It had all started to fall apart two years before, when her mother had nearly died of a heart condition. Those few months, spent in grief in the form of hospital beds, life-changing phone calls and numbness, had been an ominous omen for what was to come.
The next year had been fine. She'd just entered middle school, and sixth grade felt amazing. And then. Summer came in the form of sweltering heat, lazy days, and she lost touch with her friends. And then. Seventh grade started. The worst part was knowing, right then and there on day one, that she no longer fit in, no longer belonged. One by one, her old friends became cool and too good for her. One by one she grieved them in turn. Her true friends, unfortunately and unfairly, were not enough. They were different than what she wanted, and though she tried to make them what she needed, it didn't work. Slowly she closed herself off from them, hiding away from the world to cry in peace. It became unbearable.
One cut tie stood out more than the others. It was this one that caused the most pain, slowly but surely breaking her down. Each time he laughed, she wanted to smile in return...until she remembered that his humor was no longer directed at her. Until she remembered that to him she no longer existed. And she fought back the tears until she was alone.
She watched as one by one the pieces of her life shattered and came crashing to the ground like the shards of a broken mirror. The kind that you can try to fix but the pieces won't fit together like they did before; and in the end, when you've put it back together as best you can, what you're left with is warped. Like one of those carnival mirrors that makes you look tall or short or skinny, it's warped to unrecognizable proportions.
Now, she's started eighth grade. It's not as good as sixth was, but not as bad as seventh. So far, it's been okay for her. Her mirror is on the mend. When the mirror is complete, she knows her life won't be the same as it was before, but it will hold some semblance of what she lost. But the mirror has a long way to go. She's still patching the first row back together, and even that's nowhere near completion. But it's getting there.
