Mirror World, page 5
Olivia grabbed a clump of Chloe’s hair and pulled. Chloe’s scalp burned as she batted against her opponent, her head pulled back. She never stood a chance. Olivia wasn’t just prettier than her. She was also in better shape.
Chloe’s heel caught on something and she stumbled backward, the floor disappearing beneath her feet. Her head exploded with pain, and the world disappeared for a moment. When she opened her eyes, the crowd that had gathered around her was clearing the hallway.
“Hey, come on. Leave her alone,” someone said.
Chloe blinked, realizing the voice belonged to Brent. He was holding Olivia by the shoulders, gently pulling her away while giving Chloe a pitiful stare. She’s not worth detention, that look said.
“What’s going on in here?!” an authoritative, male voice said.
Mr. Smith’s bulky figure walked into the throng, looking down at Chloe. “What happened to you?”
It was an accusatory question, something that a suspect would be asked, not a victim. Chloe was still too dizzy to find the words. She raised her hand to the back of her head where the throbbing was coming from. She looked at her fingers, fearing that she would see blood. That, luckily, wasn’t the case.
“Mr. Smith, thank goodness you arrived when you did,” Olivia said in a high-pitched voice. It was her teacher-flattering voice. “She attacked me out of nowhere.”
“Everyone, settle down!” Mr. Smith shouted to calm the crowd. “Olivia, what happened here?”
“Chloe slapped me, Mr. Smith. I pushed her to defend myself, and she fell.” She raised a hand to her cheek.
Chloe was up on her feet by then.
“Is that what happened?” Mr. Smith asked.
“It is, Mr. Smith. Right, guys? You all saw it,” Olivia insisted. The persona of the innocent schoolgirl was cracking under the anger and pressure.
The crowd hesitantly murmured in agreement.
“Mr. Smith, that’s not…” Chloe tried to say before she was interrupted by the teacher.
“Chloe, did you slap her?”
“She did,” Olivia interrupted.
Others nodded. Brent nodded. Of course he did. It was his job to defend his girlfriend. Seeing that caused all the fight in Chloe to vanish.
“Quiet. Chloe, did you slap her?” Mr. Smith repeated the question.
Chloe hesitated. “Yes, but only because—”
“Come with me,” Mr. Smith said.
“What? Where?”
“To the principal’s office. Come on.”
Mr. Smith had never displayed any strictness for as long as Chloe had taken classes with him. When a teacher allowed the students to exert such anarchy during his lessons, punishment was the last thing that would be expected.
That was why it came as a surprise to Chloe to see Mr. Smith standing in front of her with that reticent look on his face, his tone commanding and impatient. For the first time, she could imagine him in a police uniform despite being overweight and not looking like he would be able to run more than a mile.
The others must have been terrified by this display of power, too, because the hall went deafeningly mute.
“Mr. Smith,” Chloe started. “I swear I didn’t—”
“Now, Chloe. Don’t make this any worse than it needs to be.”
Yup, definitely a cop.
Chloe did the only thing she could. She complied.
“The rest of you, no loitering in the hallway. If you have classes, go to the classrooms. If you don’t, you’re free to go home. Come on. Move it.”
The students usually needed time until they moved where the teachers commanded. At Mr. Smith’s command, they moved in terrifying unison to their designated places. Mr. Smith gestured for Chloe to go in the direction of the stairs.
Only when she and Mr. Smith got close to the stairs did the students down the hall dare to laugh. Chloe could feel the eyes of her peers plastered to the back of her head until she was out of view.
7
“I tried calling your mother a few minutes ago, but she wasn’t answering, Ms. Kirk,” Principal Sandoval said.
Chloe bit her lip and tapped her foot on the floor while staring at her lap. She refrained from saying that her mother was probably passed out drunk again.
Principal Sandoval was a man in his fifties. Whatever hair he was missing from his glistening head he compensated with the bushy, grizzled beard. He always looked like he was dead inside. Chloe didn’t think she ever saw him smiling.
“I also checked your grades,” Principal Sandoval said. “Chloe, it’s not looking good.”
Chloe looked up at the principal, biting her lip so hard that it hurt. Was she going to be expelled? Maybe it would be for the best anyway. She was so over Parkrose High that she couldn’t care less anymore.
“Mr. Smith already told me about the problem, but I want to hear your side of the story. Can you tell me what happened?”
The principal sounded friendly enough, but Chloe knew that he was only trying to get information out of her. She didn’t want his help. She just wanted to be left alone.
Principal Sandoval leaned in his seat and sighed loudly. “Chloe, I’m trying to help you. An attack on Olivia Hubbard can have some serious implications, do you understand that?”
“I didn’t attack her.” The words sounded unconvincing even to her.
She ran a finger down the wristband. It was intact, even after her fight with Olivia.
The principal rhythmically tapped his fingers on the wooden surface of his desk. Chloe could feel his gaze on her, but she refused to look him in the eye.
“I know your father was a veteran who died while deployed in Iraq, correct?” he asked.
Chloe stopped playing with the wristband. She slowly nodded.
“I understand how difficult that can be for a person your age. Without a father figure to guide you, going through school and everyday life can be tremendously difficult. Have you ever spoken to the school’s counselor?”
“No, sir.” Chloe shook her head.
“Tell you what. I’m going to forget any of this happened today. But what I need from you is to give me a promise that you’re going to see the school counselor and fix your grades. Can you do that?”
“You’re not going to expel me?”
“It’s not in my interest to do that. My job is to have you learn from your mistakes so you can become ready for life after you graduate. That won’t happen if I expel you, and you’re a good kid. You’ve stayed out of trouble all these years.”
Chloe wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or disappointed at that. As much as she hated admitting it, a part of her had already prepared to stop going to school for the rest of the year. That would have been too easy.
Still, Principal Sandoval’s offer might have seemed like a good thing in his mind, but not to Chloe. The reason why she was in the principal’s office in the first place was because of Olivia.
She opened her mouth to argue that she did nothing wrong, but she knew it wouldn’t do her any good. The principal wouldn’t believe her, and if he thought she was refusing to face the consequences of her actions, he might inflict a harsher punishment on her.
Closing her mouth shut and biting her lip, Chloe nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. You’re free to go, Chloe.”
Chloe stood up and scooped her schoolbag off the ground.
“Oh, and Chloe?” the principal called out when she reached for the door. “Do stay out of trouble.”
***
The school was quiet when Chloe made her exit. She hung her headphones over her ears and did the only thing she knew how to do—she played sad music at full volume. The overcast weather outside was fitting.
She really liked that kind of weather over the annoying, sunny sky. She walked the long way home, letting her thoughts clear up. She didn’t think about Olivia or the school. While her favorite music played, nothing else was important.
When Chloe returned home, she found something greasy wrapped up in paper sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. On cue, her mom called out from the living room, “Chloe, I didn’t have time to cook today, so I bought you a burger.”
She was sober. Chloe knew better than to give herself hope that her mom was making progress. She had good days, and she had bad days. By the same time tomorrow, she would be passed out just as she was the day before. Or maybe she would manage to make a three- or four-day streak, but the longer the streak, the more potent the incapacitation that followed would be.
“Thanks,” Chloe said, staring at the sad piece of food.
She couldn’t eat despite the rumbling in her stomach. She forced herself to take two bites, but the food was too greasy. Her mom must have gotten it from Black Johnny down the street. It was the closest and cheapest fast-food place in the neighborhood.
She wrapped the burger back into its greasy paper blanket and left it on the table for later. She strode upstairs to her room and dropped the schoolbag on the floor, tension seizing her shoulders. One look at the “BROKEN GLASS DON’T ENTER” sign on the bathroom door was enough to remind her that she had a mess to clean up.
“Fuck me,” she said.
She loved cussing. It felt so good to cuss, especially when she had a bad day. As a kid, she used to love uttering the F word over and over with no particular reason or meaning. It was another way of relieving stress. But if she put cussing and writing poetry together, that was the ultimate way to destress.
Chloe went back downstairs and retrieved the mop and dustpan. Brushing the floor with the mop caused the glass to crunch against the tile floor. It wasn’t just the big pieces of glass that were problematic. Millions of tiny glass particles covered the floor, invisible to the naked eye.
That was why Chloe made sure to be as thorough as possible. She had to run downstairs twice to recycle the glass that had filled the dustpan. By the third time, the floor no longer crackled when she raked the floor with it. She still made sure to sweep up the entire floor once again. No more glass but a hell of a lot of dust.
She returned the mop and dustpan to their respective place downstairs and climbed back into her room. She tip-toed into the bathroom, half-expecting a sharp pain in her foot again.
The bathroom looked so strange without a mirror, but she was glad that she didn’t have one, no matter how crippled it made her feel. Especially after last night.
Only when she looked into the sink did she realize that some huge shards still remained there.
“Fucking shit,” she said, another surge of endorphin surging through her bloodstream.
She reached for the largest one and stopped herself. She was staring at the elongated triangle-shaped glass, the reflection on it showing half her face, one eye staring back. Chloe blinked then gingerly picked up the mirror shard and raised it so that she could see her face more clearly.
She was waiting for… for what?
For the reflection to do something different.
She swiveled the glass in various angles, but everything seemed normal. Of course it seemed normal. Why would—
The shard dropped from Chloe’s hand and clinked inside the sink before settling down. Chloe stood above the sink, panting, her eyes fixed on the glass that was now reflecting the ceiling. Chloe ran out of the bathroom and downstairs to pick up the trash bag where she’d thrown the rest of the shards.
She hauled the bag up into her bathroom and picked up the glass in the sink one by one, refusing to look at the fragments of the mirror. The twinge at the tip of her middle finger that she’d felt when she grabbed the third shard did nothing to stop her from recycling the rest of the glass.
Once it was done, she wrapped the top of the trash bag into a tight knot and brought it back downstairs. Chloe’s mom called out to her to ask if she was okay, and Chloe gave her an aloof, “Don’t worry,” response. By the time she ran back up into her room, she was winded and sweating.
“Fucking shitterfuck,” Chloe said. Combining swear words to concoct new recipes was also her favorite pastime.
Chloe plopped on the bed into a lying position. She swore that the springs squeaked louder with each passing day. The tip of one was already sticking through the mattress at the foot of the bed.
Too many things were happening these days, Chloe reflected. She hoped the weekend would be less hectic. She then remembered that she needed to catch up with her assignments and homework for next week—all the work she could have done a long time ago but chose not to because she had felt too mentally drained.
Her eyelids were too heavy.
Ugh, why do I feel like I’m sixty-one, and not sixteen? she thought as she allowed herself to close her eyes. She hadn’t intended on falling asleep. She just wanted to rest her eyes, but when the sweet embrace of the dreamland began skittering down her body, cocooning it into a coma, she didn’t resist.
Just before falling asleep, she remembered what she’d seen in the shard of glass just before dropping it in shock. For a modicum of a second, the room behind her had not been her own but a world of rust and darkness and ruin.
8
Friday went without a hitch. Chloe’s locker had been scrubbed clean, the “KILL YOURSELF” message gone as if it never even existed. Chloe could see the phantom markings of the sharpie in her head, though.
It was more than just a mean prank. It was a message of what her peers really thought about her. She could, indeed, kill herself today, and none of them would care. Maybe some of the students would be shaken by the news, just like anyone is shaken by the death of someone they knew.
Chloe never really entertained thoughts of suicide. She did cut herself to alleviate the pain in her head, and she did wonder what it would be like to die by various suicide methods, but she never actually thought about killing herself.
Despite seeing everything as black and white, her will to live was strong enough to dissuade her from it. That, or she was simply too much of a coward to do it.
Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of an impact her death would have on Parkrose High.
Days would pass after her death, and the students would forget that Chloe ever existed. They would mention her once or twice every few years as the weirdo from high school who killed herself because she was too weak to handle bullying.
Weak.
That word worked as a countermeasure. The thought of people like Olivia laughing at Chloe’s death made her want to stay alive just to spite them, no matter how miserable she was. Why should a piece of shit like Olivia get to live a happy life while good people like Chloe suffered?
But are you a good person, Chloe? She asked herself that question many times, mostly in the quiet hours of the night while tossing and turning in bed.
She wasn’t doing charity work. She was mean to her mom. She was just… existing, and that was it. A parasite in the world, waiting for something to change as days passed.
Bouts of identity crises came to her from time to time. She was at the age when she wondered who she was, who she would be, and whether the path she was on would lead her in the right direction.
In just a few years, she would need to choose a college to go to, provided she fixed her GPA. And then what?
Chloe had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. She knew that poetry didn’t pay the bills, and she was too introverted to be in a band. She wanted to do something with music, but it would be difficult to find a job like that that actually paid a livable wage.
Whenever those moments of questioning came to Chloe, she pushed them down and drowned them with her music. The voices remained quiet after that, for a while at least.
Once all of Chloe’s Friday periods were finished, she went straight back home.
She had no run-ins with Olivia, which came as an immense relief. Just like with her mom’s drinking, Olivia’s bullying came in bouts. When she got bored of Chloe, she moved on to someone else. Then, when no drama happened in Parkrose High for a while, Olivia made sure to start it. If Chloe got unlucky, she would be Olivia’s target.
When Chloe opened the door to her home, a pleasant redolence invaded her nostrils. Sizzling came from the kitchen, and when she went to see what was going on, her mother stood above the stove, stirring something in a steaming pot.
“Hey, sweetie.” She gave Chloe a brief glance before turning back to the pot and pan. “How was school?”
“Nothing special to report.” Chloe shrugged.
She hadn’t told her mom about the visit to the principal. She didn’t know if Principal Sandoval would continue trying to reach Chloe’s mom to tell her what happened, but the conversation with him had somehow given her the impression that the two of them had made a private deal that would keep her out of trouble as long as she honored it.
“Okay. I hope you’re hungry because there will be meat and potatoes for lunch. I know it’s simple, but I haven’t cooked in a while, so give me a break.”
Chloe smiled. She knew this was just another fleeting occurrence, despite not having seen her mom cook in months. She didn’t care. At that moment, she was just happy that her weekend started out so well.
“Thanks, Mom,” Chloe said as she turned to go upstairs.
“Oh, and I’m making lemon cake for dessert,” her mom shouted after her.
Lemon cake was Chloe’s favorite. That day suddenly got a lot better.
The moment she dropped her schoolbag on the floor of her room, she forgot all about Parkrose High and the students that made her life so miserable. Right now, bright rays of sunlight speared the dark cloud that constantly loomed above Chloe’s head.
It made her realize how little she needed in order to be happy. A sober mother, some peace and quiet, and lemon cake.
While waiting for lunch, Chloe broke out her guitar and played it a little. She hadn’t done it in a while, even though she’d been meaning to. Today, she had the energy for it. Just a few plucks of the string were enough to tell her how rusty the last few weeks of not practicing had made her. These kinds of things needed constant nurturing.
