Chapter 1
Coralie's POV
Trapped in a lifelong obsession with my flawed face, I found solace only behind beauty filters.
Seraphine, the undisputed beauty of our town, had not only stolen Cillian—the boy I liked—but made a habit of publicly humiliating me.
When I signed up for the Magnolia Queen pageant, I knew I didn't stand a chance. But one foggy morning, while fetching the paper, I found a mysterious silver compact mirror inside my mailbox.
With just a light dab of the powder, my lifelong acne scars vanished entirely. But engraved inside the lid was a list of previous owners, and Seraphine's name was glaringly present.
The faceless shadow that briefly flashed in the mirror was a grim reminder: this perfect skin didn't belong to me.
Who secretly delivered this curse to my doorstep?
Seraphine shook out her white magnolia-embroidered dress, stepping onto the porch of the White Camellia Hall. She turned and waved at me.
"Coralie, come take a picture for me."
I walked over and took her phone. Through the lens, she looked impossibly stunning—platinum blonde hair, pale green eyes, undeniably the most perfect face Belle Reve had ever seen. I tapped the shutter.
"Wow, you take great pictures," she said, leaning in to check the screen. She smiled and added, "You're like a completely different person from your photos."
I had been listening to comments like that for seventeen years. She always wrapped her daggers in sugar. If you got mad, you became the girl who couldn't take a joke.
"Take one more. My jaw looks wide in this one."
She didn't have a wide jaw. Instinctively, I brushed my hair flat against my cheeks to hide the pitted scars. I'd suffered from cystic acne since middle school. The cysts came one after another, leaving behind craters no concealer could hide. Only through the heavily filtered lens of my phone was I ever considered "pretty."
A chipped pickup truck screeched to a halt by the curb.
"What's taking you two so long?" Cillian Landry leaned out the window. The moment his right dimple showed, my heart melted a little. He was the high school quarterback, the only son of the Landry family, and half the girls in town were swooning over him.
Myself included.
"Registering!" Seraphine skipped over and threw herself into his arms. "This year's Magnolia Queen is mine."
Cillian stepped out of the truck, wrapped an arm naturally around her waist, and smiled at me. "Hey Coralie, mind taking one of us together?"
He was always so polite to everyone. He could make a random stranger feel special. I raised the phone and captured their sunlit smiles—the way he looked down at her was so picture-perfect it made my stomach drop.
"You're not signing up, Coralie?" Cillian shoved a hand into his jeans pocket, genuinely curious. "You're the smartest girl in our grade. Didn't you get top marks in Chem last year?"
"Why would she sign up?" Seraphine laughed before I could answer. "No offense, Coralie. You've got the grades, why compete with us? Pageants are... well, they're about faces. If you stood on that stage, the judges wouldn't know where to look."
My knuckles turned white gripping her phone, but I forced a smile.
The winner of the Magnolia Queen pageant received a full scholarship to LSU. For Seraphine—who lived in a mansion downtown with her three-term mayor father—it was just a cherry on top. But for me—a girl living in a trailer by the swamp with a dad working night shifts at a gas station—it was the only ticket out of this mudhole.
My mom had stood on that stage years ago, making it to the second round. It became her lifelong obsession, and the source of the lingering disappointment in her eyes whenever she looked at me.
"Alright, we're off." Seraphine linked her arm through Cillian's. Before leaving, she turned back and sweetly added, "Oh, by the way, Coralie, you need a different shade of concealer. It doesn't match your neck at all. I could see it from a mile away."
She walked away laughing, her white dress swaying in the summer sun like a flag waving in victory over me.
Suddenly, I noticed someone standing at the bottom of the steps. Clover Fontenot, my next-door neighbor and the only friend I'd ever had. Pushing up her round glasses, her pale grey eyes quietly watched Seraphine's retreating back.
"That face of hers," Clover said softly, "will have to be returned one day."
I didn't understand what she meant. I just felt something heavy thud against the bottom of my chest.
