The Real and the *real* - May 6, 2011

She was wearing a black grey sliding dress that made her feel as if she was covered solidly and implacably in wolf fur. Animal, her cold brown fur hung over in slivers down high cheek bones and bone thin lips. Her heart ticked gently in her chest, like a bouncing ball a hand pushed against. She was waiting by a door. Emily was waiting for it to open. She was lost in a white room-that-if you flipped it would be the same, roof to floor, wall to wall, inch of inch, except for the blue-green seat she was curled up in and door. The room mushed and quivered and boomed like it was being hit subtly on every side. And she didn’t belong here; her ticking heart said it with every moaning beat.
And she’d barely the energy to think calm thoughts.
The door was made out of glass. The glass had taken in the night, jagged with stars, so the door was a purply chocolate. And when she looked up she could see, shocking at first: a girl starring angrily at her, proud and haughty, stiff and bearing some burden of eternity in the scar of her pink-red lips, her round deep eyes, her dusty hair on her face. Her hands and arms poised smoothly into a point where the tips of shift fingers fell into each other like ruffled feathers. The dress fell over her like she was made to wear it, down her pouched belly and skinny arms to be elegant, an insulting lie.
And the girl moved with her, perfect, simple, honest reflection, starred back at her with motionless eyes between a cage of fingers resting on the chin, now. And the girl in the chair felt any moment the girl would fall into her being and become a part of her. It was a scary thought.
But she was not it, that person was not her. What trick was this? Surely she wasn’t that. She scoffed at it.
The girl smiled her round eyes like daggers, like she’d a hidden secret.
And now the bouncing fall of her plum heart reached out of her chest-she was sure. It felt like that was what was happening.
But then the door opened. She’d been waiting for it to open this whole time. Despite her desperateness she’d forgotten.
And he smiled at her, reaching for her hand still curved on her jaw, blue veins popping out, breaking her intensity. She didn’t see but the boy did not reflect in the mirror like she did, she was to full of his existence by her side. He took that cold fingered hand in his encompassing own like they were playing follow the leader and she had to be led along. His hand was warm like the bare earth in summer. And he opened the glass door quietly and they went out. And there was nothing outside but specks of stars.

-Pinquill girl