The deceiving Mirror

Messy hair, a shirt too long, smeared makeup running down my face. I am reminded of my acquaintance Hannah's words; “the mirror makes you look much better than you actually do.”

 I stare back at my own reflection and am displeased once again. My father’s words simultaneously echo through my brain; “If you can't even love yourself, how can you love anything in this world at all?” Despite the urge to bawl based on my physical appearance, I pick up my hand bag and walk out of my room as ready as I could be to face the day. “Good morning mom,”I say frantically searching for the cheerios.

 “Good morning honey, how was your sleep?” she responded.

“Pretty good, woke up a few times here and there but overall well rested.” I said faking a smile. 

“I wonder what’s triggered an abrupt change in your sleep pattern, hormone changes I guess?” she pondered.

I laughed to myself, “Obviously it’s more than that.”

“Well, anything exciting happen at school today?” my mom questioned with a grin. 

“Unfortunately, it’s not kindergarten,”  I chuckled.

“Come on Lexi, when I was your age highschool was the prime time to be alive; friends, parties, prom, dances, practically anything and everything that beats kindergarten. You need to find your people.”

I cringed, hearing the same conversation over and over again was nearly pushing me to ear bleeds. “Mom, my highschool doesn't really have my kind of people,”  I sighed.

“Come on, what about that Clarissa girl, she seemed nice.”

It doesn't seem you have a good side when it comes to selfies.

“I don’t know, she just doesn't seem like friend material,”I say blankly. 

“Okay well there is always Olivia, you guys were close last year, right?”

Hey sorry only my close friends can come, not sure if you'll ever be one.

“Not in a million years,” I mutter biting my lip.

“What about..”

I interrupt with slurred speech due to the soggy cereal in my mouth, “Mom, just stop it, I don't know anyone who is friend material!”

A saddened face overlapped my mom’s once happy expression.  “Okay honey, if you say so.” 

I refused to make eye contact with her, as I knew the second I saw her eyes I would feel sympathy and remorse. Instead I focused on my cereal, counting the amount of cheerios in the bowl, and swirling my spoon around to make the milk ripple.

Mom glanced at her watch and then back at me. I could see her sharp stare through my peripheral but ignored her, pretending I was clueless to her keen eye. 

“If you're going to ride your bike, then you really need to leave within the next 5 minutes,” she announced. 

“Oh shoot,”  I say, staring at the old kitchen clock. “Thanks mom” I yell before stomping up the stairs to find my bike helmet.

I run throughout my room, destroying my closet before finding the rusty old thing. The velcro of the buckle gets stuck to my hair, forcing me to rip a few strands out before correctly strapping it under my chin. “I love you mom,” I say with a tight hug, and a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for your advice.” 

“I love you my Lexi Bear,” she responds with a kiss.

My feet grow muddy from the various puddles that fill out the front yard. I take my bike off of the new bike rack, to find water dripping from every direction.  Though the seat is basically a lake, I still sit on it, peddling out of the driveway with a huge wave to my mom. I think to myself, “What’s today going to be like.” 

As I get onto the “main road” of our development I see a few classmates biking their way to school too. In particular one boy grabs my attention as he waves his hand obnoxiosuly and yelling out gibberish. He peddles closer to me, and lets out a disturbingly loud laugh.  

“You good?”, I question.   

“Shouldn't you be asking yourself that?” he snorted. 

I slowly cocked my head, confused by his statement. 

“I mean you're the lost little girl,” he blurts. 

“Wha..what?”, I responded shocked. 

“The bright pink helmet is a big give away that you're some unicorn loving 3 year old. Thought you were lost since you're out here with the big kids,” he smirked.

“Grow up already, pink isn’t as dumb as youre making it seem,” I say returning his evil smirk. 

“Pink isn't the problem, it's the helmet. Only little three-year old’s wear them, dummy,” he laugshs.

My heart sinks a little bit as I look around to see no other highschoolers wearing helmets on their heads. “Whatever.” I shrug paddling faster ahead. He follows me, so I make a detour, going the opposite direction of the school. Once I lost the crowd, I yanked my helmet off and threw it into the abyss, hoping to never see it again. My legs grow weary as I pedal harder and harder, attempting to bring myself to homeroom in time. I arrived with eight minutes to spare, so I took the opportunity to head to the lady’s room. 

Once arriving my eyes meet a group of laughing girls, who are snapping pictures left and right.  Since the bathroom door makes such a loud creaking noise, the attention is brought to me. My heart continuously skips beats, as I feel all the girl’s glance at me. They then turn away and continue chatting between themselves. A sense of relief fills me, but I remain stiff as a tree. I decide to not go into any of the stalls as chatty Kathy’s fill them all, and there was no way I was up to embarrassing myself. So, I resorted to washing my hands and decided to glance up at the mirror. I am greeted with a horrendous sight of flyaways, moist dirt stuck to my face, and sweat droplets forming at the crown of my head. I realize that the helmet must have destroyed my already messy hair, dripped muddy water all over my face, and strapped all the sweat around the circumference of my head. My brain then remembers Hannah’s words as clear as a record tape.”The mirror makes you look much better than you actually do.” If this is how bad I look in person, then how horrible is the true me looking, I question. 

I didn't have a lot of choices on how to cleanse the look. So, I decided my best bet was to splash water on my face, and also use it to slick back my hair. But, I knew there was no possible way that I would be doing it here. Not in front of this judgemental crowd.  I walked out casually and quickly walked to the girl’s locker room. Coach Jimmy doesn't have a homeroom, so I anticipated an empty locker room. I was shocked to walk in and see Olivia and her group of friends chatting while changing into their P.E. clothes. 

“Lexi, what are you doing here?” she squinted.

“Oh, I was just going to use the bathroom,” I trembled.

“What's wrong with the girl’s bathroom?” she said puzzled.

“It’s..It’s..out of...order,” I gasped. “What are you doing here?”

“The girls track team has a meet today at West Burg High. We're all meeting in the gymnasium to get one last pep talk from Coach Jimmy,”  she explained. 

    “Phss, I didn't know! I am so sorry I interrupted, I will...be leaving now!” I exclaimed. 

    “You can use the bathroom, no one is in there anyways,” she laughed.

    I felt my face become hot, but I politely responded, “Thanks.” I was quite embarrassed when I walked into the stall, as my true intentions were to wash my face, not actually “use it”. Once again I felt all eyes were on me, and I contemplated my decisions on going to the locker room. Just as I flushed the toilet, the bell rang. I ran out of the doorway as quickly as possible, squirting a bit of sanitizer on my palms and rubbing it against my face, in hopes I was successfully getting the dirt off. However, my eyes quickly began to burn and as a result my vision was clouded. Luckily, I was able to bring myself to Mr. Loritti’s room in one piece. 

“Good morning all, how is everyone doing?” Mr Loriiti asked in his not so energetic Monday tone. 

Sounds of “good”, “fine”, “great”, “awesome”, and “okay” echoed the classroom from my peers' ear piercing voices. 

“I’m hearing mostly positive words which is a good sign. Let’s get into roll call so you guys have some time to get ready for first period,” heexclaimed.

“Abby”

“Present”

“Adam.” 

“Here”

“Alexandra”

“Excuse me sir, I go by Lexi.” I say as kindly as possible. In reality I was burning with hatred for Mr. Loritti, as every day for the past month I had been reminding him of my preferred name, and every day he changed it in pen. Apparently he has horrible memory, and weak ink.

“Oh yes...Lexi, let me make a note of that real quickly.”

I heard whispers and laughs break out as everyone was getting a real kick out of Mr. Loritti’s repetitive mistake. Lots of people now call me Alexandra, cause they think it’s a hilarious joke. In reality, it's a pain to deal with and reflects on their character and maturity. Sometimes I really question how half of these popel are highschoolers. 

The day flew from that point forward, and before I knew it, it was time to head home. I managed to get zero comments on the “horrible look” I was wearing today, which I was extremely grateful for. As I walked out of the school building and towards the student bike rack, I saw the track girl’s exit the bus. Leading the trail of moping faces was Olivia.  Though I felt nothing more than resentment for her, there was still empathy in my soul.

“Olivia, how did the track meet go?” I hollered out.

She looked up at me and I immediately felt a sense of remorse for her. I could tell she was in pain, as her eyes were moist, lips were droopy, and she looked fatigued. 

“Is all okay?”, I whispered.

She almost spoke then hesitated and continued walking ahead.

“Just..let me be,”  she cried out running towards the gymnasium.  

My feet went cold. I didn't run after her. In a way, it felt like she was leaving me again, and this time I wasn't going to waste my time chasing her. 

I turned back around to be face to face with her close friend Wren.

“Hey, did she say anything to you?” she asked inquisitively. 

“Not much, why?” I replied.

“I just wanted to tell her I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

“Sorry?” I questioned. “A team loss isn't caused by one person, don't take the blame.”

“We didn't lose,” she exclaimed sorrowfully.

“What, but everyone looks so sad, I assumed..”

Wren interrupted with a deep sigh and explained; “We traded her...at the meet.”

“Why?!” I screeched. “You can't do that to someone on the day of the meet!

“We didn't think about it. There was this new girl, Lilliana, who was shadowing us, and well, she’s a lot faster, so we decided we’d have more success with her,” she gulped, tidaling with her hair.

“That's pretty rude to do to someone.” I think to myself, but I remain quiet.

“We technically did have more success because we won, but we feel bad. She was watching us from the sidelines in tears, and it hurt us all.”

“How did you guys even choose her to be eliminated?” I pondered.

“A vote. A unanimous vote,” she disclosed.

“Wow, she's that bad?”  I asked.

    “Ya. That's what all agreed at least. But I now realize that could do so much harm to her already existing self consciousness, it probably already has,” she cried.

    “Olivia, self conscious. No way, she's like the most confident person in the world!” I declared.

    “Don't let her appearance fool you. The whole confidence thing is just for show,” she proclaims. 

    “And the friend group?” 

    “What she believes she needs to survive. Look at them, their mean girls, they party too hard, and they act like lunatics. Honestly, they're the worst of them all. But they have one thing attached to them, their eggo. They're popular, so people envy  it. Others like Olivia think that the only way to be accepted in this world is to be at the top of the social chain, like them. Thus, she joins their reckless behavior because she feels worthless. Her worth is what others tell her it is. So by being popular, you're a shiny penny, anything else you're trash,” Wren ranted.

I took a few seconds to process what she said. “So youre saying Olivia believes her worth is only applicable if she's cool.” 

    “As cheesy as it sounds, yes. Being insecure is definitely a curse,”  she nodded.

    “So you think she will feel worthless being kicked out of the track team?” I asked.

    “Worthless, maybe. Probably she will mostly be filled with embarrassment, and failure. Not that they're any better,”  she adds.

“That's horrible,”  I said with a deep sigh. “You should probably go talk to her, I bet if you make her feel loved she will feel better.” 

    “Ya, I probably should. Well, have a good one!” she smiled. 

    “Bye,” I replied.

 The bike ride home was quiet so I was left fiddling with my thoughts. I couldn’t believe that Olivia was so insecure. I wondered if she wasn't trying to be rude when she walked away from our friendship, but in reality just felt her inner mind take control. The second I got home I ran to my room and scrolled through my contacts. “Olivia, Olivia, where is Olivia.” 

Luckily, I found her number, and pressed the dial button. I wasn't sure what I was going to say to her, but it was going to be something helpful I assumed. I was shocked to hear her soft voice answer “Hey.”, as I thought it would lead me right to voicemail due to the turf were on. 

“Hey Olivia. I just wanted to cll to tell you something. You don't have to say anything, unless you want,” I announced.

“Okay. Go ahead,” she whispered, clearly confused.

“I’m self conscious,” I admitted.

“Oh,”  she replied, shocked. I could tell she was at a loss of words so I continued speaking.

“I have been ever since Hannah told me that “the mirror makes you look much better than you actually do.” It made me question my true identity, and what every other person sees me as.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,”  she mumbled.

   “But after quite a bit of time I realized she was wrong. The mirror only stands as a reflection of our physical appearance, not who we truly are.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she nervously laughed.

“Because most people have mirrors,”  I replied.