One morning, I went to brush my teeth and saw my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My hair was sticking out all over. “Bed head strikes again,” I said, opening up the medicine cabinet and grabbing a comb. When I shut the mirror again, though, something was wrong.

     I felt flat, like a piece of paper. It wasn’t just me. The whole world was flat. Everything was squished down onto the mirror.

     I was trapped inside the mirror!

     “You fell for it, Dave,” said a voice. I looked out of the mirror into the 3-D world and I saw my reflection, crazy bed-head and all. He was standing in the bathroom, looking at me. “I knew that if I locked eyes with you when you opened the medicine cabinet, I could switch places with you. Now I’m in the real world, and you’re caught in the mirror!”

     He was right. I was pressed flat in the glass, and he was standing on the bathroom rug.

     “See you later, Dave!” my reflection said with a laugh, and he turned to walk out of the bathroom.

     That’s when I saw that he was still flat, as thin as paper. I knew then that I couldn’t escape the flat world until I got him back into it. But how?

     Suddenly, I saw him again, strolling down the street in front of my house. I was looking at him from the picture window on my front porch. I was stuck in my front window! Wherever he went, I would see him as long as there was a reflection. He walked down my street, and I followed him, window after window. He even waved at my friend Jim riding by in a car.

     Jim stared at him, and the car shrieked to a halt. “Hey, Dave? Where’d you go?” my friend yelled out of the car window. “It’s like you just disappeared!”

     My reflection turned toward the car and smiled.

     Suddenly, I was seeing him from the window of the car.

     My reflection walked up to the car and tried to act casual. “Hey, Jim, how’s it going? Where are you headed?”

     My friend Jim scowled like he knew something was wrong. “Um, we’re going to the pool. You want to come along?”

     “Nah,” my reflection said.

     Jim was pretty smart, though. “How come you didn’t comb your hair this morning, Dave? You always comb your hair.”

     That spooked my reflection. He took off down the street. I was running right alongside, reflected in all my neighbors’ windows. Jim chased my reflection down the street. Jim was gaining on him.

     My reflection ran toward the gas station on the corner. Ah ha! I had him now. As he ran toward the glass door, I stood inside it and caught his eye. He grabbed the door handle, pulled it open, and rushed inside.

     As soon as the door shut, my reflection was trapped in the glass, and I was free. “Thanks for teaching me how to escape!” I said.

     Jim came in then. “Hey, Dave, why did you run?”

     “No reason, Jim,” I said, making sure not to look at my reflection as we went out the door. “I think I’ll go with you to the pool after all.”