I knocked on Lucy’s front door. I’m going for a sleepover; my mum had to work late again. Her mum opened it, stared at me, and then said, “Oh; Jasmine it’s you. I take it you want Lucy? She’s in her bedroom; however you can’t stay too long in the morning, she’s got a lot of homework to do”. I smile at her politely, say thank you, and walk towards the stairs.
“Knock, Knock it’s me, Jasmine” I say as I open the door “hi, so what do you want to do tonight?” Lucy asks whilst laying out our sleeping bags. “Well, it’s a bit late so why don’t we tell ghost stories.” I suggest, “Cool idea” Lucy replied. “Oh, by the way you can’t stay to long as my mum wants me to do my homework in the morning. I do wish she didn’t care about my school life.” I look at her and say “I know, and you don’t mean that, it’s just that she loves you.”
Once we’d got our PJs on we spent the next hour or so telling ghost stories. My favourite was about a girl getting trapped in a mirror, but this scared Lucy too much. Lucy preferred the story about Captain Cod-Fish and his ship ‘The Ocean Spray’; I thought it was a bit childish. Lucy started to yawn so I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth.
When I came back through the door I go to speak but Lucy pull’s me over to her mirror which is glowing in a bright yellow colour, almost gold. ”What did you do!” I ask wondering whether she even knows what is going on with her own mirror. “How am I supposed to know?” She looks at me as if I was daft. We both exchange glances and lean towards the mirror as we do so the window seems to just fling open and a sudden gasp of wind pulls us into the mirror as if it’s some kind of door way.
I stand up, Lucy is staring at me “what’s wrong, what happened” I ask as I go towards her feeling slightly confused, she Looks at me “erm, well I don’t know do I” she sounds a bit strange and starts to walk around in circles, as she does so I go to speak to her again but her mum comes though the door “Lucy, darling, can I have a word, thank you.” They walk out the door, after a moment Lucy pokes her head through the gap and says “it won’t take a minute. I can hear some talking but it sounds mumbled and I can’t make out what is being said clearly, I hear Lucy bursting into tears.
Lucy comes back in; she has stopped crying now, “what’s wrong, what happened?” I ask. Lucy looks at me, extremely upset and confused. Lucy goes over and sits on her bed, “Well, erm... my mum just got a phone call from the school!” Lucy stopped and burst into tears again. I look at her, feeling a bit concerned I go and sit next to her and put my hand round her shoulder and say in the sweetest voice I can manage “What was it about, the phone call, to get you this upset? I haven’t seen you like this in ages.” Lucy looks up at me and with her eyes full of tears and says “I’ve been expelled from college! They said I didn’t hand in any of my assignments and kept skipping classes and always turned up late.” Lucy starts to cry again and goes over to her dressing room table and sits down “So, what did your mum say, is she angry” I ask wondering whether that was the best thing to say to someone who is upset, but it’s too late to think about it now. “Mum said it doesn’t matter and that I should go and get a job somewhere”. I am very surprised to hear this, I would have expected her mum to be raging mad, and her mum had always pushed her to do well.
4 weeks later...
Lucy knocks on my door, “Hi” she says, “I’ve had a lousy few weeks, I can’t get a job anywhere.” Lucy had had interviews at the local beautician and hair dressers. As she had no experience or qualifications they said no. Lucy felt stuck; she couldn’t go back to college. Her mum had just said that she should try something else and set her targets lower. Lucy told me that she had done this and was now working as a cleaner in burger king while also having a Saturday job in Primark sorting the clothes onto the trolleys in the warehouse, neither of them where offering to pay very much though.
Lucy’s life just kept going downhill for the next 2 years of her life, she carried on cleaning toilets at burger king and her and Jasmine stopped being friends especially when Jasmine went off to university and got new better friends. The only good thing that happened to Lucy was that she got a full time job in Primark instead of just on a Saturday. However Lucy still became a very lonely and upset person who lived on her own in a horrible little cheap flat on the edge of Boston U.S.A.
One night Lucy had had a really bad day, someone was sick all over the floor that evening in the toilets and she was chosen to clean it up, plus in the morning Lucy was sorting clothes and she ended up pulling the hole column of racks down. As soon as her shift was over in burger king she went straight home she watched a little film that she had watched about 100 times before had her dinner and went to bed as she did, she wished that she could have her old life back. Then she went to sleep with a sad face.
In the distance Lucy could hear her name being called, when she came round she realised that it was Jasmine. “Lucy, Lucy, LUCY” I’m lying in my sleeping bag shaking Lucy gently to try to wake her. “Errr, oh it’s you” she says it really softly I looked at her confusingly and then lay down and said “well der, who did you think was” she sits up looks at me sarcastically and then says “I know, well, it’s just that I had a weird dream last night but it felt so real”. I look at her wondering whether I should ask her if she wanted to talk about it or not, then wondering if she said yes what am I supposed to do, as I will just be telling her stuff she already know, in the end I decide I need to say something or she is going to feel embarrassed, so I decide just to say “well, do you want to talk about it”. She looks at me then at her sleeping bag and says “no, nothing to tell really” gets out of her sleeping bag and goes over to her dressing room table pick up a brush and brushes her hair, I go over to her and we start to talk. We hear the phone ringing and Lucy looks at the door for a second and then back at her mirror looks at me and say “it nothing really it’s just my Nan, she always rings this time in the morning”.
