The mirror is still cloudy, but something is moving inside.
Someone is standing behind me.
I turn around, but no one is there. Slowly, I face the mirror again and stare at it. I tilt my head, watching.
A handprint appears on the glass, ripping a scream from my throat.
I stumble back two steps, blinking hard, and by the second blink, the mirror is no longer fogged. The handprint is gone.
My feet carry me out of the bathroom, and I slam the door behind me. I press my hands to my face, trying not to see anything else as I move, anywhere.
My fingers catch a doorknob and push a door open. Before I even realize it, my back meets a cold wall. Or half a wall. I’m leaning forward. I feel the air carry me, pulling me down.
Then something pulls me from it, and when I open my eyes, I’m on the balcony, staring down at the gardens below. Near the cliffs, there’s a small church and a cemetery with only a few headstones.
A gasp catches in my throat when I notice the height. I stand there frozen, and the dark thought comes again. I could jump. I think about how my body would lie broken across the ground, how it would probably take a week before anyone found me, and how there is no one left to care if they did.
A tear slips down my cheek. I wipe it away with the top of my hand, but I keep my gaze down, at the ground waiting beneath me.
Someone once told me there is light when it’s your time to die. I almost died twice, and I never saw any light. I think that’s just a story people tell so we won’t be afraid of death, so we candie peacefully, hoping maybe something better waits for us after. But I think we will stay here. That we remain trapped on Earth, forced to watch everything keep moving without us while we wait for our soul to belong to someone else.
And that terrifies me.
It’s easy to die, but it’s hard to live. Living is what scares me. Other people kept the light on my thoughts long enough that the darkness only ever felt like a shadow. But now all the light is gone, and all that’s left is darkness.
Maybe this house isn’t haunted. Maybe I am.
I take a step back, and another tear slips down my cheek. This time, I close my eyes and sink to the ground, facing the church.
I feel hopeless, like I’m already dead and my soul got stuck here, in this house. And I hold all this anger inside me. At myself. My parents. At Daniel. And I want to scream. No one is here to hear it anyway. But I won’t do it, because it would make everything feel real. If I scream, it won’t bring them back. It won’t make me feel better. I would just be some crazy person screaming on a balcony.
Maybe I should scream. Maybe if I do, I’ll scare the ghosts away.
Pain tightens in my chest, and somehow I find the courage to stand. I walk back into the room like nothing happened at all.
New me. But old me.
Like always, keep on pretending. Even when I’m screaming inside, I wear a smile too well. I lift my head and take another step. I guess when you pretend long enough, you can almost convince yourself you’ve found some kind of happiness, some kind of perfection. I convinced myself that was how it was supposed to be.
The wind catches one of the white sheets and lifts it, making it twitch in the air. My head turns toward it, and when the fabric shifts again, I see a black piano hidden underneath.
I move closer, brushing my fingers over the top of it, and notice the initials carved into the surface.
“L.R.” I say out loud.
I pull the sheet away and sit on the chair in front of it. My hands hover above the keys. I swallow the lump in my throat and begin to play the first thing that comes to mind.
Für Elise.
The first song Dasha taught me.
The nerves in my hand pinch as I play, but I keep going, closing my eyes and letting the melody carry me. But my hand starts to clench as I reach for another note. It hurts so badly the pain shoots all the way to my elbow.
And I stop playing.
I guess my song has reached its end. Maybe I should keep the notes to myself. They’re safer that way anyway.
The white rose wasn’t on my bed before.
