Perfectly Reflected

 
‘Small Blue Thing’

  Today I am

  A small blue thing

  Like a marble

  Or an eye

  With my knees against my mouth

  I am perfectly round

  I am watching you

  I am cold against your skin

  You are perfectly reflected

  I am lost inside your pocket

  I am lost against

  Your fingers

  I am falling down the stairs

  I am skipping on the sidewalk

  I am thrown against the sky

  I am raining down in pieces

  ……….

©1985 Suzanne Vega

Reproduced by kind permission of Michael Hausman Artist Management 

Caution

Breaking glass exploded into my bedroom. The cold, early morning air rushed in as I leapt up and pushed my feet into my flip-flops, not sure for a moment if I had been dreaming. The crunch of glass under my soles proved I was awake. Switching on the light, I quickly scanned the room, but it didn’t look as if anything had been thrown in. I raced over to the window. The drawn curtains had held back a large part of the debris, but piles of lethal-looking shards of glass on the floor meant that I didn’t want to get much closer without proper shoes on. Leaning over, I pulled back the curtain. The early dawn light showed that the road was completely empty.

At that moment my dad burst through the door, closely followed by Mum. “Alex! What on earth was that? Are you OK?” He surveyed the damage as he spoke, and then carefully picked his way over to join me by the window. “Did you see anyone?” he asked, peering out in both directions.

I realised that my heart was racing, and had to take a deep breath before I could answer. “No. By the time I got there, whoever did it was gone.”

“Now, let’s not get all overdramatic,” interrupted Mum, obviously trying to calm everything down. “It could have been a bird flying into the window. Don’t assume that a person was responsible.”

Dad and I exchanged a quick glance of perfect understanding. We both knew that what she had said was nonsense. Still shaking slightly, I looked through the window down to the ground below. “I can’t see a bird from here. Maybe you should go and look. If there is one, it might need putting out of its misery.”

“OK,” Mum nodded and backed out of the room.

“Is there anything in here?” asked Dad as soon as she was out of earshot. “I mean, what was it? A brick?”

“I can’t see anything,” I said. “But there has to be something somewhere. Whatever it was that hit the glass was either very big or very fast; the window’s completely disintegrated.”

He grunted in agreement, taking another look down the road. “We need to get this cleared up,” he said, giving me a quick hug. “I’ll go and get my trainers on and I suggest you do the same. I’ll be back in a second with the dustpan and a sack.” Dad’s voice changed as he went through the door. “Oh, hello. I didn’t think you were actually alive at this time of day.”

My brother tried to give him a withering look but at five in the morning he was too sleepy. “Thought maybe we were under attack. Coming to see if you needed help,” he mumbled in my general direction as Dad disappeared.

“You play too many computer games. What were you planning to do – throw your console at them?”

“Ha ha. Very funny. What’s happened then?”

“We don’t know yet. My window’s been broken, Mum thinks it was a bird strike, and Dad and I think someone threw something, but I can’t see a stone or anything.” I tried hard to keep my voice light, not show him how shaken I was.

“Oh, freaky.” He looked mildly interested for a moment. “Jealous boyfriend? Irate mate? Anything like that?”

“Huh,” I grunted, giving him my best scathing look. “Hardly. When did I last upset anyone?”

He considered the room again briefly. “There you go then. Maybe it
was
a bird.” And it was true. I couldn’t think of anyone who would do such a thing to me. Perhaps Mum was right.

“Well, if you don’t need me I’ll be nipping back to bed before Dad gets me up a ladder to fix that hole,” he mumbled as he turned round and headed back towards his room.

I picked my way over to my desk and sat down to change my shoes. Despite the flip-flops, my right foot was already studded with tiny shards, one of which had drawn blood. I pulled a tissue from the box and wiped it clean. The wound was hardly more than a scratch, not worth getting a plaster for. I pressed the tissue against it until it stopped bleeding, and then fished around under the desk for my Converse. I was about to put them on when I realised that there was something in one of them, so I turned it upside down. A small, heavy, white ball dropped on to the carpet.

I looked at it for a second, then hesitantly reached down for it. The ball was covered in paper, which was secured by sticky tape. I carefully peeled back the corner of the tape and the paper unravelled. The golf ball inside dropped on to my desk while I turned over the crumpled sheet, holding my breath. I didn’t recognise the handwriting on the sheet, but my blood ran cold as I read the words:

My heart pounding, I shoved the piece of paper under my maths textbook as I heard Dad come back up the stairs. I had no idea what it was about, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to
involve my parents.

My day didn’t improve much. The clearing up and waiting for the guy to come and board up the window meant that I was late for the school coach, but then that was late too, so I spent half an hour standing at the bus stop listening to the inane chatter of the junior kids. I longed to be able to drive myself to school, but that was a pretty distant dream; I was due to visit the police station that afternoon to answer to various driving offences, and fully expected to lose my provisional licence.

None of my friends was on the coach either, not even my best friend Grace, so when I finally got to school I walked over to the sixth form on my own. As I rounded the corner my way was blocked by a familiar figure. I began to smile but her face was stony. Without warning, she suddenly slapped me across the cheek. My head flew back with the force of it and a stinging feeling crept outwards from my cheekbone towards my ear.

I tried not to stagger backwards as I turned back to face her again, tears pricking at my eyes. The thin veneer of friendship between us had gone; she looked ready to kill me. She was standing facing me, balanced on the balls of her feet, preparing to swing again. As the ringing in my ears subsided I became conscious of the absence of other noises around us. In this corner of the school there was little activity; everyone else was already inside the building, and it wasn’t yet time for the younger girls to be out on the pitches. No one was around to step in.

I could feel my cheek starting to redden. The stinging was slowly being replaced by a hot burning, and I could feel the welts rising where her long fingernails had scratched my skin.

“What on earth was that for?” I demanded, trying to stop my voice trembling.

“Don’t play any of your stupid games with me!” she hissed. “I thought we were supposed to be friends.”

It wasn’t exactly the way I would have described our relationship, but this wasn’t the time to disagree with her. “So did I, but friends don’t usually go around hitting each other.” I took a step towards her, rubbing my sore cheek. “Come on, tell me. What am I supposed to have done?”

“All right then, if you want me to spell it out. I want to know what you’re doing with my boyfriend. Why is he so interested in you? You’re nothing special.”

A short snort of laughter escaped me before I could stop it. “What! I’m not doing anything with him, and I really can’t imagine why you’d think I was.”

“You’re bound to say that, aren’t you?” she spat, and there was real venom in her voice.

“What do you mean?”

“You two have got some secret little thing going on. I know it.”

“That’s such rubbish. What on earth gives you that idea?”

“Why else would he have a whole bunch of stuff on his computer about you?” Her voice was sneering now.

“About me? What sort of stuff?”

“I don’t know. Lots of files.”

“Why would he want files about me? What’s in them?”

“I don’t know yet, but I will, just as soon as I break the passwords. In the meantime you keep well away from him, do you understand me? Rob’s mine!”

“Ashley, I know he is! And after all, it’s you who’s going to Cornwall with him, isn’t it?” I gazed at her steadily.

“How do you know about Cornwall?” Her voice had turned
low and ominous. That had touched a nerve. I cursed myself silently and tried to think of a suitable response.

“Oh, you know, gossip in the common room. A few of the others were quite keen to share the news with me.”

The thought that some of our friends saw her holiday with Rob as evidence that she’d beaten me in some competition between us obviously pleased her, and the look in her eyes reminded me of one I’d seen before, in a face that, thankfully, I would never see again; Ashley wore the same look of triumph that Catherine had worn weeks ago when she had me completely in her power in Kew Gardens. The memory chilled me so much that I took a step backwards and looked away. Ashley knew she had won.

She turned and started to walk away, but before she had gone more than a few paces she wheeled around and shouted, “You keep away from him, you hear me? You go anywhere near him and there’ll be trouble!”

Curious eyes from some passing kids swivelled in my direction, but I kept mine firmly on Ashley as she walked away, still battling with my tears and a growing sense of injustice. I wondered briefly if she could have thrown that ball, but why would she then slap me? Two enemies before nine o’clock. Fear clutched at my stomach, and for a moment I seriously considered going home to hide in bed. The sharp pain in my cheek was turning to a dull ache, and I knew I should get something cold on it. With a groan I realised that I really had to sort it out quickly; my appointment with the police was in only a few hours, and I didn’t want to look like I’d been in a fight. Cursing Ashley under my breath I made for the nearest toilet block.

The police officer looked over the top of her glasses at me, shook her head a little and returned to considering the papers in her hand.

“Well, Alexandra? What do you have to say for yourself?” she asked eventually.

I swallowed hard, wishing that there was a tumbler of water on my side of the desk. “I’m truly sorry for everything. I just can’t remember any more. All I know is that I
had
to get to my friend Grace quickly. The rest is blank.”

My eyes dipped to my lap, and I fiddled with the bracelet on my wrist. I couldn’t hold her gaze any more, not when I was lying so comprehensively. “The doctor’s report – does that help?” I added lamely.

Luckily my dad jumped in at that point. “We have provided all the relevant medical reports, Officer. You should have them there.”

The police officer started turning over the sheets of paper in her file, pursing her thin lips as she started to read. It was getting uncomfortably warm in the featureless room in Twickenham Police Station that doubled as the Restorative Justice Centre. The open windows did little to help move the stale air around as the protective mesh stopped them opening more than a chink. I tried very hard not to fidget as she turned the last page, and kept my eyes down.

“Well, it’s certainly very curious,” she said, tapping the file with one long skinny finger, then picking up the medical report again.

“We’ve submitted a reference from Alex’s headmistress,” Dad added, pointing at a letter that could just be seen sticking out of the back of the file. “As you can see from that, Miss Harvey felt
that the most appropriate response to the incident was to strip Alex of her prefect’s privileges.”

I think I had been a prefect for the shortest time in the history of the school. They had added my name to the list for the following year when I was in a coma following the incident in Kew Gardens, then promptly stripped me of it when I regained consciousness and got hauled up for driving on my own with a provisional driving licence. I never even got to see a badge.

The policewoman, who had been looking as if she was going to tell Dad off for talking out of turn, fished the letter from the back of the file and scanned it.

“Keep calm; you’re doing really well,” said the soothing voice in my head. “Don’t overdo the grovelling though.”

I sighed in relief; Callum was back. It had been a long, stressful morning and I hadn’t had a minute to call him to me, but he was finally here, making my wrist tingle as usual, as he moved his arm so that the identical bracelets we wore overlapped, his in his world, and mine in my own. I glanced up briefly at my reflection in the reinforced glass door and caught a glimpse of Callum’s blindingly handsome face behind my shoulder. All my worries faded away as my love for him swamped every other emotion. He saw me looking and winked, then looked stern.

It had been a fortnight since I got out of hospital, and his voice in my head was a source of love and comfort, commentating on my world.

“Concentrate! Don’t mess it up now!” He was right. The end was in sight. I looked briefly at the policewoman but made sure that my face didn’t reflect my sudden contentment.

There was a knock and a young PC appeared nervously
at the door. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Inspector Kellie, but you wanted to know when that forensic report was in.”

I looked quickly back at the policewoman; her stony exterior was now belied by the yellow light that was suddenly bouncing around above her head. I knew what it meant: she was either very happy about getting the report, or was very happy about seeing the fit-looking policeman. I hoped for her sake it was the policeman.