I woke up wrong.
Not in the disoriented way of a bad dream or an unfamiliar room, but in the specific, body-level way of someone whose physical reality has been altered while they were unconscious. My head felt lighter against the pillow. Wrong. I reached up the way you reach for something you are certain is there, a glass of water on the nightstand, your phone face-down beside you, the weight of your own hair, and found nothing. Short, jagged ends where twelve years of careful growth should have been.
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