It was too late to pretend I was suddenly mute.
My eyes met hers. “Mirrors don’t lie. You may not like what they show you, and you may try to change what you see, but they never lie. The woman keeps coming back, because no matter how much she dislikes what she sees, she craves the honesty. The mirror gives her the truth, and it can’t walk away from her.”
“Pathetic,” Hunter coughed.
The large shoe in the aisle moved, sliding with careful precision away from my desk. The movement shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, but there was something about the way the shoe left me. It was as if, by speaking, I’d told it good-bye.
“Is it the mirror that’s pathetic or the honesty?” a deep voice asked.
My gaze flew to the desk next to me, to the way Heathcliff’s legs were suddenly alert, his feet flat against the floor. He’d spoken.
There was no doubt Hunter Green was insulting me, the “pathetic” comment directed at my person and not the poem, but Heathcliff changed that. He re-directed it. I’d broken our silent pact, and he’d accepted it.
Hunter laughed. “I’m thinking you need to fu—”
“That’s enough,” Mrs. Callahan said firmly, her gaze passing between Hunter’s desk and Heathcliff’s. I couldn’t bring myself to look past his shoes. “I think,” the teacher continued, “that you may have something there, Ms. Hawthorne. And since I’m curious to see what each of you take away from this poem, I want you to go home, look in the mirror, and write a paper or a poem about what you see. You’re going to have the rest of the year to work on this. Perceptions often change over time, so I want this assignment to change with you.”
It was with those words that my life transformed. Mirrors are often terrible things. They don’t just make you look at yourself, they make you look at your life.
The bell rang, the sound of shuffling feet, zipping backpacks, and chatter drowning out the tension in the room. Girls cast glances at Heathcliff’s desk, their demure smiles and faint murmurs full of lustful secrets. I couldn’t make myself look at him. I knew what he looked like—tall, broad, and muscular with flippant brown hair framing hazel eyes—but I didn’t want to see his face. I’d developed a strange relationship with his shoe and his silence, and I knew that looking at him would change that somehow.
Picking up an old black messenger bag covered in handwritten quotes, I slung it over my shoulder and walked from the room, my feet carrying me into a brisk January afternoon. It wasn’t quite cold enough to see my breath misting on the wind, but it was cold enough to make me tremble. Dry leaves and pine needles crackled beneath my shoes as I marched across the school lawn toward a dirt road leading through the woods beyond, my hands stuffed into my blue jean pockets. Behind me, his shoes followed.
It should have been strange, I suppose, that he crept after me—his feet following my feet, his silence as comforting outside as it was in the classroom—but it wasn’t. Hunter Green had a history of anger issues, and Heathcliff had goaded him. For me no less.
The crackle of leaves, the feel of the frigid air on my face, and the faint sounds of cars driving away echoed around us. Rays of light filtered through the bare tree limbs above us, leaving glowing dust-filled streaks across the air like magic fingerprints. Birds called to each other, but we didn’t speak.
Heathcliff kept his distance, as if staying far enough behind would keep that strange, silent world we’d lived in alive. Even as cold as I was, my back was suddenly full of life, his presence causing my skin to tingle. Every swallow, every breath, every step was too loud. My feet were clumsy, my brain working hard to concentrate on each footfall. I was seeing the woods, my woods, in a whole new light.
My uncle’s house was a few miles away from the school, the acreage he owned separated from the woods by a rusted barbed wire fence. I’d been walking the distance for years now, but I’d never been so disappointed to see the fence.
With less grace than usual, I threw my bag over the barbed wire before climbing over the barrier, the rust coming off on my sweaty palms. His shoes followed me, his larger feet landing on the other side easily. He should have turned back by now, but he hadn’t. He remained behind me, our feet shuffling through knee-length, brown grass toward a long drive shrouded by crepe myrtle trees and overhanging gray clouds, the sun dimming with the threat of rain. The looming house beyond looked more haunted than majestic, and maybe it was. Not by ghosts but by memories.
We traversed the lane, the soil beneath our feet clinging to our shoes, the dwelling now a monster in front of us, not because it looked dangerous but because it was the end of our trek.