“All set,” Shonda said. “Good job, honey.” She gave Ella a pink ice pack and turned to me. “Okay, Little Miss Anna, how about a consult?”

“Shonda is the injection queen,” Ella said. She eased out of the chair, sat in a smaller seat beside me. I looked at the door, then at Shonda. Her face shone in strange places, like saran wrap, pulled tight.

“Just a consult,” I said and moved to the recliner, stretched out my legs, tucked my phone between my thighs and squeezed it there. Shonda loomed over me.

“Okay, frown,” she said and I frowned. “You have hyper-expression here,” she pointed at my hairline. “And here,” she touched my third eye.

“It’s extreme for someone so young, and it’ll only get worse with time.” She put a gloved hand on my shoulder and I felt it, the problem of time, the solution; the care of women, the comfort.

“I suggest twenty units of Botox,” Shonda said, “the standard preventative dose.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Boto party,” Ella said and clapped her hands.

“Alexa,” Shonda yelled, “play Ariana Grande.”

“Playing Ariana Grande,” a robotic woman’s voice replied.

Becky tapped my arm and Shonda told me to relax. She inserted a needle into my forehead, took it out, put it in again, miniscule jabs along my hairline. They stung, made sounds like snapping, followed by spurts. Between my legs, my phone buzzed and I focused on the feeling of excitement, distraction.

“This is going to look so good,” Ella said from inside the screen she was tapping. Shonda handed me the hand mirror. She got close, watched me watch the glass. I looked for a difference I didn’t see.

“Hey, hon?” Shonda said, her voice lifted at the ends. “Has anyone ever told you that your lips are asymmetrical?” She pointed to the cupid’s bow of my mouth.

“Huh,” Ella said and put her phone down, craned her neck to look.

“No,” I said. My grandmother’s mouth, her smile. My mother always said that they belonged to me as well.

“I mean, up to you, but we could fill the top lip a little here,” Shonda said, “and then even out the bottom here—it’d be so subtle. Like, one syringe of filler.”

“It’s safe, right?”

“Oh for sure, honey, it’s just hyaluronic acid, your body makes it naturally.” Shonda held up her hands. “Totally up to you.”

Ella said, “I get filled every six months—so easy. Like getting your hair colored.”

“If you don’t like it, we can reverse it,” Shonda said.

The room hummed. Ariana sang greedy, I‘m greedy, I‘m greedy, I‘m greedy. I felt my phone, hot against my thighs. A simple choice, a natural acid, and reversible if I decided I didn’t mean to choose it.