Felicia looked up into the mirror. She hated that mirror with all of her heart. When she looked into that mirror, she saw every imperfection, every flaw. She ignored her flawless, translucent skin and her pale blue eyes; she zoomed in on a tiny scar above her right eyebrow. The scar grew in her active imagination, until it became her entire face. Soon her head became a centimeter long scar that you could barely even see. And she stared into that mirror for the longest time, and then she announced something surprising.

"I don't care about my looks."

"I just look in the mirror from time to time so I'll have an idea as to what I look like." She firmly placed the thought in her head, holding it down harder every day, waiting for it to become true. Slowly, but surely, she began to believe it. And that was just what she needed, because she was about to destroy seventeen years of work.

***

Hundreds miles away Ali was lying on the hardwood floor of her room. Something drastic was about to happen. It would be any day now. Felicia had whispered her words into the phone, but Ali could tell there was thought behind them. Felicia believed what she was saying. "I… I've done something awful. And I'm coming there. I'm coming there to start over." Ali had been in shock. So many questions had filled her mind: What had Felicia done? Why was she coming here? Was she… was she a danger? Would it even work?

But Ali had to push all doubt out of her mind. Felicia had just called her to say that she was almost done preparing. Whatever that meant. She guessed it meant she'd better clean up the guest bedroom. So she had better start now.

***

Felicia took out the colored contacts, took one last look into her icy, hard eyes, and then popped them in. She was now sporting the eyes of a mousy girl with nondescript brown eyes. The most common color, right? She pulled her long hair out of the ponytail she had tied it in for convenience. The common color of brown she had chosen would turn her into half of the girls in America.

Muttering to herself and crying softly the whole time, she chopped exactly eighteen inches of her long, once lovely hair off. They were looking for someone with a long, blonde braid. They were looking for someone with cold blue eyes. They were looking for a seventeen-year-old in Michigan.

Not a nineteen-year-old in New York. The plan was brilliant, just brilliant, if she said so herself. And she did. It was her plan, after all. And after two months of carefully checking her plan for flaws, she came up empty. She was never so unable to find imperfections in her life. And Felicia preferred it this way. Imperfections were too unreasonable to be dealt with.

***

Ali's mother was always surprised at her daughter's impossibility. "I need to use the guest room… um, for my stuff." she nodded sweetly as she said this, clearly needing the "Okay, dear" she was expecting. "But can't you just put it in the garage?" "No!" she screamed, " I need the guest room. Please, mom?" The old woman sighed, thinking. "Fine."

Without knowing it, Ali's mom had just started something big. She had just let a huge, huge scandal begin. And all she thought was that her daughter needed a little storage.