The Mirror

I found myself looking in a mirror that held a beautiful reflection. A kind girl with big dreams and larger hopes stood smiling in the glass. But then fear crept in, encroaching on the image, and the world around the reflection fractured. The glass shattered. All I was no longer remained. Each tiny piece of the mirror now lay at my feet, and I can no longer see a clear image. I am broken. I am ugly. I am lost.

No matter how long I stare, the same image still reflects back at me. Swallowing hard, I glance at the note I have pinned in the corner of my bedroom mirror. You are strong. You don't care. Daily I wonder how true those words are. Daily, my strength wanes, and I find myself dwelling on the little things that shouldn't matter.

I take a deep breath and tug my thin sleeves over my wrists to my palms, holding them there a moment before I turn and snatch my backpack off my bed. My mother is at the kitchen table when I pass, and a sigh escapes her lips as her eyes creep over me. "Have a good day, Cyndi," she murmurs, and I nod, emotion catching in my throat as I pull my shoulders forward and leave.

The walk to the bus stop is short and just familiar enough to calm me. The birds sing in nearby trees, a different song from the same album of days long past; a single lawnmower fills the air with the scent of green. The shadows are wholly autumn as I pass beneath their chilling embrace.

I take slow, deep breaths. And I'm okay.

~~~

My eyelids hover at half-mast as I stare ahead at the whiteboard. Black and red numbers and shapes dance over the expanse, filling the room with the subtle hint of Expo while looking like a blurred tattoo. All around me, new Junior geometry books lend a scholastic undertone to the rising scents of autumn, proving that, even indoors, the descent into winter is apparent.

Beneath the desk, my leg bounces and stops and bounces again as I try to get the jitters in check. The teachers can feel it on the second floor, the rocking room, and I'd been called out once before. I swallow with the remembrance, my face paling. It had been my official 'welcome to high school' two years ago, one I'm not soon to forget.

Five more minutes. I exhale and glance out the window at the sullen yard. It's beautiful in its own way, the darkening sky and muted colors. During a sunny fall afternoon, the trees scream as they blaze in their fading life, but when the sun is no more than a whisper and the land is washed like the many thousand-year-old shirt it is, in its raw, unimpressive form, it's lovely and real. And melancholy. With my face a near translucent reflection painted atop it like a ghost.

Almost like a song just waiting to be written.

The moment my lips begin to tip and my posture eases, the bell jolts me back to the classroom. It crams noise into a space like no other, eliciting pounding footsteps and crunching papers as students pack their things. The teacher yells above the cacophony, only aiding the chaos. "The bell doesn't dismiss you, I do! Homework is on the board! Due next class period!"

I pack my things with deliberate softness, refusing to add sound to noise. But, then, the window shatters. Glass rains over me like pixie dust. I'm frozen in place as the bell drones out and students scream into a silence of gasps and tinkling chimes. Blinking against my pounding heart, I turn towards a lone baseball, which is rolling to a stop on the simple, grey-green tile.

Author's Note

Revamping this crap. ^^" Sorry to those who stumble upon a half-done version and don't know what's going on.

Reviews

[B]

This was a great read for me. Keep up the great work.

[Philip Muls]

You capture well the despair of an insecure teenager. Teach us how to want to live. Says it all. Looking for direction in life, not knowledge from a book. I will return to read on as I want to know more about Cyndi. Great start.

[KanaDream]

Thank you so much! Often I feel like this site favors poetry over stories so I'm always ecstatic to get a review on this story. ^^