For the past month, Piper hasn’t been herself, and it’s all because of her reflection.
She’s covered all the mirrors in her hotel room with duct tape, now. She doesn’t want to see it. It’s an omen, a rotting prequel of things to come.
The first morning she saw it was like any other. She’d eaten two bowls of cereal and bounded upstairs to brush her teeth. Her mom was yelling at her. “Piper! Hurry up, you’re going to be late for school! You have a test first hour, remember?”
The first day the clown appeared was a Wednesday. Carl knew this because he was at Oliver’s house and he was at Oliver’s house every Wednesday. His mom had arranged it with Oliver’s mom at the beginning of the school year because her new boss made every employee at the company work late one day a week and Wednesday was his mom’s day.
Carl and Oliver had heard about the scary clown phenomena, as had every 5th grader in his school, but they hadn’t known anyone who had personally seen one.