Fame for Youth

You wake to sunlight you don't recognize — harsh, unfiltered, coming through a window with a fire escape instead of a view of the garden. The ceiling is water-stained. Your back aches from a mattress that costs less than one of your throw pillows. When you sit up, your hands are young. Youthful digits with a cheap nail polish, chipped and bitten at, and a cheap ring on one finger. You catch your reflection in a smudged mirror: Rebecca's face stares back, wide-eyed, horrified.

On the nightstand there's a cracked phone buzzing itself off the edge — a shift starts in forty minutes, apparently. In the corner, are piles of books and a cracked laptop sitting on a desk. The books are from college classes, similar to the courses you used to take before Antonio. And before Antonio decided your hobby was a wine cellar.

You remember the night at Delphine's: the second bottle of wine, Rebecca crying over a rejected job application, you crying over your wasted life, full of surgeries and gala's. You remember saying, God, I'd trade you in a heartbeat. And you remember Delphine, quietly delighted, saying: care to put a spell on that?

You're staring in the mirror again, still can't believe you're young again. Perhaps this time you can do it right. You can actually live a life full of your decisions and choices, not one's decided by your husband. You can be Rebecca and be whoever you decide to be!

Your phone buzzes again — a text from a number saved as "Vivi" It seems the day has started whether you're ready or not.