What would Mitchie do if she didn't do either of those things? Break more stuff in her house? Her parents would be home tonight, and every night after that. Mitchie wouldn't get back in here, unless she physically broke into the house, but Alex didn't think she'd risk getting caught doing that.
Maybe Mitchie would do something to her car outside or something like that. She really couldn't see what else apart from the threatening text messages she would be able to do now. The texts were definitely scary to read, but Alex would be damned if she was gonna cut her knuckles or trash her house for this.
She had very little time to come up with an alibi for why the mirror was destroyed, but that was her priority right now. That, and trying to figure out in her head why the phone number she'd gotten from Mitchie was disconnected. In fact, the way Mitchie had texted after Alex had texted her through that number was completely oblivious, like she didn't even see the message. It could be an act but... it was pretty suspicious.
Suspicious. Mitchie wore that word like a glove. Actually, suspicious was too tame. Fucking crazy was more like it.
Regardless, while she was brainstorming a reason, she needed to clean up as much glass as she could.
In the process of cleaning it up, Alex remembered that technically, cleaning up around the house was one of her chores. She never actually did her chores, but it was one of them.
It wouldn't be believable to her mom, but then again, neither would her going sporadically crazy and punching the mirror till it broke. She tended to think her mom would believe her reason over anything else. It wasn't like she had any other option, right? There was no way in hell she was gonna cut her knuckles like Mitchie wanted.
So then... she had been cleaning and vacuuming and had moved the dresser out and the mirror fell and shattered. It sounded alright to Alex.
That was what she would go with. Her mom would be devastated, but probably not as much as if Alex told her she broke the mirror on purpose.
-
"I can't believe this, Alex!" Her mom's eyes watered and her voice was weak.
It crushed Alex. But I didn't do it, she wanted to tell her, but couldn't. She was sitting on the couch in the living room, and both her parents were standing in front of her.
"You knew this was the last thing your mother had from Grandma, how could you be so careless?!" Her dad yelled at her.
Surprisingly, the issue at hand wasn't that Alex had actually done her chores for once, but all about the mirror. Alex began to wonder if Mitchie had somehow known this particular thing in their house had value. It seemed far too coincidental that she'd choose to break it over everything else.
"I'm sorry..." Alex trailed off. "You have no idea how bad I feel about this..."
Her mom pinched her nose, "I know accidents happen Alex, but... I'm sorry, this is really hard for me to think about right now." She placed a hand on Alex's dad's shoulder and said, "I think I'm gonna go take a long bath. I feel terrible." She left the room.
Alex sunk her head and put her hands in her face. Fucking Mitchie. How did she deserve any of this? She thought miserably.
"Alright, honey. I understand." Her dad said. He shook his head at Alex. "You should probably head to bed."
Alex didn't even argue. This whole situation had gone over better than she'd thought it would, but she still felt incredibly guilty about the mirror. Sure, she didn't actually break it, but if she'd never let Mitchie in the house – or into her life at all- none of this would have happened.
