A Great and Terrible Beauty

When I wake, it's an actual bright blue morning with real sun streaming through the window, making windowpane patterns on the floor. Everything outside is golden. No one asking me to steal anything. No young cloaked men issuing cryptic warnings. No strange, glowing little girls standing guard while I rummage about in dark places. It's as if last night never even happened. I stretch my arms overhead, trying to remember my strange dreams, something about my mother, but it won't come back to me. The diary's in the wardrobe, where I intend to let it gather dust. Today, revenge is first in my mind,

"You're awake," Ann says. She's fully dressed, sitting on her tidily made bed, watching me.

"Yes," I answer.

"Best get dressed if you want a hot breakfast. It's inedible once it's cold." She pauses. Stares. "I cleaned away the mud you tracked in."

A quick glance down and ah, there it is, my dirty foot sticking out from the stiff white sheet. I quickly cover it up.

"Where did you go?"

I don't want to have this conversation. It's sunny out. There's bacon downstairs. My life is starting over today. I've just made it official. "Nowhere, really. I simply couldn't sleep," I lie, managing what I think passes for a radiant smile.

Ann watches as I pour water from a flowered pitcher into a bowl and scrub at my mud-caked feet and ankles. I step behind the dressing screen for modesty's sake and pull the white dress over my head, then sweep a brush through my Medusa curls and secure them in a tight coil at the base of my neck. The hairpin scrapes against my tender scalp on the way in, and I wish I could just wear my hair down as I did when I was a young girl.

There is the problem of the corset. There's no way that I can tighten the laces at my back by myself. And it would seem that there is no maid to help with our dressing. With a sigh, I turn to Ann.

"Would you mind terribly?"

She pulls hard on the laces, pushing the air out of my lungs till I think my ribs will break. "A bit looser, please," I squeak. She obliges, and I'm now only uncomfortable instead of crippled.

"Thank you," I say when we're finished.

"You've got a smudge on your neck." I do wish she would stop watching me. In the small hand mirror on my desk, I discover the spot, right below my chin. I lick my finger and wipe it off, hoping this offends Ann enough that she'll look away before I'm forced to do something really horrible--pick at my scabs, examine a blemish, search for nose hair--in order to gain a little privacy. I give myself one last glance in the mirror. The face staring back at me isn't beautiful but she isn't something that would frighten the horses, either. On this morning with the sun warming my cheeks, I've never looked more like my mother.

Ann clears her throat. "You really shouldn't wander around here alone."

I wasn't alone. She knows it, but I'm not eager to tell Ann about my humiliation at the hands of the others. She might think it bonds us together as misfits, and I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.

"Next time I can't sleep, I'll wake you," I say. "Goodness, what happened here?" The inside of Ann's wrist is a nightmare of thin, red scratches, like Crosshatch stitching on a hem. It looks as if they've been gouged there by a needle or a pin. Quickly, she pulls her sleeves down past her wrists.

"N-n-nothing," she says. "It was an a-a-accid-d-ent."

What sort of accident could leave such a mark? It looks deliberate to me, but I say only, "Oh," and look away.

Ann walks toward the door. "I hope they have fresh strawberries today. They're good for the complexion. I read it in The Perils of Lucy" She stands on the threshold, rocking back and forth on her heels slightly. Her unnerving gaze falters a little. She examines her fingers as she says, "My complexion could use all the help it can get."

"Your complexion's fine." I pretend to fiddle with my collar.

She's not bought off so easily. "It's all right. I know I'm plain. Everyone says it." There's a hint of defianc? in her eyes, as if she's daring me to say it isn't true. If I disagree, she'll know I'm lying. If I say nothing, she'll have her worst fears confirmed.

"Strawberries, you say? I'll have to try some."

The glazed calm is back. She was hoping for the lie from me, for one person to disagree and tell her she's beautiful. I've failed her.

"Suit yourself," she says, leaving me alone at last to wonder whether I'll ever make a single friend at Spence.