I was born without an original setting. I am, by nature and by curse, a mirror. When a boy in my preschool class had a stutter, I parroted him with such devout intensity that I nearly rewired my own vocal cords into a permanent stammer. Once, during a routine hospital visit, I watched an unconscious patient wheeled past with a ventilator tube down his throat; I dropped to my knees on the linoleum, clutching the ER doctor’s coat, hysterically begging him to intubate me too. And when the girl next door fell into a dark, romanticized melancholy and took a razor to her wrists, I hid in the pantry with a paring knife, attempting to carve an identical crisscross pattern into my own soft forearm. My parents lived in sheer terror of what I might latch onto next. Because of that, every human being allowed within a five-foot radius of me since toddlerhood had been vetted like a state secret. The private prep school I attended wasn’t just an elite institution; it was a sterile terrarium. My teachers drew double their market salaries, and every student in my honors cohort received an endowed monthly stipend courtesy of the Carlisle Foundation—all on the strict condition that they model pristine decorum, flawless grades, and unblemished character. They were paid, quite literally, to be my moral compass. Until the transfer student arrived. Our homeroom advisor pulled her aside on her very first morning, whispering a frantic, grave warning: “Whatever you do, don’t do anything reckless in front of Daisy. She copies everything.” The transfer girl just scoffed. “A human parrot? Please. If someone lacks a brain of their own, that’s on them. Who blames the mirror when the reflection is ugly?” Who do we blame? Well, she didn’t know about the last boy who convinced me to skip fourth period and make out behind the bleachers. My father had his scholarship stripped before sunset, had his family’s logistics firm foreclosed on by the end of the week, and made sure he was quietly, permanently relocated three states away. Carly Morgan had no idea. Instead, she cornered me, forced her way into being my “best friend,” and made a deliberate sport of displaying every dirty, rebellious trick in her repertoire. She flashed a full sleeve of inked tattoos in empty rooms, shoved safety pins through fake piercings, and blasted chaotic, brain-rotting dance tracks to drill ratchet routines into my head. Naturally, my brain took the bait. I replicated her down to the millimeter. And then, at the annual Founders’ Day Gala, under the blinding warmth of the auditorium spotlights, I unleashed the full, unhinged routine in front of six hundred wealthy donors. Down in the center of the front row, my parents’ faces turned to ash. … “Quiet down, everyone,” Mrs. Hensley called out, clapping her hands to gather the room. “We have a new addition joining our cohort this morning.” The door swung open, and a girl stepped over the threshold, her chin angled just a little too high. “This is Carly Morgan,” Mrs. Hensley announced, offering a practiced, diplomatic smile. “She transferred in from St. Jude’s, where she held the rank of valedictorian for three consecutive years.” A muted wave of whispers swept across the desks. In our classroom, there was an unwritten hierarchy dictated by a very specific rule: whoever held the highest GPA had the right to sit beside me. My parents funded an exclusive academic stipend through our family trust—ten thousand dollars a month for every student who maintained an unblemished record in my honors track. And my desk partner? They received double. Twenty thousand a month just to sit next to me, take neat notes, and breathe quietly. Every kid in the room clawed for that seat. You could see the raw resentment in the room’s posture, thirty pairs of eyes narrowing at Carly, furious that a newcomer had jumped the line on day one. Mrs. Hensley gestured toward the empty mahogany desk immediately to my right. “Carly, you’ll take the seat beside Daisy.” Then, lowering her voice until the air felt tight, Mrs. Hensley leaned in, her eyes locked onto Carly’s with dead-serious weight. “Sitting next to Daisy comes with a singular responsibility. You are expected to be an impeccable role model. Daisy has an innate tendency to mirror those around her. Under no circumstances are you to exhibit any questionable behavior in her presence. Am I understood?” Carly let out an audible, derisive snort. “A human parrot?” she said, loud enough for half the front row to hear. “If she doesn’t have a mind of her own, whose fault is that when she goes off the rails?” Mrs. Hensley’s jaw stiffened. “Carly, I strongly suggest you heed my warning. The consequences are far beyond what you can afford—” Carly brushed past her with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “Mrs. Hensley, I came here to study. I didn’t enroll to play nanny to a spoiled trust-fund baby.” The teacher’s lips pressed into a bloodless line. Still, convinced that a straight-A student obsessed with academics was unlikely to cause real damage, she swallowed her reprimand and let it drop. Carly dropped her heavy leather bag onto the chair next to mine and slid into the seat. I turned to her and offered a small, polite smile. She stared straight ahead, treating me like dead air. Mrs. Hensley tapped the whiteboard to clear the room’s tension. “The Founders’ Day Gala is coming up next week. Per tradition, each junior seminar is expected to prepare a stage piece.” Instantly, every head in the room pivoted toward me. My parents spent eleven months of the year navigating boardrooms across London, Zurich, and Manhattan; they kept me parked in this pristine boarding academy because it was the safest bubble money could buy. Founders’ Day was the single weekend they cleared their schedules to sit in an auditorium and watch me breathe. The headmaster knew it, the board knew it, and every year, the centerpiece performance of the showcase was reserved for me by unspoken decree. Carly, however, completely misread the room’s silence. She assumed they were waiting on the new academic star. She cleared her throat with smug authority. “I’ll do a classical poetry recitation.” The second the syllables left her mouth, my hand shot into the air. “I’ll do a classical poetry recitation too!” Carly cut her eyes at me, her brow furrowing. “Actually, I’ll sing an aria.” “I’ll sing an aria too!” I chirped, utterly sincere. Carly slammed her pen flat against the mahogany desktop. “Why the hell are you copying everything I say?” I blinked, processing the question with total earnestness. “You’re my desk partner. Of course I copy you.” Her teeth clicked together in irritation. “Fine. I’m going to go on stage and eat garbage.” My eyes lit up like Christmas morning. “If you do it, I’ll do it too!” The classroom went dead. Mrs. Hensley practically lunged between us, waving her hands. “All right, that is enough! You two will collaborate on a joint performance. Whatever it is, settle it between yourselves like civilized young women.” The dismissal bell rang with saving grace. Carly grabbed her belongings, her face dark with venom, and stormed out into the corridor. I didn’t hesitate. I fell in step behind her, trailing her down the colonnade and straight into the private restroom at the end of the arts wing. The second the door swung shut, Carly whirled on her heel, cornering me against the porcelain sinks. “Daisy Carlisle, do you have a single shred of a real self?” Her voice was laced with pure disgust. “Spending your whole pathetic life mimicking other people—doesn’t it make you sick to your stomach?” I froze. In sixteen years of private tutors, paid companions, and carefully monitored playdates, no one had ever spoken to me like that. Nobody had ever called it disgusting to my face. A strange, hollow sting settled in my chest, leaving me utterly speechless. Seeing me stunned, Carly’s anger curled into a cruel, knowing smirk. “You love to copy, don’t you? Anything, anytime, anywhere?” She leaned closer, her eyes flashing with a wicked spark. “Fine, then. Let’s see how much you can stomach.” The following morning. Carly arrived in homeroom, and the air left the room in a single, collective gasp. She was unrecognizable. Her prim brown locks had been replaced by a wild, synthetic crimson shock of hair; thick, greasy charcoal shadow was smeared across her lids, heavy acrylic nails studded with rhinestone studs tapped loudly against her books, and her tailored school uniform had been slashed, pegged, and pinned into an anarchic, trashy mess. She slumped into her chair, radiating pure, chaotic defiance. Mrs. Hensley walked in behind me, caught sight of her, and let out an involuntary, choked shriek. “Carly Morgan! What on earth have you done to yourself?!” The teacher bolted across the parquet floor, seizing my shoulder and yanking me firmly behind her back as if shielding a toddler from a radioactive spill. I peeked out from behind Mrs. Hensley’s cardigan, my pupils dilated with fascination. “I have never seen that before. I want to try it so badly.” Mrs. Hensley’s fingers dug into my shoulder with white-knuckled terror. “Daisy! Don’t you dare look at her!” She was clearly flashing back to two years ago—the boy who had taught me to ditch ethics class and sneak out behind the lacrosse shed. That boy had been erased from the roster, his family crushed, but the previous homeroom teacher had been stripped of her credentials, placed on disciplinary probation, and exiled to a public remedial school by daybreak. Mrs. Hensley was not about to lose her pension. Her palm slammed down on Carly’s desk with a crack like a pistol shot. “Out! Go to the administrative wing this instant! Dye that circus hair back, scrub that filth off your face, tear those ridiculous claws off, and wear a regulation uniform! You do not set foot in this room until you are civilized!” Carly merely arched a drawn-on brow, rising slowly from her chair. As she strolled toward the double doors, she paused, glancing back over the teacher’s trembling shoulder. Her eyes found mine, and she flashed me a slow, predatory wink. With no other choice, Mrs. Hensley moved swiftly to contain the damage. She reassigned the seating charts, putting Toby—our clean-cut, utterly boring class president, who spent his free time organizing Latin flashcards—right next to me. “Daisy, you sit with Toby now,” Mrs. Hensley pleaded, her voice quavering. “If you must mirror someone, look at Toby. You didn’t see anything just now. Do not copy Carly. Do you hear me?” I nodded like an obedient doll. The next day, Carly returned. She had transformed back into the model prep-school scholar. Her hair was cut into a sensible black bob, her skin was scrubbed raw and pale, and her blazer was ironed into crisp, navy creases. Her gaze swept the room, instantly noting that her seat beside me had been traded away. Without breaking stride, she marched up to where Toby and I sat. “Hey, Daisy.” Before I could blink, she hooked her arm through mine, leaning in with the easy warmth of a lifelong confidante. “Let’s be best friends.” My whole life, I had been conditioned to follow, to absorb, to reflect. I didn’t possess the wiring to say no. I nodded vaguely. Carly’s smile broadened, sharp and heavy with unspoken intent. “Great. Best friends from here on out.” The moment the final bell rang that afternoon, Carly was standing over my desk. “School’s out,” she whispered, tugging at my sleeve. “Come on, let’s go play.” She led me down the quietest corridor of the north hall, navigating through the maze of unused lecture spaces until she found an empty, dust-mote-filled seminar room at the dead end of the building. She clicked the heavy oak door shut behind us. Then, she began to dismantle herself. She reached up with both hands, seized the nape of her neat black bob, and pulled. With a soft rustle, the entire wig came off in her grip, tossing free the fiery, unwashed mane of red hair underneath. She hurled the wig onto a podium, hitched up the cuffs of her crisp white shirt, and revealed her entire left arm: a solid, sprawling sleeve of heavy black-and-grey ink, dense with thorny roses and tangled gothic script stretching all the way to her collarbone. My jaw dropped. Next came the cosmetic stickers peeled off her face, followed by the insertion of steel studs into existing holes on her nostril and lower lip. I stood there, completely hypnotized. Carly leaned against the blackboard, an eyebrow cocked. “Never seen real edge before, have you, Princess?” I shook my head, wide-eyed. Pulling out her phone, she queued up an obnoxious, bass-heavy underground trap beat. Instantly, she dropped her hips, rolling her wrists in rapid, jerky, hyper-stylized waves—a viral, chaotic street-rave dance. She knew precisely what lived inside my head, yet she swayed in rhythm, throwing her chin toward me. “This is our act for the Founders’ Gala,” she said over the thudding bass. “We’re going to blow the roof off that stuffy auditorium.” She smirked. “So, Daisy… want me to teach you?” I knew my parents would be sitting in the center of the mezzanine. I knew they would watch every second. But the ancient, mechanical urge inside my DNA flared up like dry kindling. I nodded vigorously. She slowed down the footwork, walking me through the jerky hip shifts and the rapid hand rolls. Almost on instinct, my muscles fell into place, reproducing every angle with eerie, metronomic precision. Carly laughed so hard her shoulders shook. “Holy shit,” she wheezed. “You really are a freak. You’ll copy literally anything.” The next morning, before the warning bell, I sidled up to Carly’s new desk at the back of the room, discreetly hiking up my blazer sleeve to reveal a solid, dark sleeve of thorny roses winding around my forearm. Carly’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. I beamed, glowing with pride. “Look. Exactly like yours, right?” A snort of laughter escaped her before she caught herself. She reached out, clapping my shoulder with triumphant condescension. “That’s my girl. Fast learner.” Just then, Mrs. Hensley pushed through the classroom door. With lightning reflexes, Carly yanked my sleeve down to my wrist, tucking her hands neatly onto her desk as she resumed her role as the pristine, attentive honor student. For the rest of the school day, we were model citizens. The second the dismissal bell echoed, Carly snapped her textbook shut and threw me a knowing wink. I followed like a shadow. We slipped into the abandoned seminar room, cranked the phone speaker, and spent an hour drilling the wild, jerky hand-chops in perfect sync. Carly laughed until she had to lean against the lecture podium to catch her breath. “Keep drilling the transitions. I need a minute.” She hoisted herself onto the edge of the mahogany desk, unlocked her screen, and initiated a FaceTime call. “Carly?” a girl’s voice crackled from the speaker. Carly flipped the camera, aiming the lens directly at me while I was still sweating through the routine, rolling my wrists with solemn, robotic dedication. The girl on the screen squinted. “…Who the hell is that?” “My new pet,” Carly said, her voice dripping with amusement. “She’s completely brain-dead. A literal copycat. Watch this.” Carly threw an exaggerated, jerky hand gesture into the air, yelling across the room, “Daisy! Mirror me!” Without missing a beat, I spun and copied the exact spasm. Laughter exploded through the phone’s tiny speaker. The girl on the other end caught her breath, sounding uneasy. “Wait, Carly, aren’t you worried you’ll wreck yourself? You’re in their top-tier track.” Carly let out a cold, dismissive bark. “Wreck myself? I was top of the district. I have a near-perfect score on my SATs.” She tilted her chin toward me, her eyes gleaming with contempt. “I love dragging people like her into the mud. I can slack off all day and screw around all night and still waltz into Harvard. But an empty vessel like her? By the time the dust settles, she’s the only one who actually ends up ruined.” “Ruined?” I didn’t quite grasp the concept. To be honest, I had been carrying a private knot of guilt regarding Carly. The last boy who had pulled me into mischief had met such a horrific end. But my compulsive urge to copy was a hunger I couldn’t suppress… I had been terrified that she might get crushed in the crossfire. Yet hearing how hard she was laughing, how entirely in control she felt, a wave of relief washed over me. “If she’s having this much fun, my worries must just be silly.” Carly ended the call, sliding off the desk to inspect me from head to toe. “Why is your hair still brown?” she complained. “And where are the piercings? If our aesthetic isn’t identical on stage, the shock value is ruined.” I nodded with absolute gravity. “Don’t worry. Before we go on stage tomorrow, I’ll be an exact match.” On the eve of the gala, Mrs. Hensley came by with the printed program in hand. “Daisy, what is your performance piece for tomorrow afternoon?” I raised my hand proudly. “A modern dance. With Carly!” Mrs. Hensley smiled warmly, then shifted her gaze to Carly. “Take good care of Daisy up there. Her parents are flying in from Geneva specifically to watch from the front row.” Carly bit back a smirk, muttering under her breath, “What’s there to watch? An expensive pet with half an engine?” Mrs. Hensley frowned sharply. “Pardon?” Carly instantly straightened her posture, offering a sweet, docile smile. “Nothing, Mrs. Hensley! We’re going to give them an unforgettable show.” The morning of the gala, my phone vibrated with a text from my mother: “Daisy darling, we just touched down at the airfield. Front row, dead center! We can’t wait to see you shine!” I didn’t even have time to reply. By late afternoon, backstage was a tempest of hairspray, sheet music, and stage managers with clipboards. We were two acts away from our cue when I finally came skidding through the dressing room doors, out of breath. Carly glared at me. “Where the hell have you been?” “Getting into costume!” With a theatrical flourish, I pulled off my bucket hat and ripped away my surgical mask. My waist-length dark hair was gone, replaced by a searing, radioactive highlighter-green mop. Beneath it, silver studs glinted from my nose and my lower lip—and just to go one step further, three tiny silver barbells were embedded along the arch of my left eyebrow. Carly stared at me for three solid seconds, her jaw slack. Then she doubled over, wheezing with manic glee, giving me two thumbs up. “Holy hell! You’re magnificent! You look even trashier than I do!” She grabbed her makeup kit and went to work, smearing greasy charcoal across my eyelids, layering on clumpy false lashes, and tracing harsh black ink around my lips until my own mother wouldn’t have recognized me through binoculars. Before I could look in a mirror, the stage manager’s voice boomed over the intercom: “Next up, the Junior Honors Cohort presentation!” The house lights plummeted into blackness. The entire hall fell into a hushed, reverent silence. A split second later— “THUMP. THUMP. CRASH.” A violent, vulgar, bass-heavy trap loop detonated through the high-end acoustic speakers. The overhead spots flared to life in blinding white. Carly and I stormed out onto the polished hardwood of the stage. Two fully realized, trash-glam disasters, twitching our hips in aggressive, jerky sync. We dropped low. We swung our arms. We pivoted. We launched into the frantic, rapid-fire wrist-rolling routine with ferocious abandon. The entire student body froze, mouths hanging open. In the dead center of the first row, the polite, expectant smiles on my parents’ faces turned instantly to stone. “Who are those two on that stage?” My father’s voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the air like a cold blade. He turned his head slowly toward the headmaster sitting rigid beside him. “Why is a creature like that permitted within breathing distance of my daughter?” A sheen of cold sweat broke out across the headmaster’s forehead. My mother’s hands were shaking as she gripped her crocodile-skin clutch, her voice trembling with barely suppressed fury. “We pour millions of dollars into this endowment every year to ensure Daisy’s environment is pristine. What kind of degenerate influence is she being exposed to? If my child has been tainted by this filth, can you afford the fallout?!” The headmaster was already scrambling, fumbling his phone out with slick fingers. “Mr. Carlisle, Mrs. Carlisle, please—I beg you, remain calm—” He hissed into the receiver: “Cut the sound! Kill the audio feed from backstage immediately!” The panicked voice of the technician crackled back: “Sir, we can’t override it! It’s running off an external Bluetooth receiver plugged straight into the stage box!” The headmaster’s face turned green. “Then pull the damn cable! Get the faculty up there and drag those two off the platform before this goes any further!” Meanwhile, up on the platform, I had reached a state of pure, euphoric momentum. Carly jerked left; I jerked left with mechanical perfection. She whipped her wrists; I whipped mine with twice the intensity, fully surrendered to the rhythm. Carly drifted closer to me, the manic gleam in her eyes burning brighter through her smeared eyeliner. Over the roar of the bass, she leaned toward my ear and screamed: “Daisy! Are your mommy and daddy having a good time down there?” “When they realize their precious little heiress isn’t just an idiot parrot, but a degenerate laughingstock—do you think they’ll have an aneurysm right here in the front row?” A sharp spike of panic pierced through the fog in my head. The hypnotic hold of the heavy bass fractured for a fraction of a second. Carly threw her head back, laughing like a hyena. “Brainless little freak. You were always destined for the gutter! I just gave you a little push so you’d see what you really are!” My footwork stuttered. My balance wavered. In the very next beat, the toe of my sneaker caught on the heavy, rubberized audio cable trailing from the monitor wedge. My momentum betrayed me. I lunged forward into thin air, flailing, and amidst a chorus of collective shrieks echoing from the balconies, I plunged face-first off the apron of the stage. “SMACK.” I landed heavily on the carpeted floor of the aisle—sprawled out, nose-first, directly at my parents’ feet. My father and mother looked down at the neon-green, mascara-smeared spectacle lying in the dirt before them, their pupils contracting into sharp, lethal points. Their frozen faces loomed over me like towering monuments. “D-Dad… Mom…” The last traces of the trance vanished. Mortification washed over me. I scrambled in blind panic to push myself up from the floor, but as I kicked outward, the thick audio cord tightly lassoed around my right ankle pulled taut. With one desperate tug, the heavy three-prong plug was violently wrenched from the stage-box receptacle. The thunderous, obnoxious trap beat died mid-bass drop. The auditorium plunged into suffocating, tomb-like silence. The only sound left in the cavernous space was the solitary, echoing cackle of Carly Morgan up on the stage, clutching her stomach in hysterics: “Daisy Carlisle!” “You utter, brainless moron!” “Ahahahahaha—!”
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