I was dead. I was sure of it. I was sure that I had just died by some rando sneaking into my house and making me do unnecessary homework.

I didn't know much about what it was like to die, other than you had to experience it to really know what it's like. Everything was just black. No sound, no scents, I felt nothing. It was like I was floating in an abyss.

I then saw a face. It was hard to make out, but it was definitely someone's face. Someone I knew. Maybe they hadn't fully killed me yet. Maybe they just drugged me and were kidnapping me.I tried to make out the face.

Gray eyes. I could see that for sure. Whoever they were, they had gray eyes. I couldn't remember anyone with gray eyes. The face was slowly zooming out, but it didn't help me decipher who it was. It was like viewing or watching a video with the lowest quality. Blurry, and all you could see were the basic colours. Whoever it was had black hair, too.

I still didn't recall anyone with black hair or gray eyes. It should've been easy, since gray eyes were pretty rare. There was a maximum of one person that could possibly have gray eyes in my tiny little town.

I waited until it was fully zoomed out. I was getting frustrated. The quality hadn't risen a bit. It brought back memories of eye exams, where I couldn't read or make out any of the words or pictures that were shown to me. I had only been set free from my glasses a couple months ago, and I wasn't too eager to remember them.

I noticed that the quality was slowly but surely rising. I excitedly waited. I then noticed the image was changing, a background forming and the person becoming smaller. I watched as it became a sorta or video recording of a little girl with black hair and gray eyes talking to another little kid who looked a bit like me.

Actually, a lot like me. I looked closer. It was me. The same blonde hair, the same birthmarks, the same old glasses. My first ever pair of glasses! They were black and pink-purple, with little butterflies on the sides. I remembered when I first got those glasses.

I didn't recognize the other girl, though. I could faintly hear audio playing, and listened as closely as I could.

"No, Eric!" Gray eyes exclaimed. "White is a colour! Right Mi?"

"Yeah!" Little me agreed. "If it wasn't a colour, there wouldn't be a whole entire crayon for it!" I looked pretty smug after bringing up that point.

"No! It's not a colour! My auntie is a real life artist and she told me it wasn't!" 'Eric' exclaimed.

"Yeah! A real life artist!" Another kid protested.

"Your auntie is lying, then!" Gray eyes retorted. A collective gasp was heard from the surrounding toddlers. Accusing someone of lying was equivalent to giving someone the middle finger back then.

"No she's not! She even showed me some of her drawings!" Eric replied.

The rest of the argument drifted off from if white was a colour to a bunch of random topics, as most conversations do. I sighed. Memories.

I remembered that someone had said something about if fighting with some kids in kindergarten if white was a colour. But the memory of who it was escaped me, much like why I was being shown the memory.

I was surprised to see another memory slowly fading into view as the other faded away. It pictured Gray eyes and Little me with tiny whiteboards and markers, drawing squiggles on whiteboards. I watched as we switched whiteboards and looked at them thoughtfully. In unison, Little me and Gray eyes began scribbling on their whiteboards.

After a few minutes, we both held up our whiteboards. We had both drawn the same thing! Our whiteboards both contained poorly drawn cats, although Gray eyes' cat was slightly less poorly drawn. I had this weird feeling that told me that Gray eyes was always the better artist between the two of us. Weird.

The memory gradually faded to black as a new one appeared in front of my eyes. In this one, Gray eyes and I were sitting next to each other while the teacher tried her best to teach us simple addition. Little me poked Gray eyes' shoulder. Gray eyes poked back. We started to poke each other for around 5 minutes until I accidently poked the person in front of me instead of Gray eyes.

The kid in front of Little me poked the person next to them, and thus the cycle continued. Gray eyes and Little me kept poking each other and quietly giggling, not even realizing that others were poking their friends as well.

The teacher looked back from her lesson to see a conga line of toddlers poking each other. I could only imagine what the hell she was thinking back then. Gray eyes and I were blissfully unaware that the teacher was asking who had started the poking war. The blame train rode along the tracks smoothly until it came to an abrupt stop at Gray eyes and I.

"Miri Sof and Lyra Kelly, do you have any explanation for this?" The teacher questioned.

Lyra Kelly. Lyra Kelly. That was her. I really did know her. I couldn't believe it. I almost refused to. I was so sure that I'd never met her, but boom, there she was, with me. I didn't know what to do. I didn't think I could do anything but think. I focused my mind on watching the memory fade away, and becoming extremely disappointed when no memory faded in to replace it.

I had to know more. My mind couldn't leave me at such a huge cliffhanger. I already hated it when books and movies ended in cliffhangers, and now it was a million times worse, now that I was experiencing the cliffhanger.

I waited and waited for a new memory to come fading in, but none came. It wasn't fair for my brain to show me three memories and then not show me anymore. I floated there, in the empty abyss for what seemed like eternity.

Until I opened my eyes. At least, I thought I did. Everything was still as dark as before, but I could suddenly feel things, like my Ipod, which was right next to where I lay on the carpeted floor of what I assumed was my room.

I felt around the room. Boxes, random clothes, pieces of paper randomly strewn about. Yep, my room. I reached directly forward and felt a wall. I felt all around the wall until I could feel a couple little bumps. I pushed the wall and was amazed (not really) to learn that the wall was not a wall, and was in fact, a door.

I pushed harder on the door until I opened it. I tumbled onto the ground of my room, Ipod in hand. I then realized my eyes hadn't adjusted to the brightness. I squinted as I got onto my knees and looked around my room. Almost nothing had changed, except for the faint smell of mint now lingering and a new piece of paper on my desk.

I managed to get on my feet somehow, and waddled over to my desk to inspect said piece of paper. It was a blue sticky note, with little cut out letters glued on it. On further inspection, I figured out that it was my handwriting that the letters were written in, and that the letters given were E,P,L,M,H, and E, in that order.

I studied them for around five minutes until I figured it out. I unscrambled the message to read HELP ME. Oh, Geez.

I was unsettled, to say the least. After the experience I had just had, I was in a state of shock, sort of. I had just gotten blackmailed to do an essay on some dead girls from the 80s', then knocked out for who knows how long. Just a typical day in the life of Miri, eh?

I checked my Ipod to see if my Internet was back, and to my surprise, it was. Whoever it was that broke in must've at least been considerate enough to turn my Internet back on after they knocked me out. How nice.

I had been logged out of the texting app for some reason. I didn't understand why the criminal did that, since all it did was take me 30 extra seconds to reach Chris. I looked at our chat and saw that I had 50 unread messages. I scrolled down, trying to go through the messages as fast as possible. Most of them were just panicked texts that consisted of him saying my name in a variety of different ways.

I reached the bottom of the conversation, reading that the most recent text was two minutes ago. It was the same as the others, though, so I gathered that not much had changed with Chris.

Mirror: chris?

CompleteLoser: miri!! it's been 4 hours!! Why haven't you answered my texts?

Mirror: dude, long story. more importantly, are you okay?

CompleteLoser: yeah?? still, miri, what happened?

Mirror: I

Mirror: I'll tell you at school

CompleteLoser: fiine

Mirror: I'm gonna go,, take a break for now

I turned off m6 Ipod and took a moment to assess my current situation. In the span of around one week I had (kinda) reconnected with an old friend, accused said friend of not being real, found out about a kidnapping, had my life threatened, forced to help a criminal with their homework on some famous kids from the 80s', knocked out, and had some weird dreams about my past which just so happened to reveal that I knew the girl who went missing.

Geez. This type of stuff is what you'd probably find in some very messed up fictional novels written by children, huh?

But, something still didn't add up. I had very obviously known and been close to Lyra when I was little, so why didn't I remember anything about her at all? Even if I hadn't seen her since kindergarten, hearing her name a million times should've rung at least one bell.

Something was definitely off with that. My memory couldn't have been that bad, could it? I pondered that for a minute. Maybe it was. When had I last seen Lyra? I couldn't recall anything, still, so I asked Chris.

Mirror: do you know the last time I've talked to Lyra?

CompleteLoser: uhh, a couple days before she went missing

CompleteLoser: why are you asking?

Mirror: to help ease my thoughts

CompleteLoser:?? what's going on?

I didn't reply. My memory was not that bad, I knew that for sure. Something or someone had cleared all my memories of Lyra from my mind, for some reason. I didn't know if I should tell Chris about it or not. I didn't do it, since I didn't think he could handle the stress after what happened in the past few days.

Mirror: nothing, dw

I switched off my Ipod before he could respond. I jumped a little when I heard the front door opening from downstairs and someone coming in. I immediately assumed that the criminal had came back for more and ran back into my closet.

I was relieved and slightly embarrassed hear my mom's voice calling for me.

"Miri?" She called. I creeped out my closet warily.

"Yeah?" I replied, my voice louder than I wanted it to be.

"I'm back from work ," My mom stated simply.

"..Cool." I responded, ending the conversation there.

"Sorry I'm late.. There was a traffic jam for some reason." My mom said, resurrecting the conversation.

"Oh really?" I asked.

"Yeah, it was weird, since there usually aren't many people on the road on Sundays,"

"Mhm."

I looked at my comfy bed longingly. All I wanted to do was take a nice long nap after what had happened. So, I did.