Dead Jealous

Truth

"It was great, mum. We caught up, and we're even planning to go meet up again tomorrow for a walk at the lake," Sky said to her mum as they drove home.

"That's lovely. Are they all good?"

"Yup. Hey, mum, I was wondering..."

"Yes, sweetie?"

Sky swallowed. "Mum, was Tara happy in that last month? Do you think she might have...hurt herself?"

The silence was filled with so much tension, it felt like you'd be able to cut it with a knife.

Her mum kept her eyes on the road as she talked. Her expression was kept even and light, but Sky could see her lips wobbling a tiny bit, her eyes becoming the slightest bit more glossy, and her voice becoming higher and wobbly.

"I don't really know, honey," she sighed, "She was hiding up in her room more often I guess, but you were too. There was a bit of tension between you two as well, but..."

"Wait, what?"

"Honey, I don't know..." her voice cracked. "Can we not talk about Tara right now please? I'm sorry, Sky, but I can't..."

Sky nodded and looked out of her window, resting her head on the glass. There it was again. If they weren't hiding secrets to protect her, they were avoiding them.

When they got home, she went to her room, kicked her shoes off, and lay on her bed thinking.

Her eyes scanned the white ceiling. She turned her head and gazed at the wall, where her desk sat - the least cluttered she had seen it in months, no doubt due to her mothers frantic, par-obsessive cleaning habits when stressed - and my mirror, which admittedly she hadn't looked in for weeks. She couldn't stand to look in at Tara's ghost in herself.

Her eyes caught the light in the mirror and she snapped up into a seated position, startled.

What the hell?

.As she had been laying down looking at the mirror, she could see the word "Dead" in greasy lines on its glass.

But as she sat up, the light in the mirror changed and she could no longer see the chilling word.

She peered at it closely. She'd never noticed it before, and she hadn't in the months that she remembered.

But it could have been because she'd never looked at it at that precise angle...

It said 'dead'. It had been written in her mirror.

Her heart started beating faster and she felt hot, then cold, than hot again.

She reached out and touched the cool glass, wiping at the word to see what happened.

The faint 'E' looked mostly the same except for a faint smudge. The greasy writing could have been there for months and months, and she wouldn't have realised.

Sky began desperately scrubbing at the mirror until she could no longer see the awful word. Her hand was sore when she lay back onto her bed, her mind racing. Who had written that on there? She didn't think she'd do it herself.

Oh, my god, she thought to herself. What if Tara's murderer was threatening her and thought that Sky's bedroom was Tara's? It was a reasonable mistake, barely anyone could differentiate them unless they'd known them for over a month.

It seemed kind of ridiculous though. Whatever it had been written in on the mirror - wouldn't it have been easier to graffiti in black marker or spray paint on the white, bare walls? And if this whole business was planned - which it must have been, if there was a threat in her room - wouldn't the killer have had a bit more foresight, planned it better and been able to recognise the victim they had chosen?

Sky's head hurt like it hadn't done in almost a month. She didn't like to think about those awful days in which she'd woken up in hospital. It had been traumatising to say the least.

When she initially had woken up, her head felt like it had been crushed in with a sledgehammer. Her skull thumped painfully. Her parents were squeezing her cold hands. And she was frantically running through her last memories, trying to reach conclusions and gain understanding as to why she now lay in a sterile hospital which buzzed with sluggish energy.

Those few days, when they told her what they knew. Those were among the most painful days in her life. She would never go back to them. Skye would rather die.