Mirrored Cuts

Chapter 23

My phone vibrated, drawing my attention to the little black brick of a phone that brought me information. It was an email. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. And then I opened them again. It was from my advisor. I tried to get to the actual email as fast as I could by scrolling at top speeds and disregarding all the other notifications I would have checked if this was a normal morning. When I arrived at the email, I paused for a second. I wondered if I should wait to open it, as unsolicited emails from advisors were never emails that allowed me to sleep after they had been read.

I took a deep breath and swallowed my panic. It was Monday. No teacher innocuously emailed over a weekend. She wanted to see how I was doing because she had received my mid-semester grades. She thought I was a joy to have as an advisee and she was worried. Could we set up a time to talk? I responded like the joy she thought I was, thanking her for her concern and agreeing to meet, at her convenience of course. I then threw my phone across the room in a diagonal direction, hoping to put as much space as possible between myself and her reply.

I attempted to sleep but my worry about her email had been correct. Sleep taunted me, running out of reach when I got close. Giving me an F for effort. The cruelty of the act set me upright, no longer attempting to cover myself in the blanket of unconsciousness. I cast away the little demons racing around my head with their posters. I silenced my alarms, wrapped myself in a robe and picked up my shower caddy. I would wash these demons out of my head and get ready for my test. The door clicked behind me and I was faced with Flint listening to music and studying with another girl on my floor. I tried to look away before he saw, but the doors were loud and fire proof so it drew his attention.

"Andi," he said.

"Flint." I walked away from him and his study buddy, the one Flint had replaced me with.

In the cubicle showers, I stood still and hoped time would stand with me. The hot water felt divine, burning away the sweaty worry and the fog encasing my brain. I rubbed soap across my face. Maybe I could scrub through to a new me. A me that received good grades. Everyone else seemed to get by in their classes doing the same amount of work or less than I did. If I scrubbed me away, maybe what was left could do well on this test. When I stepped out of the shower, I was pink and there was not a single cell of dead skin on my body. At least I knew I would have a career in spa care if I couldn't get my grades together. And there was always career EMT. I flinched when it crossed my mind. Career EMT was something that was always on the horizon for the EMTs at college EMS. It was enough money for someone as young as we were, if you worked for a paying service. But we all knew that being a career EMT was difficult. To support more than one person, you had to take on extra jobs with different services, just to make ends meet.

To get back to my room, I had to pass by Flint and my replacement. I tightened my towel and walked forwards. I kept my head high and only nodded to Flint as I passed, hoping he wouldn't see how hurt I was. He was packing up his computer and books. I grabbed my door handle and realized I had forgotten my key card. I must have thrown it when I tossed my phone. I checked every part of my caddy. Ruby hadn't come home that night so she couldn't open the door from inside.

"Flint, can I borrow your phone?"

He handed it over. No questions. He didn't care why I needed it.

I called Ruby. When she didn't answer, I left her a message and called dorm services to gasp out my story, hoping they understood the crisis that I was in, because I had no clothes and my test started in 45 minutes. They assured me they would send over a security guard with a key. However, they were experiencing a lot of calls that morning so it might not be right away.

I ended the call and handed Flint his phone. He looked like he was going to ask a question, but then he followed my replacement out of the room. I thought about running after him, but my pride took hold of my legs. I slid down the wall in front of my room to a seated position and stared at the door that was so very far from my test. I would never be able to get to my test like this. I had failed myself like I was going to fail this class.

I thought about how, when I was younger, I had loved my towel so much that I had wanted to make it into clothing and spend the day in it. I would spend my after shower time playing dressmaker with my towel, arranging it in toga like formations. When my mom saw me posing in the mirror with my towel, she had made sure I knew how ridiculous that was. It would seem that I had not learned. Here I was, with only my towel as clothing. And I was trapped in a dorm. Who knew that I would want to go to a class so badly that it would reduce me to a puddle on the floor?

After a time, when the security guard was still absent from the hallway, I sat up. I didn't need my clothes. I just needed clothes. I shot up to my feet. I started knocking on doors, trying handles, starting from one side of the hallway and working my way down. No one was answering, either because they were asleep or because they weren't there. I arrived at the last door in my hall, my RA's door. I knocked, hard, hoping that even if she were asleep, she would wake up.

She opened the door, rubbing her eyes. "What's up?"

I hugged her. "Can I have your clothes?"

She raised one eyebrow.

"I'm locked out and my test starts in 10 minutes. The security guards are terrible."

She woke up and gestured me in. She threw a pair of university sweatpants and a sweatshirt at me. "Do you need shoes?"

I nodded with the sweatshirt partially tangled over my head. A pair of flip-flops hit my leg. I shoved them on my feet and started running. "Can you get my phone and key card if the security guard gets here?"

"Good luck," my RA called. "Knock 'em dead!"

Halfway through my run, I wanted to do just that but to myself. Running in flip-flops is no easy feat. And I was doing it in flip-flops, overlarge sweatpants and the rain. What I was doing would probably be called repeated falling before it was called running. I wanted to slow down every time someone saw me but I forced myself on, hoping I would never see that stranger again and that they would never ask me why I had looked like a pinwheel. I threw the door open to the building my test was in and kept running. The clock on the side of the hall said that I had one minute. I could make it.

I reached my classrooms hallway and saw someone standing by the door. He was closing the door!

"Stop! I'm here for the test."

He continued to close the door. "The test has started. No one gets in late. Professor's orders."

"Please." I sped up, trying to grab the door before it closed.

He shut the door. I slowed to a jog and stared at the door.