I am alone. I am pinned to a wall. I cannot move, I cannot speak. I never have. All I can do, is watch. I watch, and I think about the things I’ve watched. I love, too, I think. I wonder if I have ever been loved back. I don’t think I have, because if I had then why would she leave me? I wonder if I am capable of being loved.

I believe I was born of a box in a home store, before I was taken to this sage green room, and hung on this wall by a tall man. A girl was watching. She was young then, with golden ringlets framing her pale face, wet lips, and leaking, brown, gold-speckled eyes. She was crying because the clouds were crying, she said, and she could not play outside. But then she looked at me with her curious eyes and was suddenly not so sad. She pulled a perfect ringlet down with her finger, and as it bounced back a giggle poured out of her. I wondered if it was I who delighted her. I thought it must be so, because she hid behind the man’s leg, and when she peeked out at me the room was illuminated by her sing-song laughter again. “What are you doing, Emily?” The man asked playfully. That was more than fifteen years ago.

After Emily’s sixth birthday, she had what her mother, Sarah, called a “loose tooth.” She put her pointer finger on it, and the tooth wiggled to her beckon. I wondered why this happened to Em and no one else, and then I was afraid it might hurt her. But she was not afraid. The fearless girl squealed with joy, and from that moment she couldn’t keep her finger away from her mouth until one day it fell out completely and she was ecstatic. She called for her “father,” the man who had put me on this wall, and he said they should put it under her pillow for the “tooth fairy.” I did not know why they did this, or what a “tooth fairy” was, and I wanted to ask, but for some reason I have never been able to speak, and Emily has never spoken to me.

When she had lost all her teeth, and she was in something called “middle school,” Emily began changing. She had to wear round green things over her eyes so she could see, and metal “braces” on her teeth. One day another girl came home from “middle school” with her. Emily sat on the bathroom counter as the other girl dumped many little bottles out of a pink and white polka dot bag. One was filled with a thick brown-tinted substance. The girl smeared this on Emily’s face. There was a long thin pink bottle with a green handle with spikes at the end, covered in black goop which she put on Emily’s eyelashes. There were powders of every color imaginable that let up smoke when this girl plopped them on Emily’s face with various sized brushes. The girl told Em not to wear her glasses, and taught her to smile without showing her teeth. It wasn’t really a smile, I thought. When this girl was finished Emily smiled under the pretense of happiness. I know when Em is happy her laughter is fearless and echos off the walls. Her eyes widen and her feet can’t help but leave the ground. Whatever these substances were, they did not make her happy. After the girl left Emily stared at me for a long time. Then she cried.

She did this often after that day, always hiding her face and her smile. I always wanted to know why I made her cry, what I had done to her. I imagined that she hid her feelings like everything else, saving them only for me.

I have always been pained knowing Emily has a life away from me, one I could never come to or be a part of. I cherished the early mornings when she would get ready to leave our world, and the nights when she would return. A time came when all Emily spoke of was “college.” This was a place she would go for what seemed like forever, and only visit sometimes. I was shocked that she would leave me, and that she wasn’t sorry. She wasn’t even sad. She was like her child self again, fascinated by the world. She spent all day studying and her free time reading. Her brows would furrow over an intense equation and when she finally solved it she would jump up and down. She would laugh her sing-song laugh again. I always wanted the best for her, and it seemed this was it. I never knew it would pull her away from me, that the best thing for her would be the worst thing for me. The last time I saw her, I could hear her family and her friends and strangers, too, bustling about the house. When Emily came to my room, I could see that she and these people had been putting all of her things into cardboard boxes. I did not know what was happening. Almost everything in my sight had been packed away, and the boxes they were packed in had been taken away too. All that was left in this room was an empty soap dispenser, an old, worn down rug, and a green bar of soap in the shower. Emily looked at me one last time. She said “Goodbye,” turned the lights off, and walked through the door.
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I don’t know how long it’s been since. I used to measure my days by when I saw Emily.  I guess it has been a very long time, because I have thought about a lot of things. I have thought about how Emily was the only person I could rely on to relieve my loneliness and grace my ears with laughter. Now she’s gone and I have nothing. I’ve been telling myself she is happy, but what if she isn’t? What if we are both lonely and sad, and would be happier if we could be together. How could I get to her? I tried moving many times, so much as a finger and I would have been happy.

Sometimes I can hear Emily’s parents upstairs, and that will let me know what time of the day or year it is. Sarah, Em’s mother, stays in the house all day, and her father leaves. Sometimes she gets sad that Emily is gone, and I wish she would come talk to me, or sit with me, so we could be sad together.

A loud two part bang, like when Emily would jump up and fall in the kitchen upstairs, interrupted my troubling thoughts. There was a small groan, and then vast silence. Later I heard the phone ring through the air, and no one answered it. Sarah usually answered promptly. The front door opened and closed, and I could hear Emily’s father call to his wife, “Honey, I’m home!” and that, too, remained unanswered. There was a feeling of panic in the air and much chaos above me. I heard sirens outside of the house and a multitude of people walking above me. After that day, I didn’t hear Sarah in the house above me. But I heard Emily’s father quite often.
Later there were more people making noise above me, like the day Emily left. I gathered that her parents were leaving now, too. When it had quieted down a bit a woman came down to my room with a box in her hands. She had blonde hair, not golden like Emily’s, but softer, and darker. She had the same curious, brown eyes too. She looked around the room, and put the soap dispenser in the box. Emily’s father called down, “Emily, did you get everything?”

“This woman must be Emily,” I thought. This was my Em, all grown up. She looked at me the way she used to, and I knew she must love me too. She called up the stairs, “Hey, dad, why don’t we take this mirror?” I didn’t know what she was saying, but it didn’t matter to me. She walked away again and I swear, my heart, it stopped. But she came back, with other men, and they picked me up off the wall. I realize that I must be much smaller than them. But it was okay, because Emily loved me back! “Be careful with that mirror,” she said. “I don’t want it to break.” The men carried me to the unfamiliar upstairs and then outside to a “moving van.” It was filled with furniture. Emily stood inside the van, close by a rectangular thing. It was bordered with wood, and the inside looked red like the “couch” on the other side of the van. Then when Emily stood in front of it I could see her legs. This magical thing, I guess, shows you what you look like. Emily pointed to the ground next to it and told the men, “Put it over here.” She was talking about me. I was going to be put across from this thing. I would finally see myself! The men set me down, and at first I couldn’t see anything. Then I saw a white rectangle, a border.

I don’t move or speak because I am not a human.

Emily and the men left and closed the door. Wrapped up in darkness, I wonder if Emily has ever seen me. The engine started and I could feel myself moving. No, every time I thought she looked at me, she was only looking at herself. We hit a bump in the road, and I saw a crack in front of me. She never loved me. The engine stopped. Why should I care? The crack tore  through me. I’m not even alive.

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