Mirror, Mirror | ✓

•Day 6• Ava

❝What a shame that the girl who once believed in fairytales and magic had to be struck by reality with demons in her mind and the fear of never being loved.❞
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I smiled as I looked out my window. It was raining; Holly's favorite type of day. Will didn't have as much time with her as he used to, so it made me happy when the few days he did have with her went as wonderfully as possible. However, I knew that not all days would go just as well. When I'd gone over to Holly's house to check if she was around, her dad had informed me that her sister, Eve, was coming home the following weekend. I couldn't help but feel utterly disappointed. 'Hate' was a strong word but it was the only thing that could describe what I felt towards Eve. 

She was a pain, really. She had no compassion, no understanding of anyone but herself and hated it when anyone showed her sister attention. Her reasoning was always that she felt she didn't belong in the family because there was so much time spent on caring for Holly. It wasn't too much of a surprise when she'd announced she was moving away for college. I'd never known her when she lived here, so that was a blessing in itself. The few times she'd come over were a disaster, though. 

I picked up my phone and decided to call Ted, after much contemplation. After all, he was one of my best friends, and it wasn't like I had anything else to do while Holly and Will were on their date. 

He picked up after a few rings, and I couldn't help but feel nervous. Will had started full-fledged shipping us and it had led to more than one embarrassing encounter. I genuinely hated when he did that. It made us awkward around each other, not in the least more romantically inclined or whatever the hell Will thought he was helping with. "Hey, Av!" Ted said chirpily, and I smiled despite myself. I loved that he was trying to reduce the tension between us. It helped me confirm that the need to save our friendship was mutual.

"Ted! You free? Will and Holly are on a date and I thought it'd be nice to do something too so that they wouldn't be the only ones out having fun all the time. What do you say?" I sounded a tad bit overenthusiastic. Or maybe that was just my mind telling me that so that I'd feel even more insecure about myself. I hoped he didn't sense anything out of place. 

"I....uh.... I'm kind of busy at the moment. Um, maybe another time?" He sounded so nervous I wanted to jump off a cliff then and there to hide my embarrassment. It was clear he was preoccupied with something way more important. Or someone. 

"Oh, that's alright. Never mind. Sorry to bother you." I spoke in a monotone that clearly suggested I was annoyed. I cringed at my words. I hated how one moment I could camouflage my emotions so well and the next I appeared so goddamn obvious. It really was unfair. 

"I'm sorry, Av," he said, and I cut the phone. I didn't know why I was so bothered by this. I wasn't going to behave like those stereotypical girls who denied their feelings for a guy until the moment he told her he liked her, but I also knew I didn't really have feelings for Ted either. Or maybe I did, but I didn't want to. I knew he wouldn't like me back. All his exes had been magazine-cover beautiful, had cute and feminine laughs and were popular. He did dump them- like that was some sort of confidence booster- but at the end it all boiled down to one fact: I wasn't his type. 

I hated feelings, honestly. I believed that if I could go on denying them, eventually they'd just vanish. It wasn't helping matters that Will was an idiot. As long as he kept leaving us alone on purpose and making snide remarks when we were together, I wasn't going to get over Ted. But I really needed to if he was going to keep ditching me for dates or whatever else that was so much more important to him than hanging out with me. Yes, I was wholly aware that I sounded like a girl desperate for attention, and that's why I never told anyone what I thought. It was better to keep to myself than being judged all the time.

After minutes of being left to my own thoughts, I scrolled through my contacts list, looking for a distraction. In the end, I called Riley, whom I didn't know very well, but wanted to know better. She was Elody's best friend, and, as Ted and I had discussed earlier, it was probably best to befriend Holly's splits' friends too if we wanted to get closer to her. So that's what I was going to do. 

"Ava?" Riley's voice came through the phone. "Hey, Riley. Yeah, this is Ava. I was just wondering if you... maybe wanted to hang out?" 

She hesitated a split-second. I didn't blame her, though. I would've done the same if a random girl I said hi to in the halls called and asked if we could hang out. It simply was uncommon.
"Hey- that'd be great! You can come on over here if you'd like." She sounded as if we were best friends and this happened on a daily basis. I appreciated her effort to make me comfortable.

Twenty minutes later we were at her house, chatting as if we'd been friends for years. It was funny, really, how Elody and Holly chose best friends quite alike to one another. And just as I'd thought the first minute I'd talked to her on the phone, Riley was a tension-reducer. She was a ray of sunshine. I found myself feeling so happy and relieved of all my worries with Ted just by being around her.

"I guess it's just difficult when I see her around people I've never really talked to before, and when she looks at me like I'm a stranger she passes in the halls," Riley said, putting her heads in her hands for a second. I nodded, shifting my mind back to conversation at hand. I could relate to her on a whole other level, looks like.

"I understand that so well. You end up feeling so useless. No matter how much you were there for her, say, the day before, she doesn't remember."

She looked up at me. "But I guess it's a slight bit better for you, since you're best friends with Alora, Daisy and Holly. I've just got Elody, so I barely get to see her, what, once a week?" She said exasperatedly. I gave her a sympathetic side hug. Again, something I rarely ever did, yet I found myself gladly doing for someone I'd only just met. Riley was different. Or maybe it was me who was different around her.

"You know what? Maybe I could introduce you to the splits. Or the dwarves, as I like to call them."
She gave me a questioning glance, but didn't bother to ask me about it. "That sounds amazing."
I smiled, then began to explain Will's plan and how Ted and I were helping him out.

"Starting tomorrow, then, you're going to be a part of Project Mirror, Mirror. I'm going to help you become friends with all of Holly's splits."

"Actually, that would be Elody's splits for me, since I haven't even met Holly yet." She laughed.
"This is pretty confusing, isn't it? So you in on the plan?" I asked, with an inviting smile.

She grinned. "There's no way I could say no."

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A/N Now you have officially met Riley. And hey- she and Ava totally hit it off!
Do you think their friendship is going to last forever, or is it too much of a break from normality for Ava to keep up with?
Comment your thoughts!