DARK BEFORE DAWN

A story by THERESA CORELLA

I remember, when I was just past a stone's throw from adolescence, watching myself in the round mirror above my dresser, and asking in words like these: "Are you a mirror? Are you a kind of transparent wall? Are you me? or somebody else that I am?" And I remember thinking that maybe in the mirror I was in a place by itself. My better side maybe. When I turned the lights off all that stayed of this isolated world was the reflecti on from the window of a crescent moon and its scintillating subordinates splashed on the black surface like frozen sparks. And how else does one, just passing adolescence, think when bound in a place smaller than he feels?

For hours I tossed in my bed trying to sleep; trying not to watch the stars in my dark mirror. I tossed and turned making a shambles of the bed poor Mrs. Murphy had so carefully made up for me that morning. Dear Mrs. Murphy who cared for me like a daughter even though she had her own. I had been renting the extra room downstairs. She and her daughter Peggy slept upstairs.

First it was friendship with Peg. But how do you ignore it when it becomes so much stronger and deeper and more important than friendship that you would give your life to preserve it? Peg felt that way too. Peg was a year or two younger than I. At that age a year or two seems to make a lot of difference; you feel...well...sort of protective and maybe you think you're wiser. Anyway I had told Peg I didn't think we should see each other so much anymore; that it was better each of us made new friends. Despite our efforts our need for each other seemed undeniable. over a month now and I had still been trying to make Peg see that we shouldn't let ourselves get the best of us. (Whatever was meant by that.) That month I went out with Andy almost every night.

It was

At three-thirty, on the luminous dial of my clock, I got up and dressed in the dark, What was the use trying some thing

8