Free The Pretty One by Cheryl Klam Page A

calls out excitedly, peering down. “Are you ready?”
    Considering the fact that my dad is at home
and
using the camera that he only used once before (the night of the accident), his silence is remarkable. Chances are slim that he figured out how to work it, but he’s obviously trying to behave, which only adds to the weirdness. I would much rather have him swearing his head off than this Mr. Cleaver/
Leave It to Beaver
routine.
    Lucy waves me over.
    â€œTaaa-daa!” she says, moving out of the way as I take my place at the top of the stairs.
    â€œWould you look at that!” Dad exclaims as he practically blinds me with a camera flash.
    â€œOh Megan,” Mom says, holding her hands to her mouth, as if in shock.
    Now I know how my sister feels when she’s playing a role. As I walk down the stairs, I wonder if my parents can see my new pink thong. Ew. I try to wipe the thought from my mind as Iad-just the short skirt my sister picked out for me and self-consciously pull my snug shirt over my bra strap. I’m baring much more skin than normal. I have lost nearly fifty pounds over the past year, and my parents insisted on buying me a whole new wardrobe (thus explains the thong), all purchases supervised by my sister (also thus explains the thong). All my old clothes are stored in the back of my closet in a big black Hefty bag marked SALVATION ARMY .
    â€œNow one of you together,” Dad says, waving Lucy over. Lucy and I stand side by side as we wrap our arms around each other. She looks over at me, beaming sisterly love. I smile back, even though there’s something about this whole thing that is giving me the major heebie-jeebies. And for some strange reason, I’m tempted to muck it up a bit. Maybe give my sister, who has been nothing but nice and sweet, a big old kick in the ass. Or perhaps I could just take my dad’s camera and, oops, drop it smack on the floor as in: I’m still
me,
people. I know I look a little (to be fair, a lot) different but WHY ARE YOU MAKING SUCH A BIG DEAL OUT OF THIS? YOU SAW ME EVERY DAY FOR SIXTEEN YEARS!
    I must be a really terrible person to even think about kicking my sister or dropping my dad’s camera, considering the hell we’ve all been through the past year. After all, it wasn’t just me who went through the ringer; it was every single person in the room, particularly Lucy. Lucy originally blamed herself for what happened to me (What a coincidence! So did I!), saying that if it wasn’t for her I never would’ve been upset and blah, blah, blah.
    Amazingly enough, like some beneficent religious figure coming into town on my white horse, I took the high road. And although I managed to convince myself that I alone was responsible for my accident, I never really managed to convince Lucy, who put herself into purgatory. She broke things off with Tommy, and although she performed in the senior productions, she didn’t even audition for anything else all year. She claimed that she didn’t want to commit herself, preferring to stay flexible so that she could accompany Mom and me to New York for the surgeries. At first I was kind of happy to have Lucy as my own little servant or magic genie, but by spring it started to make me feel mildly guilty to think of all the fun Lucy was missing, and all because I had stupidly run into the street without looking.
    â€œWait a minute,” Lucy says, her eyes flashing concern. “Megan needs a tissue.”
    This is the worst side effect of my surgeries: my runny nose. It wasn’t horrible, like the gushing of a waterfall, but more slow and steady, like a leaky faucet. At first the doctors were concerned I had a “cerebrospinal fluid leak” (that is, my brain was leaking), but they tested me and ruled it out. The doctors said it was due to either the misplacement of the glands that secrete mucus, or because the cells that handled the flow of mucus were destroyed, or