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There’s a picture of a girl in the hallway.
Luz doesn’t really like looking at it, which is probably why she’d found herself where she is right now.
Amity and Hunter are running chores with her mom, which Luz’d overslept for too long to join. Willow and Gus wanted to explore the woods, torches at the ready, and Vee was tagging along to supervise. Luz had rejected their offer to join. She already knew the woods like the back of her hand, after all.
And so there she’d found herself in the newly unfamiliar situation of being in an empty house with a lot on her mind.
There’s always a lot on her mind, recently. Right now, however, she has no need to push it away.
She’s been avoiding mirrors, recently. Her friends would probably disagree, but it seems like the right time to address the problem at its root.
The photo’s frame is a deep walnut colour, cool to the touch. Her mind goes oddly silent when she pulls it off the wall.
She traces a thumb over the glass. It leaves a little mark.
Feeling heavy, she makes her way to the bathroom. Her face frames the mirror. A few months ago she’d have to stand on her tiptoes for the same angle.
But that was a few months ago, longer, even, for the girl in the photo.
She looks a lot like Vee. She doesn’t look all that much like Luz.
It’s kinda funny, but she doesn’t bother forcing a laugh. It’d be mirthless.
Luz remembers the day it was taken in flashes. A bright, cloudless day, the last stretch of summer chasing after her in the sweat beading down her temple. The shirt she’d been wearing was yellow, but kinda scratchy, but that hadn’t mattered that much after her mama had turned the hose on her when she’d hid in the bushes to avoid pulling weeds one too many times. The girl in the photo is smiling with her teeth, but only because her mama had taken it without her realising.
The girl in the photo is up to her knees in mud, and she’d always hated the photo, displayed proudly on her mami’s wall of equally embarrassing photos, covered in pasta or with her hair done up in seven different styles at once.
The girl in the photo is Luz, but it doesn’t really feel like it. Sure, Luz has the memory of the day, but that’s all she has. A memory.
She takes the plunge, and she looks into the mirror.
It’s hard to reconcile.
She’d gotten her hair cut, a few days before that photo, the shortest it had ever been. She’d loved the feeling of running her hand over the back of her head, the bristle beneath her fingertips.
Her hair’s just above her shoulders at the moment, long but limp. She runs a hand through the strands, and it feels wrong that her reflection does the same.
It’s stupid, she knows it, but she’s avoiding mirrors because they just don’t feel right anymore. She looks in, and she’s never quite sure that the girl looking back at her is her.
But here she is, a snapshot of only a year ago in her hand, and that doesn’t really feel like her either.
She doesn’t really know how to feel about it.
She knows it wouldn’t be that hard to look like the girl in the photo. Hand any of her friends a pair of scissors, pull on a shirt that probably wouldn’t fit her that well anymore, crack an old version of her smile. Easy, really, but still not right. Not to mention…
Damnit.
She’s overreacting, really. She’s overreacting and she knows it, but here she is.
Quietly, she raises a hand to her face. There’s no need, really, the house is empty, but she’s feeling quiet right now and there’s no one around to get worried about it, so she allows herself the small privilege.
Two fingers trace the new scar, tracked through her eyebrow.
She still doesn’t know when things started to get quite so permanent.
Because that’s the thing- things were starting to get permanent now. The human realm had always felt like a challenge, one she was always fighting to overcome, but still something she could fight. The Boiling Isles, in comparison, had been so, so easy. The higher the stakes got the harder she tried, and every single time, it’d worked out.
Even on the Day of Unity, behind all the fear anger guilt she’d thought it would work out. And it almost had. She’d been so, so close.
But then the Boiling Isles had thrown her a curveball called The Collector, and with the closing of a door, her world had jumpcut into reality in one stark, jarring motion.
She’s not really the girl in the photo anymore, she’ll never be that girl again.
A lot of things don’t feel good right now, but the thought that no one will ever meet that girl again hurts.
The girl in the photo hadn’t always been happy, Luz knows. Luz remembers rejection well, loneliness even better, and they’d felt like the end of the world at the time. Now, Luz knows the end of the world, the real kind. But she just can’t help herself.
That girl had been Luz, and now she wasn’t.
She’s happier now, in a strong, objective sense. She has friends who love her, a mom working harder every day to understand rather than fix, a sister who doesn’t even fight her for the top bunk. The problems are harder, but she’ll fix them eventually. They’ll all fix them, together.
But she’ll never be that girl again. She can wear the costume, speak the lines, but she won’t be that Luz. There’ll always be that line over her eyebrow, a visual reminder to strike her out of the running.
There’s a lot to be thinking about right now, and there’s been so, so much change. But she’s feeling quiet today, and so is her sadness.
She wants to be a little bit selfish today, so she lets herself be as she mourns a girl who’s not really dead. A girl who was younger. A girl she’ll never be again.
Eventually, the front door will creak open and Luz will have to face the rest of the world.
For now, though, she’ll just face her own.