“I don’t need one more room full of people pretending not to pity me.”
She looked at me quietly across the kitchen table.
“You survived something terrible once,” she said softly. “Don’t spend the rest of your life surviving instead of living.”
Eventually, she convinced me.
We bought a dress.
Curled my hair.
Spent nearly an hour carefully applying makeup over the scars on my neck.
And for a few fragile moments while standing in front of the mirror, I almost believed maybe the night could feel normal.
It didn’t.
The second I walked into the gymnasium, regret hit me immediately.
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