u/Nick1995James

Hi everyone, I'm trying to find a contemporary Young Adult psychological horror/suspense novel that I read in Spanish around the 2000s or 2010s. It had an agile, modern, and urban narrative style, not a classic gothic or Victorian ghost story. I strongly suspect it might be a translation into Spanish, and the title could be very similar to "The Ghost in the Mirror" or "The Shadow in the Mirror".

Here is the exact sequence of events and highly specific scenes I remember:

• The Detonante (The Bathroom Scene): The protagonist (a teenage boy) is locked in his apartment's bathroom, having a furious internal monologue about his daily frustrations and stress. In a fit of pure rage, he punches the bathroom mirror, shattering it. From the gap/hole in the broken glass, a mysterious shadow entity escapes and attaches itself to him.
• The School Descent & Social Isolation: He didn't suffer from bullying before this. The bullying starts because he is the only one who can see and interact with the shadow, forcing him to act erratically ("like a crazy person") in public.
• The Classroom Incident: There is a specific scene in a dark classroom (during a movie or a projector presentation). The shadow takes advantage of the darkness to whisper or do something to him, causing the protagonist to snap and scream/react wildly, ruining his reputation in front of the whole class.
• The Torment at Home (Subtle Horror): He lives with both parents (father and mother). The shadow begins to torment them in an invisible spectrum that only the protagonist can see. The parents' physical bodies only register these attacks as common ailments:
  • In one scene, the shadow chokes the mother. In reality, she just feels a minor throat irritation or a sudden cough/clearing of her throat (carraspeo).
  • In another scene, the shadow climbs onto the father's back or grows huge to crush him, and the father just complains about sudden, severe back pain.
  • Throughout the book, there are multiple heartbreaking moments where both parents look deeply disappointed, sad, and overwhelmed by their son's apparent downward spiral.
• The Fight & Suspension: After the classroom incident and the shadow tormenting his parents, the pressure peaks. He is with his only friend (or one of the few he has left) when the school bully approaches to torment them. The bully mocks the protagonist for being crazy and tells the friend: "You know the saying: he who walks with crazy people..." (a play on the Spanish proverb "el que anda con lobos, a aullar aprende"). The protagonist snaps, they fight, and the bully knocks him down or leaves him dazed on the floor.
• The Real-Time Consequence: The protagonist comes to/wakes up right there on the floor where the fight happened. With blurry vision, he sees the school principal and his father standing over him, arguing furiously about his behavior. He is suspended on the spot.
• The Slap & Internal Monologue: Back home, a terrible argument breaks out due to the parents' sheer frustration. The father, pushed to his limit, slaps him. The boy runs to his room to cry. In his internal monologue, he notes that he isn't crying because of the physical pain of the slap (in fact, the bully's punch hurt much more), but because of the sheer impotence, injustice, and weight of the whole situation.
• The Hospital & The Medical Mystery: The psychological stress and the shadow (acting like a parasite that chills you from the inside) cause him to suffer an unbearable stomach collapse while lying in his room. He gets extremely sick or faints, and his scared parents rush him to the ER. The doctors find his gut health and intestinal flora completely destroyed because, out of nowhere, bizarre objects appeared inside his stomach that he supposedly "swallowed" (I am 50/50 on one of those items being a shard of the broken mirror glass that magically materialized inside him).
• The Psychologist: While recovering in the hospital bed, a psychologist interviews him. Because of the strange items in his stomach and his school breakdowns, the psychologist mistakenly assumes the protagonist was trying to "self-harm / unalive himself" due to severe depression.
• The Climax: All of this leads to a final confrontation or battle against the shadow near the end of the book.

Book Details: It was a full novel (not a short story anthology), likely a thin paperback used for school reading programs (plan lector) from popular YA publishers in Latin America/Europe (like SM, Alfaguara Juvenil, Norma, or Panamericana).

Does this ring a bell to anyone? I won't be able to sleep until I find this book. Thank you so much!