The fear of mirrors? Was it really from a car accident?
Something in the back of my mind told me there was more to it somehow. Then again, what did I know? I'm a coward, not a doctor.
Having survived my shower without any encounters with the mirror, I left my apartment and started to walk over to the campus. Being three minutes away from the school was nice. Especially when dragging my portfolio around. Granted I intentionally kept it light to avoid having to drag it during Venice’s flooding seasons.
My first class here would be art theory then an expert of Renaissance art would be part of a lecture as well.
‘A fine arts major from Venice Italy.’ It had a nice ring to it. My school in California had offered to send me to Rome, then my counselor recommended this place in Venice. She was worried about my trauma and said this school had a colleague of hers as a teacher who I could contact if I ever needed to talk. She lived a floor down in the same apartment building as me.
I had only met her once. She was a sweet older woman with short white hair and muted blue eyes. Her voice had a calming effect over her clients. After that first meeting, she helped me get my keys and we had a cup of coffee then I didn’t see her afterward. From what I had seen she rarely went out if she wasn’t working at the school.
That was a shame. Venice was beautiful. The old buildings lining the canal, people and boats packed together in perfect lines. The gondolas on the water moving in a consistent rhythm with the traffic. The path to the school was basically a straight walk through Rio tera canal. When I had room to spin around and take it in, it was wonderful. There were other times it was super crowded, and that pleasant atmosphere vanished. In crowds, people seemed to be looking at me. The only things I wanted people to see of me were my sketches and paintings. As bad as my self-esteem was, I was proud of my art.
Then, I stopped short, dread filling me. The street in front of the school filled with people. Everyone around me spoke and shouted in Italian. I crossed my arms and held my purse close to my chest and attempted to tuck my portfolio behind me, adjusting the crossbody strap as tight as it would go. I had tested this route in my head several times. My mistake was I wished for an empty street. My fingers twitched as I held my bag. I jumped at every moment someone passed me, whether they touched me or not.
Finally, I slinked inside and sank into my seat. Other students glanced my way, and I turned red.
A few students to one side of me gossiped among themselves. I wasn’t sure that it was about me, but it felt like it. This was my first day in class, and these students would have been in this school for a while, so I was the new girl. Without solid proof against it, I was left to wonder in silence.
My paranoia continued all the way through class. I turned on my tape recorder and recorded the lecture. I had been attempting to translate the teacher’s lessons. Most of my teachers spoke English if I asked... However, this teacher, in particular, had refused my request.
I had studied Italian for a few years up to this point. I had the basic knowledge to live here, but some parts still confused me. It was even worse when someone spoke fast. I needed to translate at my own pace. This class didn’t allow for it.
‘At your own pace. Take your time Rayne.’
A phrase I heard a lot after the accident.
Take my time. Frustration burned within me. Yeah, it took me enough time, alright. Two years to relearn my name, three years to recognize my parents’ faces, and four years to even realize what had happened. I had only been ten at the time, and I had lost ten years of memories. Most of those moments, I never got back. I had to start from scratch.
My dad and I had been going to fish at Lake Tahoe and the truck ended up turning over, they said. I ended up getting thrown out of the truck and was found unconscious. I had no memory of anything before waking up, to a crying woman’s face…my mother’s crying face.
Or so they all told me.
The teacher continued his lesson during my musing. Shoot, I’d lost my place! The recorder was still turned on but there was a warning on the side of the little digital recorders screen:
Warning cannot save recording, not enough storage space.
I sighed. Why did I even try?
My internal translations had already lost context. I couldn’t keep up with the teacher anymore. The lecture became so broken, I forgot what class I was even in. I dropped my pencil and buried my ears in my hands. It was a poor attempt to block out the new information, so I could try to process the first half of the lesson. And it probably made me look even more like a weird new girl. I peeked back at the class around me trying to listen to the lesson and seem normal.
A girl sitting at my left glanced my way. Her eyes narrowed, and she looked intently at me. Then she tapped her partner on the shoulder and whispered to him. He shifted in his seat, and she slid closer to me.
“Would you like me to help you out?" Her English was perfect. My heart skipped a beat in surprise, and relief flooded me.
I turned to her and smiled.
"T-thank you. I'm sorry, I don't have the hang of Italian just yet."
“It’s not a problem,” she smiled, pulling a pencil free from her red-brown hair. She slid closer, grabbing my notebook free from my lecture area. Still high off the relief of meeting a fellow English speaker, I looked at her up and down.
She was taller than me and beautiful. Long red-brown hair with two small braids, one by the side of her olive-brown face and another tied back with her ponytail. Her eyes, that were mostly hidden by the side braid, looked like milk chocolate, only made brighter by the make-up she wore.
She continued speaking. “I had similar problems when I first came.” Her smile grew, “By the way, my name is Juliet.” She laughed and added, “Such a classic name, I know. It’s perfect in Italy.”
She mumbled something about smelling sweet or something under her breath in Italian, then turned back to me.
I laughed with her, “Maybe your parents knew you'd be in Italy someday."
“Yeah, I suppose. Not a bad guess for two farmers from Pennsylvania." She laughed again. “This is the part where you say "Hi, nice to meet you. I'm…" She waited for me to continue and I froze. “Insert, presumably, non-Italian name here…" she whispered. Her eyes screaming hint, hint. I froze, my mind spinning in a logic loop. Did she think I was stupid? Was I? why would I freeze for a simple question? Was she going to leave now? Don’t leave me alone?
I shook off my fear and answered her.
“I’m Rayne. Rayne Higgins," I finally muttered.
“It’s nice to meet you, Rayne. I won’t bite, I swear. Here, I’ll help you translate your notes from today. I can help you through until you get it more. We foreigners must stick together. God knows the locals are no help."
Her partner glared, obviously taking offense. His green eyes lit up and he moved his floaty black bangs out of his face. His lips tightened, forcing his stubby mustache into the foreground. She said something to him in Italian, reassuring him that he was an exception or something. He huffed and turned away from her, twirling his pencil between his fingers.
A boyfriend perhaps? They seemed that way just with how they interacted. I finally interjected awkwardly. “Thank you so much. I really appreciate your help."
I felt the pressure dissipating and a calm came over as my panic faded. Just to have someone here, willing to help me, made me feel safe.
"Hey, don't sweat it. I can tell you're a good kid."
"How can you tell?"
“I have my ways. Just consider me like Sherlock Holmes. I can read people,” She said, confidently clapping her hands together and tilting her head towards me, giving me the biggest smile up to this point. After a moment of me staring back at her, she started to roll up her sleeves when her confidence seemed to rub off on me.
I smirked. “You know most versions of Holmes make him an antisocial sociopath? Wouldn’t that have made him not good at reading peop
le?”
“Only the modern ones, my dear Padawan. Who’s to say I’m not similar, hm?”
It seemed our TV show tastes were similar. Thinking back to her statement I twitched: was she just teasing or is she actually admitting to being a sociopath? No, that wasn’t right.
“Well, you offered to help me. A sociopath wouldn’t care right?” My voice cracked as I questioned my own statement. Juliet’s clasped hands moved to her pointing my way with a quick flick.
“Bingo.” Juliet grinned. “Wow, you know more than I thought. What are you studying?”
“Fine arts, mostly.”
Her eyes lit up curiously. She sat back and looked at me up and down.
“Makes sense. You look like the artsy type.”
“Um, thanks.”
“I’m studying psychology. Nothing more fascinating than the human mind.”
I frowned. “What’s a psych major doing in art theory?”
Juliet laughed and rested her head in her hands, staring at the board.
“I’ve always found art fascinating. Its effect on people, how we read it and understand it, how it pulls out our emotions sometimes without us even realizing it. I want to understand how our minds are so affected by art of all forms. I’m taking a few classes to aid my quest. Art theory, music, film—they all affect us in some way. I have little talent for evoking those feelings, but I want to learn all I can about them and what art can do.”
She seemed so serious, yet whimsical. A great dream to look at every angle of your passion. I couldn’t help but admire that about her.
The teacher smacked his pedestal with a loud crack. He’d heard us! On instinct, I buried my face into my book, but he looked right at Juliet. She retorted back at him in Italian. ‘Yeah, yeah’ and ‘teacher’ were all I picked out of the lengthy sentence. The teacher turned away, reluctantly maintaining a professional tone, and continued his lesson.
“Cranky old goat.” She huffed, then gave another big grin.
I grinned back. I couldn’t help myself. She was infectious.
After that, I stuck close to Juliet for most of the morning. Turns out she not only took an art minor here, on top of her psych classes but she also had a break while I walked to some of my afternoon classes. She’d track me down while I went from lecture to lecture.
Something about her just seemed trustworthy, and I needed a friend in this place. I had lost all the friendships I had years ago. First, from the memory loss. Then I’d left so suddenly from my college. I still don’t entirely know why I said yes to the program. It was like something calling me here. I had felt it when I was offered to join the study abroad program, and again when I was given the chance to come to Venice instead of Rome.
It was like a tight tug saying, ‘there was magic here.’
Surprisingly the initial jump from California to Italy was easy. It’s the follow through doubts. Then being on the plane, knowing it’s too late. And finally, the acceptance of your decision that’s the hard part. I was forced to cut so many ties I had from back home. My Parents pulled so many strings to get me the money to go to school to start with let alone getting me a phone to be able to reach them. I offered some of my other classmates to exchange numbers. I gave them mine and they said they would text me, so I could add the contact, but no texts ever arrived. I should have expected that, should have seen that the girl that had once forgotten everything could be just as easily forgotten herself.
Knowing that I could be making a new friend, some of the darkness from this morning faded.
~
It was time for lunch. Juliet had closed her notebook after having explained the notes from the latest class to me.
“So, do you understand now?” She asked.
“Yeah, I think I get it.” I laughed, my voice shaking. Having an understanding was so much better. I almost felt like crying; I was so happy it was over.
“The professor can speak English, but he says it makes his class too easy. He has a lot of exchange students in class this year. Thus, he claims ‘If you’re going to embrace learning abroad, you embrace the native tongue as well.’…”
“I see, yeah. I think I get it,” I smiled. The more we spoke, the more comfortable I became. Almost like I was really gaining a friend.
Putting the notes back in our bags, we went to get our food. The school itself, as Juliet put it, had garbage food so we went to a small shop nearby to get something, for me a coffee and a sandwich and for Juliet an iced tea and some kind of pastry. We found a table in the courtyard of the school and sat beside each other with a fountain in our view.
She laughed wholeheartedly, celebrating finally acquiring her food, before taking another sip of her iced tea. She looked, and I heard her whisper oops as she looked down at her straw and noticed that her lipstick had rubbed off on it. Without missing a beat, she grabbed her purse and pulled out a small mirror. I caught a glimpse of it and panicked. The image of shattering glass invaded my memory. Turning my head away, I tried to hide my trembling. My heart fell to my stomach and I felt that familiar sense of dread surrounding me, strangling me.
Juliet frowned. “What’s the matter, dear?"
I gripped my clammy hands together, trying to calm down. But I kept seeing the glass, hearing the sound of it being broken. I licked my lips and tried to answer Juliet.
“I-I'm sorry. You might think it’s s-silly or stupid..."
She edged closer to me. "What do you mean, hon? What has got you so spooked?"
My fingers dug into my sides, and I swallowed hard thinking about it.
“T-the mirror..."
She looked at me, eyebrows raised. “You’re afraid of mirrors?"
I nodded and cringed. Instead of laughing as I thought she would, Juliet simply slipped the mirror back into her purse. She looked at me apologetically, “I’m so sorry, hon.”
“It’s okay,” I sighed. The feeling of dread released me and was now replaced by embarrassment. “You must think I'm strange."
Juliet shrugged. “Not really. I told you, I’m a psychology major. I’m being trained to tread carefully with this sort of thing.” She paused, lost in thought. “Spectrophobia, huh? Why mirrors, if I may ask?”
“I’m not sure. When I was ten, I had been in an accident and I lost my memory. I’ve been terrified of mirrors ever since that day. It seems pretty silly, but I can’t help it.” I paused, looking at her face for a reaction.
Her mouth moved as if she was talking silently to herself. Maybe working out a theory, just as the doctors did. They thought it could be the memory of the broken side view mirror from the truck, or the sight of myself in the hospital. They told me that was the first time they observed my reaction to mirrors. Whatever the theory was, it never felt like enough. And it didn’t fix anything either.
She thought in silence for a few moments, then smiled.
"Well, I won't pry anymore then. I'll leave my makeup as it is. Who knows maybe I'll get a job at the circus!” Juliet laughed.
I smiled; glad I wasn't being judged. She stood and looked at the clock on a light pole behind us.
“Juliet?” She looked my way again. “If you’d let me, maybe I could help with your face.”
She smiled at me and handed me her lipstick. “I’m trusting you with this, Miss Higgins.”
“Sure, I won’t mess up...I hope.”
It wouldn’t be so bad. Applying makeup on someone else was like painting on a canvas, at least I thought so anyway. I had managed to put simple things on me, like lip balm and Chapstick, by memorizing the basic form of a human face. My strokes with lipstick felt the same as my strokes with a brush.
I helped her out, wiping off the messed-up lipstick from before and relining the half she had smudged. Her make-up looked better than before. Her smile brightened when I finished.
She turned away leaning into her purse, presumably looking back into the mirror out of my view.
“Thank you
, Rayne!” She smiled then followed up with a compliment in Italian that I was actually able to translate.
I shrugged. “I’d hardly call it a magic touch... Steady painters’ hand, you know.”
Juliet nodded. "Hey, after classes are over, would you like to go to the café? There’s one not far from the school."
"Sure." I laughed, feeling both glad I was invited and heartbroken that my makeup fix was about to be for nothing. Washed away by the liquid gold that was coffee.
I followed her, and relief washed over me. I was glad I met Juliet. I needed a friend here. I needed that connection. Even as shy as I was, I couldn’t stand being alone.
~
More nights of nightmares came after that day. Some nights I was just in darkness. Other nights monsters, cloaked in shadows with no defined form, came up and surrounded me. Sometimes I was alone, and the shadows would shift from animal-like to humanoid forms. Other times there was someone with me. They would also be cloaked in shadow. Why? I wasn’t afraid of this one, like the man that would attack me in my recurring nightmares. Was this shadow the same? I couldn’t tell. These variations, on top of my usual recurring nightmares, only served to confuse me more.
What did any of this mean? My nights couldn’t get much darker than being essentially split between two selves and going through the pain that seemed so real. At least I had the sun every morning to tell me things were looking up.
After all, I had been in Italy for nearly a month and finally felt well-adjusted thanks to Juliet and her help with my Italian. I’d gotten to know Juliet well over the following weeks.
As usual, we met up on the walking bridge over the canal near my apartment. Juliet was waiting for me she was waving at a man working a gondola nearby. I looked over and saw it was her classmate from when we met. Marco, if I remembered. Juliet handed me a to-go coffee cup and continued blowing kisses towards him.
“Morning Juliet.”
“Hmm, what was that?” she slanted her eyes my way without actually looking at me.
“Buongiorno…” I sighed, giving in to her need to quiz me any chance she got.
Glass Souls (Reflection Book 1) Page 2
