Bamboo

Anyone looking at her would have called her beautiful. God knows many had. And not just men, either. Women, old people, everyone said it. To her face. An old woman on the bus just the other day said it. She was shuffling down the aisle, and she passed Virginia and bent down, and, not even looking at her, said in a reedy, insubstantial voice, "Beautiful child." She must have seen her as she was climbing onto the bus, just a glance, but that was enough.

Virginia looked at herself in the mirror. She didn't think of herself as beautiful. Well, not any more beautiful than her sister Georgia. Or Ms. Phalen, who worked with her at the museum. But Virginia was the one everyone noticed. But that's only because, Virginia thought, tweezers poised, they don't look too closely. Don't know what the sun looks like either. It's bright and it's orange, but that's about it. You look up, there it is, your eyes start to tear, you look away, assuming you've got the whole picture. But you don't.

And they didn't have the whole picture of Virginia, either. The tweezers hovered for a moment, then descended on the freakishly long hair in Virginia's left eyebrow. Virginia had to pull it every week or so. It kept coming back. It grew as long as three quarters of an inch, curled slightly, to hide, to camouflage itself. It was Virginia's dark secret. She already had the "imperfection that made her beauty more striking." A tiny scar beside one eye (bicycle accident) and an even tinier brown birthmark below the corner of her mouth, on the right.

She knew, from people's comments and questions and glances, that these flaws were intriguing. They set her apart. But so would a third arm, or a tail. Or hairs that forced themselves to the surface with the speed of bamboo. Out of control. Malignant. Hideous.