“That’s it,” says the nurse.

Dr. Howard told me that even if the light box works, it will take a few months to start seeing any improvement, but I still glance down at myself afterward. The patches on my feet are bigger than quarters now. Looking in the mirror, I hold up my hair and turn to see my neck. The spots there haven’t joined together yet, but there are a dozen or so sprinkled around. Next, I pull back my bangs and study the spots underneath. There are even more now than last Monday, following the angle of my eyebrows. I pat my bangs firmly back down so that the spots are hidden again.

Here’s something I haven’t really been honest about until now. I’ve started noticing other people’s faces. Like, a lot. I study their skin colors. Give them names like the ones on the backs of Gram’s paint tubes. Summer sands for Lily and wild honey for Fina. I stare at Ms. Singh (driftwood) during class and look at how smooth and even her face looks, even on the days when she has little baggies under her eyes.

And sometimes I feel jealous of them. All those one-colored people who don’t even know how lucky they are because they’re too busy thinking about how their noses are too long or their eyelashes aren’t long enough, so they never stop and take a second to be thankful for their skin. Even Ruby has an even layer of fresh cream underneath her freckles.

I always wear my hair down now to cover the spots on my neck and long-sleeve shirts and sneakers to cover my other ones. But I won’t be able to hide the spots on my forehead if they decide to creep down past my bangs. And what happens if all my treatments don’t work and the spots keep growing, and more and more of the color gets sucked out of me until I have none left at all?

I read online that it happens to some people with vitiligo. They lose all their color. Then there are some who have patches all over their body and actually have their doctors give them a depigmenting cream to get rid of the rest of their color. Because at least that way, they’re one color again. And people probably don’t stare at them anymore, because they just look really pale (magnolia blossom). So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

But the idea of losing the rest of my color makes me wrap my arms tightly around my waist, like if I just squeeze hard enough, I can keep it from draining away.