She watches this girl all the time, this girl named Sheena. She touches her own face and wonders subconsciously why can’t I look like her? She doesn’t like to think that and tries to look in the mirror and be proud of what she sees.


All she sees is the little imperfections she can only pick out: the too long, thick coarse hair, the mouth that’s barely visible, they eyes too round and the nose too thin, the long neck . . . Just everything is too . . . too . . . messed up.


She sees Sheena whose eyes crinkle when she smiles and who snorts when she laughs. She wants to look like Sheena who grunts when trying to comb out the tangles in her hair, only to sigh happily when it flows just right over her shoulders. Sheena with everything she can’t have.


Every night she goes to sleep in her closed off box of a room to be reminded of how she’ll never look like Sheena, be like her, and that hurts worse than anything. No “You’re beautiful the way you are” is gonna help.


But it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as when she finally decides to cut free of her box, jumps off the cliff, and her head breaks as it hits the ground.


“Josie!” The girl ran into her sister’s room to see her face red, teeth biting her lip.


“What?” she said irritably. She was in a middle of an important tea party with the Queen.


Sheena flung her hands around, trying to express all the anger in her. “I told you to never go in my room!”


“I don’t!”


Sheena bit back her tongue from cussing. “Then who did this?” Josie looked at the mess on the floor and shrugged. “I don’t know but it wasn’t me.” And she left.


Sheena just sighed, picking up her battered porcelain doll. The head had completely broken on impact, the face nothing but tiny shards. What Sheena didn’t understand was how it got out of its box. She never tried to open it. It just stayed in its place on the top of her bookcase.


“And you were so beautiful too,” Sheena said, cleaning up the mess before throwing the doll in the trash.