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Elena.

Changing From the Inside, Out-03

I picked up the mirror I had dropped in surprise and reluctantly looked at it again. My eyes were completely dilated, so my eyes were ink black. My skin was chalky, like all the blood from me had been drained. I touched my face with my free hand in disbelief. My face seemed the same, but there was something so different about it. My cheekbones seemed sharper, the little roundness I had left in my face from childhood was gone. Mom hugged me, but i hardly felt her. I stammered until audible words escaped from my cracked lips.

"What...thing do I have? I asked, handing her back the mirror with my shaky and sickly pale hand. "Sweetie, you know I can't give you the answer to that, well not an answer that will necessarily make sense to you. You'll have to wait for Friday."

"And wait for the people that were supposed to come in the first place? This can't just be by coincidence..."I stared at her with suspicion and she looked away and stared at the neon red numbers on my alarm clock. I waited for her answer but she shrugged and said that it was a coincidence, and that it was a sign that everything was going to be okay. She told me it would be better if I didn't leave my room and if I did, it would have to leave at night, for my eyes and skin were sensitive to light. She asked if I needed anything from the kitchen, I shook my head, so she left and closed the door behind her.

Cassandra had a killer sleeping disorder, so I knew she would be up this late. I went over to the phone to call her, but to my surprise there was no dial tone. I pushed the receiver again and again but there was no dial tone. I looked at the back of the phone and I couldn't believe me eyes. The wire that was connected to the phone had been cut. The phone had worked before that day, and I was sure my mom wouldn't cut it, would she? She would have had time while I took a shower though.

I gave up suddenly, I started feeling nauseous again, probably from whatever I had. I crawled into my bed again, closed my eyes and drifted into a very deep sleep.

My eyes shot open from the pain of a horrible headache. Instead of it being extremely cold like it was before, it was maddeningly hot. It felt as if my flesh was peeling off, but as I felt my head, all I could feel were beads of sweat running down my smooth but pallid face. I realized just then that as soon as I had woken up I'd been groaning in pain, which had woken my mom up because she was now pounding on the door I'd locked by habit.

I heaved myself up from bed feeling as if I weighed 1000 pounds and finally let my mom in. She had a solid colored plastic orange bottle with her. I tried to turn on my headstand light, but she gently pushed my hand away. I was in too much pain to ask what it was or to even protest as she gave me the liquid.

It tasted amazingly, and the word 'amazingly' or any other word would have been an understatement. It didn't smell like anything, but I was sure It wasn't water. The density of it made it go pleasantly and smoothly down my throat. I left a warming sensation and then a cold sensation afterwards. I didn't know what the liquid looked like because the bottle concealed it, but I think I got an idea when I got some on my finger after wiping my mouth.

To me, it looked black with a hint of red in the almost-pitch-black room. It must have been some other color...but it was too dark to see. I licked the liquid from my finger that I had studied and about an hour later, my mom had left without a word after I'd slowly finished the liquid. I didn't feel as weak, and the headache was almost gone, hardly there. I must had fallen asleep because the next thing I know I heard birds chirping outside. I felt refreshed, better than ever, better than before this whole thing happened.

I got up from bed with the intentions of brushing my teeth, but I stopped, frozen because to my surprise, my mom had placed the mirror back up in the bathroom. I realized just then that the mirror had never needed 'fixing', but she'd just wanted to be there beforehand to warn me of what I now looked like, and now that she had, she'd put the mirror back.
What would I look like now? Better? Worse? Well there was only way to find out...I held that thought as strongly as I could as I slowly walked up to my small bathroom and looked up from my sink to look at my reflection.

My skin was back to its normal, to its nowhere-near-as-pale color, my eyes were gray again, everything seemed to be itself again. It felt as if the whole thing had been a horrid nightmare. I knew Mom wasn't home because she was at work. I was supposed to start working in the summer at the local mall.

I felt normal so I left my room, which wasn't protected from sunlight. The sunlight felt comforting and welcoming as it flooded our apartment and it touched my skin. The sun was very bright so it was about noon. I was at home on a school day all by myself so I decided to watch movies until I was interrupted by a phone call. "Hello?" I said, as I paused the movie.

"Hey! How are you feeling?" Max said in a cheery voice. "Cassie told me you fainted in class yesterday." I hardly knew him, all I knew was that he sat by me in class, not the class I fainted in obviously."Yeah, I'm fine thanks..." I said awkwardly.

Max noticed this so he was quick to explain that he'd asked Cassandra for my phone number so he could see how I was doing. "Well thanks for calling, I haven't talked to anyone all day." I turned off the TV just then because I knew that more calls would surely flood in right about now.

"So what do you have?" Gee, he just had to go right to the point, didn't he?

"The doctors at the hospital won't get the results of the tests I took, but they think I may have Anemia." I lied, remembering that even I wasn't sure what I had, but I surely wanted to clean up any rumors that could start to spread, because I knew high school students need to have an answer to everything and if they didn't, they'll fabricate it themselves no matter how crazy it could sound. For all I knew, they could think I was pregnant, despite my great reputation and no existing boyfriend. I really needed to go back to school to clear everything up before it was too late.

"So I'm guessing you're not coming back tomorrow, are you?" He believed what I'd told him, he believed me.This was one of the things I hated about myself: I was a great liar.

"I might, I mean I feel fine right now and I got some medication."

We said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone. A couple more people in my classes, which included my friends called that afternoon, and I pretty much told everyone that I had the same thing, Anemia.