It’s on a chair by the window, with its mouse face turned as if to stare out at the street below. Its button eyes catch something, reflecting it back as if it’s sending some sort of message. My breath misfires, and I look away so quickly I feel a twinge in my neck. That thing is a childhood superstition turned decor.
I keep it because my mother insists it’s lucky. Eighteen years of luck, of getting what I want must prove that, right?
I snort at the ridiculousness of that notion. The only power anything has is what I decide to concede.
I turn back to the mirror, lift my arm again, and inspect. There is the faintest shadow if I choose to see it, like the ghost of hair under skin, but that’s just my imagination, just the brain’s tendency to fill in blanks.
I touch the area, finding it soft, and it stings in a way that feels satisfying.
I continue on, picking up the toner, working it in before moving onto the retinoid. The pea-sized amount I measure is like a ritual sacrifice. The jade roller, chilled from the little mini-fridge drawer, glides along my cheekbones. The cold forces my breathing back into an even metronome. I count strokes, eight per side, always even, symmetry becoming a prayer.
By the time I’m smoothing cream down my throat and over my collarbones, the itch of panic has burned itself out. I glance at my arm one more time, quick and punishing, a test I expect to pass.
It’s fine. Of course it’s fine.
I pick up my body oil and work it into my shoulders, watching the light slide over my skin in a glimmer that could be called holy if I believed in things I don’t. Someone else might make this into a story: a sign, an omen, a whatever. They’d run their mouth, and it would grow in the telling. I don’t tell stories. I make narratives that stick.
Still, when I reach to turn off the tap, my fingers slide on the metal like I’m all thumbs. I grip harder than necessary, and the faucet squeaks. I freeze, then deliberately loosen, smiling at myself in the mirror. There is no room for anything as ridiculous as fear. If there’s a smudge on the glass, I simply wipe it. If there’s hair where it shouldn’t be, I remove it.
Maybe I’ll book a laser appointment next week, just because. Prevention is powerful. It’s always better to decide before you have to do something, always better to be ahead than chasing your ass.
The candle gutters in a draft I can’t feel. Through the doorway, the distant street spreads itself glittering and obliging, and the mouse on the chair is just fabric, thread, and nostalgia catching light.
Iwake up certain I’ll feel smooth skin. My routines work. I fix things. I always fix things.
I pull my arm out from under the duvet and brush my fingers over the spot I shaved so well last night.
Prickle.
I jerk upright so fast that the sheets coil around my waist. It’s not a prickle. It’s a thicket. In the pale morning light the hair is not just back, it’s darker, heavier, a swath of shadow marching up my forearm where there should be a sleek nothing.
My stomach does a small, mean flip.
No. That’s not right.
That’s not how bodies work. That’s not how my body works.
I throw the duvet aside and hurry to the mirror over my vanity, angling my arm toward the glass, then the window, finding the light that never lies. It’s obvious in any light. Last night it was a weird patch, fine enough that a good razor and a little precision took it out clean. Now it’s like the arm of someone else, no, something else, one grafted onto me.
The hairs lie flat and silky when I stroke them the right way, then bristle up stubbornly as I go the wrong way. They are nearly black, even though my hair on my head is not.
Each one looks thick, deliberate, obstinate even in its determination to be there.
The first shaking breath that comes out of me sounds small and ridiculous. For a second, I can see my face in the mirror the way I see other people’s; eyes wide, mouth parted, pale with the kind of panic that makes other girls call their moms. Well, that won’t be me.
It’s lighting, I tell myself, harsh morning shadows. Hormones. Stress. God, we’re teenagers, technically. People sprout all kinds of unfortunate fuzz under stress. I probably slept weird. I probably didn’t shave as close as I thought, busy and tired after all of the fun of yesterday.
I blink, and something clatters in my head. The mouse doll. The glass eyes.
No.
I clamp down on that hard enough to taste metal. That’s ridiculous. Coincidence is a thing. Witches, magic, bullshit superstition is not.
I go to the bathroom and lock the door behind me, twisting the faucet open to cold. The shake in my hands makes the water splash everywhere as I yank open the drawer and pull out my razor. I grab shaving cream, foam spilling over my fingers, and smear it over the patch too fast, too thick.
The fur laughs. No, of course it doesn’t, that’s insane, it’s hair. Hair doesn’t laugh. Hair doesn’t do anything. But the little drag it gives under my palm feels like defiance all the same.
“I am not doing this.” I say to no one.
