Losing Mira

Chapter 2

              Mira lived in a world of flowers. She was a sweet daisy, delicate and strong, the sweetest of impossibilities. Mirabelle always had something for everybody else. She gave her delicate love. She gave words as her gifts, her advice worth more than anyone could give her. She gave everything to her friends, and everyone was her friend. She gave that extra look, the comforting touch of the hand, giving exactly what was needed. She was the 1 am phone call, the warm hug.

     I don't know where she got her strength. She lived in a small house, adjacent to mine. Her parents, a stay at home mother, who did everything but mother, and her father, a corporate CEO who wasn't sure what to with a dog, let alone a child, gave her nothing that she needed. Mirabelle was loving person, never loved. She gave until she was empty, left with nothing for herself.  I suppose that's why what happened was allowed to happen.

     Mira was almost always taken, from 8th grade on. She was perpetually in her relationship with Mason, the athletic star of the district, tall and striking with platinum hair just long enough to sweep by his ice blue eyes. They stayed with each other through innumerable break ups, the example of love to everyone around them. They went to every party, every dance. She was slight to his built frame, and he was a year older, ever doting. They were a couple to the perfect standards. He brought her flowers, and she brought him home. They followed every rule, became the perfect couple in everyone's eyes.

     I was violently jealous. In some way, I always loved Mira. I was always there for her, I was her 1 am phone call. It was my shirts stained with her tears, my door she'd show up at after their fights. But it was not me she loved. She was my Juliet, but I was not her Romeo. I had my Rachel, who I may have truly loved. Not one couple in the world has ever had that chance, and Mira made sure I didn't.

     I loved Rachel with a passion. She was my first girlfriend, my soul mate. She was the perfect balance, beautiful and outgoing to my gawky and unsociable. Rachel possessed straight brown hair, almost red. She wore it in a ponytail, or plainly down. Any way she wore her hair, it was her eyes that shined. They were a blue-gray, alive in imagination. They were constantly changing, as if they were a portal to her ever stormy mind, their intensity only dulled by a smattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks. She was just the right height, the top of her head reaching to just above my shoulder. She was mine.

    Mira was Mason's in a much more public way. She was a romantic in the most dire of ways, her rocky relationship with Mason a constant source of emotion. Mirabelle and Mason officially started dating in 8th grade, their initial relationship ending when Mason was caught with another girl. In a small town, everyone knew before Mira. The pitying glances told her more than Mason ever would. My deep hatred of Mason began that day, a harsh day in mid-February.

He made Mirabelle cry, the first time out of many that day. Her slightly red eyes, made more apparent by the harsh lights in front of the dark sky and powdery drift of snow surrounding her like a blanket, made me feel something. Empathy is a strange emotion, when mixed with anger. It's a burning dagger to your soul, screaming "Feel something, Damn it!". It made me want to cry with Mira, to make her feel not alone. It possessed me to hate Mason. In just a moment, I knew it had to be him.

"Come in" I said as I offered her the door with a slight flourish, enough to grant me a wilted smile.

 I waited for an explanation, for her to tell me what I already knew was wrong. Mira gave an almost mute whimper and wrapped her arms around me, a desperate hug.

"Mason."  She said, his name coming out of her mouth with a loving tone, a warm touch, but hollow of the happiness love should hold. The single word conveyed so much emotion, even muffled by my deep green hoodie.