The sun had long since dipped below the jagged skyline, leaving behind a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Inside the apartment, the air was thick with the chemical haze of extra-hold hairspray and the sharp, metallic tang of a hot curling iron. Amara leaned so far into her vanity mirror that her breath fogged the glass, momentarily blurring the reflection of a woman who looked increasingly like a stranger.
It was Sunday. Usually, this was the hour of laundry, of meal-prepping, and of mentally bracing for the Monday morning commute. But the "usual" had been incinerated weeks ago.
Now, her bedroom was a battlefield of cosmetics. Scattered across the vanity were discarded cotton pads soaked in black smudge and half-used tubes of primer. On her phone, propped precariously against a jar of moisturizer, a twenty-something influencer with terrifyingly perfect pores was chirping about "effortless nocturnal glamour."
