My hands fly to my mouth as if I’m in a tragicomic Shakespearean play: the skittish housewife who walks in on her husband kissing his decade-too-young mistress in their own bed.

Except this is infinitely worse.

A mosquito or some kind of demonic bug must have bitten me in the mountains yesterday, because there are two formidable, bright red bumps on my face—both smack in the middle of each of my eyelids, puffing them up like balloons. They’re so inflamed that my features look like they’ve been put through a distorting filter. I haven’t been this appalled by my own reflection since the days before my dramatic makeover.

“Oh my god,” I whisper, touching a careful finger to my left eye, then my right, as if I can somehow wipe the hideous bumps away like a mascara stain. “Oh. My god.”

“Leah?” Daisy’s voice floats out from the other side of the bathroom door. “Are you brushing your teeth?”

I take a deep breath. Force my panic to stay put for a little longer, even as reality comes crashing in, all my old insecurities overriding my brief moment of peace this morning. The compliments from yesterday suddenly feel so insubstantial in comparison. “Yeah, I’m almost done—just give me a few minutes …” To think. To escape this hotel before anyone can see me. My eyes swing to my reflection again, half-hopeful that it might not be as bad from a certain distance or angle, but if anything, the bugbites only seem to be swelling up further, rendering my face nearly unrecognizable.

My stomach sinks. Even though I know that it’s completely irrational and the world isn’t going to end simply because I don’t look super hot at present, I still have to fight the embarrassing, overwhelming urge to cry. It’s the same as when Cate would post a group of us where I wasn’t sucking in, or my smile was too stiff, or my hair was falling in the wrong way. That powerless, turned-inside-out feeling, the ever-present reminder that I’m not always pretty, that other, uglier versions of me exist, and nobody would ever want them.

Stop freaking out and think of solutions, I scold myself. If not an emergency exit, then at least find a way to cover up your eyes—which are itching so badly I’m tempted to scratch them out just to make it stop.

“Hey, um, Daisy?” I call out. “Do you have a pair of sunglasses I could borrow?” I should’ve brought my own pair, but I never usually wear them, because up until this morning, the lower half of my face was the weaker half.

“I’m so sorry—mine are broken,” she calls back. “They fell just the other day when I was bending down to help this really sweet old woman pick up her apples …”

Of course that’s something that would happen to her.