Author's Tangent: Due to how popular this story was and how disgruntled I was by the way I wrote it, I have chosen to rewrite it. I really hope everyone enjoys it. I have mixed Mirror Image, Lemon Deuce, and another story I was starting to write in order to form this one. It follows most of the Mirror Image story with changes, especially the voices of the main characters. Please read and review and let me know what you think. Please be kind until I have at least the second chapter up. The first chapter is a little darker than the previous Mirror Image beginning, but I promise the story gets lighter and more fun. Thanks again, and I hope all my faithful Mirror Image readers are not too mad at me. I deeply apologize. And I love you all to death if you continue to read this piece and forgive me (there are no excuses good enough that I can give you). Always yours, Sefi.

Broken Mirror

My reflection stares back from the broken mirror
Distorted pieces staring from shards of broken mirror

Wondering where these false images come from
I’ve lost myself deeply inside this broken mirror

Disillusioned with myself, finally seeing the truth
That hides within shattered images of broken mirror

One thousand eyes blink, with lies behind each one
Cast at me from the remnants of the broken mirror

Crooked smiles endlessly reflecting back in sadness
Captured is the deep despair by this broken mirror

Scattered about the floor inside each silver shard
My self has been captured into this broken mirror

-Tiffany Green

I ceased to exist at the age of seven. Or – to be perfectly honest – I should say that Samantha Morgan Paige ceased to exist. I ceased to exist only months after my own parents ceased to exist. A mere year after they had died my world had spun upside down and I was caught in the whirlwind trauma of the Eagan family. There, I was transformed from the beautiful young girl into a blank doll – easily molded and pliable. I was there to fix everyone else’s problems, and no one worried if I screamed. Samantha vanished into a void and became Sam – a confused and terrified boy.

Ah – but I suppose I get ahead of myself and you’re probably wondering “what the hell?” Well, I shall explain. I shall explain how my life became what it is today.

It started when I was very young, about the age of seven. My real parents died in a car accident – utterly cliché way for all of my drama to start. It started with a car accident. Big deal! How many tragic stories begin that way? I can’t even get sympathy for that. With so many children starving in far off countries, who would care about a little girl who just lost her parents in a car accident? I mean with over six million car accidents every year resulting in over three million injuries and roughly over forty thousand deaths, who would care about two more victims out of the average hundred something people dying from car accidents everyday? Who would give a nickel and dime? Well no one did but my aunt and uncle who decided to pity me and offer me a place in their family.

Their names were George and Ellen Eagan, and they had a son by the name of Sam Eagan – my cousin. I had never known much of the family until I moved in with them. The only whispers I had heard were that Sam and I were extremely alike in appearance and disposition, and when I met him I could say that it was true. And for the first couple months Sam and I were inseparable. He watched over me like a knight in shining armor. He protected me when I was wrapped in my memories and loss. He always knew how to make me smile, and so we all became a family in those first few months.

However, only four months of living there and everything began to change. Sam grew ill. He grew very, very ill. So sick in fact that his parent’s locked him up in his room and would allow no one see him, not even me. Yet I had a feeling he was dying and I panicked. I snuck out one night and climbed up a high tree into his upstairs window. With the moonlight that shined in I saw how pale and diseased he appeared, and I also saw that terrified look in his eyes – that deadness inside. He was scared, and now I became his knight. He clung to me with everything he had, and it was the first time that I ever saw him cry. And being noble, I hid my tears so as not to scare him.

In the dark that night we sat grasping onto one another for dear life, hoping that the tide would not pummel us. We sat together until dawn came, and I realized then – when the sun’s first rays were sneaking across the wood flooring – that I was clinging to a dead Sam. His eyes were closed as if he was dreaming, and in that moment he did look utterly at peace and safe. Though at that moment I had a sinking feeling. I was alone. I was alone and everyone around me seemed to be dropping like flies. I was only seven when I realized that I killed everything around me. I was the disease that ate at Sam. I was poisonous. That’s when my shrieks tore through the morning, and they would not stop.

Ellen was broken. The moment she saw me screaming with her son in her arms, she broke. She flung herself at me and threw me across the room. Her arms lashed out over and over again and her shrieks could have been heard down the block. I felt no pain, even when my lip split open. All I could feel was her pain, and all I could hear were her damnations of my soul. Her hate battered against me. I had sucked all her son’s life away. I had killed her son. I had robbed her of her only baby. It was my fault. I was numb all over.

It was George who broke everything up. He had wrestled his wife off of me and shushed her until she, not once glancing at Sam’s lifeless corpse, but crumpled and wept silently on the floor. George only glanced at me, but said nothing. Instead he scooped his son up and went out the door, leaving Ellen and I to our despair. It was only later that I found out he had gone outside and quickly buried his son beneath a weeping willow in the backyard – which I also found very cliché and knew that Sam would have detested it.

George was mechanical. After heartlessly burying his son, he marched like a stiff soldier back to the room and escorted a hiccupping and sobbing Ellen from the room, closing the door softly behind. No one even glanced in my direction.

I could only weep, and I did for days. No one bothered bothering me. I just sat on that floor and wept and wept. I ate nothing for two days until my head grew fuzzy and disoriented. On the third day, the door to the room finally opened, and when I collapsed, I felt George’s strong arms beneath me. For he had rushed forward, supposedly coming to my rescue. It was all lies!

He carried me down the stairs without speaking a word and fed me the most delicious pancakes. Those were bribery pancakes. I know that now. I never thought pancakes could be evil until that day. Pancakes were the devil and the blueberries piled on top were the demons, and I ate them all while licking my chaps. Yet although they were personified evil, my stomach had gurgled with happiness, and the dizziness in my head vanished.

In the fury of my eating, I noticed George – strangely calm – take the opposite seat at the table and stare directly across at me with horribly intense eyes, as if dissecting me. His eyes were so intense that when I noticed, my fork paused halfway to my mouth and fell to the plate with a loud clatter.

That’s when he chose to speak. “Samantha, dear. How is everything?” His beguiling smile was a circling snake, and the composure in his voice was a hidden storm.

I swallowed. “G-good.” The words tumbled stupidly from my lips. Fear was beginning to prickle the back of my neck.

Clearing his throat, he gradually moved to the point. “There is a slight problem, sweetie pie.” Sweetie pie sounded disdainful coming from his lips. “You see your aunt is grieving.” There he paused and I shivered. No matter what my aunt had said I loved her, and my heart ached and wrenched when I saw the flash of pain in his eyes. “She is grieving so much that she has fallen sick, a-and . . .” His voice broke and he looked away, swallowing harshly.

I bit my lip and could not say any words of comfort with the saliva coagulating in my throat. Yet when he turned to me I saw a new determination in his eyes, and there was something else behind it – which I later defined as greed. He refused to lose his wife along with his son. His voice was suddenly filled with pleading and sap. “S-Samantha, dear, you wouldn’t want anything to happen to your mother would you?” My mother? That is what he said. It is sickening to me now, but I suppose at that time I did think of her as my mother. I mean I had no one left and I was starving for attention and comfort. I needed someone’s shoulder to cry on and someone to hold onto.

So I shook my head and he gently smiled, raking a nervous hand through his messy hair. “I-I h-have an idea.” He was stumbling all over, and I felt my tears ready to fall. “If you do this for me I would be forever grateful, and I would never ask anything of you again.” This time I nodded numbly. I was prepared for that worst. “I’m sure Sam would not want his mommy to die.” Mommy? His words were getting more and more desperate. “If Sam had not died, your mommy would not be so sad and would be all better, right?” I nodded again. My heart was breaking. “If Sam were to come back, we could be a family again.” He weakly smiled and he gulped. I would do anything. I did not want to break apart my only family. I needed them!

“Would you become Sam?” Silence consumed the room as he spoke the words, and I found myself instantly nodding. If killing myself would have brought him back I would have done it, and so I agreed. The smile that burst onto his face made me begin crying, and I remember him scooping me up into his arms and hugging all of the air out of me. It was the first true hug I had had since Sam died, and I choked with glee.

That day my hair was cut. My bushel of soft, silk blonde hair was chopped into a shaggy boy’s cut that matched Sam’s hair perfectly. I was shoved into his clothes. I was told never to enter my room again. Sam’s room would be my room. I would be forced to stare at all of his things forever. I was forced to become my dead friend. I was forced to become a boy. Yet I suppose I really wasn’t. I had doomed myself by nodding. I had doomed myself by being too kind. That was my one fault. I have always been too kind, too sympathetic, and I still am.

I was pushed into my mother’s room. Darkness touched everything. Not one light had been on in days, and the curtains were drawn taut. A moldy and sick smell had already curled around the room and was making me choke. A shiver ran down my spine, and I cleared my voice once my eyes adjusted and saw Ellen’s frame hunched over on the bed – ignoring my entry. “Mother?” The voice that came out was not mine. I pitched it just right, and the ghost of Sam’s voice sang through the room. Ellen’s head whipped around, and as George entered, he flickered on the light. The light quickly ate away the darkness, and when Ellen was illuminated, I saw just how horribly Sam’s death had affected her. Her features were sunken in, and her eyes were tainted red. Her once curvaceous body was now thin and frail. Her skin was a sickly gray, and her hair seemed to have lost all of its youth – becoming stringy and frayed. It was a startling change, and if George had not been behind me, I would have run.

As her eyes shrank against the light, she stared at me blankly and I held my breath, praying that it would work. George beamed at her, and she slowly stood up and crept toward me, her spidery fingers clutching at the air. My heart thudded like a gong.

She stopped right before me and scrutinized me – suspecting danger. Though as I counted the seconds down, color began to slowly swim back to her face, and in a rush of surprise, she threw herself on me and wrapped her arms around me so tightly that I could not breathe. “Oh Sam!” she gushed out. My heart sang with delight. “You’re alright!” She laughed out with joy, and I could not help but smile. Everything would be fine now.

“Mother!” I whispered, nestling my cheek against her shoulder. I was unbelievably happy, and when George knelt down beside her, he patted my head with gratitude.

“I told you I’d bring him back.” George laughed and wrapped his arms around the both of us, and it became one of those cheesy family moments – a perfect hallmark moment. And as I write this I’d like to add, a perfect twisted hallmark moment. It was a hallmark moment built on deceit. “I promised you. I told you I wouldn’t let you down. See we’re a family again.” George’s breath felt warm against my skin, and I could not but sigh with relief. I could do this.

Yet George – always that schemer – broke my happiness and added, “Let us forget out bliss for a moment and go downstairs. We need to morn and give Samantha a proper funeral.” And as he spoke those words, both of their arms left me, and I stood there at a loss as both of them beamed down at me. George ruffled my hair and said gently, “Come now, Sam. You wouldn’t want to forget about your best friend, Samantha, would you?” That’s when they both turned to leave and head downstairs, and that’s when I realized whose name was written on Sam’s tombstone. It was my name. Samantha Morgan Paige would be written neatly on the tombstone with an ugly inscription that read: “Our butterfly, who gave this family life with her beautiful wings.”

I will tell you now that a car accident is cliché and happens everyday. I never minded when people did not weep for the loss of my parents. I wept enough for them. However, I will tell you that although I do not have statistics for proof, not many families do what the Eagan family did, and not many would be able to keep it a perfect secret. Yet the Eagan family was sinister enough to do it. So do I not finally qualify for a little weeping? Do I not deserve some empathy? Or am I wrong?