What a wonder love is, or so I’ve heard. All humans had a natural longing to be loved, and the things we did for it were beyond insane, but the safest thing and the easiest thing to do was to look pretty. Imagine every successful love story. They all end with a pretty girl and a pretty boy on ice skates, a carousel, in a wedding, or something of that nature, with their pretty little faces nothing but colored smudges in a picture they framed in their pretty suburban home. There was but only one explanation. Beauty was nothing but a science. Beauty wasn’t a nice laugh, a kind heart, or whatever those cheesy movies shaped it out to be. It was nothing but three things; shape, symmetry, and unity. Someone, somewhere, gave me a certain power, and I was determined to use it to its full extent. This is my story, and here you will learn what it truly means to be beautiful.
    Before, I was an average girl; mediocre looks, a nice laugh, and a kind heart, and I was naïve enough to think that was all that really mattered. But then, a boy asked me out. Let’s simply refer to him as Winter, as he made me feel nothing but cold and dead inside; as bleak as a long and miserable winter. It was clear Winter could’ve had any other girl for this date, but he wished me. He didn’t say he liked or loved me. He just asked me outright and simple, which almost made me hurt inside. Something about that infuriated me, but enthralled me all the same, so I couldn’t and didn’t refuse his proposition. There was but only one explanation. He wanted me to change, to alter who I was. Perhaps, I was just a diamond in the rough, and all I needed was a little bit of polishing. Perhaps, he would tell me he liked me if I changed, and I had one week to do so.
    It started with makeup, the innocence of just a little color here and there seemed simple enough and at the time I didn’t know what extremities true love would require. So I began to work. I quickly learned the rules of makeup, and was quite fascinated with how it abused the basic laws of vision and illusion. First, darkness was simply the absence of light, as where they were shadows, there had to be ridges, and obscurity was nothing but beauty. Next, if you can’t see it, it’s not there. Seeing is believing, and if there was nothing to see, there was nothing to believe. Lastly, the eyes always lie, unintentionally so. Eyes like to assume; they don’t perceive what’s there, they see what they desire to observe, and there was but only one explanation for that desire. That desire is the masterpiece that needed to be recreated to make true love.
    These realizations are what made me realize that “pretty” was nothing but a science. To experiment, I took my first masterpiece of a face to school one day. I felt strange, but more people talked to me, people I had never talked to before. They gave me less than genuine smiles, but smiles none the less. Winter even made an effort to walk up to me, and inform me he was excited for our romantic, one on one jamboree, in six days from that very day. Even educators looked at me differently, telling me I looked pretty, calling on me more in class, and even cutting me slack where they never had before. There was, once again, but only one explanation for this bizarre episode of proceedings; all this was happening just because of a pretty, little face. It was as simple as that. How could I have been so blind before?
    But, this was not enough. I needed more; more research, more materials, more experiments, and I just as I was about to die of my unsatisfied hunger, a trunk arrived at my door. The trunk was inscribed with beautiful designs with the perfect balance of shape, symmetry, and unity and it made me incredibly tempted to open it on sight. But there was a note on the trunk that read in big, bold letters, “READ BEFORE OPENING”. I obeyed the letter, snatching it off of the trunk with long, painted nails and opening it. The letter went as so, “My dear girl, if you are reading this, it appears you think you have discovered the true meaning and science behind beauty. I have given you a gift to keep your research moving. If you are prepared to be the prettiest girl in the world, open the trunk”. There was but only one explanation for this. Someone out there knew I was destined to discover this age old secret, and they were prepared for the day it came. I happily chuckled to myself.
    In a frenzy of mad avarice for the beauty which awaited me, I flipped the trunk open and tore through what felt like miles of tissue paper. Once I had reached the bottom of the trunk, I saw a glowing box. I tried to touch it, but when I did, pain ached through my hand and echoed through every inch of my being, slightly disorienting me. I was nauseated and still shivering with shock, but my curiosity got the best of me, and I touched the box again, expecting to have to endure pain. However, I touched the box again, felt nothing, and was able to open the box to reveal… faces. All the pretty little faces a girl could ever want. I gently ran my hands over them, relishing them and their unbelievable magnificence. All of them were similar to mine, but each one was slightly more altered than the last, until the last one looked nothing like the forever flawed face I had now. The shape, the symmetry, and the unity of these faces… it was almost unreal. I felt so powerful. Once I put on one of these faces, I would be unstoppable. Adoration and fear were nothing but the same. What we called beautiful we obeyed, just as we obeyed what we feared. We quivered before the beautiful, just as we quivered before the terrifying. Something about this was incredibly unfair, but primal and true all the same.
    I grabbed the box, hurried to my bathroom and locked the door. I laid the box out on my sink, and examined all of the pretty little faces. These faces, they must’ve been hundreds of years old as the skin glimmered with the beautiful colored smudges of countless fingers. There was but only one explanation. Beauty faded, and that was supposed to make it beautiful, but what if, it lasted forever. That would mean eternal love, eternal wealth, and eternal success. I could take incalculable amounts of pictures and frame them in every last inch of this world, so everyone could love me.
    My research continued, and I was finally able to match up numbers. I realized it wasn’t just me. Masterpieces all across the world, Mona Lisa, the Starry Night, the Scream, they all used a certain geometrical formula to produce shapes that cooperate. I compared these equations with the proportions on the faces, and tested them out by plugging numbers into these equations. Only that one, last mask perfect aligned with numbers deemed mandatory to create, or at least create illusion of beauty. Everyone would love it. Everyone would love me and my pretty little face.
    Each of the remaining days to the date, I wore the new faces. Each day I became more beautiful, attracted more friends, and became one of the most adored girls in the school. Next up, was the world. However, I saved the final face for my upcoming date.
    The days went by at a snail's pace allowing me to savor these moments of being on top of the world, although there was no need. I would, after all, remain this way forever. Although, as these days went by, I found myself… losing myself. My nice laugh had all but disappeared, and my kind heart was now only kind to me. I had lost a few friends, but who needs them? If they weren’t willing to accept me for the new and improved me, then that was that. I was more confident and better than ever. I had worked and researched for this face. I deserved all the praise I was getting, all of the love. I felt I would go to my grave denying it was ever my mistake. Pretty hurt, but just enough to be worth it.
    Finally, the day of my glorious date arrived, and it was time to bear the last, most perfect face of them all, and cage Winter’s heart. At this point, I had simply forgotten what my actual face even looked like, but I didn’t care. The last thing I needed was to be plagued with its toxic imperfections and revolting blemishes.
    After changing into my great, blue dress with countless layers of skirts that fell like cascades of ocean water, I went into the bathroom, opened the box, and picked up the last, but not at all least, mask. I removed the one I was currently wearing, and dawned the reign of my final face. I looked in the mirror, delighted with the delusion which lay before me, and numbed to any remorse or grievance for my original face.
    I heard the doorbell ring, took one last look in the mirror, and ran downstairs to meet Winter. I stepped up to the front door, took a deep breath, and forgetting it was locked, swung it open with so much force that the bolt and both of the locks broke with loud crunching noises. I smiled.
    “Hello Winter.”
    Strangely enough, the look on Winter’s face was not one of adoration or true love, but one of terror. He asked me who I was, and I told him it was me, the girl with the nice laugh, the kind heart, and the pretty little face.
    He released a screech, and I watched in stunned silence as he darted for his car. No. No. No! NO!
    I chased after him, yelling at him to return to me that very instant or he would be sorry. By the time I caught up to him, he was already in the car, attempting to start it up. I slowly walked around the car to the front seat door, my long, painted nails scratching the paint off of the car with a terrible screeching noise. However, as I reached the door, and looked into the window, I only saw a reflection; the reflection of the most horrifying monster I had ever seen in my entire life. It was hideous!
    I punched the window with the force of a seasoned boxer, and shards of glimmering glass went flying everywhere, and before I knew it, I was surrounded by tens upon hundreds of the reflections of this terrible creature. I screeched and tripped over my own dress, falling into a puddle of water and being greeted with a much clearer image of it. I cried out in fear, and ran back inside the house into the bathroom, where the box still lay, wide open. I jumped over to it, and starting rummaging through all of the faces, searching for the perfect one. It had to be in here somewhere.
    My calculations must’ve been off. Perhaps the formulas I used were incorrect. Maybe the proportions weren’t simplified or I should’ve converted to decimals. Maybe I should’ve used circles instead of ovals, or maybe acute triangles instead of right. Maybe the features just weren’t symmetrical, or maybe they just weren’t united and didn’t work together properly. Maybe I could never be pretty. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of digging through the box, I found the perfect face. Something about it told me it was more precious than all of the others. I violently tore off the one I was currently wearing, hastily mashed the new one onto my head and looked into my mirror.
    It was… my original face, but only now did I see the face was, somehow… flawless. The shape wasn’t perfect, the symmetry wasn’t as pleasant as it could be, and there was quiet the mix of features that seemed to stand independent. It may have not been the ideal of pretty, but it was beautiful, and for once, looking at that mask, I felt I knew there was but one true explanation for what beauty actually was. Beauty was a nice laugh, a kind heart, and realizing that the face you have may not be “pretty” to the rest of the world, but more beautiful than you could ever imagine. That was true beauty, and it couldn’t be explained in any equation.
    This was the face I had been born with, the face that I had been and would’ve continued to grow with. This was my mother and father’s face. This was the face smiling in the pictures alongside my friends, my true friends. This was the face that somebody who truly loved me would’ve cherished. This face was my birth right, and I’d taken it for granted.
    I looked back over at the box of faces. They now all looked so strange and horrific; they weren’t me, they weren’t anybody. Those faces may have been pretty, but they would never even begin to have the depth to be beautiful. I knocked the box aside into my trash can, and stared into the mirror, admiring my own beautiful self, not with arrogance, but with graceful concession. I cast one last glance at the box, but then turned away, and never looked back again. Those faces were more than just pretty little faces. They were mocking, malicious masks that fed off of my greed and insecurity, and I swore to myself I would never wear anything but my own face ever again.