I Found My Sister’s Diary After She Disappeared
I can explain now. When I bought my mirror, I felt that I was not alone. Stephanie suggested I sell it, and I became angry. I knew it was meant for me. At home, I cleaned it and looked at my reflection. It wasn’t right, but it wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t like other mirrors. I was too tall for many full-length mirrors. This mirror was smaller and that was fine with me. In other mirrors, I saw myself how other people saw me. In this mirror, I saw the Other Me. I saw what I could really be.
I noticed a pimple on my cheek while I was cleaning the mirror, so I was inspecting it. I don’t pop them on the rare occasion I get them, but I was just looking. As I raised my hand to my face, I noticed that my reflection was slow to copy. I blinked, watched, and when my eyes were open, my reflection blinked. I nodded my head and changed my expression and moved in other ways. My reflection copied, but it seemed like we were playing a game. I simply stared, waiting for something, but then my reflection smiled. That made me happy, because I felt like the mirror really belonged with me. I knew the mirror felt the same. I don’t quite know how I knew that. “Hello,” I said. Most people feel silly talking in front of a mirror, unless they are teenage girls standing in front of their bathroom mirror, feeling pretty in a new dress and pretending they are talking to their crushes, but I knew that I was not talking to myself. I whispered, though, so Stephanie did not hear me. Actually, I knew that the mirror would not want her bothering us. My reflection said hello, but not out loud. I was so pleased that I giggled. The next night, we had our first conversation, although the Other Me didn’t speak out loud. Sometimes I did, mostly out of habit, but mostly I could just sit and listen and she would do the same.
I tried telling her about my life, about how I never really had any friends, never any boyfriends, about my insecurities and about my absent father and how my mother always seemed too busy or uninterested in Stephanie and me. But she already knew these things. My friend knew that life felt meaningless to me, no matter how nice I was to people or what activities I tried to engage in. She knew that I collected what people called “garbage” because I understood how it felt to be useless. She used to be lonely, but wasn’t anymore.
I asked her where she came from, and she told me she simply existed. “Where?” I asked this aloud. Anywhere, she said, but not aloud.
I used to be like you.
What do you mean?
Alone.
But I have my sister.
I want you more. You would be more useful here.
That was the first time she mentioned that.
November, even though months don’t matter
It’s just a habit for me to keep track of the months.
When Stephanie was at work, I played music for the Other Me. She knew of it but had never really listened to it before. She said that where she lived, music didn’t matter just like calendars didn’t. This, she told me, didn’t make her sad. She said it wasn’t boring where she was, because there were always new people to meet. Nice people. People like us.