I remember crying my eyes out the whole car ride home, furious and burying my face in my knees. 'It's not fair.' I thought, an assessment concluded by most if not all preteen girls. But unlike the others, I wasn't sobbing over the boy who held someone else's hand, or the latest glittery sneakers my mother couldn't afford. Instead, I was upset over a cosmetic dental "improvement" my dentist at the time decided - without precedence to conduct on my unique smile.
My canines grew in longer and far more pointed than average. No, it was not the picture perfect look the posters in his office depicted, but it was my smile no less. But that did not mean it was a flaw, especially not to myself, who felt pride in being picked a natural choice to play The Wolf in last years presentation of Red Riding Hood. But no, this man felt it necessary to take one of the very few things I admired about myself without even asking.
Try as she might, Mum just couldn't calm me down. And to think, back then, I didn't even realize why losing that part of myself hurt so much.
Ten years later and that very same girl was still baring her teeth in her foggy reflection of the bathroom mirror. Gliding her tongue along the dulled edge of what used to be, briefly letting that memory flutter by before going about her routine.
Lily stood atop her scale at one hundred and thirty pounds, five feet ten inches. Her limbs were long and thin, milky white and freckled. Fresh from the shower, water dripped down the curves of her bones to the floor. Her day started before many awoke, even the sun did not rise to greet her tired grey eyes.
The morning ritual of a woman was a mixture of pampering and self deprecation. With every minute spent readying yourself for the world, another minute was spent critically pointing out the flaws perhaps not even the most shallow would see. But those little voices of ridicule were not the only one's Lily could hear at this early hour.
'Child, you must brace yourself.'
Words slipped through her ears, deafening yet hard to decipher at the same time somehow. The voice vanished as soon as it arrived and in that instant after she could not even remember what was said or the voice that said it.
But she did hear a voice, didn't she? Lily pulled a towel from the hook and wrapped it around herself before cautiously pulling the doorknob. Steam quickly escaped into the cold, dark hallway. The icy feeling of the floor beneath her bare feet kept her on her toes as she peered down the corner. "H-hello?"
