She’d been sitting in front of her vanity for longer than she could tell. All of the tools of war were laid out in front of her, untouched. The lipstick, red stain and glossy texture with a tip rounded from use. Brushes, straighteners, curlers, all unplugged. An entire bag of eyeshadows tipped over and strewn out for better viewing. Liners, pencils, puffs and blush. Entire sections littered with shimmery jewelry, as fake as she was. And hanging off of the mirror were all the bows and ribbons a little girl could ever ask for.

She sat in front of the mirror, and touched none of them. Her face was clean, freshly washed and unmarked. And she stared, at the stranger in the mirror, and wondered what her name was.

She wondered what her life would have been like. She wondered how different she would have been. She wondered if she could have ever been beautiful.

The way Cami and Otto were beautiful. The way America and Peyton were beautiful. The way Lucky had been beautiful.

They were together, now. Cami and Otto shared and admitted feelings that Maebe had tried to get them to accept for as long as she’d loved them. But she’d wanted it for the most selfish of reasons, and her motivation was as twisted as the feelings that now rose like bile in her stomach when she thought about the two of them, upstairs in that room alone. Without her. Because what good was she, anymore? She had a specific use, and now that use was outdated, unneeded. Cami and Otto gave each other everything they needed. They were best friends, and now, they were more. Her doing, and now, her undoing. Because she would lose them, and she only had herself to blame for the way she would crumble to dust at the inevitable moment it happened.

And they would be happy, because they were normal, and she could never be.

Her black little heart twisted with familiar jealousy, and she smiled at the reminder of who she was on this side of the mirror, while her reflection stared back at her unmoving, and filled its eyes with pity. It was the pity that enraged Maebe, and spurned her into action.

She reached out for the tools of her craft, and began to skillfully paint her mask. The lines across her eyelids pulled them out of hiding. The gentle twitch of her hand brushing color lovingly against her cheek in precise measurements. She could see it there, when she worked; the dotted lines that told her ‘here, Maebe. Enhance here. Distract from here. Change here. No one will look in your eyes when your lips are that red.’ She smiled, and the whites of her teeth were vicious and bright against the red of her perfectly painted lips. They were a sign, a beacon, a siren call. They begged to be kissed, and ********. They begged to be ruined, because they were so perfectly shaped by the color and application, hiding whatever was really inside.

She put down the lipstick, and looked in the mirror. The girl in the reflection was the same unpainted, unwashed canvas she’d been before she’d begun. Maebe couldn’t see herself anymore; all she could see was who she’d been. Who she could have been. The plastic smile on her lips faded, and the girl in the mirror sucked in a breath of hope.

Was she the girl that Cami and Otto saw, when they looked in Maebe’s eyes?

A hand slid against Maebe’s neck, and she fluttered her eyes closed. It slid against her skin, rising up her neck until it crested over her chin and pressed hard against her lips. She opened her eyes, and she was looking at herself, and the perfect mask she’d painted on her face. But more than that, the hand that covered her mouth was familiar, and the man who owned it leaned down to look at her through the mirror.

“This is who you really are.” His hand pulled away slowly, and the red, red stain of her lipstick smeared all the way across her face. He held her by the chin, and kept her eyes on the mirror, and her ruined face. “Stop running away from it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re better than them. They will only ever disappoint you, leave you and wither away. You do not wither. You fly.”

He smiled.

“This is your high point.” Lawr reminded her, kissing the top of her head. “Let me pin your wings to the wall.”

He was gone. Maebe looked down at her own hand, and the fingers covered in red, red stain. In the mirror, she saw herself again, as she really was. The swath of red against her face had ruined the mask, but when she smiled, her teeth were still viciously white against it all, and it still distracted from her eyes.

She was perfect.