He’s sitting next to Alexis Smith, her right leg slung across his left. Her short, pale fingers are laced through his long dark ones. She looks away, then rests her cheek on his shoulder. Chirag kisses the top of her head like it’s nothing: No big deal, he’s kissed it a thousand times before and could kiss it a thousand times more.
The top of my head is the only place he kissed me after my accident.
How long has this been going on? Has Serena been keeping it from me? Or have I just refused to see it all on my own, every time I looked the other way, every time I avoided the places I knew Chirag would be?
The string hanging from my chest tightens again, making my breath come fast and hard. This is what I wanted. I ended it so that he could go on with his life and have the senior year he deserved. He deserves a normal girl like Alexis. A girl he can take to senior prom and who can dance the night away without sneaking off to take her pills. A girl whose hand he can hold without feeling her scars. A girl he can kiss with his eyes open, a girl who gets stared at because she’s so pretty, not because she’s a monster. I bet that when he tells Alexis he loves her, she’ll just say I love you, too, instead of shooing him away so that he can’t hear her parents’ fighting.
I told Ellen that I needed to find new things to look forward to. I need to give up Chirag, just like I gave up the track team. I mean, I know we broke up months ago, but it wasn’t until right now, this moment, that I really understood what it meant. Chirag isn’t in love with me anymore, not even with the old me. A rational person like Chirag would never be in love with someone who doesn’t exist. And the Chirag I fell in love with has disappeared, too. I’m not the only one who’s different now.
The string pulls itself so taut that it finally snaps.
Two coffees, please,” Adam says, smiling his crooked smile at our waitress. “One with milk and sugar, one black.”
We’re sitting in the diner after Group. He doesn’t look away when I take my pills, one right after the other. Tonight, as I gulp them down, he actually sings an old song about how one pill makes you larger and one makes you small until I’m giggling so hard that I can barely swallow the last one.
“Better be careful,” I say. “If my mom finds out you’re making it harder for me to take my pills, she’ll ix-nay this whole relationship.”
My tongue trips over the word relationship. I mean, I guess that word applies to pretty much every kind of human interaction, but people usually only use it for romantic ones, right? Or not-quite romantic ones, in our case. Maybe tonight will be the night Adam makes his move.
“I don’t really get the feeling that you’re in the habit of listening to your mother when it comes to who you hang out with.”
“Whom,” I correct teasingly. Adam rolls his eyes. “Anyway, not listening to her has never made her shut up before.” In a singsong voice that sounds nothing like my mother’s, I recite: “Take your pills. Have you done your stretches today? Well, I didn’t see you do them so do them again. Go to school, to see Dr. Boden, to PT. Chirag will drive you.” I shake my head. “I’m so sick and tired of her pushing, pushing, pushing me.”
Adam shrugs. “That’s what parents do.”
“She was always like that. Even before the accident. It really pissed me off. I mean, I was a good kid. I got good grades and ran track and I stayed out of her way when she was fighting with my dad.”
“The perfect daughter,” he says, but it’s clear from his tone that he knows I’m far from it.
“I know,” I groan. “I know. I could be a brat, and it’s been a lot worse since the accident. But she has no idea what this is like. This,” I say, pointing to my face. “She’s so determined for me to handle it the way she wants me to handle it—the way she thinks she would handle it. But she has no idea what it’s like to be stared at, to look in the mirror at a reflection you still don’t always recognize.”
“Most people can’t understand. That’s what Group is for.”
I nod. “I know. And I’m grateful. I just can’t remember the last time I had a conversation with my mother when she wasn’t asking whether I’d done everything she thought I was supposed to do.” I close my eyes. I can see it now, the way she scrunches up her nose as she goes through her mental list; her nose has freckles on it, just like mine used to. “Thank god I don’t have her nose anymore.”
I clap my hand over my mouth. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I just said that.”
Adam takes a bite of his sandwich. “Said what?” he asks, his lopsided mouth full of turkey club.
“About my nose. Her nose.” I point to my face, tracing a finger down the slope of my nose. “This nose.”
“It’s a nice nose.”
“Yeah, but it’s not my nose. I mean, not my real nose. My real nose was my mother’s nose. This is my donor’s nose.”
I press my finger to the tip of it: hard and pointy, so different from the nose I had before the accident.
“Let me ask you something,” Adam says. “Did you like your nose? The one you had before the accident?”
Slowly, I shake my head. In fact, I’d hated it. I used to whine to Serena about how round and bulbous it was, used to wonder whether Chirag thought it got in the way when he kissed me. “I used to joke that someday, I’d get a nose job or something. You know, upgrade. But I never would have. I was scared of the surgery.” That sounds ridiculous now.
Adam says, “Well, at least now you don’t have to.”
“Don’t have to what?”
“Don’t have to get a nose job. Think of your new nose as a bonus.”
I shake my head. “This isn’t the nose I would have chosen. Someone else’s nose.”
“But you said you got your old nose from your mother.” Adam takes another bite, chews and swallows. “Either way, you’re walking around with someone else’s nose on your face.”
Adam is one of the few people in my life who has never even seen a picture of the old Maisie. He doesn’t know the way that I used to look, the freckles on my round nose and the dimple in my cheek.
Adam has scars, too. He’s broken, just like I am.
Maybe he hasn’t tried to kiss me or even just take my hand because he thinks I’m not ready yet. Maybe he thinks I’m fragile. Maybe I have to be the one to make the first move. Maybe it will be the beginning of a lifetime of first moves, because boys will always be worried that I’m too delicate.
Not that there’s exactly a line of people waiting to make a first move with me. There’s only Adam.
“Hey,” I say suddenly, as though I’ve only just sat down and noticed him sitting across from me, “do you want to go to prom with me?”
“What?”
I press my hands flat on the sticky table, looking at them instead of at him. “I know, it’s not traditional for the girl to ask the guy, but it’s not like you even go to my school—”
“Or any school. Maisie, I graduated from high school a long time ago.”
I look up. “I know, but—”
The look on Adam’s face shuts me up. He’s mortified.
Oh god, what was I thinking? That just because Adam is damaged, he’d want to go out with me? That just because he has scars, Adam wouldn’t be disgusted at the idea of seeing my face up close while we slow-danced, of feeling my scars through the layers of my dress? Not that there is a prom dress in the world that could cover them up. I’d need to wear long sleeves, a high neckline. I’ll be the only girl at prom dressed like a nun.
No one wants to dance with the striped girl in the ugly dress, her deformed face popping out of its high neckline like some kind of grotesque balloon.
“Maisie—” Adam begins, but I shake my head.
“I’ve got to go,” I say, getting up, relieved that I drove myself here tonight. “I think I left one of my pills at home.”
“No, you didn’t. I counted them.”
“There’s a new one,” I say as I stand. “Some kind of herbal supplement my mom wants me to start taking.”
In any other context, the mere suggestion that my mother would want me to take an herbal supplement instead of the scientifically engineered pills my doctors prescribed would make Adam laugh.
Adam doesn’t try to stop me, doesn’t follow me out of the restaurant and into the parking lot, doesn’t hold my car door shut when I try to open it. He’s probably relieved that I’m going, relieved to finish his sandwich without my broken face staring at him from the other side of the table, the pathetically deformed girl so desperate for a date, so deluded that she thought someone might actually want her.
I stuff my key into the ignition like I’m stabbing something, ease my foot off the brake as I shift into reverse and back out of the parking spot. At a red light, I close my eyes for just a second.
I try to imagine myself at prom with Adam, what it would have looked like when I walked into the gym with my arm linked through his, the long-sleeved, high-necked dress I would have worn. Instead, I see the backless green dress I planned to wear a year ago. I see myself dancing circles around the boys, giggling in the bathroom with Serena, sneaking out to the parking lot in between songs. And it is Chirag, not Adam, that I see beside me: Chirag’s arms circling my waist as we slow-dance, Chirag’s lips tickling my cheek as he whispers I love you.
Even now, nearly a year later, whenever I am scared, or I can’t sleep, or I’m in pain, I still close my eyes and imagine that I’m with Chirag at prom.
Behind me, a car honks. I open my eyes: The light is green. I press down hard on the accelerator.
Too hard. The car lurches forward. I slam on the brakes. More honking from the cars behind me.
My hands are shaking. It’s dark out but I forgot to turn on my headlights.
I pull off to the side of the road and rest my head on the steering wheel. I squeeze the wheel so hard it hurts—not just my burned left hand but my normal right hand, too. I can feel my pulse, steady and strong, throbbing in my temples. Again, I see myself in the green dress, happy and carefree, dancing with the boy I loved. I can see the lights flashing on the dance floor, the press of bodies moving to the music.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t tell whether that’s the old or the new Maisie dancing in the green dress. I can’t see whether my left arm is covered in stripes, whether the dress is revealing the scars that snake down the left side of my back. No matter how tightly I shut my eyes, how carefully I concentrate, how much I want it: I can’t see my own face.
The following Wednesday is the one-year anniversary of my accident, and I don’t go to Group. I take the car and drive around in circles, careful to avoid the church and Adam’s diner. I watch my left hand as I turn the steering wheel. The scars have faded but they’re still there: undeniable and practically glowing in the moonlight.
I haven’t skipped Group once since December and I miss it. If I go to Barnard, I’ll have to find a group like ours in New York City. For now, maybe I’ll have to find another meeting close by. Or maybe Adam will. Officially speaking, he’s the one who hurt me, so he should be the one to leave, right?
But when I pull into my driveway at the end of the night, Adam is there, sitting on our stoop.
“My dad’s car is in the driveway,” I say instead of hello. “My parents would have let you in.” In fact, there’s no missing the fact that my parents are home; I can hear them fighting from here. Silly stuff again: something about gas mileage and commuting. At least they won’t have to fight about that if I go to Barnard. I won’t need to use my mother’s car then.
That’s the second time tonight that I thought if I go to Barnard, instead of when.
Adam shrugs. He doesn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable with the shouts coming from the other side of our front door. “I’m not here to see your parents. I’m here to see you. And your car wasn’t in the driveway.”
“It’s not really my car. It’s my mom’s. She just lets me drive it,” I explain needlessly, and Adam nods. The silence between us is strained, worse even than the night we first met, when I didn’t want to say a syllable more than was absolutely necessary. “I should go inside,” I mumble finally.
As I open our front door, I think about the night when Chirag asked me to prom. My parents’ shouts sound almost exactly the same, even though the subject has changed.
Now they don’t stop yelling until they see that there is someone else with me, someone they’ve never met, someone whose scars are even worse than mine. I’m mortified by the way they stare. You’d think that they would know better. But then, like Adam and Chirag both said, it’s human nature. They can’t help it. When I first met him, I couldn’t help it either.
“This is Adam,” I begin. My parents are frozen on opposite sides of the living room, two boxers who’ve retreated to different sides of the ring. “He’s my—” I hesitate. My friend? My sponsor? My almost-until-he-rejected-me boyfriend? “We’re in Group together.”
My mother’s face twists from anger to a saccharine smile. “Adam,” she says warmly, walking toward him with arms extended. “How nice to meet you.” She hugs him. I can’t remember the last time she hugged me. She closes her eyes as she squeezes; she looks exhausted, like maybe she’s finally sick and tired of fighting. Or maybe like she just really needs a hug.
Adam hugs her back; he’s nearly a full foot taller than she is. “Nice to meet you, too.” He shakes hands with my father. My parents aren’t quite staring anymore; now they’re grinning. Like they’re excited I have a friend who’s even more deformed than I am.
Adam’s gaze shifts from my father’s face to the pictures on the wall behind him, seeing my old face for the first time.
“Okay, we’re going to go to my room,” I say quickly. I take Adam’s hand—my scarred left one is closer—and pull him along behind me. My parents don’t protest, even though they never let me take Chirag to my room, never let me sit with him behind closed doors. For all their talk about how they want me to have a normal life, they don’t worry about me being behind closed doors with a boy anymore. They know I’m too hideous for anyone to want.
Or maybe, I realize with a twist in my gut, they think Adam is too hideous to be a threat. Maybe they can’t imagine that I would want him. Somehow, that’s even worse.
Adam sits on my bed while I stand by my desk, taking my pills. I’ve started to hate my room, to hate the plush peach carpet I picked out when I was ten; the bulletin board peppered with pictures of Serena, Ellen, and Samantha; pictures of Chirag and me; ribbons from meets that I won.
This is the old Maisie’s room. The new Maisie doesn’t want peach, and she doesn’t want to be surrounded with relics of her old life. I’d like to paint the walls white, get a bright white carpet, a white bedspread. A blank slate.
After a few minutes of silence, Adam says, “Maisie, I want to talk about last week.”
The final pill sticks in my throat. I gag, cough, then gag some more. Adam stands to help me but I shake my head and reach for my water glass. I drink every last drop of water, forcing the pill down.
“You okay?”
My throat feels like I just rubbed it with sandpaper, but I nod. I sit down on the bed beside Adam.
“We don’t need to talk about it,” I say softly, rubbing my neck with my hands.
“I want to talk about it.”
I don’t look at him. “Why?”
He scoots closer and puts his arm around me. “Because I owe you an explanation. I didn’t handle it very well. Of course I’ll go to your prom with you, if you want me to.”
“You will?” I say, and Adam nods, smiling his lopsided smile.
I smile back. Maybe my first-ever-first-move wasn’t a total failure after all. Maybe it led perfectly into this moment: a boy with his arm around me, smiling down at me. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m leaning closer to Adam, my face against his.
And then, I’m kissing him. The skin around my mouth feels tight. My new nose bumps into Adam’s awkwardly. I tilt my head to the side but then my teeth get in the way.
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Why is this so hard? I have the same mouth. Everyone said I was so lucky to keep my mouth. Marnie always says that PT for a new jaw is the hardest. And this nose is smaller, for crying out loud!
Gently, Adam pulls away. “Maisie,” he says carefully, “I meant that I would go to your prom with you—but as a friend.”
I drop my face into my hands. My hideous, disastrous, mismatched face.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I’m lying. I know exactly what I was thinking. That we could be two damaged people together, undressing in the dark, sharing our scars. But all along, he was probably only doing it for Marnie, because she asked him to look out for me and he’s hopelessly in love with her. I try to remember each and every time I thought he was flirting with me—each and every time he was just being nice. Of course he doesn’t want me. Who will ever want me when there are Marnies and Serenas in the world?
“Maisie—” Adam starts, but I shake my head.
“It must be gross, seeing my face so close up.”
“No, Maisie—”
“It’s okay. I need to get used to the idea—” A lump rises in my throat, so big that it’s impossible to finish my sentence.
Adam puts his hands on either side of my face and pulls it toward his so that we’re only inches apart. I feel his breath on my skin, feel the scars on his left palm on my cheek.
“Look at me, Maisie,” he commands, and I do, even though there are tears in my eyes. But when I see his face, I blink them away. Much to my surprise, I don’t see disgust in his eyes, or even pity. “Is it gross,” he asks, “seeing my face this close up?”
I don’t answer immediately. This close, the first thing I notice is his eyes, hazel with flecks of gold in the irises. Almost yellow, like a cat’s. Next, I look at his mouth. I’ve come to love his crooked smile. I can’t imagine him without it.
“Of course not,” I say finally.
“Are you horrified, being so close to my scars?”
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