"I Hate Being Poor"

I hate being poor, 13-year-old Oliver Moore thought after a cloud of dust he’d brushed off an ornate dresser sent him into a sneezing frenzy.

Thirteen-years on this Earth, he’d known from a young age that his family struck its claim on the wrong side of the tracks. His father was in jail on drug charges, while his mother worked two jobs struggling to keep their apartment. They could have moved somewhere cheaper, but the two-bedroom apartment placed them in the Spring Ridge School District. Because most of the students came from the palatial estates to the north and, as a result, it offered one of the best public school educations you could find in Houston, short of going to private school.

All it cost was his pride.

While his classmates cracked jokes during the community service hours at the Spring Ridge Assisted Ministries (SAM for short) resale store, he had to carefully eye every loose scrap of clothing and book for anything that might fall within his weekly.

While other kids spoke about the latest releases on PlayStation and Xbox, Oliver was left holding a fifteen-year-old Nintendo Wii that his mom had bought off the boy next door when he’d outgrown it. While the machine was older than Oliver, Nintendo didn’t frequently change up their lineup of games, so he’d gotten all the essential characters like Mario and Zelda, but a year out from high school, he was woefully behind the other kids who’d graduated to shooters like Call of Duty, Fortnite and Halo. Maybe if his dad wasn’t in jail, his family would have enough money to afford a new PlayStation, or a computer that didn’t take forever to startup and sputtered like an old car in a Looney Tunes cartoon whenever he tried running games more recent than 2008.

Today was an especially excruciating day of community service for Oliver, as they’d just received the motherload: Two trucks full of furniture, clothes and jewelry from the estate of Hazel Bigby. There were many things one could say about the 81-year old, recently deceased socialite: she was part of Houston’s business elite, a fashion icon, one of the most beautiful women who’d ever lived (at least in the ‘70s), etc., etc. That she’d been filthy stinking rich was the only thing that mattered to Oliver. It was visible on every item wheeled down from the trucks into the sorting area at SAM.

Oliver overheard some of his classmates talking across the floor. “Look at this! I think this is real gold. This woman’s husband had to be loaded,” an athletic boy said. A sigh from a girl with pigtails. “Don’t you know anything? Hazel Bigby didn’t need a man. She was entirely self-made and didn’t want anyone weighing her down.” “So she was some kind of feminazi?” One of the other boys from the basketball team said. Oliver could feel pigtails’ eyes roll from across the room. Oliver honestly didn’t care what she was, but he knew he’d do anything to wake up and find himself rolling in fat piles of dough. It was while the young man was fantasizing all the things he might do if he caught any wayward leprechauns that Oliver Moore found the thing that’d change his life.

It was innocuous. When he opened the dresser drawer and found it sitting there, he’d almost put it aside without a second glance, but something about the item intrigued him. It was a hand mirror, with an elaborate designed gold handle that made Oliver think of a vine with feathers in place of leaves. Like everything else in Hazel Bigby’s collection, the mirror had a regal air, looking as if it would be right at home in a 17th century oil painting. That wasn’t what drew Oliver in. The mirror was unquestionably valuable, as it was Hazel Bigby’s hand mirror, but there was one thing about it that Oliver had never seen anywhere before.

The mirror’s surface was violet.

===

No one noticed the mirror’s absence. It was never indexed or missed because no one ever knew it existed. If you asked anyone at SAM about whether or not the estate of Hazel Bigby had donated a gold handled mirror with a violet surface, none would have any idea what you were referring to.

But Oliver Moore knew. He knew it wasn’t his to take, but he’d taken it. He spent the rest of the school day after community service anxiously stealing looks left, right, front and back, the strap of his bookbag always within reach.

Once he was back in the apartment, safe in his bedroom, Oliver unwrapped his pilfered treasure His mother wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours. It was just him and the mirror.

He held up the mirror and, much to his surprise, found the face that looked back wasn’t his!

“Hello, handsome,” The woman in the mirror said.

Oliver half-screamed, nearly throwing the hand mirror across the room, but he stopped himself.

The woman in the mirror laughed. “Try not to break me, dear. I’m quite fragile.”

She was beautiful. More than beautiful, Oliver thought. She was a goddess. Although he could only view her from the shoulders up, he could tell her satin dress sensuously traced every curve. The woman could have been anywhere between the ages of 18 and 35, as she seemed to hold the grace of someone fully confident in their appearance, and the playful energy of youth.

“I'm flattered by your wandering eyes, but this conversation’s rather one sided,” the woman in the mirror said. Her eyeliner reminded Oliver of a cat.

“Wh-who are you?” Oliver stammered. For some reason, having the pants scared off him by a talking mirror had a way of drying his mouth.

“You spend ninety minutes digging through my possessions and you don’t pick up my name?” The woman pouted her lips. “I’m hurt.” She shook her head in dismay when this still did not elicit a response from the youth. “I am –or, I should say was—the prosperous Miss Hazel Rigby!”

“You’re—Really?” Oliver asked. “Weren’t you, well, um... Old?”

“Tsk-tsk,” the projection claiming to be Hazel Bigby said, shaking her head. “I see you still aren’t old enough to know the proper ways of addressing a lady. You have much to learn, Oliver Moore.”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver said. “When I saw your picture on the news last week it was recent, so you were all... You know! Pruned.”

Miss Hazel Bigby sighed. “It figures they’d only use pictures of the weakened, old Miss Hazel Eleanor Bigby taken near the end of her days. ‘Oh, the poor thing never married!’ ‘She must have been so lonely.’ Bah! Spare me that noise.”

She crossed her arms, stewing over the information. Oliver couldn’t imagine being upset about how people reported on you when you were already dead, but this was clearly a matter of great personal importance to the spirit in the mirror. He supposed, to her

The silence had become nearly unbearable when she smiled again. “I suppose I can’t blame you for being unfamiliar with me in the prime of my youth. Rest assured, you’re looking at a loving recreation of the face that launched a beauty empire by the sweat of her own brow.”

A question had been waiting at the back of Oliver’s throat, and, during the pause, he now saw an opportunity to ask: “How did you know my name?”

Hazel Bigby laughed. “Dear boy. You’re holding a magic mirror and *that’s* the first thing you ask?”

“Well, what would a better question be?”

“Don't you want to know how my spirit evaded the clutches of the Reaper?”

“Okay,” Oliver conceded, “How did you do that?”

A big smile. “Magic!”

“That’s not really an answer...”

“As for how I knew your name, the answer is also magic. Do you have any more questions? If not, I’d like to know why you stole me from my comfortable place in the drawer.”

“Oh, well...” Oliver broke eye contact. He’d been dreading a confrontation with an adult over the theft of the hand mirror all day, but he had no way of knowing the adult would be inside the mirror itself. He took a breath and met the purple tinted visage of Hazel Bigby. “You have to believe me when I tell you that I don’t usually do things like this. I’m rules following spoil sport! Honest. I saw your mirror and I just...”

“Go on,” she seemed to purr.

“I felt a pull,” Oliver said. “Like I had to have it.”

“Interesting,” She said, lush lips forming a winning smile. It was no wonder she used to grace the covers of magazines. “How long have you been going to SAM?”

Oliver shrugged with one shoulder. “My middle school had us doing ninety minutes community service there once a week all year. They said It'll look good on our records when we start applying for colleges.”

“But you’ve been there before,” Miss Hazel Bigby said. “I’m guessing you’ve walked those floors countless times before the first pimple popped up above your eyebrow.”

“How did you—magic, right?”

“No magic.” She laughed. “That much I could read from your face. There’s nothing wrong with admitting you’re poor, Oliver.”

Oliver’s grip around the mirror’s handle tightened. “Of course you’d say that. You were rich.”

“I lived long enough to experience many ups and downs.” She wiped a strand of hair from her almond shaped face. “You don’t have to be poor forever if you don’t want to be.”

“I’m only thirteen,” Oliver said. “I’m still figuring out puberty, so don’t tell me about how all the decisions I make now are going to shape my future.”

“I was going to say no such thing,” She said. “If money’s what you want most in life, I can help you.”

Oliver was taken aback. “You can?”

“Of course, dear.” Hazel Bigby smiled again, this time kind and reassuring sliver, rather than boastfully beaming. “If you had all the money in the world right this instant, what would you do with it?”

Oliver thought. There were so many ways he could put a fortune like Hazel Bigby’s to use. They could exchange the apartment for a house, he could buy new clothes instead of relying on second hand stores, but the one thing he wanted now more than anything else...

“I'd buy a PlayStation 5! Brand new.”

“An easy start!” She said joyously without any condescension. “That’s, what, four or five hundred dollars?”

“Five-hundred,” Oliver confirmed, “Plus tax... And then I’d need games, an extra controller for when I have friends over, and-”

“There, there,” she raised a silencing hand. “I get the picture.”

“I can’t believe this,” Oliver said, overwhelmed. “Is a Willy Wonka sort of deal? Like, is this mirror your golden ticket, and now I get all your stuff?”

“Who said anything about that?” Miss Hazel Bigby scoffed. “I never said anything about giving you a fortune. You’re going to make it.”

“Oh...” Here comes the usual adult’s speech about bootstraps, he thought. Why do adults always have to do that thing where they promise you the world upfront, then start tacking on an infinite number of amendments in the fine print.

“Why so sullen?” Hazel Bigby asked. “I didn’t say anything about having to work. 

“What sort of promise?” Oliver asked warily.

“The kind not easily broken.” Her expression turned serious. “If you want to be rich, you must give yourself to me. My instruction must be obeyed.”

“So, what,” Oliver said, “You’ll be like a tutor?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she replied. “Follow my directions and, you’ll be tripping over PlayStations. And whatever else we set our minds to.” Her eyes seemed to glow as she said it.

“I’ll do it,” Oliver said. 

“Very well.” She brought her hands back into the frame and removed the ring from her right hand. “Here, Oliver. Take this ring.” She extended her arm, but, like a reflection, she couldn’t extend her reach beyond the barrier of the mirror.

Oliver stood perplexed. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just reach in and take it,” Hazel Bigby answered. “That’s really all there is to it.”

It seemed stupid, but Oliver did as he was asked, and placed his free hand against the mirror. Much to his surprise, his hand passed through the violet surface. It felt like a cold jelly wrapped around his arm, but alive. He could feel it pulsing, gently suckling his arm.

“You’ve almost got it, dear,” He heard Miss Hazel Bigby say just before...

Oliver shrieked as he felt a bony hand wrap around his wrist, yanking half his arm into the portal. He could no longer see Hazel Bigby, and she did not answer his cries. The tug of war felt like it went on for an eternity until, just as quickly as it had grabbed him, the unseen hand relinquished its hold, and he tore his arm free.

“What--?” Oliver looked to his hand. It appeared unharmed, except there was now a thick gold ring with a purple jewel at the center.

How did that get—Oh, magic, of course. That was the last thing he thought before Oliver’s consciousness faded from the world.

===

“Mmmmm, it feels good to be back in the flesh.” Miss Oliver Moore relished the feeling of those words passing over her teenage boy lips. Freshly showered, she inspected her budding boy’s body in the mirror. It had been a few centuries since she’d last had to endure male puberty, but she believed the pimple-faced youth had the right raw ingredients. In 3,000 years of life, she’d certainly worked with worse stock. Her original plan had been to have her mirror fall into the hands of some well-to-do bidder at her estate’s auction, but she welcomed the challenge of starting from scratch. Going through school again might be just the break she needed after humdrum life she had fallen into as Hazel Bigby.

The smell of Hamburger Helper was in the air, a stovetop comfort the spirit hadn’t tasted in over thirty years.

Miss Oliver Moore slipped the violet mirror into a bathroom drawer that she’d determined was hers by the presence of Old Spice deodorant sticks and a retainer. In the corner of her mind, she could make out the faint screams of a thirteen-year-old boy whose mind was now sunken into the dungeon of her mind.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Miss Oliver Moore said. “We’re going to make it out there.”

She knew she would. She always had.