Ten of Me ✓

One

A/N: Hey guys!  Some of you may recognize this book—if you've been here since I first created an account, you'll know that this was one of my first pieces on Wattpad.  I took it down to query, but as I'm now pursuing another round of edits and won't be querying much in the near future, I figured I'd share it with you all again!  Be sure to leave your thoughts :)

NICOLE

Mirrors are funny things.

Sometimes you look in them, and you're happy with what you see. Other times, when you're sad or hurt or upset, and you're staring into them, all you can see is what's wrong.

I have to admit, when I looked into my mirror on April 3, I was the first. Something about today felt different, like something amazing would happen if only I kept telling myself that it would.

I carefully layered on my mascara, blinking slowly and steadily as I watched the makeup adhere to my lashes. The sun was streaming in through the shutters in my huge bedroom, and cheerful pop music was streaming from my speaker. Anything could happen.

As I was trying to fix a spot where my mascara had clumped, one of my eyelashes fell off and clung to my index finger. I brought it up to my eye, studying it. Without a second thought, my eyelids shut. I wish Noah Murdock will ask me out today.

I blew as hard as I could, but the stupid eyelash had mascara all stuck to it and wasn't coming off my finger. Eventually, I flicked it off, rolling my eyes as it fluttered off to who-knew-where. A glance at the clock, and I saw I was running late for school.

Maybe today won't be as amazing as I thought.

*

School was always the same: nothing good, nothing bad, a careful navigation between good and bad grades and between popular and unpopular. I guessed that was me: mediocre at everything. Never great, but never awful, either.

It wasn't like I didn't have friends--I did. A lot of them. And it wasn't like my grades were suffering, either. I was just always so in the middle, never the person I really wanted to be. I wondered vaguely if I should have wished to be a different person instead of for Noah Murdock this morning. A body and personality transplant for a day would be so fun, so freeing; I could be anyone I wanted to be, if only for twenty-four hours.

Unfortunately, when you're an eleventh grader and you're running late for English, you can't exactly focus on could-be's and might-have-been's. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and headed into the classroom, taking my normal seat in the middle of the classroom and flipping through my notebook with averagely detailed notes and okay grades.

I was sick of just being that fiftieth percentile in everything.

"All right, guys, go on and pass your essays forward. Make sure all your prewriting and outlining is stapled together in the order I have described on the board." Mrs. Coale was pacing the room, watching as the students obediently began pulling out their thick packets of essays out from their folders. I slid mine out and began rifting through all of my research, notes, pointless rough drafts, and edits. Two seats over, Noah was paper clipping his packet and slapping it down onto his desk--it looked very thin.

The thing about Noah, though, was that nobody cared how long his essays were or how many questions he'd skipped on his math test, because he already had a full ride to college just for lacrosse, which he was evidently very good at.

As the class lethargically continued sorting through its essays, Mrs. Coale took attendance, her fingers moving fast across her keyboard as she marked us all present. I glanced to my left and was surprised to see that my best friend, Morgan, had actually decided to come to class today instead of skipping.