The fitting room's small and there's a mirror, and I keep my back to it out of nine years of habit.
I get Lashes' shirt off and the dress over my head, and it slides down and settles, and itfits—it sits on my shoulders the way clothes used to fit before, like it was made to, and I turn to look before I remember why I don't.
I remember when I see Lashes' face in the glass behind me.
The dress dips in the back. Not far, but far enough.
And there it is, the whole of me laid out in the mirror—the ropes of scar tissue and the places that healed crooked.
The ones that got split open again before they could close at all, ten years of a man with a strap.
The first time I've looked at it head-on since Marie's bathroom. I look at it in a mall fitting room with two women behind me.
Nobody says anything for a second.
Then Nova steps in.
She's a nurse. I'd forgotten she's a nurse until right now, because she looks at my back the way a nurse looks.
Not away, not wincing, her eyes tracking it steady and clinical, taking it in without making a show of taking it in.
"Okay." Her voice is flat and easy. "The top one, running up under your shoulder blade. Does it pull when you reach overhead?"
I blink at her in the mirror. "Sometimes."
"Yeah. That one healed down into the muscle. There's work we can do on it—not to make it vanish, I won't lie to you about that, but to get the range back so it quits catching." She meets my eyes in the glass like we're discussing a bad ankle. "Whenever you want. No rush. It's not going anywhere and neither am I."
That's all of it.
She doesn't tell me I'm brave.
She doesn't tell me it's not that bad, because itisthat bad.
She's a nurse and she won't insult me by pretending. She looks at the worst part of my body like it's a problem with a fix, and then she looks back up at my face.
Lashes is leaning in the doorway.
She's pulled her own collar to the side without a word, and there's a scar across her collarbone I hadn't seen before, thick and old. She lets me see it. She doesn't say anything about it. She pulls the collar back.
"Dress is stupid good on you," she says. "Nova was right. Don't tell her."
"Heard it," Nova says.
"I meant you to."
I look at myself in the mirror.
Green dress, scarred back, my mother's cheekbones and my father's chin, forty pounds lighter than I should be and standing up straight for the first time I can call to mind.
"I'm buying it," I say.
But they don’t let me.
Nova takes it upon herself to get me the dress, even though I did argue quite a bit with her.
Lashes and Ruby told me to just let her do it. And, I smile to myself, because this is what sisterhood should feel like.
We're back at the club a little after four and the good part of the day holds all the way to the gate.
