My hand met skin.
Smooth. Bare. Chillingly bare.
I sat bolt upright and let out a sound I did not recognize as mine. It came from somewhere deep and primal, a split-open noise more animal than human. I stumbled out of bed and lurched toward the mirror over the dresser.
The woman staring back at me was not a bride.
She looked like someone who had survived an illness, an accident, or a punishment.
My scalp was completely shaved. Not clipped short. Not butchered in patches. Cleanly shaved, almost to the skin. My eyes were swollen from sleep and shock, my mouth half open, my whole face frozen in disbelief.
Taped crookedly to the mirror was a yellow sticky note in my father’s heavy block handwriting.
Now you have the look that fits you.
Ridiculous girl.
My knees went weak. I grabbed the edge of the dresser before I slid to the floor.
There are moments so cruel your brain rejects them at first. It starts reaching for alternate explanations. Sleepwalking. A prank gone too far by a cousin. Some bizarre mistake. But I knew immediately.
