Roar. Cecelia Ahern

mirrors, it’s him. She feels something when she looks at him, something she hasn’t felt for a very long time, a lifetime ago, when she was another person. The person she doesn’t look like any more.

      He comes close to her, places his hands on her two arms and turns her around. The personal touch surprises her.

      ‘Your mirror is over there,’ he says, pointing.

      She sees her mirror in the corner of the room. He has done exactly what he said he’d do, he brought it back to life. It has been sanded and varnished and she can see it as it was, in her parents’ bedroom, by the wardrobe, Daddy’s shoes lined up beside it, Mummy’s hair curlers plugged into the wall on the ground.

      She walks over to it and stands before it, seeing his reflection as he stands behind her. She looks at her reflection. She takes herself in, examines herself.

      ‘You fixed it already,’ she says with a smile. She’s back. It’s her again. She looks rejuvenated, as though she’s had a facial or invested in a new expensive moisturizer, which she hasn’t. It was the mirror all along, she knew it. ‘I thought I was here to choose a pane, you tricked me!’ she laughs.

      ‘You’re happy?’ he asks, his eyes sparkling as the light of dozens of mirrors bounce light around the room and make him look like he’s glowing.

      ‘Yes, it’s perfect,’ she says, examining it again.

      She sees a red dot on the glass and reaches out to touch it. Her hand hits the pane, no dot to be felt. Confused, she spins around to look at him in the flesh. ‘What kind of mirror did you use?’

      ‘Look at it again,’ he says, a strange look on his face.

      It feels like a trick. She slowly turns and faces the mirror again. Examines the frame, the glass, everything but her face really, because he’s behind her and she’s self-conscious and fluttering inside. The red dot is still on the glass and she wonders if it’s a test, though she has already reached out to touch it and it’s not physically there.

      ‘Have you ever heard of a thing called simultaneous contrast?’

      She shakes her head.

      ‘It’s a painting term.’

      ‘You paint, too?’

      ‘Just as a hobby. It’s a term for when certain colours look different to our eye when placed next to each other. The colours aren’t altered, it’s just our perception.’

      He allows this to sink in.

      ‘Turn around and look at yourself again,’ he says gently.

      She slowly turns around and really takes herself in this time. Her eyes scan over her older face, her fuller cheeks, the wrinkles around her eyes, her fuller stomach. She pulls her blouse away from her waist self-consciously and as she’s doing so she sees the red dot again. Instead of reaching out to the glass, she looks down at her body and finds the sticker on her arm. ‘How did that get there?’ she asks, peeling it off.

      He’s grinning.

      ‘You stuck it there,’ she says, remembering her surprise at his touch when he spun her around. He’d used that opportunity to place the red sticker on her arm.

      ‘The mirror test. All of us mirror artists do it,’ he says, joking.

      ‘The first time I saw the sticker, I thought it was on the mirror,’ she says, figuring his test out. ‘The second time I realized it was on me.’

      He nods.

      ‘It’s not the mirror, it’s me,’ she repeats, and the message hits home. ‘It wasn’t the mirror that was broken, it was me all this time.’

      He nods again. ‘Though I wouldn’t say you were broken. It’s all about perception. I didn’t want to touch the mirror. It’s perfect as it is.’

      She turns around and faces the mirror. Studies her face, her body. She’s older. She’s aged more this year than she feels she has in five years, but this is her now. She’s changing, she’s ageing, more beautiful in some ways, other ways it’s harder to take.

      ‘Well?’ he asks. ‘You still want to replace it?’

      ‘No. It’s perfect, thank you,’ she says.