Eli Woz 'Ere!

Eli wasn’t trying to impress anyone when he raised his arm that day—just to be seen differently.

The school playground buzzed with the low, familiar static of boys showing off. Near the cracked tarmac, Colin leaned against the fence, his anorak zipped halfway, sleeves bunched tight at the wrists. Simon mimed a bodybuilder’s flex, grunting theatrically. Adrian snorted into the sleeve of his jumper. The air smelled of damp leaves and something like milk left out too long.

Eli hesitated, then rolled up his sleeves. “I’ve started working out,” he said, not sure why he was offering it like a secret.

His arms looked the same—thin, pale, a smudge of yesterday’s ink on one of his wrists.

Colin blinked, then laughed through his nose. “That’s cute.”

“Show us again next year,” Simon said, nudging Adrian with a grin.

The moment passed. The group wandered off, leaving behind the smell of sweat and early autumn. Eli stood a while longer, sleeves still pushed up, before letting them fall.

The mirror was in Eli’s bedroom. It had been there since he and his mum moved into the flat after the divorce. No one else at school had divorced parents, and for weeks that was all anyone whispered about. The flat was small and smelled of damp. The mirror—tall, too grand for the room—doubled how squalid everything looked. But it was heavy, too heavy to move, so his mum decided they’d leave it where it stood.

That night, he lay on the floor, face down on a threadbare rug, counting not repetitions but breaths. Push-ups, sit-ups, something with a chair. The exercises didn’t matter. The ache did.

In the morning, he stood before the mirror with damp hair and flushed skin. Turned sideways. Squinted. Maybe... just there. A shape beneath the collarbone. A suggestion.

By lunch, he was tugging on Colin’s sleeve. “You should see.”

They gathered at the back of the school, where the fence met the bike racks.

“I think it’s working,” Eli said, pulling up his sleeves again.

The silence was longer this time.

“You look exactly the same,” Colin said. Not unkind—just indifferent.

Eli’s arms dropped. The boys left.

He tried again the next week. Only two showed up. By the third week, no one came.

Still, every morning, he stood in front of the mirror. Flexed. Adjusted his stance. He started cleaning the glass with his sleeve—not for vanity, but like he was keeping something ready. He didn’t know what for.

One night, after a quiet dinner and a bruised feeling that had nothing to do with his body, he stood there longer than usual. The flat was dark. A storm had passed earlier, leaving the windows streaked and the air faintly metallic. He pressed his thumb to the glass, smudging the edge. Outside, the wind fussed at the letterbox and rattled the drainpipe—then stopped.

Then, clear and close:
“Eli.”

He froze. The voice wasn’t behind him, but inside the mirror—like breath pressed into the glass.

The reflection was unchanged. And not.

Its stillness was deeper. Its gaze, steadier.

“They don’t have to see it,” the voice said. “You’re the one becoming.”

Eli frowned. “But what if I’m not?”

“You are,” it said. “Because you haven’t stopped.”

He didn’t speak. Just stood there, legs sore, arms trembling faintly.

“You’re the only one who needs to believe,” the voice added. “For now.”

Eli nodded. Not to the mirror, but to something deeper inside of himself.

He turned away. Behind him, the reflection lingered a second longer than it should have.

Winter arrived slowly, layering itself across the windowsill like a second silence.

He no longer checked the mirror for change. He still trained—quiet, patient routines. The workouts had become less about improvement, more about rhythm. A kind of prayer.

He didn’t talk to anyone about it. Not out of shame—but because he couldn’t find words that would match the stillness growing inside him.

Sometimes, before sleep, he’d dust the mirror’s frame. He didn’t know why. Only that it mattered.

One night when the flat felt especially hollow, he looked in the mirror and whispered, “You’re different.”

The boy reflected said nothing. But he nodded—just once, exactly as Eli had weeks before.

That was the first night Eli didn’t need to do a single push-up.

One pale afternoon, while reading by the window, Eli heard laughter on the street—sharp, familiar. His chest tightened. The sound hadn’t changed. But it no longer reached him the same way.

He stepped outside.

A group of boys had circled someone smaller—thin arms, baggy coat, a haversack spilling its contents onto the kerb.

At first, Eli thought it was about him. That they were waiting. But as he walked toward them, their postures shifted. Colin—older now, maybe—looked at him with something like recognition. Or confusion. Or neither. It didn’t matter.

“We were just messing around,” one boy muttered, kicking a bottle aside.

Another shoved the small boy into a shallow puddle before turning away.

The group scattered like they always did—confident until confronted, loud until silent.

The boy stayed where he’d fallen, soaked and blinking up at Eli.

Eli crouched. “You okay?”

The boy nodded too fast. His chin quivered.

“Come with me,” Eli said, offering a hand. “There’s something I want to show you.”

The boy looked down the street, then back at him. Eli didn’t speak again. He waited.

After a long moment, the boy stood.

Eli’s room was quiet. Dim light pooled along the floor, reaching the edge of the mirror.

The boy hovered in the doorway, shoes dripping onto the rug.

Eli gestured him in, then knelt by the mirror. “I used to stand here every day,” he said. “Not because I liked what I saw. But because I hoped something was changing.”

The boy approached slowly.

“It didn’t tell me who I was,” Eli continued. “But it showed me who I might become. If I chose to keep going.”

He stood, stepping back.

The mirror was too big for the room, too old to shine. Still, it held something. The boy’s reflection stared back—not stronger, not taller. Just... waiting.

His finger traced the hairline crack in the glass. He didn’t ask about it.

“It’s yours,” Eli said. “You can come back when you need to. I’ll keep it here.”

The boy nodded, but didn’t speak. He reached out and touched the glass, the way Eli once had.

When he left, the hallway stretched ahead, long and dim. He didn’t look back.

Eli stayed by the mirror, shifting his weight slightly.

In the reflection, two faint handprints remained.

One new.

One remembered.