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FAWN

The apartment smells like cheap lemon disinfectant that never quite covers the old grease stench clinging to my hair and skin.

I stand in front of the bathroom mirror in nothing but my underwear, staring at a face that doesn’t look like mine anymore. My eyes are brown, but they’re more dull than before. My blond hair is lifeless and wet from the shower I took, which failed to wash the diner smell off.

No matter how hard I scrub, it never works.

I worked a double today. Fourteen hours, nonstop, on my feet. My lower back throbs in a rhythm I’ve stopped noticing unless it completely disappears, which it never does. I’m nineteen years old, and I move like I’m forty. I eat like I’m punishing myself for something I didn’t do. Breakfast was a cold biscuit at six in the morning. And lunch? Yeah, that didn’t happen. Dinner was a handful of fries I stole from a plate on my way back to the kitchen, shoving them into my mouth so fast I barely tasted them.

“Fawn!” Bailey’s voice cuts through the thin wall between the bathroom and our bedroom. “Are you almost ready? The Uber will be here in twenty minutes, and you haven’t even put your costume on!”

I close my eyes and count.

One. Breathe in.

Two. Breathe out.

Three.

Opening my eyes again, I hope to see something else. Someone else. Someone better.

No luck. Still me. Tired, struggling, and generally failing at life.

The costume hangs on the back of the door. It’s white polyester with a fluffy tail and a pair of ears attached to a headband. Bailey found both of our costumes at a thrift store two towns over, buy-one-get-one-free, and she lit up as if I’d just handed her a million bucks. Matching bunny costumes.

Because nothing says Halloween like two broke bitches pretending they’re not one missed rent payment away from sleeping in a rusted old Honda.

I pull the ridiculous thing on. And of course, the damn thing doesn’t fit right. It’s too tight across my chest, too loose at my waist, and the fabric starts to itch me almost immediately. I adjust the ears in the mirror, and they sit crooked, one flopping forward, the other straight up. I look fucking ridiculous… like a server who can’t afford a real costume, going to a party she doesn’t want to attend.

“Fawn!”

“I’m coming,” I call back, and my voice sounds harsher than intended…even to me.

I step into the bedroom. Bailey is already in her costume, posing in front of the full-length mirror we found on the curb last spring. She looks amazing. She always does. Same blond hair, same brown eyes, but on her, everything looks better…brighter. Life hasn’t sucked all the hope out of her.

Her features are more distinct than mine are. She has the kind of face strangers trust immediately. The damn costume even fits her better, too. My sister filled out in ways I never did, with curves where I have angles, a softness I lost somewhere between Dad walking out and Mom getting sick and dying. Leaving me the only thing holding our lives together.

“You look amazing,” she says, catching my eye in the mirror. “Stop looking at me like that. You’re going to have fun tonight. I promise.”

“I just worked fourteen hours,” I say. “It’s just my face.”

“And it’s beautiful… well, minus the frown,” she says after turning toward me and grabbing my shoulders, forcing me to look at her. “Give me one night. Please, Fawn. For me. Besides, when was the last time you did something that wasn’t work or sleep?”

I don’t answer. Honestly, I can’t remember.

There was that one movie night, maybe six months ago, where I fell asleep twenty minutes into it.

Then there was a book I started reading on my break at the diner, until I lost it under the seat of the Honda and never found it again.

Oh! And the guy who smiled at me when I brought him his pancakes at the diner. He was a trucker with a pair of soft and kind blue eyes. I thought about giving him my number until I remembered I have nothing to give anyone. No time. No energy. No version of myself that isn’t exhausted down to the bone.

“Fine,” I say. “One night.”

Bailey squeals and hugs me tight. She’s warm, and she smells like the vanilla body spray she shoplifted from the drugstore last week. For a second, I forget about all my problems. A smile tugs on my lips.

But the moment slips through my fingers before I can hold on to it.

Crushing responsibility rushes back. I have to be the strong one. The responsible one. The one who doesn’t complain because complaining doesn’t pay the electric bill.