The thing is, the thing that the campers don't realize, is that you never learned how to be a real girl. She did – that girl with her eyes like a waterfall, sweet and bright and quick to sing, to fill just as much space as she does, no more and no less. Your half-sister with the ragamuffin hair and uneven smile, she figured it out when you couldn't. You're a doll-girl, even before you grew into this shiny, slick body of yours, even before you cut it into it and learned to make it rounded and soft and pleasing to look at. You could blame your mother for this. You could, and sometimes you want to. But that wouldn't be quite the truth, either. The truth is you did this to yourself, and by the time you realized you were more plastic than flesh, that you couldn't remember the way you used to look, you didn't know how to be anything else.
You used to dance for fun. That you remember, the momentum of it, the wild sweep – how you didn't care about moving like water or oil. Now you dance for them. You practice and practice and practice so you can time the right moment to toss your hair, curl your hand in a come-hither gesture. You're not sure if they'll like that; too obvious, you can imagine them saying, she's lost her charm already, if she had any in the first place. Part of you is yelling, let them talk. What the hell do you know, you want to say, what the hell. That blushing act, that feline charm served with a wink, like you weren't a doll then, too. You have many faces, none of them particularly kind. You have no delusions about being a hero or even a warrior. But that part of you stays quiet, it always will, because you're too stupid to get the words right, and even if you were smart, nobody would want to hear you. They tolerate you as a fool. You have enough reminders of that; you hardly need another one.
And you are stupid; that's one thing they get right, wearing their snide smiles and gossiping in tones just loud enough for you to hear. You aren't smart by any stretch of the word, not even in the things that doll-girls should be when let out of their cases. But there is one thing you have. You know just enough to understand they want you to be stupid, a little girl in her mother's clothes, giggling under her lipsticked smile. Remember: nobody wants to hear you talk. Not your family, not your friends. You are a doll-girl, and you will be until the day you lose your expensive glow. After that you'll be replaced by a newer doll, one with skin like silk and a wasp-waist slim enough to break. Until then, you will dance for them.