She’s crying over him again, since loving him is basically open heart surgery at this point. She stares around the room that reeks of two months ago, back when things were still flawless. Everything had been gold back then, today minus sixty. But tonight she’s sobbing on her bedroom floor, in her safe place under the desk in the corner, curled up in a ball because maybe if she makes herself small enough the world won’t notice she still exists and the pain will go away. That would be nice, she thinks--the metaphorical knife not being twisted deeper into her chest. But the pain’s still there, and she’s still cut in half and gasping for breath over him three minutes later when she happens to look down at her hands; her nails, specifically.

They’re painted black, a fresh coat she’s just put on that afternoon. Nothing special, really. She briefly tortures herself by remembering how he’d always liked when she painted her nails dark like that, because he had liked her all covered in midnight. But no--that’s not why she notices her nails. She notices her right hand, and how her pointer finger has a little polish off to the side, on her finger, all messy and smudged. She looks at her fingers, and suddenly she’s ten years old again, and he mom is finally letting her wear her nail polish to school, so she’s picking out her favorite color--this horrid electric blue Big Her just abhorred now. But Little Her’s got this polish and her mom offers to paint her nails for her (because staying in the lines has never been her strong suit) but she’s saying no because she’s in 5th grade, for God’s sake, and she’s old enough to paint her own nails.

So Little Her takes that blue and she sits down and she holds her hand so steady and she paints her left hand and it’s just perfect. She waits for it to dry and everything, just like a big girl, just like her mom did. And then when that hand’s done drying, she unscrews the nail polish again and she holds her right hand so, so still and she narrows her eyes and carefully, meticulously smears the polish all over her fingers, just as messy as if she hadn't been trying at all. It looks terrible, Big Her remembers, but Little Her had been so proud because she painted her nails by herself and she was basically all grown up. She goes to show her mom, and her mom looks down with a mixture of exasperation and humor and tells her that her right hand is wrong, and asks “Do you want me to fix it?”. Little Her tells her no and that she wanted it like that, because she’s always been a combination of too sensitive and too stubborn.

The memory fades out, and Big Her is back on her bedroom floor. She’s there, and she’s wishing like hell that she could just be ten years old again, before she really was all grown up. Because nobody offered to fix her right hand when it was wrong this time. Nobody offered to fix any of the things that were wrong.