Avonlea

Who I Am

The old house was filled with mirrors, but my favourite one was the one that didn't exist.

Well, in a manner of speaking. It was there, but you could never look directly at it, as the light shining from one of the other mirrors was so magical and entrancing, that your eyes were pulled to that one instead of the other. And when you tried to look at it from the corner of your eye, it was never there.

I'd been coming to the house for a little over six years now. When I asked other people what they thought about the house, they tended to change the subject, and mother had always tried to stop me from coming. It wasn't my choice to come either. At seven thirty eight every evening, I would be forced to walk over to the house and examine the mirrors. Not that I minded much. I'd become used to it by now.

The mirror that didn't exist had always been my favourite. However, when I came tonight, I found that something was different. Instead of a nonexistent mirror...one existed in its place. But it wasn't the one I'd been staring at for years, finally real. No, this one had a frame of obsidian, and what it reflected back at me...was a possibility. A question. A preposition. An inverted world, where father came back and mother stopped drinking...but also where people jumped off cliffs, and dug knives into their wrists.

I had to make a choice. But I didn't want to.

And so, for the first time in six years, I ran. Away from the answer to who I was. Because I really, really didn't want to know.