Salina Huang, Period 7, 2/28/22

Modern Mythology 2022

Salina Huang

2/28/2022

Period 7

Senior 2021

There she was again. My eyes were glued to her as she entered the doorway, locking the door behind her. With a mug of hot chocolate and a book in her hand, she settled in the blue bean bag by the window. She would sit there and read for hours, as I admired the changes in her emotion. 

Outside of this room, she wore a stoic expression. However, when she read, her face became lively. Laughter, grunts of annoyance, or tears—I always cherished the shifts in her delicate features. Although I could not wipe her tears when her favorite character died, I still admired how beautiful she looked when she cried. 

I fell in love with the way she tucked her hair behind her ear to keep it out of her eyes. I fell in love with the way she stretched after she finished a long book. I fell in love with the way she color-coded her books on the shelf. For as long as I could remember, I watched her come home and read by the window until it was too dark to see the pages. 

Of course, this was a one-sided love, she didn’t even know of my existence. I was not of her kind either. All these years, I watched her from the inside of the mirror on her wall, forever confined in this glass prison. When she smiled at herself in the mirror, it lit up the darkness where I resided.

One day, she burst through the door, a panicked look on her face. Huh? This was unusual. Behind her was a man, tall and broad. She backed into the wall, her eyes wide with fear. The man seemed to be her father, as he shared her flowing brown hair and round black eyes. 

His deafening voice bounced off the walls, but I could not understand what he was saying. He swayed slightly when he walked towards her. Was he drunk? Suddenly, he became violent, yanking her precious collection of books off the shelves and sending them flying. She sank to the ground, arms shielding her head. He launched a thick book at her and it pierced her skin. I watched as blood trickled down her fair skin. I wanted to scream.

In the blink of an eye, a book with a blue cover came flying towards me. The mirror shattered.

No.

NO.

The last thing I saw was her beautiful crying face. I was surrounded by darkness and could hear nothing but the pounding of my own heart. I cried, and cried, and cried. The same stories that allowed me to fall in love were responsible for the shattering of my heart. All that I had now was a broken mirror.

And a broken heart.