I can't recall any specific inspiration for this one. Sarah's first line of dialogue just popped into my head while I was getting reading for bed one evening. I've been reading a collection of Haruki Murakami's short stories this week and I think his tone may have been a bit of an influence.

This one is in first person; it seemed like a natural fit for the story.

---

Mirror

I dated Sarah Beirsteker beginning in the summer between grades eleven and twelve until sometime early in the following spring when we broke up over something stupid. I don't even remember what we fought over but it wasn't anything important. We ended up having a screaming match over the phone and hung up on each other. We didn't talk for several days and the next time I saw her she was already seeing her lab partner from her chem class. That's how things were in high school. Anything romantic is simultaneously a Shakespearean tragedy and as disposable as the paper napkin you get with your Whopper combo from Burger King.

I met her because she worked at the same 7-11 as my buddy Jeff. I went in one day hoping Jeff would be working so I could get a free Slurpee and hotdog but instead Sarah was there. We recognized each other from school, got to chatting and soon had a disagreement over bands. The argument lead to our first date; Nevermind had come out a little while before and like most teenagers around then I was very suddenly really into Nirvana. Sarah, though, insisted that they'd just ripped off all their ideas from the Pixies. Now, I never really cared too much about details like that. I liked listening to music and never got worked up about who ripped who off. Yeah, the first Stone Temple Pilots album sounded a lot like Pearl Jam, but they were both good albums so who cares? However, if it was going to get me a date - over to Sarah's place to listen to music no less - I'd have argued up and down with her that the sky was pink and that ketchup was a fruit. Boys in high school, right?

Not too long after we started going out, she told me about her peculiarity. It was right out the blue.

"Mirrors don't work properly for me."

I rolled over towards her. I'd been half dozing and hadn't really caught what she was saying.

"What was that?"

She was lying on her back, hands behind her head and staring at the ceiling fan in her room as it made slow rotations. She swung her feet in and out, her toes drawing little arcs in the air. Sarah had brown hair that was splayed out over her pillow. In the right light sometimes it would nearly turn a blond colour.

"Mirrors don't work properly for me," she repeated. I watched her small breasts rise slowly up and down as she breathed. We'd been fooling around earlier, kissing and rolling around on her bed. But when one of my hands went under her shirt, she shooed me away with a playful swat. Not angrily, but establishing her boundaries. I think we'd only been seeing each other for a couple of weeks at that point. I didn't mind. I yawned and propped myself up on my elbow so I could look at her better.

"What do you mean, mirrors don't work properly for you?"

She kept on watching the ceiling fan, but a smile was playing at her mouth.

"The best way I can describe it is like this: my reflection doesn't always behave. It sometimes does its own thing. Come on, I'll show you."

Sarah hopped up off the bed and led me, holding my hand, down the hallway to the bathroom. She closed the door behind us and flicked on the lights. They had one of those mirrors that are encircled by light bulbs and it was bright in there, almost harsh. Sarah stood in front of the mirror and leaned in until she was nearly touching noses with her reflection.

"Look."

I stepped behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, gave her a kiss on the neck and then looked into the mirror, my cheek against hers. She was grinning, even blushing a little. I nestled in against her and stared at her very cute, lightly freckled face.

"I don't see anything."

"You aren't really looking. Take a closer look at me in the mirror."

I tried my best and gazed into the mirror, concentrating, but nothing looked out of the ordinary. It was just Sarah and me.

"Can you give me a hint? What am I looking for? Nothing looks out of the ordinary." As I spoke, I watched my reflection mouth my words the same time I did. It was like watching a poorly dubbed foreign movie, the sound coming from my mouth didn't match up with my duplicate's moving jaw.

"What about my hair?"

"It looks like your hair. A little messy though." Sarah usually kept her hair combed out straight but in the mirror I saw several strands that were wavy and unruly. I reached to smooth down the stray hairs but under my palm her hair felt soft, silky. Most days Sarah could be in shampoo commercials. "So?"

She rolled her eyes and stepped away from me. Then she turned to face away from the mirror and, waving her hands, shooed me to make me step backwards.

"Now look again."

Sarah was facing towards me and her reflection was staring offstage at where my own my duplicate would be standing so I could see just the back of her head. I blinked, and then I saw it. My Sarah's hair was neat and straight and combed out. Her reflection, though, looked like she had hopped out of the shower that morning, towelled off her hair and ran out the door in a rush. It was the same length and colour but wavy and tangled, begging for a comb to be run through it. I could even see some split-ends.

"Woah."

"I know, huh?"

I stepped toward her and my reflection became visible in the mirror again. My hand went to my own hair.

"Your reflection is fine," she told me. "It's just mine that's broken."

I took several strands of Sarah's hair, laying them across my palm. In my hand they were straight but in the mirror I held a scraggly handful. To that point in my life, I'd never witnessed anything bizarre or supernatural and I didn't know how to react.

"It's so - wow."

"Ya, I know."

"So your hair never matches?"

"It's not always my hair. Just some little detail and I often don't even notice it. Last year, when I had to give a presentation in English, it gave me a total scare. I'd been getting ready in the bathroom when I saw a big stain on my white sweater. Like, grape juice or something. I had a total freak out until I looked down and realized it was just the mirror playing tricks on me again."

"It happens with any mirror? This isn't, like, an antique mirror you inherited from a creepy great aunt or anything?"

"Nope, it's just a plain old mirror and anyway it happens in any of them. I have to be careful when I'm using my compact to check my makeup."

Sarah told me it had been going on for as long as she could remember. In grade one, she'd tried to tell her teacher about it but got sent to the principal's office for making up stories. I asked her what her family thought but her parents tended to dismiss anything that wasn't directly related to Sarah getting into university. Her older sister, though, used to call her a freak all the time until their parents forbade it. We were back in her room, lying on her bed, as she told me these stories. Sarah talked and watched her ceiling fan spin lazily while I played with her hair, half concentrating on what she was saying and half concentrating on her hair. I liked her hair before but that night I kept running my fingers through it, as though I would find the magic trick between the strands. I didn't get it then; I thought the thing with the mirror had something to do with her hair.

---

The next day I didn't have much to do, but Sarah had to work so I went over to Jeff's house to hang out. We spent the afternoon playing Nintendo and thumbing through his older brother's collection of Penthouse and Playboy magazines. This was long before the days of the Internet and for teenage boys finding pornography was like stumbling over a lost treasure. Kids these days have it so easy. The topic of Sarah came up at one point and I ended up telling Jeff about Sarah and the mirror.

"It had to be a trick of the light or something."

We were sitting on the musty couch in his basement. It was one of those ancient sofas from the 70s with the incredibly ugly upholstery that everyone's parents had in their basements. This particular specimen was a fiery orange with yellow and brown stripes.

"I'm telling you, it wasn't a trick. It was real. Her reflection's hair was completely different."

Jeff shot me a skeptical look while directing Mario to throw turnips at enemies.

"I'm working the midnight shift tonight and I'll see Sarah at shift change. I can't wait to ask her about this. I always said she was kind of a freak."

I realized then that perhaps I shouldn't have been discussing this with other people. Sarah hadn't said it was a secret or anything, but nevertheless it didn't seem like the kind of thing I should have been running around blabbing about. All the same, I think if I'd not told Jeff anything, I would have burst. How do you not talk about something like that?

"Look, maybe don't bring it up with her, OK? Shit!" A fire breathing plant in the game killed me. "If she hasn't told you about it before then maybe she doesn't want you to know. I probably should have kept my mouth shut about the whole thing."

"Fine, but man, I'm going to be checking her out in every reflective surface in the place."

I was picking Sarah up after her shift that night so I gave Jeff a lift. When we got to their 7-11, she gave me a kiss and Slurpee. After chatting with Jeff for a little while, we walked to my car (my parents' car, to be specific). I couldn't help it - once we were inside, I twisted the rear-view mirror so I could see Sarah's face. She smirked as I looked back and forth between her and her reflection.

"I've got good news and bad news."

"Oh?" she said.

"Well the zit on your forehead isn't in your reflection but Mirror Sarah has an eyebrow ring." Back then, eyebrow piercings weren't nearly as common. It was only the very dedicated punks who wore them.

"No way!" She leaned toward the mirror to get a better look and ran her index finger over the spot where the piercing would have been. "What do you think? Should I get one?"

"I don't think it's really you."

---

For the rest of the summer, Sarah and I settled into a pleasant and comfortable routine of hanging out in between our crappy summer jobs. My own crappy job was working at my uncle's restaurant. Actually, it wasn't such a bad job. I'd go in most mornings and help the prep cooks chop vegetables, make hamburger patties. If there were a lot of dishes left from the previous night, I'd wash them as well. And it was low-hassle, provided me with spending money and didn't really get in the way of seeing Sarah or Jeff. The reflections thing? After the novelty wore off, I just accepted it as a quirk of hers. It was charming, in a certain way.

School began again in September and the first day was the source of a certain amount of anxiety for me. It isn't uncommon for teenagers to hook up during the summer and then when they return to school one of them suddenly realizes the other isn't cool enough or that their social circles are simply too far from intersecting. I was actually sort of avoiding her; I couldn't remember from the previous year who she hung out with and I could picture the scene. Sarah walking down the hall with a few of her friends and when I try to say hello she walks on by without even sparing me a glance. I wouldn't even get officially dumped. But my worries turned out to be just my imagination having a field day. Sarah found me after lunch period, threw her arms around me and planted a kiss on my cheek. After that we walked hand-in-hand to her next class.

---

A few weeks later, I was working one evening at the restaurant. Their dishwasher hadn't shown up for his shift so I had gone in to help them through the supper rush. When I was finally getting caught up on the dishes, my aunt - who did the books - came to tell me I had a phone call. I was a little puzzled because no one ever called me at work. I took the call in the office at the back of the restaurant. It was Sarah.

"Oh my god! It's horrible," she sounded like she had been crying.

"Sarah, what's up? What's going on?"

"My reflection it's - my nose is bleeding."

"A bloody nose? Well tilt your head forward until it stops. And put a wet towel on the back of your neck."

"No, no, my reflection. My nose is bleeding in my reflection. It's awful, it's r-running down my face." She sounded as though she was about to burst into fresh tears.

"But you're OK? Like, your real nose isn't bleeding?"

"No. Can you come over?"

"I'll have to see how much longer they need me but I'll be over as soon as I can."

When I got there, she was still upset. I lay down on her bed beside her, put my arm around her and tried to say comforting things.

"It can't hurt you," I told Sarah, "It's just a trick or an illusion."

"My reflection has never done anything sinister before. It always seemed, I don't know, playful. It's never shown me anything like that before."

"I'm sure it doesn't mean anything. Things will be back to normal in the morning."

I stayed there until her parents knocked on her bedroom door, wondering what was going on. But things didn't get better. The next morning, Sarah got out of bed and walked blearily to the bathroom and splashed water on her face to wake up. She opened her eyes and shrieked when she saw her mirror image had two black eyes and a swollen lip. She looked like she'd been severely beaten. I found this all out when I called her during my spare. She hadn't shown up at school that morning and I'd worried.

"What I am going to do?"

"Do you really have to do anything? I mean, it's not like you actually have a shiner."

"If my hair looks a little different in the mirror or my lipstick is a different colour, no one is going to notice. But someone is going to catch my reflection and see two giant black eyes. The whole school will know I'm a freak."

"Sarah, you aren't a freak. It's the mirrors that are broken, not you."

---

By the time we were in October, Sarah was staying home from school most days. Her reflection continued to be menacing. Sometimes she would appear has a horribly aged version of herself. Often the Sarah on the other side of the glass looked as though she had a wasting disease. Open sores on her face, her hair falling out in clumps. I continued to insist it was nothing but I was getting scared too. By this point, her family couldn't really ignore what was going on, but at the same time, they didn't really have any ideas for helping her either. They removed all the mirrors from the house. When they weren't using their shiny, stainless steel toaster, they hid it away in a cupboard so that Sarah wouldn't have to accidentally see herself.

One Saturday afternoon, I'd convinced her to go for a walk with me, in a park not far from her house. It was going to be one of the last nice Saturday afternoons before the weather got around to the serious business of winter. It wasn't unusual for us to have snow on the ground by the end of October. While driving to the park, I adjusted the rear view mirror so I wouldn't accidentally catch a glimpse of her. Sarah didn't put on makeup anymore these days and she'd lost some weight. Seeing a diseased or injured version of yourself day in and day out takes a toll on you. As we walked through the park, Sarah was jumpy and nervous and she hardly said a word to me.

The path we were on took us along a duck pond, which I didn't think anything of until I happened to glance over and see us reflected on the surface of the pond. There was no wind at all that day and the water was a sheet of glass. I jolted to a stop.

"Sarah! Look."

"What is it?"

"Your reflection."

"I don't want to see it."

"No, you have to look at yourself."

Reluctantly, she turned and lifted her sunglasses up. I saw her blink once and then lift her hand to her cheek.

"My reflection. It looks -"

"Perfectly normal, I know."

The images of disease were gone. In fact, as near as I could tell, the Sarah reflected in the water looked exactly like the real Sarah. The only thing I can think of is that mirrors were manufactured, artificial. But somehow, seeing her own self reflected back at her seemed to make all the difference. The spell was broken, the curse was lifted. Or something. On the drive back to the Beirsteker's house, I glanced at her in the mirror and everything was perfectly normal and as far as I know, mirrors remained just mirrors for Sarah. She started going to classes again and life was normal.

Like I said earlier, we broke up the following spring over something stupid. I always thought it was weird we broke up, though. After going through something like this, you'd think we were meant to be together. But life can be pretty odd sometimes.

5 responses to "Week #8 - Mirror "

The Erinn Over the Ocean wrote: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 05:53 Thank you for not calling it "Mirror, Mirror". The tone was very different from all of the others. I really liked it. It's neat to see how many different voices you have inside your head, in a not-creepy way.

Ginny! wrote: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 08:35 Interesting. Nifty. I like the bit about the breakup.

Jo K wrote: Monday, 28 Jan 2008 13:55 Wow! Loved it! I think you could flush this one out into a novella. Have you read Neil Gaiman... yesh, of course you have!

Dana wrote: Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 00:43 Actually, the only thing I've read by Gaiman is Neverwhere. Fragile Things is on my list of stuff to eventually read, though.

D.J. wrote: Thursday, 07 Feb 2008 07:11 I like it, your writing is very clear, and you tell the story well ... I guess I'm just left a little less-than-satisfied, because I never quite grasped what the differences in the reflection were meant to be. Not that I need to know everything, but if it was meant to have an additional meaning, I missed it.

Leave a comment

Name
Email (will not be displayed)
Website

(HTML tags allowed: b, i, blockquote, ul, li, strike)

I've been getting a lot of spam comments lately so my filter is pretty aggressive. If your comment doesn't show up, it's probably just been quarantined. I'll authorize it posthaste :)