Swallow

Chapter 1

Frumpy, greasy, chubby Mildred. Zitty, dorky, ugly Mildred. Weak, slow, stupid Mildred.

Those were Mildred's foremost thoughts on a typical early morning, an entire school day ahead of her. She glared at her reflection in her floor-to-ceiling bathroom mirror. Mirror Mildred stared back at her out of sad, mud-brown eyes, the kind of brown found in swamps and backed-up toilets. The kind of brown people ignore or immediately turn away from should they realize they've looked too deeply into them. There she stood, surrounded by cold, expensive seafoam-green marble flooring and semiglossed matching walls. A troubled girl.

A broken girl.

Her day began with her mind racing through all the jabs at her appearance she'd heard throughout the years. Unibrow. Her eyebrows were too close together. She hadn't even known until the other students at Roanoke High told her so. They were both thick and thin in patches and met on the bridge of her nose—two friendly neighbors not really shaking hands but reaching out. Mouth breather. She hadn't realized she breathed loudly and through her mouth until her classmates teased her about it. They teased her about her clothes, her hair, her shoes, her backpack, her bad gym skills, her breath—any little thing that Mildred did wrong, they let her know. Often. Once the taunts were spoken out loud, Mildred kept hearing them in her mind as they replayed on a loop—all the ugly judgments, mockery, and cruelty. All the nasty insults she was accustomed to hearing swished through her mind like a vicious tornado, leaving a relentless trail of self-loathing behind. She felt the sharp pain of each hurtful word as it pierced her ears and stung her eyes. Felt her heart break from the cruel jabs. Felt less than human—like some alien creature pretending to be human but not doing a very good job of it at all.

Pictures cluttered the edges of her mirror. She'd taped them there herself with clear tape. These were photos of girls she admired. Girls who weren't her friends—they'd never be her friends. Some of them she'd taken from school yearbooks, others she'd lifted from her classmates' social media, and some were famous girls from magazines. The photos were supposed to be there for motivation—a suggestion she'd read in a magazine—but the photos of beautiful people had the opposite effect on Mildred.

She stared blankly into the mirror, hating it the same way she hated those classmates—which is to say deeply, but with a desperate, nagging need to be accepted by them. For nine years, since the second grade, she'd been the outsider, the unaccepted. With the rest of junior year and senior year to go, she'd give anything for that to change. She wanted the mirror to show her someone she would be proud to be. Someone like Michelle "Chelle" Martin, the pretty girl at school, or even Selena Gomez, who always smiled with a confidence that Mildred wished she had.

But no matter how much Mildred wished, Mirror Mildred remained that girl everybody hated, even though she couldn't exactly pinpoint why. She had never hurt them, but hurting her seemed to be their favorite hobby. Mildred hadn't teased Chelle when she'd gotten a bad haircut in sixth grade. Mildred hadn't made fun of Chelle's best friend, Yvette, when she was caught stuffing her bra in seventh grade. Mildred didn't lash out at any of them when they said horrible things to her. She felt angry at herself instead for not finding the courage to stand up to them, for feeling that somehow—deep down—it was all her fault. When she got so frustrated that she cried, it made them laugh harder. Every little thing they teased her about stuck to her as if she was the world's biggest insult magnet.

Raggedy Ann. Her dull, dark hair hung thin and stringy down to her round shoulders. Lifeless as yarn. She'd washed it the day before but it was already oily. Crater face. Her pockmarked cheeks poked out like those of a puffer fish, giving her eyes a slightly squinty look. She used various creams for her skin but nothing seemed to work. Piggy. Her round belly stretched her shirt and spilled over her pajama pants. If only she had more willpower, she told herself. Dieting had never been easy for her.