There was a day.

there was a day when audrey came to understand it all, when what she had needed to know all of her life came into focus, tiny pixels blending in with each other, revealing the part that she needed in order to figure the rest of it out. she wasnt looking for answers then, on that day. she wasnt walking around campus questioning herself, doubting every step, curiously analyzing the way other people walked, the way they talked to people they barely knew, the way they looked at her. she wasnt tugging at her shirt that day; she wasnt hungry, or too full. she wasnt angry at the plasticness of the day, by the way the weather refused to reveal anything other than pleasantness, agreeability. she wasnt particularly aware of how the weather on this day like all the other days, was how people want other people to be-- steady, calm, pleasant, easy. people will move if it begins to rain all the time. especially when it rains in the middle of the day, when its the most inconvenient for you. especially when the rain is accompanied by screams of lightening and thunder so loud you feel it in your shin bones.

she had woken up that day without needing something to look forward to. the day was enough, she decided as she went about the routine of her morning, the carefully crafted routine. she still hadnt heard from him- it had been over a month since they talked, but what she was doing didnt feel like waiting. she was glad for it, glad for something all her own, some way of keeping time, some way of living that was completey foreign to anyone else, completley sacred. if there was something that people couldnt see, if people didnt know, then she was separate, then she lived somewhere else that couldnt be touched by any other mind but her own. that, to her back then, was what forgave her shortcomings, what pardoned all her faults. that she had this perfect capsule inside of her, this one unflawed thing. maybe her legs could be compared to the long tan pair in the short skirt, and come in last, but no one could hold this up to something else and see which wins because no one knew it was there.

she was sitting in class, in the front row, next to a girl named marissa (she knew this by her neatly printed headline on her notes "Marissa Monde: PSYCH 361"). marissa had these long, oval fingernails with dark pink nail polish on. her fingers were smooth and sinewy and she was picking incessantly at a tiny sliver of skin sticking out like a weed from her cuticle. even her tiny fingers were too big to grasp it, too slippery to yank it out. audrey watched her. her nails and her hands were pretty, like a girl's should be. perfect for rings, for holding hands, for using silverware, waving, putting hair behind ears, touching someone elses face. audrey was jealous. her hands were large, she had long fingers but they didnt look like it becuase they werent slim. they had always reminded her of flatworms, though she couldnt remember if she had ever seen one or even if such a thing really existed. she had very small sqaure nail beds and nails too weak to grow out past the mound of her fingertip. she had desparately wanted, since she was a child, to have long, painted nails. she tried to grow them out frequently, and a few weeks ago had grown them so long she could tap them against her desk so that they made an impatient noise. but once they were that long she became a little scared, because her hands stopped looking like her hands, and she realized that she was spending all of her time just looking at them. with her arm straight ahead as if she was admiring a ring, with her palm facing up and her fingertips curled in, on every surface she could find. she remembered how in high school she could recognize anyone's hands, even the people in her class of fifty that she didnt know that well at all. and everyone used to tease her about biting them, and about how short they could get. and she liked that, that they too could recognize her hands.

the first time she met him she put her hands on top of the counter as he was making her coffee and he looked at them and then smiled as he stirred the milk.

what? she said, though they had never spoken before. she had been waiting in line, at the coffee shop where he worked. she said it in a friendly way, because her heart was beating fast from the sight of him and she knew she couldnt leave without something. something at least.

i knew thats what your hands would look like.

she was startled and it made her heart beat faster. she retracted them from the counter and looked at them, in the same way she looked at them when her nails were long and she couldnt believe they were hers.

but now she wanted marissa's hands. they were feminine and clean. if shown two pictures of hands, one of her uneven, ragged, reddish ones and one of marissa's tan, smooth, long, manicured ones, boys would pick marissa's.

and this was the moment that it stopped snowing on the television set. this was the moment of the day that changed everything for audrey:

she didnt want boys. she wanted him, and he had picked her.

if she had tried to please boys, he would have seen her hands on the counter and not smiled, because they would have been a lie.

and that, audrey realized with a pang to her heart that made her eyelids flutter, is how it always is.