All she wants is to hide her scarred face. All he wants is to take the perfect portrait.
She’s moved so many times that any fear or discomfort she may ever have felt at being in an unknown place is now completely overshadowed by the sadistic glee she takes in being the unknown person. She has no doubt at all that the grapevine is already on fire, but at least until the rumors spread, she can find the old satisfaction in watching them discover her.
If they approach her from the right, then they’ve already seen, and she sees all the same things she’s gotten so used to seeing in people’s faces. The pity, the pain, the oh-how-awful. All too often, the scorn, the disgust at being in the presence of one who is so far beneath them on the scale of humanity. Sometimes, and this has always perplexed her, the fear; the fear that perhaps it’s contagious, that simply being near her can cause your own face to shrivel and pucker, that you might wake up ugly tomorrow.
When they approach from the left, when they haven’t seen her yet, then she sees the other half of the classification going on. The lust in the faces of the boys, the cold sizing up of a threat in the girls. She can see them saying Tall, thinnish. Lithe, I guess they call that. Look at that hair, that body… and then she turns toward them, turns the right side of her face toward them, turns the scar toward them, and watches it all get realigned.
Uh, next? the boys’ faces say, looking away, looking around.
Oh, sorry, no threat at all, say the faces of the girls. I’d still kill for that body.
