WOS Gen Flashfic Challenge #24: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Charlie has nightmares like they’re going out of style for a few weeks. She sleeps with a light on and all the reflective surfaces in the room covered up, until one day she gets out of bed, pads into the bathroom, and glares at her reflection.
“Bitch,” she says out loud. “You will not beat me. You hear me?”
Whether or not Bloody Mary does is questionable, but her brother Peter gives her a very strange look at the breakfast table later on.
*********
Life doesn’t return to normal right away, like someone’s snapped their fingers and put it all back on track. After all, Jill is still dead, and Donna won’t talk to her anymore, and half the school thinks she’s a psycho.
In her sillier moments, Charlie thinks that’s hilarious. Like on Buffy, way back in the very first episode. The really scary thing is that for all she knows these days, vampires are real.
It’s three in the morning the first time that occurs to her, and she actually calls them, lets the phone ring once, twice, and then hangs up, angry at herself. If she’s going to actually do this, she can’t keep sitting around waiting on some handsome guy to save her.
The fact that Charlie basically has a choice of two handsome guys just makes it worse, in her opinion.
*********
The mirror in her room stays covered with a towel for a while even after the nightmares stop before Charlie finally snaps and tosses it out. It lies on the garbage bins at the end of the drive for an afternoon and a night, till the men come at dawn, winking up at the sky and beckoning passers-by with the secrets hidden in its depths.
*********
The world changes with a whimper, not a bang.
At school, no less. One bright irritating Wednesday morning. A few weeks have passed since that fateful chemistry class, and the story of an allergic reaction to some antibiotics has been told, accepted, and forgotten in favour of newer scandals, other freaks. She’s just about got her reputation back, and she and the girls are headed up the main staircase talking and laughing, heads together, discussing the merits of Chuck Henderson versus Mick Wilkins.
Then, up ahead, a girl slips (is pushed), staggers a little and falls, scattering her books. She’s thin and pale, dark-haired, and her jeans are stonewashed, loose and comfy (so last season).
Charlie stops and helps her pick up her stuff as her friends step around it like the notebooks have cooties, caught between giggles and disgust.
“Erm… thanks,” the other girl says, looking at her like she’s the Second Coming.
“You’re welcome,” Charlie shrugs.
At lunch, she says “thank you” to the dinner ladies, and they seem… perplexed.
So do her friends, but increasingly, Charlie’s wondering how they managed to earn themselves that distinction in the first place. She’s beginning to suspect they didn’t. Earn it, that is.
Worse is the creeping little thought that far too many of them remind her of Jill. It’s mean and disloyal to a dead girl who was her… who…
Oh, fine. Jill was an intolerable bitch who killed a little boy and hid the fact, who threw herself at more boys than Charlie eats hot dinners and who was fiercely contemptuous of anyone who didn’t think and believe and act and, most importantly, dress exactly the way she did.
Anyway.
She helps her little brother with his homework once or twice, and he stops teasing her about the way she avoids mirrors these days like they’re a live beast about to spring at her as if in gratitude.
*********
She visits Ben’s grave one morning, very early. The world is grey and quiet, streaks of gold and red along the edges of the clouds announcing the sunrise, some time in the next hour. Charlie sits with him until his headstone is flooded in bright morning sunlight, and thinks of how close she came to joining him, under the sod.
Thinks of how stupid she was, how naïve. How bad her choices were.
Then she gets up and leaves, never having spoken, determined never to come back.
*********
“Next thing you know, you’ll be voted Miss Serendipity,” Donna snarks at her one day in passing. “Seriously, who are you and what have you done to Charlie?”
The remark makes her think and think all day. Finally, she corners her Mom in the kitchen and asks about it.
“Mom? Am I different?”
Her mother looks up from the apple she’s peeling. “Um. Different how, sweetie?”
Charlie makes an awkward gesture with one hand. “You know. Changed.”
“After Jill died?” That’s it Mom, straight for the kill.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Well, traumatic experiences will do that to you.”
And with that cryptic and a little disturbing sentence, she sweeps out, leaving Charlie to her jumbled thoughts.
*********
Peter’s up next on the list of people to ask. He pushes his hair out of his eyes and gives her an incredulous look that is intrinsic to all fourteen-year-old little brothers.
“You kidding me? A year ago, you wouldn’t even look at me. Now you’re sitting on my bed. By choice.”
Charlie feels a little bad about that.
*********
Last but not least, there’s her Dad. He’s in Philadelphia on a business trip when she calls, but he sounds delighted to hear her voice. That’s Dad for you: never there, but feel the love.
Charlie does.
“Hey, Dad. I have a very important question for you.”
“Fire away, baby girl. Then you better put your mother on before she files for a divorce.”
“Sure, Dad. But look. Have I changed?”
In Philadelphia, there’s a short pause, and the distant thrum of traffic and voices in the background.
“Um,” Dad says, just like Mom did.
Charlie glares. “You’re no help at all, any of you,” she says, and hands him over to Mom.
*********
So maybe it was the whole near-death thing. Maybe seeing Bloody Mary is enough to frighten someone into being nice. Or at least, nicer. No one will ever accuse Charlie of being some kind of saint, that’s for damn sure. She can still bitch with the best of them.
But she’s kinda… well, she supposes she’s mellowed.
No. No, that makes her sound like soggy, rotting fruit, all squishy and… yeah. No mellow. Not this week.
Observant. Yeah, she likes that. The New Charlie is more observant. And consequently, more willing to do something about what she observes.
Actually, that sounds kinda pompous.
Hm.
*********
In the end, it’s the diary entries that help her figure it out. She likes keeping a diary: likes to sit down and just ramble on in writing about anything and everything, relatively sure that sooner or later, something deep and insightful will come out of her scribblings. That’s just, like, the law of averages.
Isn’t it?
Eventually, something does come out of it. She’s just filled up one more notebook; she puts her pen down with a little bit of regret, and flips through the closely-written pages, her life in reverse, from now all the way back to -
It’s close to the front of the book, a short single-sentence entry marking the end of the most horrific and terrifying night of her life.
Yesterday, two complete strangers saved my life for no reason whatsoever.
Charlie sits and stares at the sentence, at the rather wobbly handwriting, at the shapes the dark ink makes, scrawled across the page, for a long time.
Yeah. She figures that’s good enough.