Mirror 1: A Totally Normal Day

I don’t think anyone realizes that she was my whole life. I don’t normally take pictures of myself or events or really anything. I don’t find joy in documentation. I don’t see the importance. But when I’m looking through my photos app after everything, just to get one more glimpse of her face normally and I can’t find one because I deleted everything after the breakup because I thought it would help me get over her, and I’m sobbing in my bed because the thirty days passed in the deleted album section which means every single image of her is permanently gone, and I just can’t get over that dead panned bloody forehead picture of her inside my mind, and the number of photos in my photos app has gone down from six hundred forty three to only three hundred seventy eight, it really does hit different. 

         She was my whole life and I threw it all away because I couldn’t move. Why? Why couldn’t I move? She’s dead, and she’s dead because of me. Nick’s sister is still alive because he could move and clutch her tight against him like the world depended on him to. In a way it did. 

         She was part of his world just as much as Kitty was mine. He saved part of his world and I didn’t. What other facts am I missing? I don’t know why I hate him so much. He was surviving. 

         Now I’m not, maybe that’s why. 

My apartment walls are starting to look funny. Everybody has moved out from the building except the French couple at the very other end of the hall, so now I have no noisy neighbors except the cars outside, but they’re gone too. Even the honkers and the drunkers and the dogs have taken a break. It’s just the static of my own thoughts and my pale dirty apartment walls. God, I wish somebody would just make a continuous noise, and god I wish my realtor would come in and paint these damn walls with something other than white. 

Oh wait, I forgot, nobody, not even my realtor cares about me. All he cares about is taking the money out of my pocket. In fact, the only people that could possibly put in a complaint about me to make him care were the French couple all the way down the hallway. I haven’t heard a single word of French for the last week because I’m pretty sure they’re on vacation with their pet poodle who would bark all through the night. 

That meant I was actually completely alone in this entire building. No people on the street to see me through the window, no friends to stop by and check on me, and certainly no family members to give their awful apologies. 

If I screamed nobody would hear. 

“That’s right.” I twisted my neck so hard to the right to catch the voice that wasn’t real because there were no strange noises in the street to make up sound. I breathe steadily in and out, smelling my disgusting blanket I haven’t washed in days but cried in for longer. I was pathetic. 

How could a voice reply to a person's thoughts? Nobody was in my head but me. 

Right? 

“How do you know that I’m not you?” The voice says again. I sit up straight in bed, panting this time, with every hair on my body pointing up. It was so clearly a voice. It had to be because I’m thinking right now, and I can’t hear a single thing. My thoughts can’t be so loud that they create their own voice. I wasn’t insane like that. I just sometimes saw things that weren’t there or heard small voices. I wasn’t crazy. 

“I’m tired of you ignoring me.” 

“Who’s there?!” I shout into the darkness. I feel stupid, like I was shouting at nothing. Nobody else had keys to my apartment except me and my realtor. My stupid realtor. 

Almost like the voice took a second to pause and laugh, nothing responds back to me. I don’t see any black shadow zip by or smiling creatures’ peek into my doorway. It’s just me yelling into my apartment like an idiot. 

“God.” I say it like a swear under my breath as I let myself fall back into my pillow. I wanted sleep to take me under its wing again and fly me out the window both metaphorically and physically. Except, when I gaze up at my ceiling there’s something waiting there for me. 

A long shadow projecting itself from the window shapes itself into a person. My eye twitches, my heart begins to pump harder and louder inside my chest. It wasn’t real, shadows weren’t people I’m not stupid.

“Get up.” Somebody whispers in my ear so close I can feel the warmth of their breath in my ear. For the second time tonight, I sit up and look around for something that wasn’t there. What is wrong with me? I’m not crazy, I’m not, so why am I acting like I am?

My eyes catch myself in the mirror, the mirror right at the post of my bed. My legs are out and bent at a ninety-degree angle in startlement, my arms are supporting my torso as it should be, but my face?

What’s wrong with my face? Why does it look like that? Why does it look like a slightly misspelled word, that you know is misspelled, but can’t quite put your finger on it? Something is wrong. I move my head to the side to see if my reflection tracks, but it doesn’t. I move more to the left, more, more, more, until my ear is to my shoulder. My reflection does not listen. In fact, its lips contort from a thin line to a semi-circle. The skin is pulling away from the teeth, the cheeks are balling up to push its lower eyelid up into the sclera.

My reflection is… smiling?

Why do I look like th-

~Uh oh! Sorry about that, this is the wrong mirror! I don’t know how this got here, just ignore that. It’s not a part of the story either way. My brother must have accidentally left it behind, silly him. Anyways, before I show you the first mirror, I completely forgot to introduce myself! I’m Mr. Hat, the one and only! I’m here to show you a quite interesting story that’s been playing out in my world. For years I’ve worked very hard to collect each one of these mirrors to put them in order, to tell the very story you’re seeing right now! Cool, right? Typically, the most important mirrors come from these three teenagers, they have quite interesting thoughts, that’s why I’ve chosen them to show you what’s happening. I’m going to skip ahead a little because this story sort of starts out pretty slow right up until this first mirror. This is where is gets gooood. Grab your popcorn, get your snacks, and enjoy the show! Trust me, you won’t regret it. Let’s first hear a little bit from the only girl in the trio:

Mrs. Brenman taps her fingers onto her desk and slowly shakes her head at me. Those pointy nails were unbelievably long just like her face. I can see my essay lying in front of her ungraded, with not even the slightest mark. Perhaps I really outdid myself this time. Not to brag but I did write incredibly well. I wouldn’t be surprised if she gave me a perfect score. However, this was English II pre-ap with Mrs. Brenman and I was called up to her desk on her lunch break. No one was ever called to Mrs. Brenman’s desk after the bell rang on a rainy Monday when she had her tuna fish egg sandwich already lying in front of her.

  “The cat lay dead on the sidewalk with its eye popping out from its skull. The bus had run it over and the bus driver pulled over to see what thing he ran over.” Mrs. Brenman reads from off my paper in a high pitched tone so loud it felt like the frequency of her voice was going to explode my ear drums. She smiles despite the ambiance of the paragraph she was reading. “When he got out, his horrible, terrifying, bone chilling scream rocked every passenger on his bus except for one.” Mrs. Brenman takes a long pause to chuckle. It was enough time for me to execute the most perfect bubble pop I’ve ever done in her class. She flinches at the sound but carries on, “The passenger not horrified started to laugh because he thought killing cats was funny. His name was Mr. Brenman and he was a cat killer. Last Tuesday, at what people suspect to be five o’clock after school, Mr. Brenman did a similar act of pure hatred. He ran over Stella’s cat for fun.” She sniffles like reading the truth really hurts her slow dying heart. I actually felt true sympathy for her because it must be shameful to know a cat died like that. 

“Why are you writing this when the prompt was ‘In what ways does the president benefit our society, in the book ‘Democracy is a Pleasant Thing?’.” She points a crooked finger to the question on the board. I yawn before giving my response, “Because the book explains every way democracy isn’t a pleasant thing. I thought I might give an example.” Mrs. Brenman loved us providing examples so I thought it was fitting personally. “I’m sorry Ms. Suzuki but I will not tolerate any poor attempts at a joke when you were supposed to write an essay. I appreciate trying to make me laugh so think of it as a… happy zero.” She grabs her big fat red marker and draws a horrible circle right above my title “WHY THE PRINCIPLE CAN GET AWAY WITH MURDER.” I hoped she enjoyed that nasty sandwich that made her breath smell like a skunk and a dirty sock had a baby in her mouth. 

Mrs. Brenman hands me my essay back with a very tight grip and laughs the whole way behind me as I exit her class. I can barely grab my skateboard without feeling her figure towering above me. The moment I take a footstep out she slams the door. Ryan who was conversing with her friend group notices I was finished with Mrs. Brenman and comes over. 

“What was that?” She asks me. I roll my eyes and hold out the newly marked paper. My mom was going to kill me if she ever found this paper so I shove it into my pocket. “Yikes. Was she really mad? Did she yell?” Ryan’s enthusiasm makes me feel better. It wasn’t everyday an upperclassman was so interested in a sophomores life. So I try to play it cool, “Nah.” Her friends also seemed very intrigued by my calm demeanor. I’m the spotlight the whole way down the staircase to the cafeteria. We’re about to go down the last flight before we all hear yelling. 

Ryan wrinkles her brows and overlooks the rail. Below us there is a circle of people all gathered together recording something in the middle. They all chant, “fight, fight, fight!”. Ryan and her friends immediately start running down the stairs. I don’t follow everybody close behind and instead walk down with my skateboard clutched close to my chest. All the jocks are mixed in laughing or cheering. The closer I get the more the yelling makes sense. I found Ryan among the people video recording and she didn’t look excited anymore. In fact she was staring at me like I was the one fighting. My tongue goes dry as I push past people to get to the center. 

Nick is thrown onto the floor and kicked in the nose by Garret. Garret was laughing at him and looking over his shoulder to his jock buddies. “Look at snowball!” They roar in response which heats the fire. Nick gets up and grabs Garret by his shoulders, ramming him into the entire football team. He yells, punching Garret repeatedly in the face. Garret is now on the floor and Nick stomps on him so hard that something starts to bleed in his mouth. 

“Nick!” I cry out. He wasn’t going to stop. 

Nick gets on his knees over Garrett and instead of kicking grabs his yellow hair and begins to bash his head into the stone ground. The crowd has turned from invested cheers and chaos, to concerned faces. 

“He’s going to kill him.” Somebody comments. I don’t wait for administration and instead lunge forward grabbing at Nick. My touch doesn’t stop him though and he continues. I try to pull him off Garrett, feeling like I was trapped on all sides by cameras and people looking. My lungs are paralyzed and my arms just feel flimsy. 

“Nick, get off him!” Mr. Lenore pushes me away and is able to tug Nick off Garrett, who was crying crippled with blood streaming down with his tears. Nick is still yelling things that don’t make sense. He’s dragged away panting and enraged. Only when the security at school grabs him does he relax. At that point people feel more inclined to walk away before Nick starts memorizing faces. 

I’m left in the center of the chaos by myself, facing Garrett who looked more pathetic then he did when he lost our homecoming game on Friday. I don’t know why this happened, or if it was just a sad attempt to get himself to look tougher, but either way Nick was screwed. He may have won the fight, but there wasn’t even a fight to be had in the office with the “adults”. I hoped he had a good reason for beating the most privileged kid in our class. 

He sits a chair away from me. His arms would normally be folded but one hand is holding an ice pack to his nose that the nurse had given him. She wouldn’t give him anything else or really see him at all. It’s not like he would have let her anyways. 

We can both see the shadow of Garret and his parents through the blinds of the old principal's office. Garrett’s mom is waving around her hands in the air. Muffled yelling comes from the door. There is only one voice I can make out and it’s a woman. I can already tell who is going to win amongst the adults walking out of that office, and it certainly wasn’t Mrs. Brenman’s husband. Normally I would be glad but not in this situation. 

“Akemi, your mom is going to be here in 15 minutes. Nicholas, your caseworker in 5.” The office lady mumbles lazily. She was more exhausted with her job than worried about getting yelled at by some parents. I glance over to Nick who still refuses to even say a word to me. His caseworker would be coming and getting him. Was he lying the other day when I asked him if it was all working out with his foster parents? They got into a fight but Nick always got into fights with everybody. They were so kind to him. He told me that he felt like they cared about him this time. 

He wouldn’t give them up that easily. Right? 

“What happened?” I whisper to Nick who doesn’t look at me right away. I wasn’t the one he was angry at and I’m sure he would like to tell me before his case worker picked him up. Nick’s nose wrinkles and he only turns his eyes towards me, 

“He called me snowball so I gutted him.” Nick admits in a whisper back to me. I knew that wasn’t the real truth but I wasn’t going to push him any further right now. The last thing he needed was his best friend to force him to put all of his heart on a silver platter for the office ladies to eat up. They were the masters at office gossip and if they knew something, every person in administration was hearing about it. The reason why I know snowball didn’t upset him is because lots of people have said that behind his back, because of his white hair, and he’s heard them. It wasn’t a clever insult and it didn’t get under his skin like how he was acting. 

Garrett must have said something really mean about him either under his breath, or to his face. He was just that kind of guy, he deserved it and I don’t even know what happened. It was about time somebody showed him that he isn’t all that just because he’s a quarterback on the football team and has dated half of the girls at this school. I don’t think he even realizes that the only reason why he got HOCO king is because his parents paid the majority for decorations and stuff. Ryan is in STUCO and said herself he had gotten last when it came to votes. 

“It’s ok. I know Mr. Lenore will vouch for you. I will too.” I wink at him trying to raise his spirits. He smiles just a little bit, “Thanks.” 

“Nick, let’s go.” I hear his caseworker. She was a tall woman and normally friendly but I can see this time she wasn’t so considerate. Nick loses the smile and gets up with his ice pack still clutched in between his raw knuckles. 

“Thank you so much for calling me. You ladies have a wonderful day.” She chirps to the office staff who just grumble in her direction. Nick walks out first before she can even say a word to him. 

Now all that was left was my mom. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear I was “in another fight”. 

***

“Ma, I wasn’t hitting anyone. I was trying to get Nick off that jock, Garrett.” I sat in the backseat of the car because my mother didn’t even want me up front. Thunder can be heard in the background and drowns out my mom’s stern voice. “Akemi, I don’t want to hear it! I told you if Nick gets into any more fights your responsibility is to stay clear of it.” She knew she sounded crazy. He is my best friend. Of course she knew I wasn’t going to just stay out of it. He would knock someone's head off for me so I at least have to make sure he’s ok in a physical fight. 

“Ok, well Garrett deserved it.” Her sharp eyes met me in the mirror even though she was still driving on a busy highway. I can hear the leather from the steering wheel because her hands grip it so tightly. “You are all kids. I don’t care if Garrett deserved it or not. Nick shouldn’t be giving anyone concussions or black eyes. If he’s being bullied he needs to tell his parents or someone else to help him. If it was the other way around and he didn’t just have a bloody nose Nick could have gotten seriously hurt. Do you want that, Akemi?” She was asking a question and I knew it didn’t need an answer. 

“I want your phone and your laptop when we get home.” I sit up right in my seat with my jaw dropping. 

“What?” I ask her. 

“You heard me. Phone and laptop. If you keep arguing with me I’ll make it your skateboard too.” She couldn’t be serious. How was I supposed to text Nick about what was going on? The least she could do was let me make sure he was ok. That whole case worker thing was not normal in the slightest. 

I slid her a nasty look and pulled out my phone anyways. She did say when we got home. I open up my messages and tap on Nick. The last conversation we exchanged was just images from our hangout in central park. I huff and text him, 

“My mom’s taking away my electronics so I can’t text here. Sorry :( See you at school on monday” 

No reply, I’m left on delivered as expected. He was going through a lot. I don't even know if he was allowed to be on his phone right now either. All that mattered was that he knew I wasn’t mad at him. 

My mom slams on her brakes and then honks at someone. That probably meant it was time to stop pushing her before this escalated. So I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and threw it in my backpack. The rest of the car ride home is in complete silence, despite the pouring rain just outside the car window. No radio, no talking, and no looking at each other. The moment we get into the apartment she holds out her hand expectantly. I reach into my backpack and give her my laptop and phone. She doesn’t say anything else and goes to her room, as do I.

I grumble off the anger, kicking at a basket of laundry, and then flopping onto my bed in frustration. My cat, Boo, jumps from his cat tree and wobbles over to me until his furry body is pressed against the backs of my heels. He purrs in this gurgly voice he always did. Not even he could make me happy right now. I turn onto my back and kick my shoes off. I wanted to become teary eyed while staring up at my ceiling because I could feel the emotion warming up my face, but it never came. I was more worried about what was going to happen to Nick than angry at my mom for being so difficult. 

Boo hops onto my bed and immediately begins to walk all over me with his heavy paws. Boo wasn’t even that heavy but it felt like three thousand pounds was being separated into fourths, on top of my chest, through his feet. 

“Dude.” I push out in a breath. Eventually he settles and curls up on my stomach. His two big cross eyed watery bulbs stare at me. Well I think he’s staring at me but I really can’t tell. He breathes heavily, like he was struggling for each gulp of air. In reality that’s just how Boo was, some say he was a pug in his past life. I agree heavily with that statement. 

I pat him on the head and sigh deeply. Him and Nick were really the only two friends I needed. Everybody else could go die in a ditch for all I care. Especially Garret. I’ll dig his grave for him personally if I have to. 

Boo sneezes nastily before getting up again and waddling somewhere else. With his departure I decided that I need something to take my mind off things too. Some music too would help. The only issue though was that my phone was gone, which meant Spotify was gone too. 

That’s when I remember something I had in my drawer. I hop up and scurry over to my desk with my large set of drawers. I go to the very last one, open it, and find an array of random things. Amongst those random things was my very own IPod Nano. I smile and take it out with its attached headphones. I hadn’t used this thing in centuries. 

Did it work? 

I have no clue but it was better than hearing the traffic outside for the rest of the night. I grab a converter, plug it in, and pop that Ipod Nano onto the charger faster then Mr. Brenman was speeding through Stella’s neighborhood running over her cat like it was a speedbump. That still pissed me off that just because he was the well renowned principal of our high school, he could get away with first degree murder and speeding. I would never let that slide if he hit Boo like that. I would become his personal nightmare. To be fair that wish of mine was already partially true because of what happened today, but I don’t think he realizes just how much worse it could get. I’m talking about protesting signs outside the school, media coverage, police reports, and a funeral for my cat that he was NOT invited to. Regardless I don’t think I’m going to be the one who gets him fired anyways. Some rumors were going around that he was being investigated for stealing money at the school or something. 

Typical. I always knew he was suspicious. Him and Mrs. Brenman. 

Speaking of Mrs. Brenman I pull out her crumpled essay in my pocket. The last thing I needed was my mom to ground me further because of this too. I would be the delinquent of the household if she got her hands on my “happy zero”.  I can already hear it, failure daughter, getting into fights, high school drop out, and for some reason she was convinced Ryan and her crew were affiliated with a gang because she did the six seven sign at me as we were driving off last week. It didn’t matter anyways with the whole Ryan thing though. She probably wasn’t going to ever talk to me again anyways. 

I ball up my essay and throw it in the garbage. The IPod Nano is charged by then. I pick it up, tap the on button a couple of times, and I’m immediately greeted by a bright blue screen with an assortment of apps. I click on the music one and scroll through the songs I have saved. Not the best but definitely a throw back. 

Satisfied, I pull up in my rolley chair next to my desk, and grab my sketch book from off the side. I flip to the next available page, flick a pencil out, put in my headphones, and just let the graphite do the rest. 

My world is ushered as I’m transported back into middle school me’s music. Pop, indie, and of course some rock. To be honest, not too shabby. 

I hum along and tap my foot underneath the table. I’ve been working on some new designs to put on my skateboard next time Nick and I go up to Joe’s wood work shop. These cloud designs keep wanting to be created by my hand. They’ve worked themselves into my doodles, test papers, sketches, and even some character designs. They’re everywhere and every time they’re different. I just needed to find the perfect set of swirlies to put on my skateboard. So I draw page after page of these different swirls and clouds. Weird lines, straight lines, curvy lines, until I get a sketching page that looks good. This was the perfect set to try and replicate. Now all I needed was the mark where I wanted it on the wood. Joe was going to have a fun time carving these out. 

I take off my headphones and turn towards the window. Immediately I realized that there was a large shadow behind my curtains that was not there before. Accompanied by it was a loud banging noise. 

I walk over and draw them back, revealing a Nick that was squished in the window frame trying to escape the pouring rain. He looked annoyed and it appeared he had been there for a while. I whip my head back to my bedroom door to make sure my mom wasn’t coming. All that was there was Boo licking his coat. He dumbly sneezes and then balls himself up on the ground. Before letting him in I lock the door, put my ear to the wood, and ensured everything was clear before walking quietly back over. 

Regrettably I open the window, “What are you doing here?” I whisper to him, as if that was going to help with his loud stomp when he drops down onto the floor. Way to announce his entire presence to Manhattan. 

“I was bored. I couldn’t even text you because your phone got taken away.” He explains in a normal voice. He really did not care about not alarming my mom. My carpet also was suffering the consequences too because Nick was fully drenched from head to toe, splattering water all over like a soaked wet dog. The only courtesy was him taking off his shoes. It was a habit my mom managed to engrave into his head. Clearly she couldn’t engrave every word she said to him, “My mom already said you aren’t allowed to come over anymore. Are you trying to get me more grounded?” I throw up my hands. 

“Nah. She doesn’t care. I’m her little angel child.” He slides off his heavy coat and slings it over my little bench that had my shoes underneath it. He looked completely unbothered which was both an annoyance but also a good thing. It meant that maybe he didn’t leave his new foster home. Perhaps, he just was going to have a meeting with her and she happened to be the one picking him up. 

“Keep it down.” He flops onto my bed in his wet clothes and goes on his own phone. I join and lay down next to him. He just scrolls through some videos before turning it off and looking at me. 

“You wanna know, huh?” He knew better than that. 

“Yeah of course? The heck.” Nick rolls his eyes and looks towards the ceiling. His face goes flat again and I can tell he’s putting himself back into that situation. 

“It was in algebra two and Garret started bringing up my name. I thought he was talking about somebody else until I heard foster being thrown in.” Nick puts his hands behind his head and stretches out his back, “Obviously I turned around and stared-” “Yeah well no duh.” “Mhm, and he started laughing. So I asked him what he and his stupid thugs were laughing about.” I roll to the side to watch his animated facial expressions. 

“He said, ‘Oh nothing, just how you’re such a loser that not even the crappiest families want you,’ or something like that.” Nick does an impression of Garrett in his girly high pitched voice. What a pathetic insult from Garrett. In the least, when you’re going to harass someone, make it good. 

“I was just existing! I don’t know why he started.” 

“It’s called self reflection, Nick. Garrett is such a bum that he has to make everybody miserable around him. What happened next though?” 

“Oh yeah right. Well I just flipped him off and turned around because I actually needed to lock in.” Nick sits up quickly, “He just grabbed me! Boom!” He reaches out only capturing the air for a second when he pulls back. 

“He pulled you? Oh my god, why?” 

“Right?! It was on from there. At first I just got up and shoved him off me. You know, self defense. The bell rang and the teacher yelled at us,” 

“Berkeley, ew. Literally all he does is watch hockey the entire period.” It was completely out of character for Mr. Berkeley to actually care about something. Apparently he had a falling out with one of the teachers he was buddy buddy with so now he didn’t have anyone to back him up when he got in trouble with administration.  

“Yeah, and I would have just left it. Walk it off and go eat some lunch, but Garrett just wouldn’t stop.” Nick shakes his head, “He followed me out of the class calling me all these stupid names, whatever. I think it really pissed him off that I was just ignoring him. When everybody came down for lunch that’s when Garrett started shoving me in between himself and his brainless friends. I had enough and punched him in the face the next time I got close.” He seemed disappointed in himself and I could tell that he wasn’t going to elaborate any further. I also knew that he was leaving out what specific names were being said because it was more than just “snowball”. 

“He got what he deserved.” I sat up next to him. Nick avoids eye contact but doesn’t say I’m wrong. To be fair it wasn’t as if Nick started the fight. Typically, he felt worse when he threw the first punch even if the person needed to be beaten up. Nick wasn’t senseless when he fought 

I don’t push him though because today already sucked. If he wanted to tell me then he would. 

“You know what? How about we go paint something?” He slips from my bed and grabs one of my spray paint masks that were hidden behind my night stand. Nick hadn’t asked me to go tagging in a while but my mom. I would have no life if she checked on me and I was off doing something actually half illegal. 

“Uhh.” He gets his mask out too, and then smiles expectantly. I couldn’t just say no, especially after everything. Nick never offered to go anywhere. 

“Yeah sure.” 

“Where do you wanna go?” 

“Let’s go camping.”

***

I hover my marshmallow over the small trash fire waiting for it to brown. Boo, who I carried over here in my backpack, stalls at my feet waiting to be fed. Once I got the gramcrackers out, he would get something, but right now begging wasn’t going to do anything. Nick shoves an entire s’more into his mouth already. He manages to only have to chew for a couple of seconds before swallowing it all down. He was going to eat everything before I even got a bite of my own s'more. 

“You know,” Nick gets up and starts to shake a can of spray paint. “Nobody really tells you just how much high school sucks until you’re already there. It’s like all the adults in my life were hyping up something so… jeez." I nod in agreement and kick my feet up onto the stool he was just sitting on. 

“It’s kind of stupid.” He pulls his mask over his mouth and starts to mark the wall with his tag. Three little lines and then a swoop in cornflower blue. It looked like a curvy N and an A were shaking hands with each other before the A decided to grow a tail at the end. Nick practiced so hard for that tag all night freshman year. He wouldn’t let it go until it was absolutely perfect. Now he just did it like he’s been doing it all his life. It was silly how hard we tried to make things look iconic. 

“Yeah I’m getting tired of it. I just wish sometimes that everything, all our problems, could go- pooh. We could live in our world with our own rules. No parents, no Garrett’s, no Mr. Brenman’s, just us and our imagination.” Right after I get that thought out, somebody calls from the end of the tunnel. Nick and I immediately snap towards the noise, my heart sinking. A flashlight shines from a male figure.

We were screwed.

I knock over the small can of fire and stamp it out with my foot. Nick turns off the lights and bolts towards the metal gate on the other side of the tunnel. I grab Boo, who chirps at me in confusion, and shove him into my backpack, slinging it over my shoulder. 

“HEY!” Rapid footsteps begin to pursue us. I try to grab as many cans of paint as possible and then I follow Nick, running with my heart in my throat.

“Ditch the paint, we gotta run!” Nick yells at me, already climbing up the fence. They were so much money though, and I knew whoever was at the end of the tunnel was going to trash them. They were getting closer and closer though with every slow step I took towards Nick. He was waiting but I don’t know how much longer he was going to be willing to. I join him at the bottom of the gate trying to lift the spray paint towards him.

“GET BACK HERE!”

“It’s not going to matter if we get caught!” He wasn’t going to lift me up unless I dropped them. So, I do, and he heaves me high enough to get to the very top. My feet dig into the small holes of the metal, and I scramble to throw one leg over. Nick leaps down once he’s on the other side. I look back and see that the person yelling at us was a police officer and he had a radio in his hand and a flashlight in the other.

“It’s those kids that keep vandalizing everything!” He shouts into the mic.

I get both legs on the other side of the fence and look down. It was a long drop.

“Come on!” Nick urges me. The cop was coming with us and if we didn’t leave, he was going to catch us. I unhook my feet and jump with a small yelp. My legs hit the ground hard, sending jolts of pain up through my shins.

Nick clutches my hand and pulls me into the street before I have time to panic. A cop car swerves around the corner with sirens on. It couldn’t be that serious! Don’t they have better things to do, better people to catch? If we were caught. No, that couldn’t happen. I would be dead meat.

“There’s a concert a couple of blocks down. It hasn’t started yet; we can lose them in the crowd!” Nick explains, pulling me through a greasy alleyway. The cop car slams on its breaks making a loud screeching sound.

We weave through trash and straight towards the auditorium. The cop from earlier is still on our tail but the fence seemed to have slowed him down enough. My lungs burn from the cold night, making it hard to catch my breath at all.

Nick and I leap from the alleyway straight into a packed street. Cars line every parking spot, people are chattering excitedly, and restaurants are bustling with customers. This was definitely the hot spot before the auditorium, it would be impossible for those cars to get in.

“Let’s go!” Nick doesn’t let me stop to think of our next move, he just keeps dragging me forward. There is a stoplight up ahead, but the red hand still was up. A group of people wait for it as cars pass by. Nick and I run straight through them as we turn the corner. People shout in surprise but I don’t have enough time to apologize. We’re already half way down the street jaywalking across. It didn’t really matter I suppose, we were already in trouble. Nick goes up through another alleyway. I turn to look back but before I can catch eye of anything my foot gets hooked on something. Nick shouts in surprise pulling me down onto the ground. Except instead of hard concrete I feel myself free falling with Nick. I scream, my stomach flying into my throat. Wind catches in my ears and I plummet into darkness.