At five-thirty, orange-gold light pours through Maria’s window. It lasts until five-forty; she’s been ready since five-fifteen. She has restraightened her hair and reglossed her lips. A tiny bead of gel atop a thin finger reslicked her eyebrows. Little earrings that glint cheap and plastic sit in a shallow cup, ready to be clipped on. The mirror confirms her preparations. Maria practices a three-quarters inhale that expands her ribcage and pushes out her chest. She tilts her head just barely off its spinal axis and tucks her chin just enough so that when she looks straight ahead, her eyes look fuller, rounder, and a little more inviting — not seductive, not cringe, just a little heavier, a little more open, a little deeper. A gummy, toothy smile is out of the question so she crinkles the corners of her mouth. No good. She resets. This time she protrudes her top lip an extra millimeter so that the flesh rests more casually instead of pulling inward on the sides. The left side always pulls up a little higher but this can be corrected for with neck yaw. She redoes the inhale, this time shallower so that the divot where the base of her neck meets her clavicles casts a more dramatic shadow. She catches an eyelash out of formation; her eyes flutter and she frowns as she coaxes it back into place with her pinky. No pimples. No visible pimples. She clips on the earrings, wincing. One more part of the hair: a gentle middle-plus-ring-finger sweep. The mirror has done its job — on to the execution stage, with six minutes of nice light left.
The phone sits between her thumb and her middle finger so that her index can tap the circle that captures her image. Her arm stretches out almost parallel to the soft rays of sunlight but offset enough that neither the phone nor her arm casts a shadow onto her face. The phonescreen automatically brightens to its maximum, harmonizing with the sunlight. Maria meets her own gaze and inhales. Snap. She envisions Christian Alvarez, the lanky eleventh grader with a deep voice and greasy hair. She inhales. Snap. She shakes her head with tight control so that a single lock of hair descends, crossing her eyebrow which subtends a cute angle with the neighboring lock. She inales. Snap.
Five-and-a-half minutes remain. She pulls her phone to her nose and hunches over its screen to appraise the photos.
Ugh. Disgusting.
She swipes.
Ew.
She goes back to the first, hoping it seems better by comparison. It does not. She checks the third, about which she didn’t feel great as she took it.
Literally so ugly.
She deems them all unsalvagabe even with filters. Her phone thumps face down on her bed and she turns back to the mirror, pulling the corners of her eyebrows up and away in order to tighten the elastic in her skin, if only temporarily. She meanwhile scorns her own chin.
Four-and-a-half minutes remain. Arm out, phone balanced, lungs three-quarters full, Maria tries again. Snap. She takes just one then checks it right away. She swallows hard, disappointed again.
Maria crumples two tissues in each hand then stuffs her bra one side at a time. Flat hands press down then release, testing the springiness of the crumples. The hands curl into half-fists with thumb and index outstretched to yank off the now-deemed-tacky earrings. Another pair clips on, triggering a choked-down moan of pain. It’s too late to redo my makeup, she laments. She tries on a new expression conjuring a new mental image: herself, a few years older, at a professional magazine photoshoot, standing wide-legged in front of one of those long cascades of shiny paper, surrounded by tattooed photographers and doting staff. She inhales, stiffer, and sucks her neck in. Snap.
I look retarded.
Three minutes remain. Maria closes her eyes and paces. Tears begin to form behind her eyelids. But she has to try again. She repositions herself in the window-light’s bath and exhales, opening her eyes, hoping that the half-tears offer her some glint without any redness. She cannot bear to look at herself in the phonescreen anymore. She blurs herself from her own perception, seeing instead only shadows: cast by her hair, beneath her chin, under her fake tissue-paper-breasts. She lets her teeth out for one smile but does not capture the image. Her eyes do look red; she needs a moment.
One minute remains. Maria cannot hold her inhale steady; her heart is beating too hard, reverberating up her arm, compromising her grip on the phone. In desperation, she goes for irony. She can lower her right eyebrow but keep her left raised and she can flop her tongue out of the side of her mouth without it looking too doggy. Snap. She can close her eyes while looking skyward and feign a dopey, pleased mouth, framed with the flat back of her left hand under her chin, purple fingernails drawing focus away from her awful nose, her awful chin, her unnacceptable forehead. Snap.
The house across the street begins to eclipse the Sun. A blue-gray shroud descends over Maria, hunched over her phone, staring at pictures of herself, judging them at once as a boy with a crush, a jealous friend, a cruel rival, and a domineering parent. Each filter she tries seems to serve one character or another; never all they all happy. Never is she happy either.
Delete.
Are you sure?
Delete.
Are you sure?
Delete.
Are you sure?
Delete.
Are you sure?
Delete.
Are you sure?
Delete.
Are you sure?
Delete.
Are you sure?
Maria hesitates; it’s the last one, the only one left. She tabs over. Jessica Monfredo posted four minutes ago: she’s in her bathroom and her hair’s still wet, casually wet; her skin glows, almost with a halo; her breasts balloon, proud and huge — fuck you — but her ears are huge too, stupid-huge, elephant-huge; her pose is so forced; you can literally see smudges all over her mirror—
Whatever.
Back in the photos app, Maria, with the tip of a finger, places two tiny pink heart characters, one on each of her cheeks, beneath her closed eyes wet with secret tears, and types the caption
~golden hour~
then posts the picture.
Four likes arrive instantly; Maria flops supine onto her bed to wait for more. None do until three hours later when a boiled crustacean of a middle-aged pervert, incognito as a teenager named “Candy,” locates askance through bifocals and then taps, with the numb tip of a bulbous finger, a little heart-shaped icon.