Turn 11 of 19

Old memories began fading at the edges. Looking at photos of quiet Sophie felt distant and almost boring. “I’m still here,” I told the mirror. The polished blonde staring back didn’t look convinced. The bag seemed to whisper patience. I still fought—baggy clothes, avoided mirrors.

I find the photos on my phone at midnight. Marcus is asleep — or pretending to be — and I sit on the edge of the bathtub with the door closed and scroll through pictures from six months ago. A girl with mousy brown hair and a soft jaw stands next to Marcus at his sister's barbecue, wearing a loose t-shirt and jeans, laughing at something off-camera. I know it's me. I was there. But the face in the photo looks like a cousin I vaguely remember, someone I'd pass on the street without a second glance. The girl's shoulders are rounded. Her smile is open and easy and a little crooked. She looks like she'd be happy to help you find a book.

I scroll further. A selfie from last spring — me in the park, squinting at the sun, no makeup, a faint acne scar on my chin that I can't find anymore. The scar is gone. I touch my chin and feel only smoothness. The girl in the photo has small, unremarkable breasts and narrow hips and a posture that says *sorry* in every line of her body. I stare at her for a long time and feel nothing. Not grief. Not longing. A faint impatience, like waiting for a movie to get to the good part.

"I'm still here," I tell the mirror above the sink. The woman looking back has high cheekbones and a sculpted jaw and dark blonde waves that fall past her shoulders without a single strand out of place. Her lips are full and tinted rose. Her skin is poreless, luminous, the kind of complexion that belongs in a magazine spread. She looks like she's never had an acne scar in her life. She looks like she's never been uncertain about anything. She doesn't look convinced.

The bag sits on the closed toilet lid, and I can feel it the way you feel a space heater in a cold room — a radiance, a presence, something that breathes. I don't hear words. I don't need to. The warmth says *patience* the way a season says *wait*. It has time. It has done this before. It did this to Vivian, and Vivian fought too — or maybe she didn't, maybe she was smarter than me, maybe she understood sooner that the fighting was just another form of choosing.

I try to fight. The next morning I pull on the baggiest sweatpants I own — an old pair of Marcus's, gray, two sizes too big — and a shapeless hoodie that swallows me to mid-thigh. I avoid the bathroom mirror. I avoid the hallway mirror. I eat breakfast with my head down and my shoulders curled inward and I try to make my body small again, try to remember the geometry of being forgettable. But the sweatpants hang from hips that are wider than they used to be, and the hoodie drapes over a chest that pushes against the fabric no matter how loose it is, and when I pass the dark window of the microwave I catch my reflection and even in silhouette the body is wrong. Curved. Defined. A shape that baggy clothes can't hide, only mock.

At work I keep my head down. Dana watches me from across the store and says nothing, but her silence has changed. It's not confusion anymore. It's the silence of someone who has decided to wait and see. The bag is under the counter, and my hand drifts to it every few minutes like checking a wound. My phone buzzes at 3 PM — the unknown number: *You looked beautiful in green. She wore it to Bistro Margot the night she met me. I still have the napkin.* I stare at the message until the screen goes dark.