I pull at the tip of my nose and frown. The bridge of my nose has never been this crooked… has it? No, no, it hasn’t. I swear just yesterday it looked better than this. It must have. And my eyelashes. I have this one that is always sticking out the wrong way, opposite all the rest. Every morning, I blast my metal eyelash curler with the highest heat of my hair dryer and clamp it around my eyelashes until the edges of my eyelids start to burn. By the end of the day, they always revert to their true out-of-place form. I have this scar on my jaw, too, from that night I got drunk after my ex cheated on me, and I fell face-first into a flight of stairs. I hate that white mocking piece of marred skin. 

I rub my eyes. Once. Twice. I think there is something wrong with them. Maybe there is a little speck of something caught in my eye making my face look crooked. The right side of my face droops, and the left one is so tight that it looks like it’s tugged against my skull from one of those headache-inducing slicked ponytails. Is my face melting? Is my mask falling? I grab at the edges of my face. They soften under my fingers. My shoulders tense up. I try to lower them, fix my posture, and straighten my spine. I feel my mom’s cold hands on the back of my neck as she whispers in my ear, A curve in your spine takes no time to become permanent. She told me it was bad for her image, my image. I straighten more.

I hate I hate I hate.

I pull out my makeup bag from the bottom drawer of my desk and turn on my mirror’s light. Great. Now I see every pore and every scar that I have from when I thought I was an aesthetician in the 8th grade. I squeeze my eyes shut then open them again. I slather my face with every product imaginable. I run blush across my cheeks and the bridge of my nose. You know, that effortless flush as if I’ve just been flirted with or stood out in the cold for a bit. Or both. Something like that. 

I run glitter over my eyelids. Mascara over my lashes. I pat powder everywhere and swat at the air as excess floats around me. I press everything into my skin until I can no longer feel where it begins and I end. I relish as I am covered. I secure the mask in place. 

Once, when I was eleven or twelve, my mom called me into her room. I followed the sound of her heels against the polished wooden floor. My mother pointed towards a chair in front of her vanity. I sat down and pulled myself in towards the desk. The bottom of my ribs pressed against the edge, and my mother came up to stand behind me. There was no escape. I was stuck. She smiled at me with her perfect teeth. Skin so taut I couldn’t tell whether she was smiling at me or just bearing her teeth. Maybe I’ve never seen her smile. 

I watched in wonder as she unveiled the makeup I always begged to use as a little kid. I gaped at it. There was nothing more I wanted to do in the world than take the shiny red lipstick second to the left in the third to the bottom drawer and draw a swirling line across my face. It would be fun. She saw that glint in my eye. I tried to suppress my smile.

It was all very methodical. Her hand picked up a bottle of something the color of my skin and a thick brush. She rubbed the liquid into my face. It became my face. She ran the brush in small circles across my face, polishing off the top layer of skin. It wasn’t important enough, that top layer. It was like the rough and cloudy surface of an unpolished marble counter. 

My skin felt tight, tight and heavy. Scrunched my nose and furrowed my brows. I lifted my hands to rub away everything that felt wrong with my skin. My mother slapped my hand. A look flashed through her eyes I had never seen before. Jealousy, maybe. She screamed at me. How dare I waste the opportunity she had given me? But I just stared at myself, at my face. I couldn’t look away from how stiff I looked. How contrived and constructed. I wasn’t me. But it was me. It was the me worth seeing. The me that elicited smiles and compliments. And respect and strangers holding doors, going out of their way to be kind to me. I wasn’t me when my face was bare. It wasn’t much of a face anyway, red and patchy. 

So, more powder. More blush. A little lip liner. Some bronzer here and there. I sculpt my face into what I know it is meant to be. It’s smooth and buffed. Like everyone’s should be. I mold it the only way I know how. I breathe out. I relax. I lean back in my chair. I have my face back.

A fly buzzes around my head. It lands on my desk, and I swat at it. It flies up only to land on my thigh. I swat at it again. This time, it ends on the edge of my mirror — its small, spindly legs perched on the edge of that thick, white frame. As I turn to look at it, my eyes catch my reflection. It’s like my mask, my face, has slipped off. It’s melting again, but really melting now as if I hadn’t spent any time painting it on. Everything is too dark and too light and too settled into the creases of my face. This isn’t how it’s supposed to look. I know that. But I look like this.

I guess I didn’t press it into my skin enough. I didn’t force the makeup into my pores enough to combine, to supernaturally bind it to my skin at the atomic level. The mask is slipping at the edges. I grab my sponge and try. I try to force the mask back into my face. Small taps towards the middle of my face and larger strokes towards the edges. They become more violent and desperate. There is nothing I can do. 

I preSs, pRess, preSS, prEss. And suddenly I am hiTTINg, Hitting, hIttinG. And it isn’t enough. I tear at my hair. I can’t help it. I pull at the edges of my skin. It’s not moving. I claw at my eyes, pull at my eyelashes until my desk is littered with the remnants of myself. I’m bleeding. I can’t tell where it’s coming from. I let out a scream. My face is red. Mascara runs down my cheeks. It burns. Those unpronounceable chemicals make neat trails down my cheeks. I pull at the seams 

of my being until there is nothing left. I stare at my pink muscle formerly beneath my skin, beneath my face, beneath my mask. My nails scrape at what’s left of me. I tear at it. I cry out as I jerk the cartilage of my nose into where it is supposed to be. It pops into place. Tears sting, but I feel accomplished. A smile, a sense of comfort, grows. I dig my fingers into my cheeks and I pull them back. I smooth them, but I can’t see if they are smooth enough. Blood rushes down. I scratch at them. I scratch until there is nothing left to scratch at. I scratch until all I feel is bone. 

iT’s NoT enoUgh.

It’s not enough because it’s still there. A structure reminiscent of my face. I can’t see my scar anymore, though. No one can see my scar anymore. That’s good. That’s really good. My heartbeat soothes. Blood rushes into my ears, but it’s good. White noise.

Now there’s a ringing in my ears. I squeeze my eyes shut. It stings. The ringing doesn’t stop. I open my eyes reluctantly and see my friend FaceTiming me. My heart. It seizes, pauses for a moment. I stare at myself. I stare around at the blood and the scattered parts of me that litter my desk. I scramble to grab everything. I lunge, and I reach. I slam the skin back into place. I glue everything together. I sew and patch and cover everything with the kind of makeup that looks good on camera. My mask, my face, myself. I slather it on and press those chemicals into my face until they have no choice but to bond with my being. Everything is a bit too much, too defined. Realistic on camera, though. That’s good. That’s good.

I stare at myself. I breathe out. It’s okay. Not the worst I’ve looked. I smile. I prod my cheeks up and pull my lips into a natural curve with my fingers. I answer the phone.