You would think the first thing we ought to learn in school is basic numbers and alphabets...
Wrong — the initial thing they teach you in grade school is that reflections are hazardous. It is not that they can chop and sever your fingers, but that they do things to the human mind. And that is the official stance of the government.
Since the passing of the Silver Act at the beginning of the 21st century, it has been illegal in every country to hold or carry a mirror. Illegal. Banned. One cannot buy them, one cannot make them and most certainly cannot have one in their residence. The world adapted. Bathroom cabinets consist of simple flat painted wood. Car rear-views are wholly digital feeds having a built-in matte filters to block any unfortunate glare. Even smartphones are loaded with highly required anti-reflective displays. You have to look at a printed picture or trust the sincere, even violent, judgment of a lodger, to tell you what you are going to see yourself in before you leave the house.
You get used to it. You forget that it was part of human life to watch yourself on the real time.
"You zoning out again, Bakey?"
Blinking my eyes, distracting myself from the boring, frozen window of the college coffeehouse. Tori was shaking in her hand a wooden stirring rod in my presence. Caramel macchiato among other drops flew and landed on my open textbook on sociology.
"Hey watch it", i said loudly, while trying to wipe the brown spots off my page using my shirt sleeve.
Victoria Scott--Tori to anybody who did not wish to receive a death glare--merely smiled and licked her lips on her atrociously sweet drink. Not my fault you are staring at the wall as though it is going to show you the answers to the midterm. You look so worn out, Olivia. You have bags under your eyes with more bags.
"Thanks. So accommodative", I said. I massaged my temples. My head ranged, a steady and treading throb that I had been feeling since I awoke.
"I'm just saying." Tori reached over the little table. She would never be out of it even in finals week. Her hair was dark, and was twisted perfectly, a wonderful indicating feat as we could not see ourselves in a mirror to do the same. "You haven't been sleeping. You've been spending all your free time down in that dusty basement."
"I was only going through his stuff, Tori. It was three years. I thought it was time."
My dad went missing when I was seventeen. No note, no evidences of a conflict. Dropped his keys on the kitchen counter and disappeared into thin air. The police termed it as voluntary disappearance. I termed it as a nightmare. In his wake he left a house filled with boxes he had been packing. He had been toying with us taking us out of state before he melted away. I got the house and the boxes, and a colossal complex of being abandoned.
"You don't need to do it all in a single weekend", Tori said, and then suddenly sounding slightly more serious like that older-sister kind of vibe.
I hadn't even had a chance to reply before the bell over the door of the cafe tinkled. I didn't have to look up to know who it was. The dragging weighty footsteps and the unique smells of costly cologne and inexpensive cannabis betrayed him.
Cole. My step-brother.
Sliding in beside me into the booth, he bumped me over with his hip. He was as ugly as sin. He had wrinkly clothes, and a patchy, uneven patch on his jaw. Behind him followed, like a shadow, Penelope.
Penny smiled, feeblely, sheepishly, and sat down beside Tori. "Hey, guys."
"Hey, Pen," I said, smiling at her warmer than I had been smiling at my step-brother. "Would you like anything? I was about to have the pack packed up."
"I need cash", Cole said flatly. He didn't look at me. He glared at the table and rubbed his thumb.
"Hello, too, Cole," I said, zipping up my backpack. "I do not even have any cash. And even if i had, i woundn't give. Get a job."
"Don't begin with me, Olivia",he shouted. He spoke in a low tone, with his usual lurid danger.
Penny put her hand across the table and placed it kindly on his arm. " Cole, stop. We promised not to disturb her. I still have some money on my card, we could get something at the dining hall."
Cole snatched his arm out of her hand so quick she flinched. It was a small move, hardly noticeable unless you were observing it specifically but I happened to see it. Tori caught it too. Her eyes narrowed.
"Don't touch me when I am talking" muttered Cole. Then he stared at me. " Look, I only need forty dollars. I'll get you the money on Friday."
"Like you did to me last month?", I got up, and heaved my heavy backpack onto my shoulder. "I'm literally broke, Cole, mortgage on our place does not pay itself. I am going home."
"Whatever, Bitch", he muttered, and looked away.
Penny looked mortified. "I am sorry, Olivia, but he is just not feeling well, he's been depressed, you know."
Well, I would have liked to shake her. I would have liked to explain to her how depression does not turn you into a control-freak prick who can treat his girlfriend like trash. But this wasn't the time, and definitely not the place. "It's fine, Penny. Get in touch with me later in case you have anything, okay?"
Before I swung a punch at him, I gave Tori a glance that spoke i'm out of here and she shook her head.
The stroll to my place of residence was hit and miss about gray concrete and gray thinking. The end of October was not pleasant, it had been pouring steadily all day, a drizzle of what seemed to be pure ice. The blankness of the deserted house was pressed against my ear drums when I eventually opened the front door and stepped into the house.
I dropped my bag at the door, kicked off my wet sneakers and went directly to the kitchen to get a bottle of water. My gaze swept over to the door in the basement. It was kept a little open and looked like it had a dark, open mouth that was ready to swallow me up.
Tori was right. I was obsessed. All the free time I could get between classes and shifts in the library, I was down there. Tearing through packing tape and cardboard, in search of... something. A clue. A reason. Anything which described how a man is able to simply disappear.
I picked up the water and flicked on the light of the hallway, and began to descend the wooden steps. And it felt like the stairs protested loudly, creaking under my weight. The cellar smelled of some old paper, moist concrete and dust.
In the far wall there were approximately thirty boxes piled up. In the last seven days I had gone through like half of them. Mostly boring stuff. Elderly tax returns, tools that rusted, photo albums, full of matte pictures of me as a little kid with my orange hair in messy pigtails.
I drew the next box off the stack. It was heavy. Heavy, heavy, as compared with the rest. The side label was smeared, and was in heavy black marker: MASTER BED - MISC.
I pulled it out to the middle of the room, and sat with crossed legs on the hard floor. I picked my box cutter that was on the floor and cut the tape.
Under a blanket of packing peanuts, was a set of little, leather-bound notebooks. I picked one up. My dad wrote in his dishevy-grasping hand writing on the pages, and it did not make any sense. It was like a kind of shorthand cipher which I was unable to read. Mere chains of arbitrary letters and figures.
COTS - 44.9 - Unstable entry point. The silver is bleeding.
I grumbled, and threw the journal aside to consult later. Under the notebooks lay some sort of parcel fastened up in thick, quilted traveling blankets. It was tied up with far too much silver duct tape. It measured about as large as a large picture frame or two feet by three feet, but weighed a ton.