SOUTH PARK BELONGS TO TREY PARKER AND MATT STONE
«The silhouette in the mirror, I'm going to make it / I disgust myself, I tell myself what's the point» (Pas beaux, by Vitaa and Slimane)
Rumors flew, and Timmy had ears. He heard the guys praise girls they usually didn't pay attention to or didn't think they were that pretty. He heard Wendy desperately trying to convince everyone that it was all just Photoshop and being ridiculed for giving a darn about it.
It worked. He wasn't sure how, but it did work. He had seen the pictures and he found himself attracted to girls he had seen before in the hallways and had barely looked. It was a strange suggestion, a spell, something that made people look better.
...
It was a very difficult decision. It was kind of humiliating...
...But he wanted to know...
Like...what did he lose trying?
When he rolled into the gym, he saw the girls glancing at him from the corner of their eye, frown a little bit, like wondering what the heck was a guy doing there, why was he looking at them when they were working on their image, in a way they wanted no guy to see them. The coach listened to his explanation with a more open mind—well, as long as he paid the fee there was no need to give any. But he understood what brought him there.
They adjusted one desk to his wheelchair and his ability to use a mouse. The coach started his instruction.
First, he would teach him how to make the chair disappear and make him do what no doctor had ever accomplished: make him stand. All of those girls didn't know how lucky they were to be able to walk, run, climb stairs, dodge all kind of obstacles. Timmy had missed so many plans with his friends because he wasn't able to go to non-wheelchair-friendly spaces. He couldn't keep up with everyone, and sometimes the other kids were not selfless enough not to go to a certain place because he couldn't follow—it was much more reasonable to leave him behind, alone.
Then, he gave his hair a much nicer look. He had tried to comb his hair in a more fashionable way, but the result was never what he wanted. The other kids had moms who could give them a hand, but his mom wasn't in a much better condition than he was: she sometimes was a mess too, because she did what she could. He made his hair look the way these guys from the movies looked, tidy, clean, shiny, thick. It made him look much better, gave him an air of sophistication.
Finally, the teeth. Jimmy used braces and in a couple of years his speech would improve a lot and it would give his face another look; Timmy's parents couldn't afford that. Anyway, crooked teeth were not the only thing Timmy had that Jimmy hadn't: even if Jimmy had a rotten mouth, he would still have it better: he could talk in a way everyone could understand. He got tongue-tied when he spoke but that was all. For Timmy, it was a triumph to utter a comprehensible sentence, it had taken him years of therapy. Their illnesses were similar but Timmy's was a bit more complicated. Constraining, actually, because he couldn't express himself the way he wanted, he couldn't talk to people the way Jimmy did. If he could talk, he would be as charming as Jimmy was.
The guy on the screen didn't seem to have a problem to express himself. He seemed so sure. He could go wherever he wanted, talk to people about the most varied issues, express what he was feeling inside and share his interests.
He caught the other girls glance at his screen and make faces. Yes, the Timmy in the screen was a very different Timmy. This one was much nicer to look at.
He saved the photo, posted it everywhere. He kept it on his phone and glanced at it often.
Adults had always told him that there was nothing wrong with him and he had a lot of worth, but they only said so to make him feel better about himself. There were so many things wrong with him. Even Jimmy, another handicapped boy, had mocked him back in the day for it. He was a curious case, a freak—no, sometimes he felt like the whole circus.
Wendy didn't know what she was talking about when she said Photoshop was some kind of poison. She could criticize it, of course: she was healthy, she was even pretty for his taste. No one looked at her and immediately questioned her intelligence or even the right she had to be alive and not being aborted. But, of course, girls didn't understood many things—and if they were abled, they understood even less.
The Photoshopped picture did make him sad. It made him avoid the mirror and look himself into it instead. But he didn't regret making it, because he showed what he had always wanted, the Timmy people would get to love, the Timmy girls could be interested in. The Timmy he wanted to be and now seemed real, not just in his head.
Not only was he handsome. He was normal.
THE END
