They say the mirror doesn't lie.
But I do. Every single day.
To it. To them,
To Myself
She brushes her teeth like a ritual. Forty-three strokes, clockwise. Then counterclockwise.
A little giggle Escapes her lips..... because... because it's silly, right? Who counts like that? But her hand won't stop until it's done.
The mirror watches. It watches her every move.
So do the shadows in the corner of the room. Between the little wall cupboard and that big wooden wardrobe. She is not sure if they are real, but they've always been there. Like family. More loyal than her actual one.
She smiles at her reflection, but- but the teeth look wrong. Too straight. Too.... sterile. Like they were bought and installed in a hurry.
She turns to her left side—the 'pretty' side, that one auntie always insisted was her 'angle'— and grins again.
Still wrong.
That twitch comes back. The one under her right eye. It pulses like a secret knocking from the inside.
"Are you ready yet?"
She is late for school. Or work. Or whatever the sheep are herded these days. Honestly it all blurs together. She just wears the uniform of 'Normal' and walks the route mapped out by people who use calendars like nooses
In third person, she'd look perfect.
Alvia, a girl with soft features. Pretty smile. The kind of face people compliment with, "you're lucky to be naturally pretty" not realising how deeply it rots her form the inside.
They don't see the way her hands tremble when she's alone.
Or the empty look in her eyes behind those glasses.
Or how she flinches at praises because it feels like a trick.
Or how hard she is trying not to be the burden they already decided she is.
"I don't feel things like they do.
I copy. I rehears.
I memories facial expressions like lines in a play."
In school, when someone asks if she's okay, she smiles too wide. Says, "I'm fine" because that's what they wanted to hear. That's a script.
The truth?
She hasn't felt 'fine' since she was six years old and her mother told her she was stupid for asking if the sky could cry.
And now she cries in silence.
Because the sky wasn't stupid.