Turn 7 of 17

At first your hair just fills in, covering where had been thinn8ng. But as Mias firm gand strokes and holds your new jaw so you cant look away yout hair grows first steadybit quicker and quicker until the hair reaches small of your back. Still your natural brown, but thick, glossy and with a slight natural wave. Looking in the mirror all that remains of the man you were lies covered by your boxers

Her fingers slide down from your temple, and the first thing you feel is a thickening — the hairline at your crown, where it had been thinning for years, filling in soft and dense, like spring grass closing over bare earth. You almost dare to hope that's all. Just a repair. Just her hand in your hair.

Then her other hand comes up, firm, and cups your jaw. She holds your new face and turns it toward the mirror, so you can't look away, so you have to watch.

"Keep looking," she says softly. "This one's my favorite."

Your hair grows. Slowly at first — a shade longer at your ears, brushing your nape — and then quicker, and then quicker still, a warm rippling weight spilling down your neck, over your shoulders, down your back. You feel it drag across your bare shoulder blades, gathering against your spine, and in the mirror you watch it pour past your narrow shoulders, past your waist, until it settles against the small of your back, a thick glossy curtain of your own natural brown, waved gently as if it has been dried and styled by hands that cared. It moves when you breathe. It has scent — something warm, vanilla and citrus, shampoo-commercial perfect.

You stare at the whole of it now, because she's made you. The doll face, the huge eyes, the long waved hair, the small strong curved body, the pastel nails, all of it assembled in the bright bathroom light into one complete, gorgeous stranger. Nothing of the man you were is visible anywhere.

Except the boxers. The last thing you have left, hanging loose and absurd off your narrow hips, the waistband gone slack around a waist that was never his. A man's underwear on a body like this. It's the only evidence in the mirror that Dylan ever existed at all, and suddenly you understand it's not yours to keep.

Mia's fingers leave your jaw and trail down the length of your hair, smoothing it, almost proud.

"There," she says. "That's her hair. You used to wrap it around your fist."

Her hand drifts lower, and hooks, delicately, into the waistband of the boxers.