Rebirth

Heavy with sleep, my eyes crept open. As my senses wai ned, I became aware of a heavy weight bearing down on me, smothering and tight. It was as if my whole body had been caught in a thick, heavy fog; movement was very difficult, like breathing. My vision would not clear, no matter how many times I blinked. The stale, metallic tang of antiseptic stung my nose, confirming my suspicions. I was in a hospital.

The only sound to break the eerie silence was the rhythmic beeping of machinery, accompanied every now and then by the soft shuffle of nurses outside the door. Still, no one came in. I lay there, my body aching all over, every joint stiff, as if I'd been lying there for days. Fragments of my last moments flashed behind my eyelids: Liam, my boyfriend, with my best friend; the betrayal, the pain that had strangled me enough to get into my car and crash it. The rain, the screeching of tires. and then nothing. But where was he?

The one person I needed beside me at that moment. The only one who knew me better than anybody else. He was the only person I thought I could have always relied upon; he must have been contacted by now. Do hospitals not call their loved ones when somebody meets an accident? Even if he doesn't love me anymore, shouldn't he have been here, pretending to care? Uncertainty and fear crept into my mind and joined the physical pain I was going through. A wave of abandonment and betrayal suddenly brushed through my body, leaving me in that cold and sterile hospital room more alone than ever. In a last-ditch search, my desperate eyes raked over every inch of that space for one speck of hope, some sign I was not at all alone in that deserted room.

The heavy curtains closed out whatever natural light there was, and the outlook within the room was grim and unsure. I strained my ears to catch any sound, but all I could hear was the regular ticking of the wall clock, marking the passage of every second with a strange regularity. And nobody came to comfort and explain anything to me, even after my inquisitive stare and sharp senses. Indeed, all this was like being abandoned in that desolate closed room. Time stood still as I lay there; it passed like the flowing of a river that has sluggish movement.

My body felt so heavy and weak, full of me on every inch, as if all my life had been squeezed out of me. My mind was foggy, and everything was so unclear-I couldn't seem to catch my bearing on what was happening or going on. It was silent in that room, and it drowned me further into confusion and sorrow. I knew I couldn't stay in bed much longer, so with every ounce of strength, I made an effort to move. Every slight movement my body would protest, but I insisted. Finally, after managing to swing my legs over the side of the bed, I took a few stumbling steps toward the bathroom. It seemed like it took forever to get to the bathroom; every step was like an act of will. But I refused to give in. I had to move ahead, no matter how difficult that seemed. My bare feet hit the icy tiles in a shock. I stumbled on toward the mirror and caught a glimpse of my reflection. And it wasn't my face that stared back at me.

I was frozen. The girl in the mirror had a girly face, not the twenty-something woman that I knew. Her dark hair fell softly around her pale face in waves, and her eyes so large and expressive held a sadness that seemed too old for her years. She looked exactly like Elizabeth Brown of Daisy Lover's Quest.

I shook my head, blinking rapidly, clearing away the fog in my head. It must be drugs. I'd hit my head in the accident, right? Perhaps it was just some sort of wild, vivid hallucination, a product of my obsession with the book. That was what it was.

But as the minutes ticked by, the girl in the mirror didn't change. She stared back at me wide-eyed and terrified, her eyes reflecting my very own disbelief.

"No," I whispered. My fingers wrapped around the edge of the sink, feeling the cold porcelain beneath my fingers. "This can't be real.

I had doused my face with water, hoping the shock could restore me to reality. But when I looked up again, she was still there. The resemblance was uncanny.

Elizabeth Brown, the villainess whom I admired, misconceived by every other person in the story, was standing before me-except it was me. I looked just like her. No, I was her.

I stumbled backward, my heart racing. "This can't be happening…"

I was in denial and slept that night. Every time I tried to sleep, I woke up hoping to see my own reflection, but Elizabeth's face stared back at me each time. My body was trembling from exhaustion and fear by morning.

As the doctor finally entered, my heart skipped a beat.

"Ms. Brown, how are you feeling?

My breath caught in my throat. I opened my mouth to correct him, words catching in my throat. It hit me like a tidal wave. I wasn't Lily anymore. I was Elizabeth Brown, right in the middle of the part of the book where things began spiraling out of control.

This was the moment when everything started to go wrong for Elizabeth. The rumors had just begun-that she had tried to kill her perfect, beloved sister Daisy by pushing her in front of a car. In reality, Elizabeth had saved Daisy, pushing her out of harm's way, only to be hit by the car herself. But no one would believe her. This is where her isolation began, where the world turned against her.

A pit formed in my stomach as I realized what was coming. Elizabeth's life was about to become a nightmare. And now it was my life too.

The hospital discharged me after a few days. I wasn't allowed to sit with my family any longer—Elizabeth's family, I corrected myself. Daisy sat at the center of the table, shining like a star, while I was made to eat alone, a pariah in my own home. Not one of them looked in my direction as I passed through the halls, disgust palpable.

Then came school. I should have expected the staring, the whispering, but somehow it still hurt to my core. Liam, the boy with whom Elizabeth—and now I—shared a secret crush, looked utterly disgusted at me. I could feel the hate in his eyes: to him, I was a monster, different from everyone else.

I tried not to let it hurt, to remind myself that this was Elizabeth's life, her burden. Yet the lines between us began to blur. Every mean word, every shove in the hallways, every snide remark in class worked its way deeper into me. I felt her pain, her loneliness, and it was as if it were my own.

The teachers weren't an exception, either: they would treat me as a criminal, as if I had practically killed my own sister. They did not allow me to participate in group activities, and day after day, it would get even colder and more hostile in the classroom. I just could not stand this moral pressure anymore. I had turned out to be the bad guy in this story, the most hated outcast for everybody, and I saw no end to it.

I came home to maids grudgingly recognizing mine; the adoptive parents also looked at me with disgust veiled behind a layer of pretense. Once, I had thought maybe being reborn into a different world would be an escape, but this was prison: living Elizabeth's life, having to live her nightmares-and it was much too real.

Days became weeks, and I just felt myself sink deeper into despair. Whereas my vision had cleared like water, it now began to blur around the edges. Elizabeth, in the original story, was blind, but I hadn't expected that feeling to start working its way into my body. It terrified me.

I endured the torment for three months: day in, day out, fighting just to survive and cling to a modicum of hope. But as my sight continued to deteriorate, the abuse beating me down, I knew I had to find a way out of this life. I wasn't Elizabeth, not really. I was Lily, and I was better than this.

How might I ever have run away from a world in which everyone detested me? How might I have ever changed a story that had already been written?