Like a lot of the other girls, Alex had found out quickly that she was not beautiful enough to model. The lucky ones realized this sooner rather than later. But she was tall enough and skinny enough that people often assumed she was more beautiful than she was. A good trick.

“Sugar eats your bones,”

You were the exception, until you weren’t.

surely. A little stutter, a little slip of her fingernail—but there it was, a scratch. A scribble in the paint. She stared at it. She stared at her hand.

Had she ever actually looked that clean and fresh and blameless?

There were girls here, too, girls in silver hoop earrings with center-parted hair,

These were the type of people who assumed that there were rules, who believed that if they followed them they would one day be rewarded. And here was Alex, naked in their pool.

She kept bracing for a crash—as if such blatant excess deserved swift punishment.

Alex got a series of laser treatments: flashes of blue light soaked her face while she looked out of tinted medical goggles like a somber spaceman.