Mirror on the Wardrobe, part 1

The front door opens. Kattie stomps through the threshold. With a bang the door slams shut. High School was a night mare. Kattie had sat, during lunch, at her usual table with her best friends. Nobody talked to her. When Kattie turned to her friend Trisha, sitting between Haley and Corinn, and asked if she wanted to get ice cream after school. Her best friend Trisha had glanced her way, looked down at the table and her food, picked up her piece of cafeteria pizza and took a bite. Her friends conversed around her about their day and what they were going to do after school. No one made eye contact. No one talked to her.
"Why are they acting like this? What did I do?"
Kattie was clueless. To Kattie life was supposed to be peaceful, hopeful and full of possibility. She was raised to love nature and enjoy the little blessings. Kattie was direct and always spoke what she honestly felt, to a point. Katties social-eye-sight was blind to the subtleties of teenage drama. Not understanding why or what the meaning of all her friends ignoring her was about, she picked up her lunch, stuffed it back into the paper bag, threw her back pack over her shoulder and went to the library. A few chuckles and whispers sounded between a few of the girls sitting at the table. Kattie didn't look back.
Kattie pulled the door of the library open and a cool breeze hit her hot face. Mrs Andersen greeting her, "Good afternoon, Kattie".
"Thanks, Mrs Andersen"
Kattie slipped down into one of the empty couches by the Mrs. Andersen's desk. She pulled out her sandwich and a book. Kattie began to read. Here was a safe harbor, where she weathered the storm of emotions that was brewing. The storm had to hold off for three more periods till she could run home to safety. The high sea adventure of Ishmael in the pursuit of the white whale would be her company for the remainder of her lunch time.
After the fullfilling slam of the front door, Kattie threw her back pack on the floor of the landing. The backpack slid a little and with a thud the three large text books inside her hit the wall and the door frame that met in the corner of the landing. Stomp, Stomp, Stomp, taking the stairs two at a time she was in the living room. A few more stomps to the left and down the hall, through her open doorway, brought her to her bed.
A belly-flop onto her bed with her face firmly planted into her pillow. She screamed as loud as she could. No one was home. No one would be home for hours. Even then her mom and dad and sister were all distracted with their own lives and the struggles within or between each other. No one would know that she drenched her pillow with her tears. All she wanted was to escape. To find a place of peace to hide in, like she did when she was little and would crawl into a small corner of her closest, under all her clothes that use to hang in there.
Kattie sobbed. She sobbed till she ran out of the ability to breathe fresh air through her soaked pillow. She turned her head to the left. She saw her reflection in the mirror that hung on the door of an old wardrobe that some family friends had given her. Her face was not her own, she felt. Her eyes seemed to be planted in the middle of a semi-ripe tomato. Her face totally red and poofy from crying.
Kattie took three huge breaths. She sat up on her bed and looked closely at the mirror. The family friends that given Kattie the wardrobe were a couple, Stan and Tully. Tully told her that this wardrobe was a family heirloom and had survived some of the hardest endeavors in history: the Oregon trail, a move from Oregon to California by wagon and train. Tully believed, but wasn't sure, that it had been made in Europe and brought over by boat early in the history of the United States. Remaining in Tully's family ever since. Tully whispered to her before she and Stan left, when they dropped off the wardrobe:
"This is going to be a special place for you when you really need it, Kattie."
Tully was in the early stages of dementia. Sometimes she would relive or repeat things that had happened in her lifetime. So Kattie just hugged Tully and said "Thank you" for the wardrobe. Kattie just assumed that this was something Tully had been told when she moved in to her first house or an event like that.
A chill went up Kattie's spine. Maybe what Tully had told her wasn't a "dementia expert". There was an odd shimmer to the mirror. Kattie watched her reflection in the mirror as the surface had slowly lost the crisp reflection and had become wavy like looking into the surface of the still water of a pool before jumping in. She could see her reflection still but it had a ripple to it. She slid off her bed. Nervously- curious, she walked toward the mirror. Putting her hands on the oak of the wardrobe door, at both sides of the mirror as if she was going to do a push-up, Kattie lowered her face till it was inches from the surface of the mirror. She looked deep into the eyes of herself staring back. Behind her the eyes of her reflection, she could make out a faint glimmering, moving picture. Like a movie made in the painting style of Monet, soft and gentle.
Kattie opened the door of the wardrobe. Her clothes were hanging where she hung them on the rod inside and folded and placed on the shelves. Nothing was disturbed. Kattie examined the door of the wardrobe and the oak looked as it did when she and her mom had put it together. There was an odd design that had been burned into it but after watching so many episode of the "Antique Road Show", Kattie just thought that the emblem was the makers stamp.
Kattie shut the wardrobe door. The surface of the mirror rippling as the door closed like a pebble into water. Kattie felt drawn to this mirror. Like there was something only she could find. Something that was uniquely hers. She looked closely back at the mirror. The picture deep within her reflection seemed cheerful and light. It seemed warm and with dark and light shades of green like an expanse of a meadow lined by a forest, maybe. There seemed to be movement like wind blowing through this meadow and jostling the trees. There was a soft glow of sun to the scene. It actually felt like there was warmth coming from the mirror. However, this could be the light reflecting from the surface.
"Maybe with so much crying I'm hallucinating." Katie thought to herself with an air of doubt in the validity of what she was thinking.
There was only one thing to do. Kattie peeled her sweaty palms from the oak door and pointed her finger at the surface of the mirror. Kattie expected her finger to touch the surface of the mirror. She moved her finger toward the surface of the mirror.
Her first knuckle disappeared into the pool of shining silver. Ripples like water radiating out from her finger. It felt cool. It felt like water. She wasn't afraid. Startled, an eek escaped from her lips. She jumped from the mirror with surprise. Her mind running wild, even more fascinated than before. Her finger had gone into the mirror. Past the surface
"Okay, now what?"
Kattie drew a deep breathe. She stepped up to the mirror. She plunged her whole hand into the mirror. While her hand was in the mirror, she opened the wardrobe door. Her hand was not on the other side, but she could feel something soft, warm, like a blanket or a sweater. She pulled her hand out and rubbed it. She looked at it. She was only a freshman in high school.
"I don't know what just happened and even if I had the words to explain, no one is going to believe me." Kattie said out loud to the room.
She looked at her hand and looked at the mirror. Even though this was beyond odd. Maybe even hysterically unbelievable and inexpiable. Kattie knew what she was going to have to do. She looked at the mirror. lifting her leg as if she was going to step through the threshold of a door. She closed her eyes. She pushed forward. Her foot disappearing into the mirror, hit a solid surface, on the other side. She leaned forward and went through the cool silver pool. The surface of the mirror rippling and jostling with a viscosity of tomato soup. Her body shivering as it does with that first dive into a pool on a warm day.