Tavia lifted the small square carton to her lips and tilted her head back,
closing her eyes momentarily. The rich white liquid drained from the triangle
opening down onto her tongue, sending her brain a taste that we all know quite
well. Tavia's dry throat was coated in the drink, and she felt refreshed, not
having been able to drink anything all day. She lowered the carton from her
lips, shaking the empty box from side to side in agony.
"Why don't they give us bigger milks, rather than these little dinky things. I
drank the whole thing in one freaking sip!"
Fiona looked up, tugging at the neck of her turtleneck slightly, and laughed rolling
her eyes at her friend, saying sarcastically,
"Oooo, the mysteries of life...it's probably some elaborate conspiracy to keep
YOU, Tavia McGrath, from getting substantial nourishment from her high school
cafeteria."
"Probably...everyone's out to get me anyway. Just like they never put enough
milk in the cartons!"
"Who is THEY, anyway?"
Tavia looked up at Fiona, her eyes narrowing and she growled
"Those damn Smurfs...."
Fiona burst out laughing
"What's wrong with smurfs?"
"WELL, first of all, the blonde girl one doesn't even DO anything. She just
stands around! And the rest of em...well...they're...BLUE!"
"So?" Fiona took a tiny sip of her milk, having learned to take tiny sips so
that way it lasted longer. The only food she ever got was from school lunch.
"Nevermind...just know that whenever someone says something in reference to
'THEY'or 'THEM', you'll know what he or she is talking about."
"Smurfs?"
"Yes."
"You're psycho, Tavie."
Tavia shot Fiona a glance that obviously said 'DUH'. The others at the table,
that consisted of 4 guys and 1 other girl, chatted amoungst themselves. After a
moment, Tavia waved a finger at Fiona's right cheek, that had a large bandage on
it.
"What happened there, Fi?"
Fiona's eyes got a little big and she stared at Tavia. She said quietly, under
her breath
"You know perfectly well what happened there.."
The guy sitting next to Fiona, glanced at her, apparently having heard what she
said. He looked over at Tavia
"What's she talking about, Tavie?"
Fiona shot Tavie a warning glance and Tavie hesitated for a second then
improvised
"Well, Jeremy...She...uh...Fi..uh, she was over at my house yesterday...yeah!
And my hyper active little dog jumped on her and scratched up her face...we need
to get my dog's claws clipped.....and I also need to go to the bathroom, do you
need to go to the bathroom Fi? I think you do." Tavie stood up and went over to
Fiona, snatching her by the wrist and dragging her out of the cafeteria. Fiona
didn't object, she just followed in silence as Tavie dragged her down the hall
and pushed open the door to the girls bathroom. She leaned down to check under
the stalls to make sure that no one else was in the bathroom, then she turned to
Fiona who was leaning nonchalantly against a wall, eyeing herself in the mirror.
Tavie paced back and forth, growling. "We need to tell someone about that
asshole, Fi. I can't stand it that he keeps doing all this stuff to you!!"
Fiona just kept looking in the mirror, saying quietly
"I know...and you know I've tried. It's like he keeps tabs on me or something. Every single time I've
tried going to the authorities, he finds me before I do and cuts me up like a
peice of raw meat."
Tavie sighed, very afraid for her friend and knowing that every time they'd
tried going to a teacher, or anyone, something got in their way. It was like
Fiona's father knew when she was going to try and report him. Tavie folded her
hands behind her back, then went and stood in front of Fiona.
"What are we going to do?!"
Fiona's eyes were huge, as she stared at the mirror in disbelief. Fiona didn't
say a word, she just stared forward. Tavie furrowed her brow in confusion,
waving a hand in front of Fiona's face
"Whooohoo...anyone alive in there??"
There was a moment of silence, then Fiona responded
"You have no reflection...."
Tavie immediatley turned around and looked at the mirror. In it, she saw a tall,
thin red-haired girl with light brown eyes....She saw herself.
"I see my reflection, Fi....maybe we should get that cut checked, you might have
lost more blood than you thought and it's making you dillusional..."
Fiona could see over Tavie's shoulder into the mirror...What she saw was
something totally unreal and amazing. All she could see was herself standing
there, leaning against the blueish-tiled wall. There was no Tavie in the
mirror's reflection, just a distorted image of herself. By herself. A silent
aura of fear seemed to circle from the mirror, and Fiona saw a tear slide down
her reflection's face. Fiona immediatley put her hands on her own cheeks, but
there were no tears there.
"Fi...you're scaring me..."
Fiona blinked a few times and shook her head to regain her senses, then looked
back into the mirror. There in the glass she saw a perfect-looking Tavie,
staring at her, seemingly very very worried.
"Fi?"
She looked over at her firey-haired best friend, realizing now that she it must
have just been from the loss of blood the night before and it was making her see
things. "I'm okay....I think it's just because of the blood loss..I need to go
eat something to regain my compsure, c'mon, let's get out of here." Fiona
literally shoved her friend out the bathroom door. She vowed to herself that
she'd never go back and use that bathroom, even if she WAS 'just seeing
things'....
Later that day
The raven-haired girl sat cross-legged in her cramped English class desk. The
teacher droned on and on about a book that she'd read in 4th grade as though it
were some literary classic that needed to be read over and over again. The worst
part of it was that she had the undeniable need to go to the bathroom, but she
didn't want to go anywhere near it because of what had happened earlier. Fiona
was so very bored that she was reduced to counting the scratches on her
at-least-50-year-old desk and trying to figure out of any of them said anything.
Her worn and calloused fingers traveled over the bumpy surface, feeling the
texture as she tried to read the inscriptions. Her lips moved slightly as she
read them, but no sound escaped them.
"George Harris 1967"
"This class is as boring as hell
Not that hell would be that boring..."
"Geralyn Lord"
"When in Doubt,
run around in circles screaming."
"Help me."
"GOD LOVES YOU."
"Fiona..."
Her heart stopped. She was unbelieving of what she'd just read. All the other
ones were the norm for her. She'd been reduced to reading the inscriptions
before, but she'd never seen her name. But it was there, plain as day, seeming
to scream at her. Her eyes traveled across the desk, and every message she found
from then on was one she'd never seen before, and couldn't find again when she
looked for it later. Each word pieced together into a sentence...
"close"
"your"
"eyes"
"and"
"Don't"
"Look"
"Behind"
"You."
Fiona's hands started trembling ever so slightly. Either someone was playing a
sick joke on her, or she was losing her mind. She got enough courage to put her
hands on either side of her desk, then twist her back around slowly to look at
the far wall. Normally there were no posters on the wall, but today it was
different. There, directly behind her (she sat at the back of the room) was a
large poster that reflected the light of the sun. In large, bold letters were
the words:
NIAGRA FALLS.
Also, there was a large picture of the waterfall. Fiona's eyes narrowed,
growling under her breath. It was then made clear to her that this WAS some sort
of sick joke. She crossed her legs a little tighter and bit her lip in pain,
trying to convince herself that she didn't need to go that bad. But she decided
that her pathetic fear of the bathroom mirror would have to wait, because she
really had to go. Her hand shot up and she waved it around desperatley, trying
to get her teacher to notice. After a few moments he lowered his glasses and
eyed Fiona sharply.
"YES, Miss Nelson?"
"Can I go to the bathroom, Mr. Butler?"
"Miss Nelson, I'm in the middle of a lesson. I'm sure tha-"
"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Let me go to the bathroom!!" Fiona begged.
"Well, fine..."
"THANK you!" Fiona shot out of her seat like someone had put a bottle rocket
under her and dashed from the room. She screeched down the hallway, grabbing
onto a corner to turn then jumping down the 3 flights of stairs in 4 bounds. The
bottom of her sneakers skidded across the tiled floor and she rammed her
shoulder into the bathroom door, it swinging open in front of her. She ran past
the mirror, seeing for a moment, her reflection, which would have gone running
past with her, but since it was no ordinary reflection, it just stood there.
Fiona stopped short, her need to go to the bathroom immediatley dissapearing.
She backed up a tiny bit to where she was face to face with the mirror, but she
was looking the other way, terribly frightened as to what she might see. She
talked quietly to herself
"You're just seeing things Fi...forget about the mirror...just leave...leave!
don't look in the mirror..." she squeezed her eyes shut and started to turn to
leave, but then stupidly she opened her eyes and stared at the mirror. Fiona saw
what she took to be some other dimension, some other time...
There was a bald human, sitting against a black wall with a brown blanket
drapped around her. Fiona couldn't tell whether or not it was a girl or boy
because they were facing the ground. Fiona wasn't scared, for once. She felt the
growing need to know who this person was. The human's skin was an almost
startlingly white pale color, as though it had never seen sun. The blanket was
dark and dingy, spots and splotched from unknown incidents covered it. Though it
seeemed that the child clutched onto the blanket tightly, as though it were her
only means of living. Suddenly the bald human looked up at Fiona. It was her.
Though her eyes were red, and she didn't have the eyebrow ring, that was Fiona
sitting on the ground with a blanket wrapped around her. Fiona took one step
away from the mirror, shaking her head.
"No...it's not real...not real!"
Much to Fiona's amazement and disbelief, the girl got up. She walked directly up
to her side of the glass. Her eyes were sad, and there was a tear running down
her cheek. Then a small thin smile drew across her lips, and one of her hands
emerged from the folds of the blanket. The pale soft hand pressed itself against
the glass, and the sad eyes looked at Fiona with such admiration. Fiona watched
all this, her heart beating in her throat. Her eyes meet the eyes of the girl on
the other side of the glass and she stared into them. The same eyes. One blue,
and one brown. The scars...there were no scars anywhere on the other girl, while
there were many on Fiona. Fiona moved her trembling hand up and put it against
the mirror. Very, very slowly, one millimeter at a time, she spread her dry
fingers apart to where they matched those on the other side of the glass. Fiona
looked at her hand, then at the bald girl on the other side of the mirror.
Somehow, she didn't know why or what inspired her to do so, but Fiona lisped a
tiny
"Do not be afraid for me..."
The girl closed her eyes and bowed her head, as though she knew something that Fi didn't.
The girl on the other side suddenly balled her hand up into a fist and slammed it against the
glass. Her mouth moved as if to make words and she looked distressed, trying to tell Fi something.
Then suddenly the bathroom door swung open, smacking the inside wall of the bathroom with a loud thud.
Fiona jumped, crying out a little "EEP!" almost losing her breath because she
was so very startled. She looked into the mirror again, seeing the normal
reflection of herself. The long black hair, the silver streaks, and the eyebrow
ring. She pulled her hand back from the glass, wondering if she'd imagined the
whole thing. She noticed a girl standing behind her in the mirror, and she
turned around to see one of the girls from her English standing there, her hands
folded calmly on her belly. Her name was Emily.
"I'm sorry to startle you, Fiona. Mr. Butler wanted to make me come down and see
if you were all right..."
"What do you mean? I've only been here for a few minutes..."
"Fiona," replied Emily, talking slowly as though Fiona might not understand her
"you've been down here for almost an hour..."
closing her eyes momentarily. The rich white liquid drained from the triangle
opening down onto her tongue, sending her brain a taste that we all know quite
well. Tavia's dry throat was coated in the drink, and she felt refreshed, not
having been able to drink anything all day. She lowered the carton from her
lips, shaking the empty box from side to side in agony.
"Why don't they give us bigger milks, rather than these little dinky things. I
drank the whole thing in one freaking sip!"
Fiona looked up, tugging at the neck of her turtleneck slightly, and laughed rolling
her eyes at her friend, saying sarcastically,
"Oooo, the mysteries of life...it's probably some elaborate conspiracy to keep
YOU, Tavia McGrath, from getting substantial nourishment from her high school
cafeteria."
"Probably...everyone's out to get me anyway. Just like they never put enough
milk in the cartons!"
"Who is THEY, anyway?"
Tavia looked up at Fiona, her eyes narrowing and she growled
"Those damn Smurfs...."
Fiona burst out laughing
"What's wrong with smurfs?"
"WELL, first of all, the blonde girl one doesn't even DO anything. She just
stands around! And the rest of em...well...they're...BLUE!"
"So?" Fiona took a tiny sip of her milk, having learned to take tiny sips so
that way it lasted longer. The only food she ever got was from school lunch.
"Nevermind...just know that whenever someone says something in reference to
'THEY'or 'THEM', you'll know what he or she is talking about."
"Smurfs?"
"Yes."
"You're psycho, Tavie."
Tavia shot Fiona a glance that obviously said 'DUH'. The others at the table,
that consisted of 4 guys and 1 other girl, chatted amoungst themselves. After a
moment, Tavia waved a finger at Fiona's right cheek, that had a large bandage on
it.
"What happened there, Fi?"
Fiona's eyes got a little big and she stared at Tavia. She said quietly, under
her breath
"You know perfectly well what happened there.."
The guy sitting next to Fiona, glanced at her, apparently having heard what she
said. He looked over at Tavia
"What's she talking about, Tavie?"
Fiona shot Tavie a warning glance and Tavie hesitated for a second then
improvised
"Well, Jeremy...She...uh...Fi..uh, she was over at my house yesterday...yeah!
And my hyper active little dog jumped on her and scratched up her face...we need
to get my dog's claws clipped.....and I also need to go to the bathroom, do you
need to go to the bathroom Fi? I think you do." Tavie stood up and went over to
Fiona, snatching her by the wrist and dragging her out of the cafeteria. Fiona
didn't object, she just followed in silence as Tavie dragged her down the hall
and pushed open the door to the girls bathroom. She leaned down to check under
the stalls to make sure that no one else was in the bathroom, then she turned to
Fiona who was leaning nonchalantly against a wall, eyeing herself in the mirror.
Tavie paced back and forth, growling. "We need to tell someone about that
asshole, Fi. I can't stand it that he keeps doing all this stuff to you!!"
Fiona just kept looking in the mirror, saying quietly
"I know...and you know I've tried. It's like he keeps tabs on me or something. Every single time I've
tried going to the authorities, he finds me before I do and cuts me up like a
peice of raw meat."
Tavie sighed, very afraid for her friend and knowing that every time they'd
tried going to a teacher, or anyone, something got in their way. It was like
Fiona's father knew when she was going to try and report him. Tavie folded her
hands behind her back, then went and stood in front of Fiona.
"What are we going to do?!"
Fiona's eyes were huge, as she stared at the mirror in disbelief. Fiona didn't
say a word, she just stared forward. Tavie furrowed her brow in confusion,
waving a hand in front of Fiona's face
"Whooohoo...anyone alive in there??"
There was a moment of silence, then Fiona responded
"You have no reflection...."
Tavie immediatley turned around and looked at the mirror. In it, she saw a tall,
thin red-haired girl with light brown eyes....She saw herself.
"I see my reflection, Fi....maybe we should get that cut checked, you might have
lost more blood than you thought and it's making you dillusional..."
Fiona could see over Tavie's shoulder into the mirror...What she saw was
something totally unreal and amazing. All she could see was herself standing
there, leaning against the blueish-tiled wall. There was no Tavie in the
mirror's reflection, just a distorted image of herself. By herself. A silent
aura of fear seemed to circle from the mirror, and Fiona saw a tear slide down
her reflection's face. Fiona immediatley put her hands on her own cheeks, but
there were no tears there.
"Fi...you're scaring me..."
Fiona blinked a few times and shook her head to regain her senses, then looked
back into the mirror. There in the glass she saw a perfect-looking Tavie,
staring at her, seemingly very very worried.
"Fi?"
She looked over at her firey-haired best friend, realizing now that she it must
have just been from the loss of blood the night before and it was making her see
things. "I'm okay....I think it's just because of the blood loss..I need to go
eat something to regain my compsure, c'mon, let's get out of here." Fiona
literally shoved her friend out the bathroom door. She vowed to herself that
she'd never go back and use that bathroom, even if she WAS 'just seeing
things'....
Later that day
The raven-haired girl sat cross-legged in her cramped English class desk. The
teacher droned on and on about a book that she'd read in 4th grade as though it
were some literary classic that needed to be read over and over again. The worst
part of it was that she had the undeniable need to go to the bathroom, but she
didn't want to go anywhere near it because of what had happened earlier. Fiona
was so very bored that she was reduced to counting the scratches on her
at-least-50-year-old desk and trying to figure out of any of them said anything.
Her worn and calloused fingers traveled over the bumpy surface, feeling the
texture as she tried to read the inscriptions. Her lips moved slightly as she
read them, but no sound escaped them.
"George Harris 1967"
"This class is as boring as hell
Not that hell would be that boring..."
"Geralyn Lord"
"When in Doubt,
run around in circles screaming."
"Help me."
"GOD LOVES YOU."
"Fiona..."
Her heart stopped. She was unbelieving of what she'd just read. All the other
ones were the norm for her. She'd been reduced to reading the inscriptions
before, but she'd never seen her name. But it was there, plain as day, seeming
to scream at her. Her eyes traveled across the desk, and every message she found
from then on was one she'd never seen before, and couldn't find again when she
looked for it later. Each word pieced together into a sentence...
"close"
"your"
"eyes"
"and"
"Don't"
"Look"
"Behind"
"You."
Fiona's hands started trembling ever so slightly. Either someone was playing a
sick joke on her, or she was losing her mind. She got enough courage to put her
hands on either side of her desk, then twist her back around slowly to look at
the far wall. Normally there were no posters on the wall, but today it was
different. There, directly behind her (she sat at the back of the room) was a
large poster that reflected the light of the sun. In large, bold letters were
the words:
NIAGRA FALLS.
Also, there was a large picture of the waterfall. Fiona's eyes narrowed,
growling under her breath. It was then made clear to her that this WAS some sort
of sick joke. She crossed her legs a little tighter and bit her lip in pain,
trying to convince herself that she didn't need to go that bad. But she decided
that her pathetic fear of the bathroom mirror would have to wait, because she
really had to go. Her hand shot up and she waved it around desperatley, trying
to get her teacher to notice. After a few moments he lowered his glasses and
eyed Fiona sharply.
"YES, Miss Nelson?"
"Can I go to the bathroom, Mr. Butler?"
"Miss Nelson, I'm in the middle of a lesson. I'm sure tha-"
"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Let me go to the bathroom!!" Fiona begged.
"Well, fine..."
"THANK you!" Fiona shot out of her seat like someone had put a bottle rocket
under her and dashed from the room. She screeched down the hallway, grabbing
onto a corner to turn then jumping down the 3 flights of stairs in 4 bounds. The
bottom of her sneakers skidded across the tiled floor and she rammed her
shoulder into the bathroom door, it swinging open in front of her. She ran past
the mirror, seeing for a moment, her reflection, which would have gone running
past with her, but since it was no ordinary reflection, it just stood there.
Fiona stopped short, her need to go to the bathroom immediatley dissapearing.
She backed up a tiny bit to where she was face to face with the mirror, but she
was looking the other way, terribly frightened as to what she might see. She
talked quietly to herself
"You're just seeing things Fi...forget about the mirror...just leave...leave!
don't look in the mirror..." she squeezed her eyes shut and started to turn to
leave, but then stupidly she opened her eyes and stared at the mirror. Fiona saw
what she took to be some other dimension, some other time...
There was a bald human, sitting against a black wall with a brown blanket
drapped around her. Fiona couldn't tell whether or not it was a girl or boy
because they were facing the ground. Fiona wasn't scared, for once. She felt the
growing need to know who this person was. The human's skin was an almost
startlingly white pale color, as though it had never seen sun. The blanket was
dark and dingy, spots and splotched from unknown incidents covered it. Though it
seeemed that the child clutched onto the blanket tightly, as though it were her
only means of living. Suddenly the bald human looked up at Fiona. It was her.
Though her eyes were red, and she didn't have the eyebrow ring, that was Fiona
sitting on the ground with a blanket wrapped around her. Fiona took one step
away from the mirror, shaking her head.
"No...it's not real...not real!"
Much to Fiona's amazement and disbelief, the girl got up. She walked directly up
to her side of the glass. Her eyes were sad, and there was a tear running down
her cheek. Then a small thin smile drew across her lips, and one of her hands
emerged from the folds of the blanket. The pale soft hand pressed itself against
the glass, and the sad eyes looked at Fiona with such admiration. Fiona watched
all this, her heart beating in her throat. Her eyes meet the eyes of the girl on
the other side of the glass and she stared into them. The same eyes. One blue,
and one brown. The scars...there were no scars anywhere on the other girl, while
there were many on Fiona. Fiona moved her trembling hand up and put it against
the mirror. Very, very slowly, one millimeter at a time, she spread her dry
fingers apart to where they matched those on the other side of the glass. Fiona
looked at her hand, then at the bald girl on the other side of the mirror.
Somehow, she didn't know why or what inspired her to do so, but Fiona lisped a
tiny
"Do not be afraid for me..."
The girl closed her eyes and bowed her head, as though she knew something that Fi didn't.
The girl on the other side suddenly balled her hand up into a fist and slammed it against the
glass. Her mouth moved as if to make words and she looked distressed, trying to tell Fi something.
Then suddenly the bathroom door swung open, smacking the inside wall of the bathroom with a loud thud.
Fiona jumped, crying out a little "EEP!" almost losing her breath because she
was so very startled. She looked into the mirror again, seeing the normal
reflection of herself. The long black hair, the silver streaks, and the eyebrow
ring. She pulled her hand back from the glass, wondering if she'd imagined the
whole thing. She noticed a girl standing behind her in the mirror, and she
turned around to see one of the girls from her English standing there, her hands
folded calmly on her belly. Her name was Emily.
"I'm sorry to startle you, Fiona. Mr. Butler wanted to make me come down and see
if you were all right..."
"What do you mean? I've only been here for a few minutes..."
"Fiona," replied Emily, talking slowly as though Fiona might not understand her
"you've been down here for almost an hour..."