Pamela Rogers was born with a second set of eyelids that, when closed, allowed her to see through the eyes and hear the thoughts of the last person she touched. She dubbed this set of eyelids her Looking Glass. Despite possessing the ability to teleport into an individual's body in a split second, she used her Looking Glass for more mundane purposes: cheating on tests and finding out what her parents were getting her for Christmas or her birthday. She had never used it with revenge on her mind—couldn't find out anything worth using against the people she hated the most. She learned the secrets of individuals—like a boy who sat down to relieve himself or a girl whose obsessive crush on a fictional character had details better left to the imagination—but none of it inspired her to plot the downfall of her enemies. That is until she accidentally found herself observing the actions of the boy she hated the most: Josh Ross.
Pamela felt like the only student in her high school who saw Josh for the person he really was. However, she also understood their ignorance, for she, too, once thought Josh was a swell guy. He stepped up whenever the opportunity to become a leader came up in class, he always had a joke to tell, and he got along with everybody. Needless to say, he was one of the leading contenders for the most popular person in school; quite a feat in a school with around six hundred students. But as time dragged on, Pamela realized that Josh wasn't the character everybody boasted him to be. Her first insight into this revelation came during her year as a junior.
The Spanish teacher was out sick, so the carefree substitute took the class to one of the computer rooms and had them take lessons on a software program. It didn't take long before Pamela had grown bored of it and pretended to work while her ears shifted to the topic in the middle of the room.
Josh was showing students a video of a Bosnian woman tossing puppies into a river to James Turner, one of his closest friends. “That's so messed up,” said James Turner after seeing the video. Pamela expected Josh to agree with James, but his reaction stole Pamela's eyes from her computer monitor.
“I know,” Josh said with a cackle.
“What's so funny?” asked a girl.
“Watch this video,” Josh said.
After a minute, the girl replied, “That's so sad!”
Josh responded with another fit of laughter, this one louder and drawing the attention from more people in class. He showed two people for the third viewing, both girls, and one of them responded, “I feel so bad for them!”
After that, a small group huddled around Josh's phone as he replayed the video. Some of them heard what the video was about and wanted to check for themselves. By the time the video was over, the boys who had watched said something similar to James's comment while the girls were more sympathetic.
“Is that real?” one girl asked.
The answer she received was a stern, “What do you think?” from Josh, whose tone tacked you idiot on the end. Before that, he had been laughing like a madman, like some sort of sadistic psychopath who got off from watching the despair, and perhaps death, of others. And he did it every time the video played. Pamela guessed the parts in the video where a puppy splashed into the water by Josh's refreshed cackle. By the end, he couldn't control him as he doubled over, red in the face.
After that day, Pamela noticed more and more how selfish, sick, and egotistical Josh was. The event that sparked the fire of her hatred wasn't directly observed by her. It was something she heard from another student. Pamela didn't consider the story a fabrication since she had observed enough of Josh's behavior enough by then to have marked him the culprit if his name were withheld.
Every year, Pamela's Spanish teacher hosted a trip to a Hispanic country during spring break. The original destination was planned to be Spain. Josh, however, who wasn't even part of the group signed up for the trip, persuaded the students to fly to Puerto Rico.
The messenger to Pamela told the story neutrally, as if she were reading a newspaper article. But Pamela knew Josh's games well enough by then to know better than to think that he was helping the group. If death was one way the boy got his rush, then manipulating others might have made him feel as though he had the power to do anything. Pamela wished her Looking Glass could extend its reach to show others the real face beneath the mask of smiles and jokes that Josh donned in public. Come one day while in science class, Pamela would sprout an idea that didn't reveal Josh's true self to others but would rub a black mark on his reputation.
It was the day before when her idea was seeded without her knowledge or consent. She “accidentally” snared her foot on the desk of a boy named Lewis Saunders and caught herself on his arm while heading to the pencil sharpener to whet tips that could still write an essay or two before dwindling.
“Sorry,” she apologized to him.
Lewis said nothing and remained buried in his book, as though Pamela's trip were an interactive part of the story. That was one of the perks of using Lewis to cheat from: he didn't ask questions as to why she was such a clutz around him. Pamela couldn't tell if he didn't notice or didn't care, but the answer didn't matter. Lewis was one of the top three students in her grade, and he passed most assignments with no sweat. Like they were in his way of his reading time and the only way to make them go away was to complete them as fast and as soon as possible. Pamela cheated off of him ever since she entered high school, and the teachers were none the wiser.
When the bell rang, letting class out, Pamela strung her arms through her backpack straps and beelined towards the door. She had the handicap of sitting near the rear of the class, so thirty-something students plugged the door before she could dash out and to her next class. She stood off to the side, waiting for the congestion to clear when she noticed Josh edging the crowd with James.
Pamela shifted her eyes towards the doorway before her face contorted into a hateful leer without her permission. It was a habit she wasn't able to break and one she didn't notice until one female student once asked her, “Why are you always giving Josh nasty looks?”
“I do?” Pamela asked
“Yeah, you do. You hate him or something?”
“No, it's something I just do: give people nasty looks. Genetics, my mom tells me,” Pamela lied to dispel the girl's inquiring.
“Oh. Well, okay,” she said before leaving, but not before giving Pamela a suspicious look. Pamela later hacked into the girl's head and found her on occasion telling her friends how Pamela Rogers hates Josh with a burning passion. The conversations then turned to, “What's wrong with her? Josh is a great guy!” Since then, more than one person has consulted Pamela about her attitude towards Josh, which she dispels with the same lie of, “Oh, I look at everybody like that.” Some seemed content with that answer, but the girl who asked Pamela that question originally still gave her skeptical gazes.
To further squash the rumor, Pamela avoided looking at Josh at all. Whenever she caught herself glaring at him, even from the corner of her eye, she positioned her head or hand so that he was out of sight, out of mind. She planned on closing her eyes as Josh passed her on his way out of the class. When he entered her peripheral, she closed her outer eyelids. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
“You're so stupid!” James laughed.
Pamela's eyes jerked open as she stumbled to regain the balance she lost momentarily. She caught herself on one foot and checked to see who had tackled her. She drew her arm away lightning-fast when she saw that it was Josh who was knocked into her.
“Sorry,” Josh said through his laughter, and returned to James's side.
A burning sensation crawled up Pamela's arm, and she tried to rub it away on the back of her shirt. Josh wore celebrity-white teeth and walked into school with gleaming hair, so Pamela was sure that the boy showered everyday. But there was something about his touch that consumed Pamela's mind as though she had misophobia. Like if she didn't try to stave it now, she wouldn't have time to wash it off. After that, it'd be too late as a fungus used her arm as a foundation for a new home. It was silly and all psychological, Pamela knew, but the thought would persist until she scrubbed her arm clean.
Once the clog in the doorway had cleared, she bolted out of the room and to the nearest bathroom.624Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5ZnPUE2QOl
