Katrina’s eyes avoid the looking glass Grandma gave her last year, silently begging it to stop tormenting her. The mirror’s voice is relentless. All day, every day. Mocking her, insulting her, telling her she’s worthless. Katrina shoves the mirror under her mattress, hoping the voice dies down. It does not.

“You’re fat. And ugly. You have no future. No one will ever love you.”

Katrina’s shoulders slump, her hands hang limp, her chest falls. She longs to reach out to her mom and her friends, but after months of rejecting their offers of help, it seems pointless. Having been awake for three days, exhaustion creeps in. Mounds of dirty clothes carpet the floor, the scent of sweat and despair permeating her nostrils. Realizing there is no way out of this room, she succumbs to the mirror’s haunting voice and settles onto the bed. A sharp, snapping sound fills the air. Katrina lifts the mattress and pulls the broken mirror out.

“Oh!” she says to the mirror, her breath catching in her throat. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Breaking it wasn’t her intention, but she views its pieces as the tools she needs to finish things. Katrina picks up a shard of glass, then catches the reflection in the broken fragment: bottom lip raised slightly in an apologetic pout, the eyebrows lowered. Does the mirror share her sorrow?

Picking up more shards, Katrina repeats herself. “I’m sorry I hurt you.” And together, the reflections say, “Me too.”

It takes over two hours for Katrina to finish creating a mosaic with all of her broken pieces. She wipes her bleeding fingers on a dirty t-shirt from the floor and tosses it in the laundry basket. Katrina positions the mosaic on her dresser, propping it against the wall. Feeling a glimmer of hope, she picks up the phone to call home.