The Mirror I Built
My alarm goes off at 6:15, but I've been awake since 5:47, staring at the ceiling and doing math I've done every morning for the last three years: how many minutes to look effortless, how many to seem like I haven't tried at all. The answer is always the same. Ninety minutes of trying to look like I didn't try.
I roll over and grab my phone before my eyes even fully adjust to the gray light leaking through my blinds. This is ritual number one. Not stretching, not breathing, not even peeing first — just the phone, its screen already glowing with the promise of information I both crave and dread. Jenna posted four hours ago. A photo of her and Madison at some bonfire I wasn't invited to, captioned *golden hour with my golden people ✨*. Forty-three comments already. I scroll them like I'm searching for a hidden message meant only for me, though I know there isn't one. There's never one.
I don't comment. Commenting too fast makes you look desperate, and commenting too late makes you look forgotten. There's a window — I've calculated it, though I'd never admit that out loud — somewhere between forty minutes and two hours after posting, where a comment reads as casual, as *oh, I just…