A Mask in A Mirror

Prologue

Black gowns covering our best outfits and those ridiculously square hats; high school was no more. I say good riddance. My class; we've had all of high school that we can take. The black, that was fitting. There's always one. Everybody has a story about the guy that didn't make it, he got drunk and ran off the road, maybe he was sober and a drunk driver hit him. Then there are the real sob stories about the guy that everybody picked on; the joke that went too far. My grade was no exception, we had our tragedy.

Of course, I'm probably generalizing a bit too much when I say that we all were thinking of our loss. Everybody jumps on the bandwagon when somebody dies. Dead people have a lot more friends than the living. Some people lie out of guilt, others like being the center of attention, and some are just easily manipulated into joining the crowd.

Ah... here it comes. That awful blank. All I want is for Mr. Link to read that name, to wake up and see that it was all just a bad dream. Of course he won't, my friend isn't going to appear from behind the curtain. Link pauses for a moment, reading the name that isn't there. Searching his list with that same forlorn, daydreaming hope. Then he reads on and all of us listen on.

Listen on in our black robes; gathered like a funeral procession. In our nice clothes; hidden under our black robes. The robes really were fitting. As if the world was forcing us to show our true faces for a change. Hiding away all of that phony spirit that our nice clothes were trying to convey. In a few more minutes we would get to take off our black robes and go back to lying, pretending to be something that we're not; but until then we are all honest with each other. With our nice clothes hidden under our black robes.