Pauline turned to her in surprise.
“Weren’t you joking when you said that?” she asked.
“I was never more serious in my life,” replied Clarissa. “It’s the truth. Once I really did look in a mirror, and there was no reflection. I’ve been afraid of—of something ever since it happened. My brother noticed it first and said, ‘Clar, you don’t show!’ He always calls me Clar. It rhymes with jar the way he says it. I thought he was teasing me, but then I looked, and sure enough, my face didn’t show at all.”
“Was the mirror broken?” asked Flo.
“No, it wasn’t broken. I’m sure, because I noticed my brother looking in it afterwards, and his reflection was as plain as anything. My younger sisters looked, too. They saw themselves all right. There are six of us, including Mother and Daddy,” Clarissa explained. “It was Mother’s mirror. She still uses it. I was the only one who didn’t show. Mother laughed and said I must be a changeling, but I didn’t think it was funny. It still scares me. How could a thing like that happen?”
“There must be an explanation for it,” Judy replied. Here was another mystery for her to solve. But, instead of concentrating on it, her thoughts kept returning to her hair. Would it look dull and drab on television?
The brown-haired man Pauline and Flo thought they knew stepped up before the camera and announced that he was from Hollywood.
“No wonder he didn’t recognize me!” Flo exclaimed. “He isn’t the young man who works in our office and yet he does look like him. Maybe he has a twin brother.”
“Or a double. Lots of people have doubles—”
“No, Judy, only a few people have them,” Pauline objected, and Judy had to agree with her. One of the wonderful things about people, she thought, was that no two of them were exactly alike. Even identical twins could be told apart by their fingerprints, and usually there were other important differences. Judy found herself watching for individual characteristics as, one by one, the people stepped before the camera. A photograph of skyscrapers on the backdrop behind them made it appear to be a sidewalk interview.