Newspaper Cuttings

/Broken Glass/

"It was the day when everything stopped, and something started that was quite different, that couldn't be controlled or shaped or ended. From then on, a ringing telephone could terrify; a knock on the front door could numb the house into petrification." -Linda Newbery, Quarter Past Two On A Wednesday Afternoon.

That day, the telephone didn't terrify, just irritate. With a sigh, I turned up the volume on my IPod again, determined not to move from my bed all evening. Despite the volume, I could hear Mum and Dad arguing over who should answer it as the incessant ringing began to drill into my aching head. Come on! Someone answer it!
Finally, the phone stopped, but the argument did not. The voices where getting louder and louder until I could hear every angry word. Growling, I pulled my pillow over my head, reveling in the slight reprieve it brought.

A loud knock on the door brought a sudden, strange silence to the house. My heart leapt, just for a second, when I thought it might be him, come to sweep my away, just like in my dreams. What happened next put all such ideas out of my head.
Crawling out from my new den, I heard by Dad's deep voice, now slightly slurred again, demanding to know what was going on. I cringed, pitying whoever was on the receiving end of his harsh words; probably a charity worker.
Rolling over, I returned my book, trying unsuccessfully to block it all out. It was the melodic sound of breaking glass that jolted me painfully back to reality.
Panicked, I threw my earphones down on the bed and hurried downstairs to find the hallway painfully empty.

Mum stood, alone, in the kitchen, tears streaming down her face as she gazed at the floor, now strewn with shattered glass. Stepping closer, I saw my face in it, and the expression it held, broken up with the glass into a thousand icy shards.
"Mum, what happened?" I saw my lips move in the eerie reflection, but didn't hear the words, as though I was underwater, drowning in the glass.
If only I hadn't heard what came next. But I did, I did, and I wish I hadn't.
"That was...that was the police. They came for your f-father."

«~»

Broken, shattered, smashed, crushed...
With a scream of frustration, I threw the thesaurus across the bedroom, watching almost indifferently as my new mirror smashed into razor-sharp shards, all of them showing my twisted face as a more true reflection of reality: a bitter, broken girl.
Splintered, cracked...
Broken. Just broken glass.

«~»

I rubbed the splinter of glass from my mirror absentmindedly, wondering if it would get smoother with time. There was a lesson in that somewhere, but I wouldn't be learning it. Not then.
Concentrating on the cool, comforting glass in my hand, I glanced quickly around the courtroom. My dad...on trial. A criminal! Mum sat to my right, her face pale and drawn, just as it had been since that night. Her skeletal hands were clenched into fists, making her knuckles turn even more white. A sharp corner protruded from between her fingers: her own piece of glass from the photo frame that she broke when Dad sold his wedding ring. Right away, he had spent the money at the pub and Mum hadn't even known until he went too far and took the other from her dresser.

I didn't understand what she was thinking. All she and Dad had ever done was fight until I thought she would claw at him with her perfectly painted nails. She said all he was good for was his wallet, but recently his temper had been shorter than ever. Money was tight, and without his drink he was unbearable. We weren't close, but I would never wish this on him...And yet...I wondered, just for a moment, if he really was guilty, but I quickly pushed such traitorous thoughts away. If I didn't trust him, who would?

Sighing, I turned away from her again, looking anywhere, anywhere, except at my Dad below. Finally, I settled my eyes on the glass, seeing strange, dancing colours in it from the too-bright court. I felt like I was drowning, falling, sinking in to those swirling colours. For a moment, I wished I was someone else, someone new. A girl who didn't feel...dead. I was dead inside. That's the only way to describe it.

The Judge's words must have been sinking in somehow, because when he spoke again I sat up in alarm, anticipating the words that could change my life.
"How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?"
Dad's deep voice rang out around the court like a gunshot, a bullet to my heart.
"Guilty."
And the world,
Stood
Still.

Eventually, they led him away so that all was left was broken glass and broken lives. The cracks in the glass spread much further, into the lives of the families of people Dad had killed in a stupid pub brawl.
So much broken glass... At least broken picture frames can be fixed. Broken lives can't.