WORTHY, Part 1 Read Online Free

Mom said, kissing my forehead. “Like a young woman already.”
    “No, you’ll always be our baby girl,” Dad maintained, snaking his arm around my middle and hugging me to him.
    I looked in the mirror they were all standing in front of and gasped. Mom was right—I looked beautiful. My hair was swept back into a complicated braided up-do, pulled clear of my face. Both of my cheeks were as smooth as milk and had a healthy blush.
    This. This is what could have been. This is what should have been.
    I woke with a start. That dream again. I brought my hands to my face. My left hand felt smooth skin. My right hand felt warped skin—skin as warped as my terrible life.
    Sighing, I let my hands drop and stared up at the ceiling. The silvery light of the moon filtered in the bedroom window, and I felt like crying. Why? What was the point? There was nothing I could change now, nothing I could do to prevent what had already happened. My parents were gone, and my face—and future—was ruined. Why was that so hard to accept?
    I rolled out of bed and got a drink of water from the kitchen. I drained it and set the glass by the sink before walking outside.
    The land around the cottage transformed by night. I never felt scared of it—it was still the same place I knew and loved—but it was just different.
    The birdsong I was so familiar with was replaced with crickets in the field, the cries of screech owls in the woods, the far off yips of coyotes. And instead of the sun gilding the long grass and the tree leaves with gold, the moon cast everything in silver. I held my hand out to examine it in the light. It had such a strange quality that I wondered for a moment if I were still dreaming, if my real body was actually still asleep in my bedroom. It was a mischievous—if disquieting—thought.
    Even the wind had stilled.
    Wearing just my nightgown, I walked out into the field toward the barn, trailing my hand through the wildflowers that grew abundantly there. They were beautiful during the day, but ethereal by night, reduced to differing shades of pewter and steel.
    Maybe, by this light, I looked beautiful, too.
    It was a ridiculous thought, one that I’d only entertain at an equally ridiculous hour such as this. I walked a couple of more steps to the barn before I stopped myself, stunned. I realized that I was going to try to peer into one of the mirrors I’d wrapped up and stowed in there. As if a single dream had changed things. As if a smooth face would solve all ills. Laughing shortly at myself, I fell immediately silent. The sound was out of place in the night, jarring, and the crickets around me quieted to hear it.
    The night and the light of the moon might transform everything around me, but it wouldn’t change one thing. The sun would come up and reveal everything as it really was—yellow and pink and purple and white wildflowers in the field, birdsong, and the ugly scarring on my face. I couldn’t fool myself. It was more painful than reality. I didn’t need to play pretend in a mirror.
    I wasn’t a child anymore.
    Feeling suddenly tired —so exhausted I gave a passing thought to sinking down into the long grass and going to sleep right then and there—I made my way back through the field and to the cottage. I didn’t need to turn on any lights in order to make it to the bedroom with my shins and toes unscathed. I knew the place like the back of my hand.
    Bed. That was what I needed. Respite from this long night.
    “You look so beautiful, Michelle,” Mom said, kissing my forehead. “Like a young woman already.”
    “No, you’ll always be our baby girl,” Dad maintained, snaking his arm around my middle and hugging me to him.
    I looked into the mirror. My hair was beautifully done, my face smooth and gorgeous.
    Oh, well. A girl could dream, couldn’t she?

Chapter Three
     
     
    One morning, I woke to thunder.
    “Finally,” I mumbled sleepily, peering out the window. The clouds were low to the ground and