Color Me Pretty

pudding, and dry chicken, pre-shredded since I'm not allowed to have knives. 397 calories per tray times two trays = I can't even fucking think about it right now. And I'd thought this was a nice hospital. I do my best not to try and calculate the calories from four days of that stupid feeding tube; I'm sure the number's astronomical. “Just leave me alone for five minutes,” I growl, and I wait until I hear my mother move away. She doesn't go far but at least there's a semblance of privacy.
    I turn around, keeping my eyes shut tight, so I don't accidentally look into the mirror. I'm not ready yet, have to brace myself for the moment. It's going to be so bad; it's going to destroy me a little inside. I wish Emmett were here. I wouldn't look at all, but I'm afraid I'm going to end up catching a glance in a window or something and have a freak-out in front of everyone. This needs to happen privately with just me, myself, and I.
    I clutch my ugly clothes against my chest and try to be grateful that I get to take off this stupid hospital gown. Anything is better, anything. I force my breath to slow, to forget about the horrors of the last few days, and try to imagine something pleasant. Slowly, my mind begins to build a scenario, stretching itself to the limit, fighting to get past the slump I've been experiencing. Lack of food doesn't exactly stimulate the imagination. Eventually though, it begins to spin and the gears click into place.
    A catwalk, high above the glistening water, juts out from the platform and snakes around the pond, held up here and there with stainless steel poles that disappear into the darkness below. I set foot onto the clear, glass surface with a pair of custom sandals on my feet and a couture dress wrapped around my perfect body. When people see me coming, they gasp, and not because I'm fat or skinny, but because I'm just right. As I start to walk, my body morphs a little, changes from slender and willowy to ripe and curvy, womanly. At first, the change bothers me, but then, off in the distance, waiting at the end of the line, I see Emmett Sinclair watching me with half-lidded eyes and a gentle smile.
    A sigh of pleasure escapes my throat, and my heart begins to slow. I can do this. The mind has a lot of power, Claire. Take control if that's what you need to do. Start with your brain and work your way out into the world. My eyes flicker open and the clothes fall from my hands, unfolding as they go, landing in a messy heap at my bare feet.
    I clamp my hand over my mouth to hold back the wail of horror that's clawing its way up from my roiling belly.
    “No.” That one word, a whisper.
    In the mirror, the rapacious monster looks back at me, wearing two dark, purple circles of pain under her eyes. She leers at my affliction, snarls at me as she strips away my disorder and leaves me with something worse – reality. Stark, white, blistering reality. “No.”
    “ No?” my reflection asks, smiling back at me with yellowed teeth. “What do you mean 'no'? Look at yourself: this is you. This is what you've become Claire. You're an abomination, an abhorrent miscreant, a cathexis of foulness and decay.”
    A scream builds in the back of my throat.
    Where do I start? Oh, where, where, where?
    The train wreck that I see before me is foreign and familiar both, comforting and terrifying, false and yet truthful. My knees begin to shake and my body goes cold.
    If you're worried about me, you should be. Being born isn't easy; that's why most of us only do it once. And here I am, my second time around. Things have to get worse before they get better – it's a rule of the universe. Progress doesn't always mean flying forward at light speed. Sometimes, it's about knowing when to step back and take a look around. I have to do this or I'll never get better.
    My eyes are big, too big, like marbles, except they're not shiny. Instead, they're dull, matte, just two gray and white splotches of paint in an otherwise colorless face. I'm so pale, I may as well be a ghost. My skin is pallid, almost translucent, tickled through with tiny, blue veins that are pulsing with a soft weakness. My hair … oh … my hair. Where is my hair?
    My hands come up, long and spindly, tipped with those strange, blue nails, and they touch my red scalp tentatively, brush through the splotchy orange. Why did I cut my hair off? I can't even remember anymore. Somewhere, in the back of my mind that image of me falling from the treehouse