Blue Snowflakes Falling... (open, girls' bathroom)

Maggie had been so ecstatic when she'd heard there was to be a Christmas dance. A reason to dress up and be merry. That was the one time of year the Luchak family always took a real honest to goodness break. There's was delicious food, playful carols, gifts, parties, and smiles, even more importantly it marked three whole days with no practicing. Everyone needed the time to shop and bake and cook and get to church. It was by far Maggie's favorite time of year. So when she'd been handed a catalogue she'd poured over it. All the dresses were a little... too modest to be entirely on trend. With more fabric and less glitter than she was used to. She eventually picked a simple dress, knowing she could dress it up all lovely with some of her favorite jewellery and some great hair. It had a sweet little bow and a flouncy skirt to spin around in. And she could wear it other days too, just without the dress-up factor of sparkly accessories. She though that was all rather clever. Or at least that had been the plan.

Now she sported the two twin shining bruises around her eyes, tell tale of a broken nose. With a matching purple and yellowed blossom of a fading lesser bruise on her chin. She looked like a monster, or worse, like a broken sad shell of a battered wife. That boy in the stairwell made a circus freak out of her. Maggie could feel the eyes of every classmate on her in the halls everyday since then. Normally she loved to feel eyes on her. That boy had ruined that. Maggie had begged the nurse who checked her nose for something to mask her face. Sunglasses or something. The nurse checked with someone on the phone and then told Maggie she wasn't allowed. The sheer humiliation of it all was earth-shattering. Maggie had begun only leaving her bedroom, her bunk, when forced to. She hated people seeing her like this and her concealer was doing a terribly poor job of covering it all.

That morning, Maggie had decided that Christmas was too important to allow that awful boy to spoil it all. She couldn't be with her family. She couldn't go to their church or their usual parties. Even more horrifying, she was robbed of her second Christmas as dictated by the old church calender. She had to save something from the season. She couldn't stand the idea of anything else and as the adage goes, "Quitters never win, Winners never quit." So Maggie laboured. The concealer when on thing and blended in for an age. Her hair was worn down, shadowing her face a touch. Dark eyeliner was applied thick and smoked out. In the end she thought, or at least hoped she achieved something of a haunted pretty. She sat through the dinner, all quiet by herself. Eyes watching the kids around her. After dinner she slipped off to the bathroom. She needed to double-check herself, to refresh her powder.

The bathroom mirror however, was cruel. It reflected the monster instead of the girl who tried so hard to disguise it. In the harsh light of the bathroom, things weren't as forgiving as the mirror in her dorm. Her face looked, off... wrong.... freakish. Maggie leaned in closer and closer to the mirror. At first rubbing her fingers at concealer and eyeliner here and there, trying desperately to fix things. She gave a little yelp as her frantic fingers slipped and she managed to half poke/half scratch her eye. She stumbled back a step and squeezed the hurt one shut. With her one eye open she stared into mirror. It was wrong, all wrong. she was wrong. Clutching her hands over her eyes, Maggie dropped to her knees and sobbed. Loud sobs and gasping for air between to them. She couldn't go back out there. She couldn't. She shouldn't have even tried. Not when she was disfigured like this. What was she thinking?

the dress

Ellen's dress was nothing special, but that was why she'd picked it. It wouldn't be easy for her to be invisible, given how few girls were here, and the cut was lower than she liked, but she was fully expecting to spend the night with Nate. The ink of his drawing was still on her back, covered by the dress, thankfully. She doubted it would always be that easy to hide what she was letting him do to her, but at least she was better off than her roommate, for now. She knew she shouldn't think things like that, especially about the only person here who'd actually been somewhat nice to her, but she couldn't help it.

Dinner had gone better than she'd hoped, she'd sat with Nate of course, hadn't liked the wine, or the pheasant, but the rest was good, though the conversation wasn't up to much. The staff, hovering like seagulls around a trawler, had made sure of that. Keeping her head down and saying as little as possible was the order of the day, just like it had been back home. So far, Nate hadn't done anything reminiscent of Travis, besides hurting her when they first met, but she couldn't trust him. He'd do something, at some point, she was certain of it.

Before the dancing started, she slipped away, making excuses about needing the bathroom. It was a lie, she needed to get her head together, to stop thinking about the dates she'd been on with Travis that had ended in A&E, after 'falling down the stairs', or whatever the excuse had been that time. He'd never have let her slip away like this, just another reason she wasn't likely to get punched in the face again today, even if she was having so much trouble in admitting it to herself. Stepping inside, the last thing she'd expected to see was Maggie, crying her eyes out.

"Mags?" she said, stepping towards the girl. "Maggie?" she continued, correcting herself as she continued her approach. "The fuck is up with you?" she added, her brummie accent making it very hard to tell if she was being sympathetic, or was just glad of the distraction. She didn't really know herself, if she was honest. "It's just a couple of fucking bruises, they'll heal. Is this seriously the first time some guy has broken your nose?" she asked, as if that kind of thing was perfectly normal. In a like like hers, it was, she still had trouble accepting how much better others had things compared with her.

A hiccupy sob was the only thing that met Ellen's questioning call of her name. Maggie had always been an emotional person, in fact she wasn't sure you could be a dancer, a performing artists if you weren't. Of course, her family had always taught her to polish herself enough to hide them away if needed. But that sort of thing could only work against certain emotions and in certain quantities. Hurt, disappointment, anger... Those could be masked with a smile, thoughts of puppies and a good sparkle in your eyes. A gracious nod perhaps. However this downpour of panic, dispair, and hurt was something un-controllable. A real force of nature. Maggie was having trouble breathing through the sobs now rattling through her body.

Her hands moved up instinctively, trying to cover her face. It didn't matter that they were dorm-mates. That Ellen had already seen her scared, sleeping, or without make-up fresh from the shower. Or when the blackened eyes first bloomed. Tonight was a party, a dance, a night to be beautiful. And Maggie simply wasn't. Even worse, not only did she fall short, no she was down right ugly tonight. No one should ever see her that way.

"I can't.... I c-can't... look l-like this!" She tried to speak through the crying but her breathing was too off. An actual full-fledge hiccup made her shoulders bounce, followed by another sobbing sound. "I sh-shouldn't have come h-here. I sh-shouldn't... I'm so st-stupid...."

Ellen could only stare as her roommate broke down further in front of her. All these hysterics over just a broken nose? Was she really that sheltered? Ellen had trouble believing anyone would react so badly to something she had to endure every couple of months when she managed to annoy Travis enough (or when he was drunk), even in a place like this. "What do you mean you can't?" she replied, frowning. Girls didn't intimidate her the way guys did, it was much easier to be a bitch to them, especially when they were as absolutely pathetic as this. "You think you're better than the rest of us? No other fucker cries like this over a broken fucking nose." she continued, shaking her head. This was the roommate she'd thought was the sane one?

"Maggie, toughen up, seriously. It's a broken nose. You'll heal, I don't understand why it's so bad." she continued, holding station a few paces away and trying not to frown. "It's been done to me a few times, I never did this. Even with bruises you still look better than someone like me ever could, so...what the fuck is wrong with you?" she said, shaking her head a little. Now she was trying to be nice, they were roommates after all, and if there was one group she needed on her side, it was the people she shared the room with (Apart from Kizzy of course, stupid apology letter or not, Ellen wasn't going to forget getting pissed on and kicked for complaining).

The sobbing continued for a time, speaking seemed to grow impossible. Ellen didn't understand how very different the standards were. Maggie was something rare: a true classic beauty. If her nose didn't heal properly... A travesty, a true crime against God who made it in the first place. Ellen was the sort of girl with sharp features who'd only see stardom if she was lucky enough to meet the one high fashion type who might dub her 'striking' instead of 'shrewish'.

"I'm sup-posed to be beautiful... I was j-just so reckless to go out like this..."

Maggie rubbed at her eyes, smudging her eye make-up into a true raccoon look. She hiccuped, sniffled, and took a deep deliberate breathe. Slowly she picked herself up and got to her feet. She felt drained, weak, and her hands were shaking from the emotional fatigue of it all.

"Thank you for saying so..." she replied slowly when Ellen said she was pretty even with bruises. She didn't believe a word of it, how could she? But good graces and manners weren't to falter, even if she was. Maggie picked up a paper towel and folded it, running the edge she created under her eyes. Damage control. She grimaced: the rough serviette wasn't meant for the delicate skin under her eye. 

"I'm s-sorry you had to see that. I was just so foolish to go out like this. It was stupid. I should have j-just stayed in. Not force myself on other people looking like this, it was wishful thinking..."