Annoying and Boring: By India

‘Ouch!’ I whimpered as I slammed back against the wall. It was the same every morning. Blind as a bat she would stampede around the bathroom grabbing things, dropping them, picking them up again, tripping over piles clothing and wet towels, and most of all, slamming me over and over as she clumsily knocked her hand around in the cabinet for whatever she needed. I glared at her furiously as she pulled a brush through her messy blonde hair repeatedly to no prevail wincing and muttering to herself. I wanted nothing more than to scream and scare the living daylights out of her, but I knew I couldn’t, I’d already tried that before.

She was decent looking, nothing special, I’d seen prettier. Her hair was nice, and her eyes weren’t so bad either, they changed color depending on the day, I guess that was kind of neat. Otherwise she was extremely ordinary. She had a closet filled with all different kinds of clothes, I knew this because I could sometimes see it if she left the bathroom door open. Despite this, during the winter she seemed to wear the same exact outfit every day. Some jeans with one of maybe three sweatshirts, plus some obnoxiously shiny boots that I couldn’t stand, but she seemed to adore. Despite her bland taste during the cold weather, in the summer she wasn’t as boring and wore more colorful clothes, this served as at most a semi-promising testament to her future fashion endeavors. If I’d been her I wouldn’t have been so annoying or boring. I would’ve worn something different every day and styled my hair instead of ripping it into pieces or pulling it back into a tight bun like some lab scientist or something. Regardless, I wasn’t her, and I never would be. Live and let live I guess.

She had now moved on to her makeup. She was dreadful at applying it and she almost made me feel sorry for her, almost. She would poke her eye when putting on mascara and get the lip gloss in her mouth, which was pretty gross to say the least. Not to mention that more makeup meant more slamming, lucky me. I kind of hate to admit it, but as annoying as she was, it was lonely without her. I mean I’m a mirror for Christ sake, what is the purpose of being a mirror in an empty room? It’s quite ironic that we can see what’s going on around us since that’s what we’re for, seeing stuff that you normally can’t, like your face. There’s this stupid thing I do sometimes, I pretend that I’m the person, and that she’s the mirror. See- it’s easy to do this because I just pretend like I’m looking at myself in the mirror and doing what she’s doing. But when she’s gone I can’t do that, and its clear to me that I’m just a mirror, and the days are annoying and boring, just like her. Guess you can really never win- huh? 

Coffee: By Willa

      “Too bitter,” she muttered, setting her espresso down on the table. Some coffee had spilled over and left drip trails down the sides. “Can I try yours?”

     The boy glanced up from his book before inching his cup towards her.

     “I don’t think you’ll like it,” he warned her as she lifted the lid and bent down to sniff. It was evident by the face she made that the scent didn’t appeal to her, but she took a sip anyway. He eyed the packet of Sweet ‘n’ Low.

     “That stuff will give you cancer,” she rejected him flatly after catching his look, lowering the cup from her lips.

     He made discreet eyebrows at her, leashing the temptation to openly mock her for her superstitions before resuming his book. He flipped a page. She sipped his drink. The silence wasn’t punishing.

     “What’re you reading?” she inquired, although her gaze was focused out the window.

     “Portnoy’s Complaint.”

     “Never heard of it,” she commented, breaking from her people-watching in favor of studying him. In response to his silence, she jerked her foot against his. He looked up, eyebrows raised expectantly.

     “Why are you ignoring me?”

     He gazed back at her blankly for a few moments, before finally closing his book and setting it on the table. He laced his fingers together and set them in front of him, intently searching her face. He could detect the girl’s rising indignation under his scrutiny

     “You’re very pretty,” he told her simply, his eyes locked upon hers as she absorbed this.

     Finally, he picked up his book again and skimmed for his place, before continuing to read silently.

Outer Space Thoughts: By Willa

     In science class we learn that air is a gas. Only, it isn’t really a gas, it’s a mixture of gases. When people think of air they think its intangible, weightless, sort of empty. Only, it isn’t, because we also learn that gas has matter. It’s small, but it exists. The particles are just so spread out that people think they aren’t there. I wasn’t really interested until someone asked a question.

      Wait, so if the particles are spread out, then what’s in between?

      That’s a good question. Empty space, the teacher said while she beat the eraser violently against the chalkboard to rid of the chalk dust.

      Empty space?

      I looked at the kid asking the question. He was this dumb ginger kid with pudgy fingers and pale eyebrows.

     It’s a hard concept to wrap your mind around, but yeah, empty space. Isn’t that crazy?

     I wondered what empty space looked like. At first I thought it looked like air – transparent, colorless, but then I thought it couldn’t because you can feel and touch air and it has particles and it has matter, and it conducts light which is why you can see everything and air looks like nothing because it shows everything else. Empty space is just nothing.

I thought about outer space, the biggest thing in the world and how it could exist in such small quantities on earth. I don’t like thinking about it.

     The only time I like looking out the window is when I’m in a car. Everything looks like it’s rushing past you even though you’re the one moving and the everything is the thing standing still. I try to look at everything rushing past me but I can only follow one moment with my eyes and then it’s gone and I look at the next thing that’s coming. It’s like being on a fast treadmill. And sometimes I blur my eyes and I can see the picture moving, but I can’t see the detail because my eyes are blurred and it’s frustrating.

     There’s a window in front of my bed. It’s the kind of window where it stretches from the ceiling to the very bottom of the floor and takes up a lot of space. There are trees outside my window and when it’s dark, many of the leaves overlap to form shapes. The nighttime looks light compared to the leaves because they’re so black. I used to be able to see the trees, the leaves, the overlap, the positive space. But then I remembered something from science class.

     The lady showed us a picture of a young girl who was wearing a hat and turning her head. She then told us that it was really an old lady with small eyes. I had to adjust my eyes but I finally saw it and it took a while to get back to just seeing the young girl. I tried seeing the girl and the old lady at the same time but I got a headache.

     And now when I look at the trees outside I just see the shapes made by the leaves. When I’m staring hard it’s nothing special but when I blur my eyes I feel like Christopher Columbus, because it looks like an enormous map, with the white spaces between the leaves as continents and the leaves as the ocean because they’re dark. Other times I think that my room is floating in outer space because the white spaces look like stars and that my room is the only safe place left. And unless it’s daytime I can’t see just regular leaves.

Rain and Snow Photography: By India

Digital Art Pieces: By Willa

Plane Photography: by Soren

Digitally Drawn Rope: by Soren