Mirror Cracks
"Crash"
Alex Rider flinched as the mirror he had just dropped shattered on the tiled floor below him. Fragments of glass flew everywhere, shooting across the room like tiny bullets. Sighing, he slowly turned around, looking for something to use to clean up. This was the second thing he had broken this week. He never used to drop anything but lately he had been careless. It would only happen when he was alone and thinking. When he was remembering.
He reached down and picked up one of the mirror fragments. It was large and jagged, so unlike the smooth glass it had been moments before. He turned it over and caught sight of his reflection in the glass. Blonde hair, brown eyes. He had grown over the past couple of months and since moving to America had acquired a semi-permanent tan, something that was an impossible feat in England. But there was something about his reflection that wasn't quite right. There were dark shadows ringed under his eyes, a mark of the sleepless nights and the nightmares that had plagued him. His eyes had a dead quality to them, a sense of disconnection to the real world.
Alex put down the piece of mirror, not wanting to look into his own eyes any longer. He hurried across the room to collect the rest of the pieces. He knew he would have to tell Sabina this time. Most things he had broken, he had fixed on his own, not wanting anyone to know, but there was no way to fix this. Once mirrors crack they can never really be mended.
Alex looked at the pieces of broken glass he had collected. His own faced stared back at him, reflected from the shattered pieces on the floor. Cracks. Like the mirror he had them as well. Like the mirror he was broken too. He had to admit it to himself; he would never be the same again.
Once he had been young, happy, carefree. Once he had had a life, and friends. He had done well at school and had a promising future stretching ahead of him. But something had shattered that life into thousands of little pieces. Someone had torn away his hopes and dreams and now he would never get them back. Someone had broken him.
Cracks. It was the eyes that gave him away. Since his move to America he had started to recover, to pull back the broken pieces of his life and put himself back together again. But it was his eyes gave it all away. Their deadness, dark and foreboding and far too old for his fifteen years. They were the eyes of someone who has seen too much done too much and lost everything they ever loved. They were the cracks in his perfect mask. No-one could look him in the eye anymore.
Because in a way, now he was like the mirror. No matter how hard you try to fix a mirror you will always be able to see the cracks in the reflection. And it will never be the same again.