Behind the wall of dancing flames was the silhouette of a girl; squinting my eyes, I searched her outline for any distinguishing feature other than the pair of wide, pink eyes and menacing grin. The figure didn’t move, but her expression stimulated my instincts to scream and run as far as possible from the area. I could do neither; whether it was the smoke that pinned my throat shut and disconnected my breathing or my fear gluing my feet to the floor, all I could do was stare into the strange liquid rose eyes. In an instant, the silhouette vanished. In her place was the image-no longer a dark shape among the vicious fire-of the back of another girl. Slowly, she turned to meet my gaze with surprise. When she identified me, a smile broke out across her face…somewhat similar to the pink-eyed girl’s grin, but not quite as threatening. As if it were a scene in a movie. I must have been looking in a mirror now; this new girl was me, my reflection. But as it continued to smile at me, I could feel and then see the difference as my horror-struck glance was not mirrored in my reflection.
“April! April!”
Someone was shaking me and yelling my name in a whisper. I struggled to finally hiss, “What do you want?” without opening my eyes.
“Get up! You have school. It’s time to wake up”, my mom answered calmly, although I could hear the needle of impatience in it. She had probably been doing this for a while now.
I groaned. Oh yeah. School.
I flipped myself over and dug my face into my pillow. “Just 5 more minutes”, I mumbled into it.
My mom sighed, knowing well that if she did any else she may fall victim to much worse violence, and I heard her walk out of the room. I felt bad for her. It was extremely considerate of her to get up at this hour to deal with me in the morning for the sake of me being able to get ready. It certainly saved both me and the rest of the house a massive wake-up screech from 30 alarm clocks every morning. Yet, even knowing this, I could not bring myself to act polite and well mannered as I typically did. It was too early.
I allowed myself to drift off another minute and think back on my dream. Pink eyes, the girl morphing into me…how strange it all was. Then again, it wasn’t unusual for me to have really bizarre dreams. Sleep dragged me into its too-comfortable arms once more. Only a single second passed when my better instincts yanked me from them. I opened my eyes just slightly and craned my neck to the right. A full ten minutes had passed since I’d closed my eyes already! I jumped too quickly out of bed and sent a horrible rush of blood out of my head. After everything was still again, I scrambled to my dresser and fought against the headache. I quickly picked an outfit and stumbled to the bathroom to change.
Fully dressed (but not yet fully awake), I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. Instantly, the memory of my dream came back as it was before my previous brief moment of panic. Only now, my current expression read tired and confused instead of pleasantly surprised. I grimaced. How could I move my face to fit that shape so early, anyway?
I took a moment to take in the damage one night of sleep did to my appearance. It wasn’t so bad today: my stubborn dirty blonde hair lay limply in its usual half wavy, half curly fashion around my head, streaks of all different shades of blonde making their way into my otherwise soft hair; the long black lashes framing my light brown eyes were hardly having a hard time with order among themselves and were mostly not overlapped and tripping over themselves; the only feature that refused to change on a daily basis were the red splotches on each of my cheeks over my very fair, light skin. Some of my friends had thought I resembled a porcelain doll. Without doing much to it, I skipped down all 14 steps of stairs to (more or less) pleasantly greet the early-rising members of my family.
First period went by fast. History always left me tired and utterly bored. No offense to Ms. Taylor, but her teaching method never sparked any interest in me. Walking to second period English wasn’t the easy task it usually was.
I practically threw myself into the desk in Mrs. Kiess’s classroom after greeting my teacher. I really liked both Mrs.Lisa and English, but today I felt too fatigued to function properly. I subconsciously laid my head on the smooth and cool fake wood desktop. It didn’t help much, but then again, I wasn’t prepared to fall asleep.
“April!”
I looked up to see Akiko standing before me.
“Yeah?” I asked, half in a yawn. I probably wouldn’t be up to full courtesy until lunch.
“Wow, you look particularly tired today. What did you do last night?” Akiko asked, feeling particularly curious.
“Nothing. I don’t know why I’m so tired. But I had this really weird dream…not that I haven’t had stranger ones before, but…”
Tap, Tap.
The entirety of the class glanced over to the door with mild curiosity. Mrs. Lisa raised herself out of her chair and made her way to greet the visitor. When she opened it to peek out, no one could see anything but half of an older-looking student’s face. Mrs.Lisa, like the rest of the class, was silent, so the older student’s voice was heard as clearly as if we could all fit in the doorway and listen there.
“Mrs. Lisa”, he started off in a fake business-like tone, which a few students in a corner of the classroom snickered at, “I’m here to escort your new student. Here’s her schedule”.
Mrs. Lisa’s tone was confused as she replied, “A new student? But I never got any advanced notice”.
“Sorry”, the older student mumbled. His noisy footsteps quickly pacing through the concrete hallway were proof enough that he obviously didn’t care.
After a moment, Mrs.Lisa’s tone brightened. “Come on in and meet the class!”
Everyone stretched their necks at odd angles to get an early view.
First her small foot gingerly and hesitatingly entered, then the rest of her leg, an arm…I froze as I her whole body became visible behind Mrs.Lisa. The classroom murmured quietly to themselves and brought an uproar within a split second. No wonder Mrs.Lisa was silent.
Her two perfectly shaped pink eyes locked on mine immediately.
“A-Akiko…”, I stuttered, my vocal chords failing me as if smoke still remained in my lungs from last night’s dream. My eyes were round with horror.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, confused at my terrified expression.
“That’s her…that’s the girl…” I still couldn’t make the words more than stumble out of my mouth.
“You know her? No offense to you or anything, but she kind of looks like a freak”, Akiko said, cringing.
I couldn’t say anymore; the words were simply choked up in my fear as, for the first time, one of my weird dreams wasn’t just a dream. It was standing in front of me, and grinning as my reflection had when it had taken her place on the wall of flames.
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