The bell rings harshly as I slide my back down the wall until I’m sitting stiffly on the floor of the grimy school hallway. I only got three hours of sleep last night, and my head feels like someone is trying to drive an ice pick through it. My peripheral vision is fuzzy in that annoying way it gets when I haven’t had my five daily cups of coffee in the morning. A loud bang and a giggle echo from the direction of the auditorium. When I turn to look, a girl with bleached hair is just barely catching her balance against the handle of a cart piled high with parts of a drum kit. A cymbal gleams gold against the off-white floor tile. She leans down and with slender white fingers pries the cymbal from the cold floor.
She looks too happy to be here. She probably gets perfect grades and doesn’t even have to try. Every day after school she walks like a ray of sunshine into the auditorium and practices with the pit orchestra, never missing a note. She has piano fingers. Even faced with a page filled with so much music there is more ink than blank paper, her hands flow across the keys like water. Everyone loves her; when asked about her, most people say she’s a free spirit, a genius in disguise.
When she walks home, butterflies are attracted to her like a magnet. Her whole persona just screams fairy princess. Flocks of blue jays place delicate white flower crowns on her head as she walks across the bridge over Route 9, which somehow has fresh blooms breaking through the burnt grey concrete wherever she has placed her feet.
When she reaches her glowing pearly mansion, she takes slow, deliberate steps to an elaborately carved oak door. She spends the rest of her afternoon in a library with lofty ceilings and bright, crystalline windows, reading as many books as she wants because she knows that everything will work out in the end.
Reflections 