Mirror Balls And Time Capsules

Ahh, yes. I remembered this. It was one of the few things that I did, observing the fact that goldfish can’t recall anything from the day before and I was much like a dead one. My rough, speckled fingers trembled slightly from the cold as they trailed along the dents and grooves etched into the soft aluminium surface from her fingernails.

That was from Ally. It was the ball made out of aluminium foil that a girl gave her at the mall before she died last week. I turned the ball around in my fingers, looking at my contorted doppelgänger staring back at me out of the surface. I could picture Ally’s tweaked face on the ball, with her crooked nose bigger than ever.

~~~

A week before

Rolling up my sleeves tentatively, I began to rip the foil out of the roll, my thumbs tightly holding the ends of the roll as Ally fiddled with her nasal ventilator. The scars that lashed my arms were now healing a bit, but they stayed there to remind me of the depressing times when I fell into - well - depression. I still kept the memories of the pain and the three weeks where I was addicted to watching the blood flowing out of the wounds, keeping the knife hidden in the drawer next to my bed so I could watch the red waterfall surge out of my arms.

I had ripped out about three A4 sheets of foil now, enough to make a rough ball that was big enough to that she wouldn’t eat it and choke to death three days earlier than she would have died.

Her warm gaze swept the room as I began to scrunch up one of the sheets into a miniature ping-pong ball. I could almost feel the heat as her stare landed on my arm.

Please don’t ask, please don’t ask…

“What are those lines on your arms?” she enthusiastically asked, her sweet voice just above the sound of me scrunching the shiny foil up into one big ball.

I stopped torturing the foil ball and looked up. Sigh. This was a sensitive topic to me, and emotional. Normally, I would have shouted at her to be quiet but she was just a few days from her death and her face was so curious that I decided to let it slip just this time.

“They’re battle scars.”

“Ooh! Cool! Can I get some?”

My face hardened again, the memories of the bullies and the pain flooding back. Having battle scars wasn’t fun, and certainly not the way to round off your life if you wanted to be a happy lad.

“Never, and I repeat NEVER get battle scars. But,” My tone softened again, “I want you to promise me that when you see another person with battle scars, you go up to them and hug them, okay?”

Her curious face bounced back into the beaming, happy face that I always knew, from when I started babysitting her one year ago.

“Yay! Will it make them happy?”

“Yes, very happy,” I smiled, beginning to try and compress the aluminium ball into a mirror, which would be a mission failed.

One afternoon later

The smell of the mall enveloped us as we strolled casually, our eyes feasting on all of the leopard print clothes, bags and shoes. I knew she had a good taste in fashion, but not that good that we would be shopping at Pretty Little Thing. “My favourite shop,” she had told me half an hour earlier as we were entering.

Suddenly, an e-girl and a middle-aged woman wearing camo shuffled in, the camo girl’s eyes looking 10 times more excited than ours when they skipped all of the fashionable sections and went straight to the camo.

“My sweet babies!” she shouted, alerting all of the customers in the camo section to stand by and act like a statue before they got run over by that bulldozer.

The e-girl looked a bit uncomfortable as the camo girl buried herself in the clothes and started to look at the sizes. I was about to turn around to go back to leopard print shopping when I caught a snippet of her arm.

Pink and red lashes streaked her arm, exactly like mine but probably done recently. The edges of my mouth began to curve up. I wasn’t the only one that had suffered.

Bending down to a few inches below Ally’s height, I tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up with a glare that said this better be worth my time. Trying to discreetly point at the e-girl, I extended my index finger and whispered, “She has battle scars too, see?”

“Can I hug her?”

“Go ahead! Make her happy for me,” I replied, taking the coathanger out of her hands and giving her an encouraging push towards the e-girl who was loitering around the place with only black outfits.

“My heart is about to melt,” I mumbled under my breath, watching Ally pull her oxygen cart behind her, approaching the stranger. The clinking of the worn metal wheels and the axels rubbing against each other echoed around the whole shop, making that awful squeak sound. I followed behind her nearby, wondering if she was going to be kidnapped by this emo that looked like she was about to rob a bank.

When Ally was about half a metre away, she extended her arms and wrapped her hands around her waist, as she wasn’t tall enough to reach up to the neck. The e-girl looked down at her, with her perplexed expression on her face obvious.

“Why did you hug me?” she asked, hugging her back regardless.

“Because…” Ally trailed on, pointing at her arm with her finger, the pink semi-healed cuts threatening to break out and splatter blood everywhere at any moment.

“What about my arm?”

“You have battle scars like my babysitter,” she said, pointing to me.

The e-girl looked up at me and gave me the look, like where are your scars? I replied by rolling up my sleeves, showing her the faded marks that scarred me (literally).

Her expression went from confused to melted as Ally looked up at her from her meagre height of 4’1, grinning from ear to ear like a Cheshire Cat.

“My battle is not over yet,” the emo replied softly, putting on her kid-speak, “But you will always be my war hero, and I will remember that.”

Ally looked happy. “I wanna be Wonder Woman!”

“You already are.”

Turning to me, she leaned on the blank wall behind her. “You raised her well. I can guarantee she will grow up to be a fine young woman,” she complimented.

I turned grave, thinking about the time that Ally had left in this world.

“She’s got Stage 4 lung cancer. She hasn’t got long yet, only about 3 days. Since she thinks it’s no use to make herself happy, she makes others happy instead.”

Her face drooped sadly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. Also, you should really visit a doctor for those cuts. If you keep going, they’ll scar you for life and you’ll have an everlasting fear of arm revealing swimsuits.”

“I have. We’re beginning treatment in a few hours.”

“That’s great.”

“I pray that Ally will go to Heaven and have a good life there. And,” she added, pulling a small metal sphere out of her pocket, “This is for her.”

I stared at the sphere for a few moments before taking it out of her hand, mesmerized by the perfect shape and roundness of it. Ally had always wanted one.

“This is the perfect present. We tried to make one before, but it just didn’t go as planned,” I replied, digging around in my pocket until I took out a lump of metal that looked like someone took some sheets of aluminium foil and bunched it up into a ball. Which is what we did, because there was no sandpaper in their household.

“That’s nice. Give it to her for me, will you? Thank her for the hug as well.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

3 days later

Ally’s weak voice croaked as I held her hand, tears streaming down my cheeks.

“Harper…”

“Ally…”

The oxygen tubes connected to her arms were starting to slow down as her eyelids flickered. “Don’t go yet!” I shouted, the doctors and nurses looking on forlornly.

“Harper… Give… me… the… foil… ball…”

Hurriedly, I grabbed that foil ball out of my purse and pushed it into her hand. Her weak fingernails dug into the soft metal, the marks embed into the foil forever. A doctor scribbling notes on a cork clipboard from a huge electrocardiogram glanced pitifully at me, the beats on the ECG spreading out slowly. She was about to flatline soon and I knew it.

“Ally! Stay awake!”

Her eyelids flickered again, but for longer. My other hand grabbed the hem of the hospital sheet and clutched it, my overgrown nails digging into my skin out of frustration and anger.

“Harper… Promise… me… you… will… thank… the… nurses… and… doctors… for… taking… good… care… of… me…” she trailed on.

“Not yet!”

“Live… a… happy… life…”

“No no no!”

“And… most… importantly… be… kind… to… others…”

“Stay with me!”

Her eyelids started to droop heavily, her body relaxing.

“Wait!”

She closed her eyes, and her body went limp. I grabbed the foil ball out of her hand to stop it from rolling onto the ground. Soaked strands of matted hair covered my face partially as I thought about all she had given me. Hope, curiosity and happiness.

She was gone now.

Forever.

~~~

My eyes started to tear up as I put down the foil ball, whumping down carelessly on the cold, hard concrete floor. She was dead. Gone. Her funeral was in three days.

I placed it in the army green wooden box next to me and ran outside of the garage, my bare feet prickling all over as the dried tufts of grass tickled my toes. Where was it, where was it? I thought, scanning the front yard for the huge slab of granite.

“Harper!” Aunt shouted, revving up the engine of the tractor that was parked proudly on the end of the strip.

“I’m coming!” I yelled back, my eyes landing on the speckled slab of stone arched near Aunt’s flower garden. Sprinting towards it, I closed the latch on the box. Kneeling down at the base of the stone, I ran my fingers across the box. ‘Time Capsule’ was etched on the lid of the painted birch in bold, black letters.

I picked up the shovel and started to dig.