I put on a boxy, high-necked style that washed me out and made my shoulders look narrow and my neck look long in the wrong way, and Ashley immediately declared it perfect.
Two weeks before the wedding, at the bachelorette weekend at a vineyard resort, Ashley ran her fingers through my hair and said she had always been jealous of it, that Trevor mentioned it all the time. She said it reminded him of an ex-girlfriend, with the particular brightness of someone delivering news they believe will wound.
That night I overheard her on the balcony with our mother.
Everyone will be looking at her walking down the aisle with that hair, Ashley said. She’ll steal my spotlight just by existing.
I slipped back inside before they could find me. I lay awake in my resort bed and thought about the word just. Just by existing. As if my existence were the problem. As if the solution to Ashley’s insecurity was my continued erasure.
