The Mirrors

Chapter 1

As usual, there is moderate chaos on my desk. Book, textbook, scribbled sheets overlap in uneven stacks. A bit of the chilly air is pulled into the slit of the slightly open window. Forcing my skin cover with goosebumps under the thin cotton cloth.

This morning is wet. And grey. Not light at all immerses city streets in shaded colors.

And I hold in my hand an envelope of the impressive dimensions. I'm mesmerized staring at the name of the recipient. At the mine name. And I think about whether I'm very want to read the answer to my question. Am I ready?

A little more than two weeks ago, I turned to my friend (more specifically: through him to his father, who works in a detective agency and is working on a search for missing people), deciding, finally. Meet face-to-face with my sad reality.

The Creator created each creature in our world in pairs. He gave every imperfection the person who's improving him into perfection. The man. The pair. Soul mate. But even in this seemingly perfect world, not everyone is lucky. I was unlucky. I don't have a soul mate.

People think "just not yet". After all, I'm young. Only a year ago I stopped using the suffix "teen". People say "all in good time". You just have to wait a little more. That's what they tell me over and over again and I don't argue. I don't explain anything. I don't tell them my soul mate just doesn't exist. Doesn't exist anymore. He died.

You know, it happens.

Each of those who have already found a pair can see this person in the mirror. Of course, if your half is also next to one of the mirrors at this moment. And let it be impossible to hear each other through the looking-glass world, but simply admire each other, exchange gestures and words inscribed on paper is enough.

The most common impression (no matter how ridiculous it may sound): the first time is always the most unexpected. And a little scary. Probably, so is in everything. The heart skips a couple of beats when the picture is distorted and you see in the reflection of someone else's unfamiliar face. Or a figure. Sometimes a butt, it's different for everyone. But it always happens suddenly, unscheduled. Forcing the body to twitch, pulling away from the previously mirrored surface.

My first time was no less frightening. Even more than. My first sight on the other side of the reflection turned into the last one.

When it happened, I was almost seventeen. Everything happened on the eve of Christmas vacation. I was going to drive the ball across the frozen field with my friends. There's freezing outside, English wet winter has turned into unexpected ice. The thermometer dropped below zero. And from the sky flew snowflakes.

I was putting on lenses in front of the mirror in my room. The picture before my eyes flowed giving way to the unfamiliar salon of the car. In the back seat was a handsome curly-haired boy not much younger than me and I was looking at him from the rearview mirror, which is obvious. While the owner of a curly disorder sat, having buried in the book opened on his knees. From which he didn't look away, even when I waved to him and knocked on the mirror surface. Which wasn't surprising. He couldn't hear me. So all I had to do was waiting for that adorable kid to stop biting his lower crimson lip and look up at me. Waiting, almost choking on the chaotic spasms engulfed my lungs trapped under my ribs.

But he never raised his face. Because after a series of motionless moments, the picture jerked sharply to the side, turned over several times, mixing its content in together. Burst. At first, the large strip across allowing me to see the small pieces that shattered the windshield. And then it vanished into dust, erasing someone else's reality, leaving me alone with my reflection. Pale and terrified, not to death, but death itself. Leaving me to breathe the air hungrily and sharply with a small sense of hope. With the sense of hope that the picture will be reflected again. I'm waiting until late in the evening. In the evening, the news reported a major accident between Manchester and Bolton. And in one of the photos, I learned curly miracle, which was to see on the other side of the mirror until the end of life and not once in the news feed of those killed in an accident on the icy road.