“Go change, you look cheap!” my dad laughed after Mom ruined my dress. I returned wearing a general’s uniform. The room went silent. He stuttered, “Wait… are those two stars?”

“Go change, you look cheap!” my dad laughed after Mom ruined my dress. I returned wearing a general’s uniform. The room went silent. He stuttered, “Wait… are those two stars?”

The first thing people noticed about the ballroom wasn’t the chandeliers or the string quartet—it was the way my family stood together like a picture-perfect unit, polished and smiling, as if they’d rehearsed the angles of their bodies and the timing of their laughter.

I was standing half a step behind them.

Not close enough to be included, not far enough to disappear.

“Straighten your shoulders,” my mother murmured without turning around, her smile never slipping as she waved to a donor across the room. “You look uncertain.”

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