Her alarm goes off at 6:15; what a drag. Just another school day. She stumbles out of bed and goes to the bathroom. She puts in her contacts so she can see and looks up at herself in the mirror. Brown hair, brown eyes. She turns to the side and looks at her stomach. she pokes at the little bit of fat she has and grimaces. she’s trying to lose weight, but she eats too much. she leans in closer to look at her face. Long eyelashes, a few freckles. That stupid pimple on her chin that won’t go away. Lips are kind of small. She backs away and thinks to herself “Why do I look like this? I want blue eyes and long blonde hair. Then everyone would like me.” She rinses her face with soap and water, dries it off. She brushes her teeth, brushes her hair and puts it in a bun. Then she goes back to her room to find something to wear to school. jeans? no. leggings? no. athletic shorts? no. She looks in the mirror and thinks she looks bad in everything. Sweatpants it is. She’s already worn them once this week. Everyone will think she’s a bum. She looks in the mirror one more time and thinks “man I need to lose weight” Although she wore sweatpants, she thought she needed makeup and went to her makeup desk where tons of makeup lied messily. Her room was a mess. She really needed to clean it up. She got out a small mirror with a light and turned it on. At first, she was just going to wear mascara, but that turned into foundation and concealer, and before she knew it, she had covered her whole face in makeup. Oh well, she looked better that way. She looks in the mirror one last time. Maybe someone will call her pretty, even in her sweatpants. She checks the time and sees it’s time to leave for school. She grabs her book bag and steps over the clothes on the floor of her room and rushes down the stairs. She packs her lunch in her book bag and tells her parents goodbye. She just recently got her license and she was excited to go to school on her own. She got in the car and started to drive to school. She almost got all the way through town and there was a train so she stopped. “Shoot!” She said, “I’ll be late for school!” Oh well. After the train passed, she continued over the train tracks. She pulled down the sun visor and opened the mirror at a stop light and looked at her makeup. Her lipstick had already wore off! Just then, the light turned green. She reached for her makeup bag in the passenger seat and pulls out her lipstick. She then notices the light turned and starts to go. As she’s driving, she’s putting lipstick on and trying to keep her eyes on the road. She’s nearing a light where she needs to turn but not paying much attention. She takes her eyes off the road and looks in the mirror one more time. “Now you look presentable” she thought. Just as she looked back at the road, she was approaching a red light way too quickly to stop and she decided she had to go on through. Before she knew it, a semi truck was turning from the other direction and it couldn’t stop in time. The semi ran right into her side of the car; she was lucky to be alive. She blacked out and barely remembered anything.

She woke up in the hospital and was slowly trying to listen in on what the doctors were saying. She heard parts of the conversation,“broken nose… broken arm… major concussion”. She finally blinked away the darkness and saw her mom and dad sitting beside the hospital bed. She looked down at her arms. One had an IV, the other with a cast. She wondered what she could look like now. All of a sudden, she got aching pains from her head and face. Then she passed out. What happens now?

After several weeks in the hospital, she never got to look in a mirror. There’s no way she looked the way she used to. What has she done? She wishes she could go back to the way she was. She wanted to look in the mirror. Once she returned home, she rested for a few weeks.

The next day, she would be going to school for the first time since her accident. What would everyone think of her? She hoped she wasn’t ugly. She hoped everyone still thought she was pretty. The next morning, her alarm went off at 6am so she had some extra time just in case it took her longer to get ready. She carefully got out of bed and went to the bathroom. She turned on the light to look in the mirror for the first time since her accident. Her tired, brown eyes stare back at her. Her crooked nose almost looked like it was in a distorted mirror. She looked rough. She turned to the side and looked at her stomach. She hadn’t eaten as much as normal and she had lost a lot of weight. Now she was unhealthy. She didn’t know what she had until it was gone. She went to her makeup bag and went to put on her regular makeup. Maybe they won’t notice. Because of what happened to her, now she’ll never look in the mirror the same way.