• “Am I really that good enough?” A girl ponders dutifully in silence, always in silence,
    tipping her head to the side to stare at herself at a different angle
    Eyes look over her body for the countless time, looking for an imperfection
    “Ah,” she sighs, pinching nonexistent stomach fat, “I’m so ugly… I don’t deserve the name Angel…”

    Angel runs timid hands through golden tresses, then adjusts her bra-strap for the hundredth time, ‘do they look big enough?’ she sighs…
    She turns so her body’s side is in the mirror’s cruel gaze
    Staring at her gorgeous, skinny body in a haze
    “My butt… my thighs… ew, my belly…” she rattles off every offending body part in shame, pinching skin, and not fat.

    Angel sighs, and thinks about how all of her friends are doing the same thing right now, but enjoying it, enjoying criticizing themselves, enjoy killing themselves…

    Angel walks up to the mirror, and pinches her cheeks, and sees all the makeup, the fake tan, the big-lip lipstick treatment, the inches of makeup that cover her face…
    Suddenly she screams, grabbing a cloth in blind rage,
    Rubbing raw her face unseen by that cursed mirror
    She looks up at the mirror and sees a new Angel… but while not wearing makeup
    This Angel is gorgeous without all the makeup
    But then she sees the old Angel, and screams.
    “I’m over this!” And punches the mirror
    Shattering the image she thought she needed to look like to be pretty
    And comes forth reborn the gorgeous Angel

    She walks up to school the next day, natural, and people whisper,
    “Who’s that new girl?”
    Her “friends”, all in the boldest, revealing clothes and covered with makeup and stuffed padding in their bras, look at her with incredulous stares,
    And then a girl grabs her arm, and smiles.
    “Welcome back.”
    Angel is confused… who is this girl?
    But then recalls a time long ago

    A time of sleepovers and chocolate-covered-popcorn, of days reading fantasy novels and going to the arcade…
    And then glances at her other friends, and recalls
    A time of fat-free ice cream, and ‘loose weight’ parties, and days of being criticized and being a lap dog, a time of starving herself to look, ‘pretty’

    This girl, she didn’t mind that Angel had left, but when Angel went up to the other girls, the ones she once called ‘friends’, they walked away
    When she walked up to her old friends, they hugged her and smiled and asked her what the hell she had been thinking, but welcomed her back
    And the other girls
    Looked longingly (but didn’t show it) at the chocolate-drizzled, delectable parfait
    She had at lunch.
    “I’m not going to suffer,” Angel smiles, “along with you all.”