Second Nature by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Christina so very much? She meant it kindly, but she wanted me to hide behind the equivalent of a muumuu with palm trees and ukuleles all over it. She kept hoping I’d be a nun, part of a contemplative order that was cloistered. Could she have been more obvious? People who pray and wear undershirts made of Brillo inside their clothes are not pious. They’re nuts. No matter how many times Christina told me that many a religious found a vocation in disfigurement, I told her that was horse petoot. What disfigured people find in religious life is a place to hide—with the bonus of hiding among people who get extra points for putting up with stuff that gives other people the creeps. There aren’t that many beautiful, fresh-faced young maidens who become nuns anymore—unless they’re from places like Somalia or Indonesia, where nunning is a great alternative to starving. My opinion was that the rest were running from something. And yet Sister Mary Augustine actually was one of those stern-at-the-time-but-later-valued teachers whom grown students came back to visit when they graduated college.
    Who would visit me? Who would be inspired by me? I wasn’t one of those admirable disfigured people who walked across America, speaking at churches and preschools on the way, or who created an interactive video game teaching children that sensitivity is for every day, not just awareness days. I wasn’t an advocate for anything. I didn’t run 5Ks to help find a cure for anything. Maybe I truly was one of those people who was exceptionally considerate—of herself. Maybe I’d so fully embraced being looked after that I’d confused doing minor good at my job with being good in my life.

    “Do you think I’m a good person, Kit?”
    “I think you’re a wonderful person,” Kit said.
    “I don’t mean, like, interesting. I mean good.”
    “Of course. Why?”
    “I don’t know. I never … had to try to … Just, something like this happens to you, and if you don’t evaluate your life, you’d have to be really shallow. You have to think about what the hell your life is. I draw bile ducts. I make animated pictures of mitosis and meiosis.”
    “Don’t go too far, Sicily. What Neal and Joey did doesn’t have anything to do with you. If you sprain your ankle on the same day you lose your wallet, it doesn’t mean you’re being punished. Take it easy on yourself. Take one step at a time.”
    But I had already leapt off the step. There were things I had to know and do if I didn’t want to sit in the equivalent of this soaking tub for the rest of my life. People had those idiot refrigerator magnets because they helped you get up and do stuff. Kit was right. It was day one.
    I ripped the sheets off my bed and put them into the washer. My sheets stank of flop sweat. I had to hurry. If I did not, I would never be even as good as, much less better than.
    Renee Mayerling recognized my voice.
    Of course, my voice was pretty distinctive.
    “I’m sorry, Sicily,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
    Neal’s inquest was over. That was supposed to have ended something that refused, at least for me, to feel finished.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “Are you doing okay?”
    “Not really.”
    “Give it time.”
    “I guess I have no choice, as far as that goes. But, Renee? You could do me a big favor, if you would? I have to ask you some things.”

    “You bet. Do you want to get together?” she said. I wasn’t sure that I did. Only a month had passed since the night of my “engagement party,” and that month had passed so slowly that it was evident proof of the theory of relativity. I still vacillated: I loved him. I loved him not. I would take him back. I would spit on him if I ever saw him again. I was still a young woman who was, at some point, going to have to place an ad that read: ARIA MCBRIDE WEDDING DRESS: NEVER WORN . Push, Sicily. Jump . We made a date for the following week, to have coffee at the place across from UIC where I