Eyes in the Mirror

by Julia Mayer

  “It…” I couldn’t lie to her; I just promised her I wouldn’t. “It was. I’m sorry, Mom. I should have talked to you about this before. I shouldn’t have. But Mom, I like him. I really like him. And, he likes me too. I think…I think he loves me, Mom.”

  She sighed. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay. You’re growing up. I knew it would happen sometime.” She smiled for the first time. “As long as you’re careful, as long as you’re safe. You’re right, though, you should have talked to me about it. Do you really think you were ready? Are the two of you even together?”

  “Yeah, we are. But I don’t know.” I finally sat down at the table with her. “I don’t know how this happened. I didn’t plan it. Not like this.” Everything I was saying was true—this was certainly not in my plans. My mom would never know how true that was, but it felt good to be able to talk to her. I had missed her so much while I was away.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s…it’s time for your first love. I just wish…I wish you looked happier right now.”

  “I’m just conflicted, I guess.”

  My mom got up and walked over to me. She leaned down and put her arms around me. “I’m here if you need me.”

  I felt the tears start, and as much as I tried to contain them, they kept coming. I wished I could tell my mom what I was really crying about. I wished I could tell her that I had a new best friend who was hurting—and who was hurting me. That I thought I could help her. That I had trusted her. But I had just made things worse. And so had she. That we had both screwed up so badly.

  I spent most of the weekend curled up in bed, trying to figure out what had happened. How had Samara and I gotten ourselves here? How had she and Jamie gotten themselves there? I couldn’t tell left from right anymore. I couldn’t tell what I wanted.

  ***

  When I got back to school on Monday, I began checking the mirror constantly for Samara. I figured if nothing else, she’d get angry and come to yell at me. But she didn’t. When I hadn’t heard from or seen her by Friday, I was getting really concerned. I started keeping a small mirror on my desk in every class. My friend Kelly kept shooting me strange looks about it.

  “What’s that about?” she finally asked on Day Two.

  I had been waiting for this question. And I was prepared for it. “I watched this totally creepy movie the other day where this guy strangles his ex-girlfriend by sneaking up behind her. This way, I can be sure that won’t happen.”

  She started laughing and I bit my lip. Would it work? I had practiced the excuse over and over (in the mirror, of course) as soon as Kelly started looking at me strangely. “Oh, come on,” I said, “haven’t you ever been completely terrified after a movie?”

  She wasn’t laughing at me anymore, but instead looking at me skeptically. “Who do you think is going to kill you in school? What movie was this? Jeez.”

  I smiled and shrugged a little, hoping that would answer her questions.

  No matter how much time I spent staring in the mirror, though, Samara never appeared.

  And the week had been a slow one. I barely knew what was going on with the people around me, and it was hard to tell who Samara had isolated and who she had made friends with. Clearly, Jamie’s friends thought we were closer than I was used to, but I wasn’t sure about anyone else.

  Jamie walked me home on Tuesday, and as we started up my block, he put his arm around me and said, “I like us.”

  “I like us too?” I said but my voice went up at the end of my sentence, something my mother constantly warned me about.

  “But?”

  “But what are we exactly? I mean, you said we were together, right? So what does that mean?”

  “I…I kind of assumed that you were my girlfriend.”

  I smiled. “So you’re my boyfriend?”

  Jamie kissed me. I took that to be a yes. And the kiss felt like mine. Like he was mine.

  ***

  I caught up with Samara just as I was about to leave the mirror Sunday night.

  “Samara! Finally! Where have you been?” She turned toward me slowly, and I could see the dark bags under her eyes. I could see that she had withdrawn over the week. She seemed limp.

  She looked me up and down and then looked away. “I wasn’t allowed to have a mirror at rehab.”

  “Well, what was it like? How was it? How do you feel?”

  “Oh, wonderful. I’m all cured,” she said sarcastically. “Thanks, Dee. You obviously know what’s best for me. I can’t believe I ever doubted you.”

  “Samara, don’t be like that.”

  “You sent me away, Dee. What do you want from me? You expect me to thank you? Fuck you. You made this mess of my life and you left. And now I will forever be stamped as someone who was in a mental institution. And what about what you did with the kids at school? People I don’t like are trying to coax conversation out of me.”

  “Who? What are you talking about? Eva? She’s perfectly nice. I don’t know what your problem with her is,” I said. Samara was so dramatic about everything. Everyone was evil; everyone was out to get her.

  “You don’t know anything about my problems, Dee. You really want to know why I don’t like Eva?”

  “I really do,” I said, crossing my arms and taking a step back.

  “She left me, Dee. My mom committed suicide. I needed friends. And she abandoned me. She decided it was just too hard on her. I heard her telling someone else in the bathroom. If she thought it was hard on her, what did she think was happening to me? What was I asking of her? Besides someone to listen when I talked. I thought I’d found that in you, but I guess we can both see that that isn’t true.

  “And who are you to decide who I should be friends with anyway? You’re the one who tells me I deserve more? Well, believe me, Dee, these girls are not more. They’re the kinds of friends who disappear when things get hard.”

  I was so tired of Samara’s blame-it-on-the-world attitude. She was blaming me for not being a friend? She’d had sex with the guy I liked. She’d had sex with her best friend’s boyfriend. Who was she to define friendship?

  “You know what, Samara? Maybe it was hard on her. Maybe you’re not, like, the easiest person in the world to deal with. Ever think of that? What, you think your life is so hard and the rest of us have it so easy all the time? Fuck that. If someone wants to be your friend, why don’t you just let them?”

  She just shook her head at me and walked away.

  chapter 11

  Industrial-Strength Cleaner

  Samara

  I was glad to get out of the car, glad to get out of the drive away from rehab, glad to be rid of that week of my life. It had snowed while I was away, and it was freezing compared to Florida. I went straight up to my room and lay down on the floor. The room smelled different. It smelled like Dee and like hospital cleaning products. The exact smell I was trying to get away from. I heard my father knock. He pushed the door open without waiting for a response. I sat up and put my arms around my knees.

  “I had your room cleaned while you were away,” he said, looking around. That explained the smell. I thought being away from the hospital would let me get away from the hospital. It was funny: not even industrial-strength cleaners could get the smell of Dee out of my room. I looked up at my dad, and he finished staring around the room and looked down at me, finally kneeling down so we were at eye level.

  “I have something for you,” he said.

  “What?”

  He handed me a notebook and a pen. I looked at them and back at him. “What’s this for?”

  “In case you need to write down what you’re feeling. Or draw or something.”

  “Oh. Well, thanks, Dad. Great.”

  “Okay. Well. I’ll let you get settled in and unpack.” He stood up again. “I’ll be in my room if you need anything.” Before closing the
door, he popped his head back in. “Chinese for dinner?” I nodded. “Let me know when you get hungry.”

  He closed the door behind himself and I lay down on the floor again, staring up at the ceiling fan. I tried to watch any one of the spokes as it went around in circles, but I kept losing my focus each time.

  ***

  I ran into Eva the next day walking into school.

  “Hey, what’s up with you? Are you okay?” She looked at me like we were friends. Like we were kids again.

  “Huh?” Eva and I hadn’t talked in years, not since my mom died, and I wasn’t sure what would make her…Dee. Of course. Dee had decided to make friends for me. “Oh, uh, nothing. I’m fine. Umm, what’s up with you?”

  “Well, I’m confused about what’s going on with you. You seemed fine when I talked to you a few weeks ago. Then you sit and have lunch with us and say you’re coming to last weekend’s party—which you didn’t—because after begging to be my friend again, you disappeared for a week, didn’t answer your phone, and now show up here as though there’s nothing going on.” The expectant look on her face was hard to take. I didn’t owe her anything.

  “That’s quite the two weeks I’ve had,” I said quietly under my breath, putting my hand up to my head to pull my hat off.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well?” she said. “So what’s been going on?” There was that expectation again. I couldn’t handle owing this much to this many people.

  “It’s just been a tough couple of weeks,” I said, and she stared at me for a moment. What was I supposed to say? What did she want from me? Even if she and Dee had become best friends the week before, I wasn’t just going to open up my whole life to her in the entrance to our school while we were being jostled by other kids coming in. If I would ever share with someone that I had been locked up in a mental institution, it wasn’t going to be in this huge public space.

  “And?” she asked, raising her eyebrows and using a gloved hand to push back her bangs.

  “Nothing’s been going on. Let’s just pretend the last two weeks never happened, okay? We’ll just go back to the way things were before.” I wished I could do that with my whole life, well, except maybe that one day…that incredible feeling that I had that day. But, no, I needed to let Jamie go too.

  “What? You are possibly the weirdest person I’ve ever met. I’m tired of this. You want to be friends. You don’t want to be friends. You want to talk. You don’t want to talk. I’m not going to try to keep up with you anymore. Screw this,” and she walked into the building.

  It was like a flashback to what had happened when my mom died. I remembered the day perfectly. I had just locked the stall in the bathroom when I’d heard the door open again. Eva and I had been friends for a long time, but I had noticed she’d been pulling away from me, so when I leaned down and recognized her shoes, I stayed as quiet as I could.

  “I know she’s going through a lot, but,” she sighed heavily, “it’s just been really hard on me. It’s gotten to be too much. I don’t know what else I can do for her. I don’t know what she wants from me.”

  Whoever was with her hadn’t said anything beyond a noncommittal “mmm.” Eva responded by saying, “She’s just gotten really difficult to deal with,” before they left. Dee knew nothing about this kind of thing; she had never dealt with what I had dealt with.

  I didn’t need Eva. Or Dee. I was fine on my own.

  ***

  My main mission over the course of the next few days was simple: avoid Dee. We were so much more different than either of us had realized. I was tired of having to explain myself to her, tired of her judging me and thinking she was so much better than me. I was tired of all of it, tired of Dee. I didn’t hate her, not really. I was just…exhausted from dealing with her.

  She eventually caught up with me, though, on Sunday night. I’d sneaked a peek in the mirror to make sure I still looked the same as I remembered, and lo and behold, there was Dee waiting for me.

  “Samara! Finally! I’ve been trying to catch you for like two weeks.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t allowed to have a mirror in rehab.” And I’ve been avoiding you, I thought to myself.

  “So what was it like? How was it? How do you feel?”

  This was exactly what I was tired of with Dee. This sort of requirement to describe everything, to keep her up to date on everything all the time.

  “Oh, wonderful. I’m all cured. Thanks, Dee. You obviously know what’s best for me. I can’t believe I ever doubted you.”

  “Samara, don’t be like that,” she said, just barely catching herself before she rolled her eyes at me.

  We talked a little while longer, but eventually I couldn’t stand her attitude so I just shook my head at her and walked away from the mirror. I don’t know why I had expected Dee to understand; she had never acted like a friend. She had lied to me to get to know me and then sent me away just as I’d started trusting her.

  As I closed the closet, my dad came in and stood silently for a moment. Then with one quick motion he looked under my bed and in my closet.

  “Dad?”

  “Who is in here with you? I keep thinking I hear someone talking to you or something. Before you left, it just happened late at night, but I thought I heard it again just now.” He paused. “Your mother used to do the same thing.”

  “There’s obviously nobody here.”

  He squinted and then walked out of the room muttering, but before pulling the door closed, he turned back to look at me. “Just a reminder: you have your support group tomorrow.”

  I wanted to tell him I wouldn’t go, that I was tired of being his crazy daughter sent away for someone else to deal with, but I remembered what Sasha had said. I knew that her advice was better than anybody else’s, so I just nodded.

  I went to the group the next day. I hated the cliché of it all. The chairs were set up in a circle, and there was water in the corner for tea and coffee, and cookies on the table. It was all girls, and they were sitting in small groups talking about medals they had gotten or would be getting for reaching thirty-, sixty-, and ninety-day milestones. There was a group leader who began the meeting, and then everyone went around and introduced themselves, giving their names and why they were there.

  “Hi. I’m Samara. I used to cut myself, but I stopped.”

  The girl next to me winked as I sat down and then stood up herself and said, “Hi, my name is Tanya, and today is the two-month anniversary of the last time I harmed myself.” Everybody clapped, and the group leader walked over to Tanya and handed her a sixty-day medal.

  I stayed after the group to talk to Tanya and some of the other girls. They were basically split into two groups: the girls who were there because their parents made them go and the girls who were there because they were really trying to quit whatever they had started. The first group was basically all still doing whatever they had been sent there for, and the girls in the second group were all somewhere between starting and quitting and starting again. And between those two groups was Tanya.

  I went once a week. I wasn’t sure if the group was really helping or not. I didn’t think so, but it was a good way for me to see Tanya and it kept my father at bay. Things were easiest for me when he was out of the house. I wasn’t talking to Dee. We’d catch glimpses of each other, but I think we had both given up on the idea of seeing each other regularly.

  ***

  At the end of the third meeting, I was helping to put the chairs away, which seemed kind of pointless since another group came in after we did. They were just going to need to take the chairs and arrange them in a circle again on the floor of the dance studio. Tanya put a chair down, and it made a huge clatter. We did the best we could not to make eye contact so that we wouldn’t burst out laughing because that would have just been too awkward in that silent room.

>   When we walked out of the studio, both of us burst out laughing. Holding it in that long made it that much funnier, and after a minute, we were literally holding each other up. When I was finally able to breathe normally again, I said, “Do you want to come over for a while?”

  “Love to. How far are you?”

  “Not far,” I said and we walked to my house. When we got there, I took out my keys to go inside, but Tanya shook her head.

  “You have this amazing porch! Let’s stay out here for a while.”

  “It’s freezing out. Let’s go inside. It’s all snowy.”

  Tanya looked around. “Don’t you think it’s pretty? Let’s just sit outside for a while and look at the snow. It’s so…something. I don’t know.” She brushed the snow off the edge of the porch, and we sat down with our feet on the top steps.

  Tanya actually contrasted with the snow. She had really dark skin and a long black coat with a bright blue hat, gloves, and scarf. I smiled when I looked at her because that day she was wearing orange leg warmers.

  “Leg warmers?” I said. “Really?”

  “They’re making a comeback. I’m telling you.”

  We watched as more and more people walked by, packing down the snow, dirtying it, and beginning the melting process.

  “You always seem so happy in meetings,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, most of the time I’m drunk,” she joked.

  “Seriously, though, come on. You always seem, I don’t know, light. Or something like that. I feel like I’m more depressed since I stopped cutting myself. Just because I’m not letting it out the same way. What did you do? Before you stopped? It’s not cutting. I can always tell when someone else cuts.”

  She drew a line between us in the snow. I could tell she was thinking about making a joke, and I hoped she wouldn’t. She looked up but didn’t look directly at me.

  “I hit myself. With a hammer. Mostly on my legs. Sometimes my arms. But I got one of my fingers pretty bad.” She pulled off her bright blue glove and showed me that the skin under her pinky nail was still bruised. “I finally had to admit it was a problem.”