Cry Pretty || Mike Chang

Prologue

Romanticism of weakness had led to the common misconception that broken was beautiful. People believed that having fault lines tracing skin that gripped to bones like cling film was beautiful. It was as though there was a mutual understanding that when a person cracked the cracks were filled with gold.

Jordyn knew that better than most that society had fallen into a rut. Broken wasn't beautiful. Lying in a hospital bed, the gown itching where it met her bruises, she was not pretty. When her face had been inked in mascara lined tears, she wasn't gorgeous.

In fact, if anyone were to call her beautiful while she led there she may muster up the strength to let out a laugh. Her skin was pealing from her lips like a collage of her last life, falling apart as quickly as it had done in reality. Gaps between her bones were as defined as the continents on a map. She was the perfect example for a biology class. Heavy eyelids continued to close as she drifted too and from consciousness, living between reality and head. In her head she was dead; in reality she was fighting for her life.

To society she was too broken to be beautiful. She wasn't pushing a cupcake away with a perfectly manicured hand. Nor was she sitting in a group of girls crying pretty tears about how she was so alone. Fighting for a label had become equivalent to fighting to be popular. Jordyn had never wanted a label. She only wanted the pain to stop.

Kindness was a virtue that Jordyn hasn't been shown in years. Slowly, she had begun to believe that it had become extinct in the world. She had convinced herself that it had been used up by people who saw it as a privilege they were entitled to, the same way fossil fuels were slowly being used up. Only, to Jordyn, kindness was rarer than a piece of coal.

Coal. She was fed up with the amount of times she had been compared to coal. Being told how under pressure the most valuable things are made, had become a constant occurrence since she had taken refuge in the hospital. Nurses would tell her that these past two years would make her stronger than she could ever imagine, but she believed they would just make her crumble.

One person seemed to understand that she didn't need to be told things get better. Even though she believed that one day Jordyn would be able to look back on these moments and say that they made her strong, Emma Pillsbury didn't tell her niece. She knew that it wouldn't help her. Not until she believed it herself.

Being a guidance councillor, Emma knew many ways in which she could help Jordyn. However, she wasn't Jordyn's councillor, she was her aunt. There was a line between the two that Emma wasn't prepared to cross. Familial support was what Jordyn needed from her, not a therapy.

For the months that Jordyn was in treatment, Emma sat by her side. The younger never spoke, not to anyone that ever tried to pry the trauma of her past from her mouth. Yet, she would listen to Emma for hours. Her high pitched and lucid voice was enough to set a smile on Jordyn's face.

From the moment the two had met, they had known that they were going to fight the war together.