Chapter 2
Iwake up certain I’ll feel smooth skin. My routines work. I fix things. I always fix things.
I pull my arm out from under the duvet and brush my fingers over the spot I shaved so well last night.
Prickle.
I jerk upright so fast that the sheets coil around my waist. It’s not a prickle. It’s a thicket. In the pale morning light the hair is not just back, it’s darker, heavier, a swath of shadow marching up my forearm where there should be a sleek nothing.
My stomach does a small, mean flip.
No. That’s not right.
That’s not how bodies work. That’s not how my body works.
I throw the duvet aside and hurry to the mirror over my vanity, angling my arm toward the glass, then the window, finding the light that never lies.
It’s obvious in any light. Last night it was a weird patch, fine enough that a good razor and a little precision took it out clean.
Now it’s like the arm of someone else, no, something else, one grafted onto me.
The hairs lie flat and silky when I stroke them the right way, then bristle up stubbornly as I go the wrong way. They are nearly black, even though my hair on my head is not.
Each one looks thick, deliberate, obstinate even in its determination to be there.
The first shaking breath that comes out of me sounds small and ridiculous. For a second, I can see my face in the mirror the way I see other people’s; eyes wide, mouth parted, pale with the kind of panic that makes other girls call their moms. Well, that won’t be me.
It’s lighting, I tell myself, harsh morning shadows. Hormones. Stress. God, we’re teenagers, technically. People sprout all kinds of unfortunate fuzz under stress. I probably slept weird. I probably didn’t shave as close as I thought, busy and tired after all of the fun of yesterday.
I blink, and something clatters in my head. The mouse doll. The glass eyes.
No.
I clamp down on that hard enough to taste metal. That’s ridiculous. Coincidence is a thing. Witches, magic, bullshit superstition is not.
I go to the bathroom and lock the door behind me, twisting the faucet open to cold. The shake in my hands makes the water splash everywhere as I yank open the drawer and pull out my razor. I grab shaving cream, foam spilling over my fingers, and smear it over the patch too fast, too thick.
The fur laughs. No, of course it doesn’t, that’s insane, it’s hair. Hair doesn’t laugh. Hair doesn’t do anything. But the little drag it gives under my palm feels like defiance all the same.
“I am not doing this.” I say to no one.
The first stroke bites. I press too hard and feel the tug-tug-rasp of something that doesn’t want to come away.
I drag again, more carefully, and thick black hairs drop on the porcelain like the ugliest confetti imaginable.
My breath is so offensively loud; in-out, in-out.
I’m shaking enough that I nick myself, and a thin bright line beads up immediately.
I watch the pink smear into foam, and feel everything inside me coil tighter.
I fumble for a piece of tissue, stick it, press it, hiss, then keep going.
It takes longer this time. I have to go over the same patch again and again, stretching the skin, dragging in little short strokes, rinsing the razor every second because the neat little cartridges clog up with this… fur?
Not fur, I correct myself firmly. Not fur. Hair. Coarse hair. People get coarse hair. There are laser places for that. I can book an appointment. It’s an inconvenience, that’s all. It’s not a plot.
When the last dark strands are gone and I rinse the area and pat it dry, there is a shadow left behind.
The faint dark of a five-o’clock thing, like a boy’s jaw.
If I press my fingers there, it feels too smooth, stripped, but my eyes keep detecting something beneath the skin, as if the follicles are crowding against the surface.
I grab toner, the one with the acid that smells like pretend cucumber, swiping it over the skin hard enough to make my eyes water, and tell myself it’s for ingrowns. I’m being preventative. Smart.
I don’t look in the mirror while I dry my face. I look at the towel rack instead, at the safe geometry of neatly folded cotton.
My phone buzzes with my final alarm, and I know I have to move.
School doesn’t care what’s happening under your skin.
I leave the bathroom, back to my room, to the wardrobe.
My hand goes instinctively to the white puff-sleeve top I picked out last night, the one that makes my arms look toned, but I stop and pivot.
I need to be smart here. I need to think smart.
I need long sleeves, not because I’m hiding.
Not because I’m ashamed, because it’s sophisticated.
Because it’s fashionable. The weather has that crisp edge this morning; it’s practically begging for a transitional look.
I’ll look like an editorial, like I called fall early and everyone else is late.
I pull the black turtleneck dress from the hanger, the one that hits mid-thigh and hugs just enough to be a statement. It’s minimal. It’s rich-girl quiet. I can add the knee-high boots, the soft leather ones that scream money, and a gold chain.
“You look sophisticated,” I tell myself bluntly. “Fashionable.”
Sophisticated girls don’t panic over hair. They book. They budget. They manage.
I toss the dress onto the bed, then do my makeup like a drill, precise and quick.
Tinted moisturizer, concealer to cut the blue under my eyes where I didn’t sleep enough.
Powder, blush, the little glossy highlight that looks like clean skin.
I flick eyeliner out into a wing no one can argue with.
Mascara. Brows. I contour my nose by muscle memory, and when I lean in close to perfect my cupid’s bow, I catch the ghost of my forearm in the corner of my eye and the skin there looks…
fine. It looks fine. If you didn’t know where to look. If you weren’t me.
I snap my attention back to my mouth, and press my lips together until the gloss evens out.
Fine. It’s fine.
My phone buzzes on the vanity. There’s a text from someone I don’t care to see, so I swipe it away and then hover over the browser app for a second.
If I typed hair growing back overnight or arm hair dark patches, what would even come up? Articles with women smiling with latte foam mustaches, calling themselves hairy icons. Derm office phone numbers. Hirsut… I delete the half-typed word with a laugh that isn’t a laugh.
No. I’m not giving it a name.
Names make things real. This is already far too close to that.
I grab my bag. I slide on bangles, hesitate, and take two off; the ones that might slide and catch. I spritz perfume at my wrists and neck. When the mist settles on my skin, the cool alcohol stings like a warning.
Down the hall, I move light, quiet. I don’t want to run into my mother at the kitchen island with her smoothie and her incessant questions.
It’s easier to be untouchable when no one looks too closely.
I snag a granola bar and an iced coffee from the fridge, text the driver I’m on my way, and stop just long enough to look at my reflection in the hall mirror.
I look perfect.
I look better than perfect, because I look unbothered.
The sleeve drags imperceptibly against my forearm when I lift my bag onto my shoulder, and the little flare of awareness that pulses there is wildly out of proportion.
It’s fine. It’s nothing. It’s probably just razor burn.
I’ll go to the nurse if it gets weird. No, I won’t. I don’t do nurses. I do solutions.
On the porch, the air is crisp and clean in that new-year way. The car pulls up, sleek and black and exactly my speed. As I cross the flagstones, I press my arm against my side, feeling the slick fabric of the dress, my skin hot beneath, my pulse oddly loud.
Sophisticated. Fashionable. In control.
I repeat the words like a spell, then drop them.
I slide into the backseat, offer a smile to the driver that doesn’t touch my eyes, and set my gaze on the road ahead. On school, on anything not inside my sleeves.
But the worry has small teeth. It gnaws, and it gnaws. I tell it to stop. I sit straighter. I’m already composing the caption for the outfit post in my head and the car pulls away while, under the fabric, I try not to feel anything at all.