before her.

"She can't see you?"

Stiles shook his head, "I won't let her."

"Why?"

"Because she'll take us away from each other," Stiles said. "Adults don't understand."

Lydia nodded, because that made sense, and she didn't want Stiles to leave.

*

authors note: ooo getting slightly juicy now!!

you guys still enjoying this?

- ells xxx