The Silver Mirror

Chapter 5: When the Clock Struck 12

Back at home, Aira had to restrain Choco at least five times from trying to enter her room. Many days had passed since she had purchased the mirror, though she could not fathom why the d.og was so hostile toward her now.

“That dog’s been going crazy,” Mrs. Hoying said, shaking her head, bemused. “The moment I let him in, he bounded up to your door. I had to lock your room to prevent him from going in. What’s he so obsessed about, boy?” she asked, scratching behind Choco’s ears.

Meanwhile, Choco had been growling at Aira and her mother, lying almost flat on the ground, with his teeth bared threateningly.

Aira had a strange feeling that Choco had something against the mirror, but she didn’t know why. At all. She didn’t voice her opinion, only nodding her head in agreement.

Dinner was spaghetti and meatballs, though Aira had no appetite. She felt slightly cold and shivery, almost like she had the flu. Yet she felt perfectly fine and healthy. The mirror, she thought, the mirror will make everything better.

She jiggled herself slightly. What was her problem? What was Choco’s problem? Swallowing the last of her spaghetti, and slurping the rest of her water, she got up to put her plate up. 

“Young lady, it’s your day to load the dishwasher,” her dad said.

“Okay,” she said. The only trace of annoyance at her delay to be alone by herself with the mirror, was a long, exhaled breath through her nose.

When she rinsed Andras’s plate, a booger came off on her hand.

“EWWWWWWWW!” she exclaimed, hopping up and down on the spot, trying to shake off the offending mucus chunk.

Andras stifled a laugh behind her. She looked threateningly at him, and when he did not at all look threatened, she gave up the look. 

“It wasn’t even a booger,” he choked, tears streaming down his face. “It was just a ball of dirt I found stuck on my shoe. Your face though, it - ”

Instead of being reassured that it was not what she thought it was, she burst out again, “EWWWWWWW!”

By then, her whole family had joined in with the laughter. After a moment of being grossed out, Aira smiled. She realized that this had cheered her up immensely. It had also yanked her out of her cloud of depression. So instead of doing her homework that night in her room, she brought it downstairs to the kitchen counter. Aira wanted to avoid the mirror, ridiculous as it sounded, it still made her uneasy. She made a mental note to herself to ask her mother if they could return it.

Mrs. Hoying and Andras were baking cookies. Aira sat patiently, waiting for them to be ready, while Choco scratched piteously outside at the glass sliding door that connected the backyard and the dining room.

“Sorry,” Andras said at him. “But we can’t have you making a fuss at my sis.”

“Don’t call me sis, bro,” she said, wincing as she tried out the offending word.

“Then don’t call be bro, sis,” he shot back.

She huffed and then turned back to answering some geography questions that were really getting on her nerves now.

Just then, the oven dinged. (ringed? donged?)

“Cookies!” she and her brother exclaimed. They almost attacked their mother as she pulled them out of the oven to cool.

“Only two each,” she said, even though Andras had already inhaled like four. She wondered how children could eat piping hot cookies right out of the oven, but then again, they were still children, and those were cookies, so she shrugged and bit into one herself.