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Mena wrung the water out of a rag and started scrubbing the floor. The teacher-on-duty did not let her use a mop, so that Mena would have to get down on her knees, up close and personal with the bathroom floor. When she was about to dip the rag in the bucket again, she saw a shimmer of color in the water. Red-and-white stripes, just like her sweater.
But the image in the water wasn't her reflection. At the bottom of the oval bucket lay a miniature girl that looked exactly like Mena. Her unseeing stare was fixed on the ceiling.
Clapping a hand over her mouth, she muffled her cry. Here at school, if you screamed, you were automatically at fault for whatever happened. It would attract the attention of the patrolling teacher, and Mena would have to explain to her that she saw this... thing in the water.
"The patrol is not in the hallway. Don't worry about her."
The words were barely audible, but they undoubtedly came from the bucket. Mena sharply inhaled, exercising all her self-control not to scream. Her inhalation, like an invisible hand, yanked the Bucket Girl up by her belly: the rest of the girl's body drooped away from the center like a limp napkin picked up by the middle. As soon as Mena let the air out, the apparition's body relaxed. Mena retched.
Her first instinct was to dump the water out into a toilet, but she stopped herself in time. Here at school, following your natural instincts was a very bad idea, as she had learned. It always made things worse. She leaned against the doorframe of a stall and tried to think.
What if it's a Whisprey?
Mena's knees turned to jelly and she clutched the doorframe, not caring what nasty stuff might be on it. Whispreys were a school legend, something her classmates once talked about in the dorm room in low voices at night. A Whisprey would attach itself to an unlucky girl (as if anyone sent to this school could be considered lucky), and would appear in water cups, tea cups, any vessel with a liquid in it, and would whisper the victim's innermost thoughts out loud. All those girls were... eventually... found in the water too, Mena's bunkmate had added, solemnly pressing her lips together.
No. Mena could not flush the water down the toilet, as that might leave the Whisprey intact. She had to destroy the apparition into the tiniest particles. She got an idea.
Mena poked her head out into the hallway. The patrolling teacher was indeed not there, as the Whisprey had predicted. Mena tried not to think whether that was a coincidence. She carefully carried the bucket down the corridor and out the side entrance. Then she overturned it onto the sparse patch of lawn by the wall. The red-and-white stripes splashed onto the dusty brown of the trampled grass, then drained into the ground.
Is she gone? She's got to be gone, Mena told herself, as the last molecules of the creature seeped into the capillaries of the soil.
* * *
It started raining during the last class of the day. The asphalt road between the school and the dorm bloomed with mirror-like puddles. As the other kids stomped and splashed, Mena fell behind. She did not want to look at the surface of the water again today, or perhaps ever. When a large puddle thwarted her way, Mena walked around it, even though her shoes sank into the mud.
A gust of pitter-pattery sounds brushed past Mena's ears, as if rain had briefly intensified. But it wasn't water. It was words.
"Avoid Stas. He is dangerous. Go out of your way to not end up alone with him."
Mena looked around and immediately regretted the motion. Just under the surface of a puddle there was an ear. Beyond any doubt it was her own. It still had a red welt where a classmate sliced into it with her sharp fingernails.
"He's waiting by the west entrance of the dorm. He'll shove you into the mud. Go around and take the east entrance."
Surprise flashed through Mena's mind. How do you know?
"I have an eye in the puddle by the dorm," came a reply in a pelt of rain.
Mena imagined her own giant eye staring up from the water - the thick, pink lid, sparse pale eyelashes, red blood vessels magnified hundredfold. Her stomach twisted.
"You saved my life earlier. You released me into the Earth. The least I can do is to help you," said a whoosh of raindrops as it flew off into the distance: to settle in other puddles, to watch for other dangers ahead of Mena's path.