So far, so good~

I'm breaking to get kids to school, but here's what I've done so far!  It's also on my NaNo page (bekajoi over there, if you want to look/buddy up, etc), but here you go.  :)

I'm calling it Through a Mirror, Darkly.

Synopsis

Emily was a girl, all alone in her neighborhood. Ever since she could remember, her only friend was the one she made with the girl in the mirror. She, alone, understood it all. Understood everything: How alone she felt, how she wished her parents would stop fighting all the time, how she wished they noticed she was there or took time to hang out with her... How she wished the kids at school would look past her clothes and see HER, how she wished things could be different, but knew they never could.

Until one day, Emily's friend in the mirror no longer mirrored her every move... Her friend spoke back to her, needed her. And on that day, her friend reached through the mirror and pulled her to the other side.

Would she ever get home again? Did she want to?

Excerpt

Emily woke with a start, that Monday morning, and for a moment she thought she was late for school. When her eyes turned to the curtains, though, they were still dark, so she knew she had a little time before she had to move. And when the sound of the refrigerator door slamming was followed by her mother's voice, she knew what had awakened her.

“Is it really that hard to put the empty milk carton in the recycling bin? Or tell someone when you finish the last of it? What am I supposed to do for my breakfast now?!” Her mom yelled at her dad, and as usual, he just sat and took it.

Emily sat and pushed her back up against her old headboard, felt the familiar creak of the wood as it leaned with her weight, and pulled her knees and blanket close. Monday again. School again. Time for taunts and name calling. Again. Joy.

She sat and stared across the room at her alarm clock's green numbers, waiting for them to change, listening to the fight down the hall. The ranting, rather, as her father still had not defended himself. She wondered if he would apologize this time and make it end, of if her mother had gone from wondering what she would have for breakfast to what her daughter was meant to eat before school. But, as usual, her mother was absorbed with her own needs, and Emily's name was never raised.

When the clock's bright colors flipped around and read 7:00, the local radio station clicked on in place of a glaring alarm, and her mother's sounds were partially drowned out by the morning announcer's prank of the day. He was calling random numbers in the phone book and confessing to extramarital affairs with the person who answered the phone's spouse. It didn't seem to matter if it was a woman or a man who answered, and that made her smile.

She stood and looked through her closet for a pair of shirts to wear, and chose a long sleeve black shirt and a short sleeve burgundy shirt with a funny donut print. One jelly donut lay dead, bleeding jelly from bite mark and mouth, and the other donut stood screaming, looking upon his friend's bloody corpse. She pulled the two on and looked for her favorite pair of black jeans among the piles of clothes on her floor. She knew she'd seen them yesterday, and finally found them under the jacket she'd thrown when she got back from her wandering to the park for a swing to herself.

The park hadn't been empty, but at least it was a young mother and her two shockingly blonde children, not some of the kids from her school. The mother didn't even glance at her, as some others did, wondering why a fourteen year old girl was at the park without babysitting charges or younger simblings. She smiled at the little boy with black glasses as he climbed up the slide and slipped back down again with a giggle, and made her way to the taller swing set. She was getting too tall to use the other one, but the one with the blue seats still worked for her.

She'd sat swinging aimlessly, letting the grey of the clouds envelop her view, letting the motion of the swing take her out of her own thoughts, until she realized suddenly she was no longer alone. A group of three boys from her school wandered by and had seen her, and the young mother had apparently taken her children home. The boys didn't exactly harass her, but they certainly were making no effort to talk to her either. They just sat there, at the top of the fading green jungle gym, watching her swing. She sighed, rolled her eyes, hopped off the sing and headed home, tossing her grey hoodie on a pile and burying herself in a book until she fell asleep. She didn't even miss dinner.

As she pulled her jeans on and realized they were a bit loose in the waist, and her stomach growled, however, she knew she would need to eat something that morning. Which led to the kitchen with now-quiet parents. They would still be there, she knew, and if she made the wrong move, she might set her mother off again. Emily pulled her socks on, mismatched on purpose as usual, and pulled her tall black leather boots out from under her bed. She'd saved her birthday and Christmas money up for them, and she loved them more than any other item of clothing she'd ever owned.

Those boots had giant buckles with straps instead of laces, worked under jeans as well as with skirts, and she honestly could not remember the last time she wore any other pair of shoes. They were hers, and though her mother rolled her eyes at them, there was nothing she could do about it.

She'd bought them with her own money, and they weren't like a too-short skirt. There was nothing objectionable about them other than the style not being up her mother's alley. She'd even though to buy them one size bigger than she wore at the time, and was grateful, since her feet grew half a size in the few months since she got them. She'd already passed her mother's shoe size up, and hoped the boots would still fit in a year. Her mother's feet had reached their adult size when she was fifteen, she said, so maybe her giant feet would stop growing soon. Emily glanced down at her feet, and didn't think they looked giant at all, but her mother's words still stung.

Once they were buckled in place just the way she liked, Emily pulled the legs of her jeans down so just the toes showed, took a deep breath, and opened her door at last. The kitchen was quiet, as expected. Her dad sat at the kitchen table, reading a book, and her mother had moved to the living room with her coffee. She was watching a morning show which was hosted by some round faced cheerful woman who spent half the show cooking, and Emily rolled her eyes and shook her head when the woman excitedly said one of her made-up words and her mother laughed.

“Mom?” Emily tried, cautiously, but her mom didn't flinch. She tilted her head a bit so she could listen, but that was all the response she got. “Are there any eggs? I'm hungry.”

“In the fridge, but you'll have to hurry. Your bus will be here in ten minutes. There's bread for toast, if you want to make a sandwich to take with you.” The woman glanced at her when the screen changed from show to commercial break, and sighed audibly, “And pull a brush through that hair! It's a rat's nest!”

“Yes, mom,” Emily turned with a small sigh of her own and made her way to the bathroom. The lights took a moment to flick on, as the flourescent bulbs always did, and staring back at her was a too-tall girl whose dark clothing washed her face out and made her look more pale than she really was. She smiled, as that's exactly what she was going for.

Her mother would not approve of cosmetics at her age, so she couldn't do the dark eye make up and pale blue lipstick she wanted, though she had started purchasing and hiding the different pieces in her room, so she had to make do for now. When she was fifteen, her mother said, and Emily took comfort in the declining number of days as time passed slowly. She only had to wait until January, and that wasn't so far away.