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When Angela looks in the mirror, she often finds herself not enjoying what she sees.
She runs a hand through her long hair, following the motions she’s done on loop for year after year. Only with the encouragement of Roland and the others did Angela begin deviating from the way she had dressed for years, clinical instead of comfortable. Now, it has changed. Instead of her proper, uniform-like office secretary dress style, she wears longer, more comfortable pants, longer skirts in thicker, softer material; sweaters and the occasional t-shirt. And, lately… she’s found in her heart a particular fondness for hoodies, keeping her warm underneath her thinner, more decorative coats, like the ones Binah had bought for her at that antique store they had visited a few months ago.
“Here, you can have mine,” Roland says, no ire in his voice; there is naught even an implication that Angela owes him anything. She shakes the thought from her head, and takes the black jacket from Roland. It was a little big on her— just slightly, since it was bought for Roland’s larger, more broad frame— but the warmth is comforting, enveloping and pervasive to her bones. They continue walking, and Roland continues to talk, as though nothing had happened.
This body, too, she thinks.
There are the myriad of physical and mental tolls that Ayin’s treatment had taken on her, things that she cannot live without, and things she has grown accustomed to. And she does not want to feel like she’s… overreacting, comparing her experiences to that of others.
She wears the same amount of protective layers and even more than she did when she first met Roland. It is softer, more comfortable, more tailored to her instead of what someone wants her to be.
But when she looks back, and when she looks in the mirror…
Angela stares at her arms, her pale skin, eyes flicking to her bra-covered chest in the bathroom mirror. Surgery scars around her neck and collar, long healed and invisible to anyone else.
Angela stares in the mirror, and does not like what she sees. She tries to clasp her hands together in front of her midriff, but the moment her upper arms press into her chest and accentuate the shape of it, she immediately drops them back to her sides. Without all her covering, she looks… odd. Relatively thin and lanky, even with Roland’s assistance in cooking small things, with an almost comical emphasis on her… features, like that of a latex-wearing woman in a comic book, but still retaining the softness of her face, slight muscle in her arms, and the fat in her legs.
People comment. Of course they do; they’re teenagers, and Angela’s body is… impressive, even for her growing age. Always was… impressive. She has had years to ruminate; she knows perfectly well the reasons that Ayin removed her from school when he did. That little girl, pain erupting from her stomach and being unable to receive hugs from the counselor because her chest was too sensitive, and the pressure made her cry. That little girl, bleeding from her legs, and screaming out in terror.
Early onset of puberty can occur as a result of stress.
Ayin would never look her in the eyes; No, she knows perfectly well just where he would look. She had always been sharp and keen.
Most egregious of all, funnily enough, is the hair. She watches her own eyes flick over her visage in the bathroom mirror, like she’s an outsider, detached from her own body. The resemblance is clear, of course, but it’s akin to a mocking mimicry of the Carmen that exists only in Angela’s vague memories and in the photographs that Benjamin keeps. Her hair, colored like Carmen’s inverted. Where Carmen was warm and alive and loving, heat and warmth pressed into her skin and radiating from the inside out, Angela is not.
That cold, guarded, robotic nature.
“‘And I pray thee tell me for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me’,” Angela recites, reading off the page. Roland curiously looks up from his notebook, and leans over Angela’s shoulder to look at the book she’s reading. In turn, she tilts the page towards him.
“Ah, Shakespeare, you said?”
“Mhm. ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.”
“Huh… I was never much of a poetry guy myself. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of that one…”
“It’s an interesting one. A courtship scandal in Messina, Italy.” Angela smiles, staring down at the pages. “‘I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest’.”
“W—wha—?” Roland sputters. Angela watches his face go red over her shoulder. She laughs, and leans into him, pushing him back.
“A passage from the text, Roland.”
“I got that!… Which of my ‘bad parts’, huh? I could ask you that, eh?” he laughs.
I don’t think there are any bad parts, Angela wants to say.
But she cannot force the words from her throat, so instead, she simply leans into Roland’s side again. “Don’t get me started. I would trade you out if I could.”
“WHAT?! Hey! You don’t mean that, Angela…” he whines.
Of course I don’t.
The scissors shake in her hands. Angela despises being this uncertain. The metal shines in her reflection.
Tell me for which of my bad parts you first fell in love with, because I fear that therein remains nothing ‘good’. I should ask you that instead.
Her first cut is far too aggressive, too shaky, too uncertain, and her nerves cause her to slice part of her cheek as the first uneven, unplanned chop of blue hair falls down her shoulders. She does not feel the feather-light touch of her own hair falling from her head in chunks, and instead only finds herself wildly cutting. A small, heated bead of blood runs down her cheek— another on her hand, and another, and another on her ear. She only stops when the tears in her eyes— when had she begun to cry?— blur her reflection completely and she slices her knuckle open on the edge of the blade. She hisses silently, and reaches out blindly to wrap it in toilet paper to stem the bleeding. She hyperventilates, curling in on herself and digging her toes into the mat on the bathroom floor.
I do not want to be what you think of me.
I am terrified to be the things that you saw.
She clutches her wrist tighter with one hand and presses the paper into the largest cut. She should have been more careful. Her hands shake.
I am not her. But I wish, sometimes, that I was, and others, I thank the stars for everything but.
Blood from the cut on her ear runs hot down her neck, and Angela watches the bright red trail down her collarbone and ultimately, between her breasts, disappearing.
She stumbles from the bathroom, body like lead, and fumbles for her phone. It’s embarrassing, but she doesn’t have the patience to look for the contact, and she already knows his phone number by heart.
I will break down every perfect, flawless image of me.
The god of love,
Who sits above
And knows me, and he knows me,
How much pity I deserve—
How pitiful my singing is.
—With all of them together: they are so wholly united that they create a perfectly bad person, and won’t let any good qualities mix in with them. But which of my good qualities first made you suffer love for me?
Suffer love; that’s a good epithet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.
You love me in spite of your heart, I think.
“—ela? Angela?”
Ah. His voice.
“Angela, are you alright?”
“Can you,” she breathes laboriously, wheezing. “Come… here? I…”
She is at a loss for words. What is there to say?
I desire to be selfish. I want you with me.
“I…—“
Roland cuts her off. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be over as fast as I can, I promise. Do you need—do you want me to stay on the line with you?”
“N—…no, I’m… fine.”
Roland just scoffs a scared, nervous laugh. “I’ll be over as soon as I can. I promise.”
He hangs up. Blood from her hand drips onto her phone screen.
—
Roland nearly barges down the front door with how hard he swings it open, immediately pocketing the copy key to her house that Angela had given him. He’s about to have a damn heart attack.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He takes fast strides, racing towards Angela’s room. And there she sits, awkwardly crumpled on the floor and leaning against her bed, the bathroom door opposite her bedroom open, lights on, and nearly half destroyed in a mess of scattered red drops and—
Hair?
He kneels down next to Angela, pulling her hands away from her face. There’s a cut on her cheek, a few on her hands, one on her ear, and a large one slicing the knuckle of her pointer finger open. Jesus. Angela sniffles quietly. The blood is drying. And her hair… he had assumed what happened, but seeing it…
Her long hair, chopped unevenly all over, like she had to get it off. That explains the piles of hair, and the cuts… he pulls her close to him, trying to soothe her shaking. She’s clearly cold too, on top of all of that, standing around in her bra and underwear. Roland doesn’t care. He just holds her closer, trying to do what he can.
“Hey, hey, Ange,” he whispers to her. “You’re okay. You’re okay, alright? You’re gonna be fine, it’s nothing major…”
“I’m scared of the things that he wanted me to be,” she chokes out. Roland feels some part of his heart shatter, the cracks replaced by rage at the thought of who she speaks of. Angela digs her bloody hands into his arms. He doesn’t care.
“I know, I know. Um, follow my breathing, okay? In, out, in— You got it,” he encourages.
Angela heaves in and out, clinging to Roland for support, and slowly but surely, her breath begins to even out, shaky as it is.
“You got it. I’m not going anywhere.”
Angela coughs out a small, wheezy noise. Roland just holds her closer.
—
“I’m… sorry.”
Roland shakes his head. “Don’t apologize. We all have moments, and… I’m your boyfriend, it’s the least I can do…”
Angela doesn’t say anything back. She just pulls her sweater tighter around herself like it’s the only thing holding her together. Roland drapes that old hoodie he had given her over her shoulders. It warms his heart, that she kept it, and clearly loved it so, considering the condition compared to when he had had it. He takes Angela’s hand in his and smiles.
“Let’s go get your hair fixed, yeah?” he grins.
Angela just silently leans into her sweater even further, frowning. He squeezes her hand a little, questioning.
“…It’s…” she tries.
“I already know how you feel about your hair most of the time. And you’ve already cut it, so…”
He’s been trying to get her to indulge herself in an appearance, specifically a haircut, change for quite some time, after she had first displayed her concerns about her… visage, to him.
“I hardly see a point. I’ve kept it this long.”
“It’s never too late to change. You taught me that, you know.”
“C’mon. Let’s go get it fixed up.”
—
“—Oh my.”
“Woah.”
“Don’t— say shit,” Roland scolds.
Olga raises her hands in defense. “Sorry, sorry! Making no comments… Mika, y’got this…?”
Mika nods, sighing. “I can make it work. Over here, Miss Angela.”
—
The air is cold on Angela’s neck. She does not remember the last time that she felt this… light. Olga and Mika look on proudly, smug and pleased expressions on their faces as Angela spectacles her haircut in the mirror.
Then, “Look at this jackass,” Olga scolds, gesturing at Roland in one of the other chairs, who seemed to have dozed off as Mika worked. She picks up a comb from Mike’s station and chucks it at him, hitting him straight on the crown of his head with a plasticy bonk. “Wake up!”
“‘M up, ‘m up!” he shouts, stumbling off the seat. Angela chuckles quietly as Mika removes the sheet and brushes the remains of her hair off. “I—“
Roland pauses. Angela watches him break out into a soft, warm smile in the mirror.
“You look good,” he breathes. “Really nice. You did a good job, Mika,” but his eyes remain firmly on Angela, watching as she spins in the chair.
“Hell yeah she does!” Olga cheers, making jazz hands for emphasis in Angela’s direction. Mika, at her other side, smiles softly, holding aloft her shearing scissors.
Angela stands up, feeling… much more like a person. “Thank you, Mika, Olga. I… This means a lot.”
“‘Course, Miss Angela, just being nice. I sure hope he’s gonna pay, though…”
“Of course I’m going to pay! Who do you think I am? Some cheapskate lowlife?!”
“ Well…”
“ Alright!”
—
They sit on the bus next to each other. Roland is running his fingers along her hair.
“I really like it,” he muses. “Fluffy. They did a good job.”
Angela nods. She doesn’t respond, only stares out the window. Then,
“…I’m going to have to tell Benjamin.” she says softly, playing with the bandages wrapped around her pointer finger idly. “He… I have divulged little of this with him… ever.”
Roland leans against her; a comforting, heavy weight, like a blanket, and— gently pats her head, fluffing up her newly shortened hair. “It’ll be alright. He likes you for you, doesn’t he?”
I don’t know.
I fear being the things that people see me as.
“…I hope. But I don’t need his approval. He’ll have to accept it, one way or another.”
Roland nods. “Yeah, that’s a good thought process, I think… Hey, that reminds me.”
Angela perks up a little, looking over to him through the slight edges of her new bangs and the fluffiness of her new haircut where it curls in around her face. She raises an eyebrow.
“…You know I like you for you, right?” he says softly. Angela’s heart skips a beat.
“…I know.”
“Hehe. You’re getting all red—“
The bus screeches to a sudden halt, and Roland jerks forwards with a shout, nearly falling face first into the empty seat in front of him. Angela can’t help but laugh quietly, and Roland—
He sits back up in his seat, grumbling half-heartedly, but his eyes hold the most sincere form of affection that anyone has ever, ever directed towards her.
But which of my good qualities first made you suffer love for me?—
Will you come with me to hear this news, Signior?
I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes— and what’s more, I’ll go with you to your uncle’s.
Roland squeezes her hand as she unlocks the door. Benjamin is home.
The god of love,
Who sits above
And knows me, and he knows me,
How much pity I deserve—
How pitiful my singing is.
But in loving, whose names sound so smooth in verse,
Why, none of them have been as crazy by love as I have been.