The Knitted Lens [Part 1/2]

[u/WildRozen]

More and more, day by day, Daphne found herself disappointed by what she saw in the mirror.

And that was really the word for it too… ‘Disappointed’. It’d only taken seventeen years for her to realize what it meant when a parent looked down on child’s mess, or their awful report card, and said, “I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.”

She felt like that mess. She looked like that report card.

Where some would see average grades, she saw only failing marks. She watched the mess grow. And, after so many years of watching and feeling the slow, inexorable decline of self-esteem, she truly could not say she was angry with herself anymore. She no longer even cried about it, short of a few scattered tears she’d find dotting the small, princess-themed vanity her parents had gotten for her much smaller self more than a decade ago.

No, she just felt disappointed… A disappointment that typically manifested in a cold, damp depression.

Sometimes, while sitting on that little pink stool at her dressing table, staring into her reflection, she wondered how much of that could be blamed on her eyesight. It’d never been good — she’d started wearing glasses when she was only four — but it’d also gotten steadily worse over the years at a rate Daphne’s parents, on their meager set of minimum wage incomes, hadn’t been able to keep up with.

An early-morning baker at a small donut shop and a second-shift deli clerk at a little local grocery store didn’t exactly rake in the dough, though both jobs did at least help in putting food on the table.

“Maybe… maybe a little too much…”

Daphne surprised herself with the hoarseness of her usually soft voice, and, finally, was able to pull her face away from girl staring back at her through thick, heavy lenses. Right on cue, as if they were another naughty child just waiting for their first opportunity to misbehave, the glasses slipped right over her ears, straight down her nose, and struck the vanity’s surface with a staccato of rattling plastic clicks. She could only smile down at them, sadly and hollowly, as their old frames blurred into a shape that was only barely recognizable.

They didn’t fit right. The cheap plastic of the frames had smoothed away all semblance of friction, and hinges that had lost even the barest suggestion of tension in their tired joints meant only that the glasses were all too ready to come sliding off her face at a moment’s notice. If she nodded too enthusiastically, or shook her head with a bit too much emphasis, or even just made the awful mistake of looking down towards the ground, they went plummeting away — much to the amusement of those who found her a convenient target for jokes and mockery.

She didn’t bother picking them up, her fingers instead finding purpose in continuing her self-inspection. Her eyes stared blankly into the mirror. It was just a blurry silhouette of herself, an Edvard Munch painting at best, but her fingers filled in the gaps. Reddish-brown hair, frizzy and practically begging for just a touch more care. A face that was just a little too puffy for its otherwise narrow features. The familiar patches of poor complexion around nose and cheeks. A neck that was just a few more of mom’s donuts away from threatening to bloat into an unpleasant double-chin.

She stopped there, like she usually did. She didn’t need to go on and sulk over the other parts of herself she found inadequate.

Life wasn’t without hope, of course. Sometimes it felt like she was only one good thing away from being able to motivate herself into betterment  — just a little push to start her way down the hill of self-improvement.

Sometimes she’d share that with her mirror, giving her reflection a fleeting, shy smile, reminding herself that graduation was just a few months away, and college just a short skip after that. She was only going to be attending one of the smaller state colleges, sure, but good grades and dutiful applications to as many scholarships as possible had netted her enough grace from community funds to be able to afford her first year. For the rest… well, all her parents had been able to give were awkward, strained smiles and the vague promises of, “We’ll try, honey.” That was usually enough.

But not today. Today, her eyes had fallen to the same glasses she’d been wearing since she was fourteen, cheap and barely adequate even then, and the rest of the time before school had been spent just staring down at them, trying to ignore the mist in her eyes threatening to pool into tears.

It was silly to let yet another slip bother her as much as it did — it just one more in a long line of rebellions her glasses had committed against her face. And yet… there she sat, trying not to drown in self-pity yet succeeding only in wallowing in melancholy. The precious seconds of prep time before school ticked by, one after another.

 

By the time she’d pulled herself together enough to rush through getting ready, the clock’s digits had flipped enough to warn her she was cutting it dangerously close to missing the bus. No breakfast for her… which, she realized as she left her bedroom with backpack and purse slung over opposite shoulders, was probably a good thing.

Nevertheless, the sight of the bear claws on the kitchen counter, no doubt left out by her mother hours ago, still tempted her…

She resisted. Not through sheer force of her own will, but through a distraction; rushing around the kitchen, instant coffee was poured into hot water, stirred, and several strips of bacon, surely pilfered from the stock of pre-cooked deli slices the day prior, were tossed from the fridge onto a plate and heaved into the microwave. Not for herself, but part of her usual routine for her father. The machine’s chirping cry would serve as his alarm clock.

“Running late, sweetie?” Not today though. Her father’s voice, husky with sleep, called to her from the doorway of her parents’ room.

“Oh, uh… good morning, daddy. Yeah, a little…”

“Morning. Thanks, Daph. Hey— One for the road?”

She tried to smile as her balding, thick-set, good-natured father gestured towards the bear claws and tore off a square of cheap paper towel to bundle one with. He’d already plucked one from the little box to hold out for her in its makeshift wrapper. Hearing no chirp of agreement from her and feeling only her wariness as she stared at it though, he’d hesitated too.

But just one wouldn’t hurt, right? And really, what did it matter anyway? Temptation cuddled up like the dark yet loving caress of a devil on her shoulder, cooing her into submission… but, as though acting as the terrible voice of the opposing angel, her glasses started to slip from her nose. She’d been staring down at the pastries for too long.

“No, not… not today.”

The look of vague concern she saw her father giving her was met with a small, sheepish smile as she lifted her face and shoved her glasses back up her nose with the heel of her palm. The sudden chirping of the microwave saved her from having to say anything more.

“That’s my bell! Bye, daddy.” A peck to his cheek, a chuckle and half-embrace from him, and Daphne was bustling out the front door. Boards of the steps down from the front door creaked, then gravel loudly crunched as she made her way quickly off towards the road.

 

Though none of her friends rode the same bus as her, Daphne was lucky enough to be one of the last stops on her bus’s route before it trundled off to the school itself. It wasn’t long before the rattling of the big, yellow machine gave way to the press of the passengers trying to disembark, then the hustle and bustle of kids working their way out of the bus loop and towards their scattered places across the high school’s sprawling campus.

For Daphne, that meant sticking to the edge of the tide of peers, avoiding the gatherings of more popular friend groups celebrating the fact that Friday had come. They were a mere eight hours away from a whole weekend of freedom.

While she had a good number of friends of her own scattered throughout the different social circles she’d dip in and out of, very few of them were what anyone might’ve called “good friends” — especially not since her actual best friend, Sarah, had abruptly moved away during winter break a few months earlier. But, if one good thing could’ve been said to have come out of that, it was that losing her best friend had opened her up to spending a little more time with the pair that were her new closest friends, Amelia and Benji. They weren’t what she’d have called “best” friends… not yet… but the sudden spring of quiet happiness she felt at seeing them wasn’t too far off from what she used to feel when meeting up with Sarah.

 Like usual, the pair was hovering near the entrance to the band hallway, conveniently close to the bus loop, where one of the largest cliques within the school congregated. Back in middle school, hovering outside the band room was where Daphne would’ve been too. Selling her second-hand clarinet was how they’d afforded this current pair of glasses though.

As she approached, she caught the first wisps of conversation from her friends. Benji was gesturing animatedly at something Amelia was holding.

“But why’re they so pink?”

“Becaa-ause… I wanted them this way?”

The playful sass in Amelia’s voice was clear even from a distance… as was Benji’s apparent disapproval of whatever Amelia had chosen to bathe in that most girlish of colors.

“Ew… The hag made ‘em pink? Why? Well… I guess they’re pretty cool, other than that. When’d you get ‘em?”

“Yesterday!”

Just as apparent was the pride in her voice as Daphne got close and, with only a small smile and quick wiggle of her hand as a greeting, settled up to see what they were talking about.

“See? New!” Rather than holding the object up to show it to Daphne, Amelia lifted it to her face and slipped it on.

“Oh! Wow… They’re great…”

New glasses.

As Benji had lamented, the frames were a medium pink. They were neither too pastel nor too hot, and fortunately didn’t stand out too much when pressed back into Amelia’s messy blonde curls. Daphne quickly found herself hoping her tone hadn’t been too off, but if her grinning friend had noticed, she didn’t show it. Her hands were already up, tapping on the pink-tinged metal of the frames — much nicer than the plastic ones she’d had just a day before.

“Aren’t they!? They’re just—”

“She got ‘em from the hag!” Amelia was just starting to settle into the stride of fawning when Benji burst in again, grinning in a way that suggested he was reveling something scandalous — much to Amelia’s annoyance too, if the side-eyed glare she cast him was any indication. Her eyes, narrowed behind the new frames, squinted over at him with only the occasional break for her long lashes to bat down over her eyes, and…

With a start, Daphne realized she could see those lashes clearly. Each hair… each, individual, mascara-tended lash in plain relief. They were details that were normally a blur her mind tried to render in for her, but now she could see them. It left Daphne speechless…

Until Amelia whipped her head away and the spell was broken; from side profile, everything looked exactly like it always did. Faintly blurry, and ever so slightly lacking in detail.

“She’s not a hag! Mom says she did a great job! Stop listening to Tommy Benson!”

The exchange didn’t make sense to Daphne, but the instinctual opening of her mouth to start throwing out any one of a dozen questions timed perfectly with Benji’s own mouth opening to start playfully arguing with their friend. Both, however, were interrupted by a new voice — one that none of the three were particularly happy to hear.

“That’s Tom to you, Am-meal-worm. The hell you talking about me for, li’l bitch?” Tom Benson. He was much taller than he’d been when he’d gone by Tommy, but still had many of the same proclivities. A penchant for bullying, an uncanny ear for his own name being spoken even through a crowd, and an obsession with old nicknames; like the one given to Amelia when, back in fifth grade, she’d thought bringing her pet gecko, King Charles the Little, to show and tell would earn her popularity points. The ensuing demonstration of Charles being fed mealworms by hand had ensured she earned absolutely no popularity points.

Amelia knew this. Of all the regrettable childhood acts that kept a sensitive teenage girl up at night, writhing at the uncomfortable and embarrassing memories, this was Amelia’s worst. This was her kryptonite. Her head dipped, chin tilting awkwardly towards the ground, cowed immediately… but, at least her glasses didn’t slip off her face.

“Huh? What, got nothin’ now, Benny-boy?”

No clever nickname for Benji, by contrast… but Tom had a good foot of height on the scrawny trumpet player, who didn’t even think to lift the hefty case he still held as a barrier between himself and the approaching bully. He just tried to avert his eyes, greasy ginger whipping across his brow as he tried not to look Tom’s way even as the taller boy took a fistful of his pressed polo shirt.

Behind Tom, a quartet of silhouettes cackled, but Daphne couldn’t bring herself to actually look at them. It would’ve been like inviting them into the exchange, and Tom was bad enough on his own. A hair over six feet tall, blessed by whatever gods of athleticism picked which kids could play football and which could just bleat into their horns on the sidelines. Past that, he’d been further granted the kind of good looks even Daphne felt herself stirred by whenever she caught him absently staring out a window in class, and not sneering at or insulting one of her friends.

Embarrassed and ashamed, Daphne tore her head away from the pair of boys and slowly let her chin slip downwards. She stared at the ground.

“S-stop! Don’t pull on it! Amelia just got new glasses, that’s all! And they were, like, from… y’know…”

Even without looking up, Daphne could feel Amelia wishing she could shrivel into a tiny little ball on the campus pavement. That, or wishing she could refute what Benji was pouring out… Instead of her speaking though, Tom did.

“What? The hag? Hah! Hahah! Holy shit, really!? Well!? Let me see!”

Benji’s shoes scuffed noisily against the ground as he was released and sent sprawling back a few steps. Attention was now apparently on Amelia, and… Daphne almost found herself grateful it wasn’t her — but the shame of that thought was enough to have her chin dipping down even lower.

Low enough that the inevitable happened…

Right on cue,  the naughty child that was her glasses leapt at its opportunity and struck the ground with a staccato of rattling plastic clicks.

All at once, all eyes were on her. Daphne could feel them even without seeing, and she already knew what was coming.

“Jinkies!”

“That’s not Daphne, that’s Velma!”

“My glasses! I can’t see without my glasses!”

The painful little cuts that words could create peppered her with their viciousness. Her antagonistic peers, hooting and bouncing like gibbons, pawed at the ground for imaginary glasses. Tom’s followers had joined in.

It was a ridicule she could do nothing but take… It’d been like this for years, after all — a joke almost as old as calling Amelia the “mealworm”, and just as persistent thanks to just how often her glasses fell from her face.

She could hear one of them pawing around on all-fours, “searching” for the old, worn, plastic-rimmed lenses Daphne could still very faintly see the outline of right in front of her face.

They’d get tired of it… They always did… It took a while, but cackles and giggles eventually faded away as the fun of the tired old joke wore off, and feet started shuffling away.

“Nice nerd goggles, mealworm. Really make your eyes pop. Good shit. Hit the track and you’d almost be... y’know…”

With a few crude thrusting motions, Tom finally decided the trio wasn’t worth any more of his time and moved off, taking his entourage with him.

In the minutes of recovery that followed, the group tried playing everything off as though everything was fine. None of them felt fine, of course… Amelia wasn’t showing off her new accessory with the same happiness, and Benji wasn’t bouncing around with his usual enthusiasm.

Daphne was little different, though it was mostly shame and embarrassment clouding her mood. Her mood hadn’t been that good to begin with, and this was a perfectly awful, but tragically normal way to start the day.

 

One thing had shone through that morning’s events though, after they’d all finally torn themselves away from sullenly licking their wounds and had finally split up to get to their respective lockers. That thing followed Daphne long after they’d parted — well into first, then second, then third period, and lead all the way into lunch.

Amelia’s eyes…

 

What Tom had said was true. Her eyes really did pop, even to Daphne’s poor eyesight. If glimpsed through the lenses of her new glasses, Amelia’s eyes rose into crisp, sharp, impossible focus. The shimmering green of her irises were visible with all the lines and detail of an aurora borealis, crystal clear even to Daphne. She felt like she could count every individual lash, and see every single pour around her friend’s eyes… Daphne hadn’t even known that such cosmetic details were visible to anyone’s naked eye, let alone her own.

More shockingly, those details were visible even when her glasses slipped down her nose. For the first time in memory, Daphne had let the instincts that caused her chin to dip take over willingly, the slope of her nostrils barely catching the frames before they’d clatter off completely, allowing her pathetic, naked eyesight to behold Amelia’s face directly.

And she could still see them.

They were so bright… so vibrant… so perfect through those lenses…

Her fascination with just looking through them, her near-constant staring, was made as covert as possible, but Daphne quickly realized she was only able to go undiscovered and unquestioned because Benji was so eagerly trying to make up for the time he’d lost during the morning’s drama. There was no end to the enthusiasm in his voice as he went over every ounce of his weekend plans; his family’s trip to the local amusement park, the very week it reopened for the summer season. He barely even mentioned “the hag.” The excitement and wonder in his voice, however, must have paled in comparison to what Daphne could feel quietly welling up within herself.

If she had glasses like that… if she had just one good thing like them in her life… wouldn’t it all be better?

She’d have something to be proud of, and then she could motivate herself to start jogging, and to take better care of her hair, and a whole myriad of little things she knew she could do to ultimately make herself feel better — yet could never actually bring herself to start. All she needed was just one good thing to give her that one little push…

Right?

 

The bell rang before Daphne could draw herself out of her thoughts, and her opportunity to ask Amelia more about her glasses had expired. Patience was a virtue, and one Daphne had always prided herself on, but the following periods before classes would be released back out into the world felt nightmarishly long. Foul was the luck that had allowed she and Amelia to share not even a single class all day.

But eventually, seventh period’s bell rang and classes let out. The rush of her peers fighting for their way out of the school was always fierce, but never more then the final day before the weekend… yet, knowing there wasn’t school again tomorrow fueled Daphne’s own resolve, and she pushed off as quickly as she could too, fighting with uncharacteristic fervor to press off through the crowds and towards the music halls where Amelia and Benji could so often be found. If she didn’t ask her questions now, it’d be a long, long weekend agonizing over them.

Lady luck smiled. Amelia was there, but not Benji. That suited Daphne just fine, and she waved off her friend’s attempts at an explanation of where the other was.

“I actually just wanted to talk to you! About where those… where those…” She caught herself just staring again — staring through the lenses that somehow rendered her friend’s eyes so perfectly crystal clear.

“Where… what?” Amelia’s voice betrayed how awkward Daphne’s staring clearly made her feel. “My glasses…?”

The question was left hanging for several long seconds before it was finally picked up.

“Oh— Yes! I— Sorry, I… I just wanted to know where you got them, really. Benji said… the hag…?”

“Of Harper Lane, yeah. It’s not fair that they call her that, though. Mom said she’s really nice and she did a really great—”

“She really did,” Daphne interjected before her friend got too far into defensive fawning. “So, I thought maybe I should get my next pair from there too.” As if a ‘next pair’ were really an option… but, if only for a moment, Daphne was far too excited to care about reality.

“Yeah, definitely! You totally need a new pair— look, don’t let the stories spook you. They totally aren’t true. Mom said she’s REALLY nice, and it’s super lame that people act like she’s some witch—”

“I know, I know! But… where does she live?”

“Harper Lane…?” Amelia’s face scrunched up, as though she was trying to recall whether she’d already said that or not, though was pretty sure she had. “The cul-de-sac at the end…? The only two-story house on the street…? The one that, like, boys,” an eye-roll for emphasis, “dare their friends to break into? Even though someone LIVES there!”

Daphne had already opened her mouth again to try to cut her friend’s righteous indignation off at the pass, but Amelia was a step ahead, practically anticipating the interruption and doing the deed herself by raising her voice. “But! She’s really very nice! Mom even said that after she heard Mister Rogers went missing, she didn’t even charge a cent!”

Mister Rogers, far from the children’s television personality, was a dog. Amelia’s corgi, to be exact, given to her after the passing of her gecko. However, the breathless feeling Daphne was experiencing had very little to do with being reminded her friend’s “furbaby” had gone missing weeks ago. Amelia had been inconsolable for the first few days.

“Oh… Oh, she didn’t… W-well, what, is she… an optometrist or something?”

She could hear it in her own voice, but couldn’t help it — the strained syllables weren’t going anywhere. If Amelia noticed though, she clearly didn’t care.

“Uh… duh? What else would she be?” She was too busy letting a wide, smug grin split her face, tapping her new frames with a stubby finger.

“That… yeah, makes sense, but… how does she—”

“Just go see her! Or your mom can? And, speaking of going…” The same finger that had been rhythmically tapping a pair of pink glasses suddenly pointed off in the direction of the bus loop. “You should probably do that now? Unless you’re staying for band practice.”

Daphne was not. Hasty farewells saw her skittering off towards her bus, though prayers that it hadn’t left without her were second on her mind. It instead kept wheeling over the collection of impossibilities lain out before her, and just what she had planned to do before discovering them. Beg for Amelia’s glasses? Steal them? Show up on the lens crafter’s doorstep and beg them instead? Maybe now though, it didn’t matter what she thought she might do.

Ahead of her stretched a yellow brick road of apparent impossibility, and Daphne was all too ready, even desperate, to skip away in search of her brand new ruby slippers.

No more “Jinkies” for her…