works in progress

prologue

Here is a picture. I am three years old and I am perched on a stool in front of a dressing table, sweeping blush over my cheeks with a feathery wand. In the background, my mother hovers. Her hair is a waterfall of gold, her waist the circumference of a cantaloupe. She is wearing a sheath dress, pearls, and crocodile pumps with sensible heels. The image is so clear I can actually smell her Shalimar perfume. I can hear her voice—smooth, with the hint of a Carolina accent. “You,” she says, “are my beautiful girl.”

Ha!

It is unavoidable. Wherever you go in my house, there I am. Hanging in the alcove over the stairs, propped on the mantel, stuck to the refrigerator door with alphabet magnets. After what happened, you would think that someone would tear down every photo in the universe so I wouldn’t have to look at myself. But no one has. And a part of me is glad. Because looking is my punishment.

chapter one, teaser

My life is over.

It’s the kind of pronouncement teenage girls make every day. They say it after such traumatic events as, say, farting out loud in gym class, or discovering they’ve gained three pounds at Christmas and can’t fit in their winter formal dress. Oh my God, you guys! My life is over! Then they bawl to their girlfriends, eat a bunch of Oreos, and move on.

But this was different. I wasn’t saying the words for effect; I meant them. Because when you’re fifteen years old and you’re lying in a hospital bed listening to things like “multiple facial fractures” and “reconstructive surgery,” there is only one coherent thought in your mind. My life is over.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” said the nurse who was checking my blood pressure.

“No,” I said, trying to shake my head but it hurt too much to move. “I’m not.”

I couldn’t expect some stranger in Mickey Mouse scrubs to understand. But the truth was, what happened to my face wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part—the reason I was in the hospital at all—was Taylor.