The next morning I awake with a start, thinking I'm late for school, until I realize it's Saturday. I relax into my blankets and sigh. Stir the sheets with my legs, stretch.
The weekend.
Two days until my arraignment.
Till the process to decide my fate begins.
The thought is enough to propel me out of bed. I go to my full-length mirror, hung on the back of my door, and try to see myself objectively.
The girl looking back is about average height, thin, with straw-colored hair. You can't see the bandages beneath her long sleeved pajamas. She looks like someone you might pass at the mall and regard as a regular girl with college plans and a dream to settle down someday, get a good job, maybe have a couple of kids.
You know, normal.
You'd never know my dream is simply to live. To stow my terrible past somewhere deep inside and learn to carry on. To want to do so.
I reach out and touch my reflection tentatively. Trace the outline of my face with the tip of my finger. Pretend I'm someone else, looking at me. Seeing me for what I really am, good and bad. And everything in between.
Something strange happens.
All the pain, the fear, the hate—it starts to melt away.
I stare at myself and see only a girl.
Nothing less, nothing more.
Just a girl who made a mistake.
A bad fucking mistake.
But I will do everything in my power to make things right again.
As I stand there, I feel a heaviness lift from my heart. I don't know where it goes. I feel the sudden release of a pressure that's been with me as long as I can remember. It just evaporates.
And there's... relief.
This feeling I've never had before, that whatever comes my way, I'll figure it out. Somehow. I'm not naïve enough to believe that everything's going to be work out perfectly in the end. People's lives have been irrevocably changed. But I have this sense that I'll be able to get through it, with the help of Grams and my friends. And I will devote my life to making up for my sin.
This.
It's a feeling of strength.