Chapter 2 I recognized her

The mirror didn't lie.

That was the first thing I realized.

No filter. No soft lighting. No contouring to sharpen my jaw. Just me - before.

My skin was clearer than I remembered, but not perfect. A faint scar from childhood acne lingered near my hairline. My nose was broader, my chin less defined. My eyes - the same deep brown - were wide with shock, no eyeliner to sharpen their gaze.

I touched my cheek.

Warm. Real.

I flinched when my fingers pressed into the softness of my jaw - the very feature Julian had once whispered was "a little too heavy for your face."

I used to hate it.

I used to spend hours angling my head in selfies, tilting it just right so the world wouldn't see what I saw: not enough.

But now?

Now I barely recognized the girl staring back.

Not because she looked different.

But because she looked alive.

No shadows under her eyes from sleepless nights. No tightness around her mouth from years of biting back words. She still believed in love. In friendship. In happy endings.

She didn't know yet that she'd be betrayed by the two people who promised to love her forever.

I turned away from the mirror, heart pounding.

"This isn't happening," I whispered.

I grabbed my phone, hands trembling.

June 12th.

Ten years ago.

Impossible.

I scrolled through my messages. My apps. My photos.

Everything was as it should be - before the surgery, before the inheritance, before Julian moved into my apartment.

Then I saw it.

A text from Mom:

"So proud of you, sweetheart. Parsons doesn't accept just anyone. Your father would've been smiling."

My breath caught.

Dad died when I was seventeen.

And in my old life, I hadn't spoken to Mom in months before I died. We'd stopped talking after she said, "You've changed, Evelyn. I don't know who you are anymore."

I sank onto the edge of my bed.

The room was smaller than I remembered. The walls painted a soft cream, not the gray I'd chosen later. My sketchbooks were stacked on the desk - untouched since graduation. A faded poster of Audrey Hepburn hung crookedly by the door.

Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I used to say she was the only woman who was both beautiful and real.

Now I wonder if even she was held to a standard no one could meet.

I opened my laptop.

My email inbox loaded.

An unread message from Parsons:

"Welcome to the Class of 2014! Orientation begins Monday at 9 AM."

I hadn't checked that email in over a decade.

I remembered clicking it - the same way I remembered every small joy before it was buried under years of pretending.

I stood and walked back to the mirror.

This time, I didn't look away.

"You're real," I said to the girl.

She didn't blink.

"You're really me."

And then it hit me - not with a scream, but with a quiet, terrifying clarity:

I wasn't dreaming.

I hadn't woken up from a coma.

I had been given something impossible.

A second chance.

Not to relive my life.

But to reclaim it.

Because this face - the one I spent years trying to erase - was the last thing I saw before I died.

And now?

Now it was the first thing I saw when I came back.

I reached into my drawer and pulled out the brochure I'd hidden for weeks before my first consultation.

Dr. Mitchell – Facial Aesthetics & Reconstructive Design.

I stared at it.

Then I opened the window.

A soft breeze slipped in.

I held the paper over the sill.

One choice.

One moment.

One irreversible line between the woman I was - and the woman I could still become.

I didn't throw it.

Not yet.

But I didn't close the drawer either.

Because this time...

I wasn't going to change my face to be loved.

I was going to learn to love the face that survived everything.