100 Word Song: Mirrors

         I'm linking up with the 100 Word Song over at My Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog. This week's prompt was Justin Timberlake's Mirrors. As I read over the lyrics, I thought it would be fun to write two pieces that “mirror” each other about how others see us—and how sometimes people get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. Depending how you look at it, I've either done extra credit, or I cheated by writing 200 words. I'll leave it up to Professor Leroy to decide. This piece picks up where I last left Karen and Danny. You can read more about them here. 

Karen's Mirror

         Karen and Danny spent the afternoon decorating the church basement for the CYO dance. They transformed the cold gray room with crepe paper and balloons before the Ladies' Guild arrived with cookies and punch.

         Mrs. Doyle looked scandalized to see Karen with Danny. To her, Karen was the girl who “got in trouble” after her father ran away and her mother drank herself to death. Unfit to associate with the deacon.

         To Danny, Karen was the little girl who got straight A's and sang the “Pie Jesus” at Mass.

They were both right. And they were both wrong.

Danny's Mirror

         Karen could still see the same old Danny under the cassock—the boy who had holes in his jeans and dirt under his fingernails and got into fights. When the Ladies' Guild arrived, they treated him with a reverence that made him uncomfortable.

         “Deacon Daniel, you mustn't bother with moving those chairs. We'll take care of it,” Mrs. Doyle insisted, banishing the Prodigal Son to his office to work on his next sermon.

         The coffee she brought him tasted bitter in his mouth. Mrs. Doyle couldn't see that he had come home to get his hands dirty, only Karen saw that.