The world had become a gallery of polished surfaces, and Stellar was the smudge everyone tried to wipe away. In 2022, beauty was a currency, and she was bankrupt. Her online handle, Stellar, was a prayer whispered into the digital void, a hope that she could become something other than the woman she saw in her phone's front camera. Her real name, Sarah, felt like a worn-out coat she'd left in a closet years ago.
Her apartment in Queens was a shrine to failure. A ring light stood folded in the corner like a dormant metal insect. A tripod was propped against a wall, its legs akimbo. The walls were bare except for a single poster of a sunset that had come with the room. The air smelled of takeout and desperation.
She scrolled through her phone, her thumb a metronome of disappointment. TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, even the desperate hinterlands of niche platforms she'd tried and abandoned. The comments were a familiar chorus, a litany of casual cruelty that had long since stopped feeling like cuts and more like a constant, dull pressure.
"girl maybe try a different angle lol"
"bless your heart for having the confidence"
"are those teeth real?"
They were right, of course. Her face was a collection of near-misses. Her jaw was a little too narrow, her eyes a fraction uneven, giving her a perpetually quizzical look that could be mistaken for dimness. Her teeth weren't horror-movie bad, just crooked enough to make a smile feel like an admission of guilt. Her hair, a mousy brown, refused to hold a style, and her body was a string bean with no curves to speak of. She was a first draft of a person, she thought, one where the artist had given up halfway through.
She had been smart once. College had been a time of libraries and late-night debates, where her mind was the currency that mattered. But that world had no place for her after she'd been let go from her editorial assistant job. The real world, she quickly learned, valued the package far more than the contents. So she tried to repackage herself. She wanted the instant result, the viral hit, the shortcut. Patience was a luxury for people who were already winning.
It was on a Tuesday, with the rain misting against her window, that she decided to change her tactics. If she couldn't be beautiful, she would be interesting. She would find a prop, something vintage and unique that would give her content an edge. She would go thrift shopping.
The shops of New York were a universe of discarded lives. She waded through racks of polyester blouses and tables laden with chipped coffee mugs. She found nothing but the ghost of other people's bad taste. In the third shop, a cramped, dusty place in the East Village that smelled of mothballs and old paper, she was ready to give up. And then she saw it, nestled between a tarnished candelabra and a stack of old National Geographic magazines.
It was a hand mirror. The silver backing was flaked and blackened in places, and the glass itself was a spiderweb of cracks, though the surface was surprisingly smooth to the touch. Only about sixty percent of the reflective surface remained intact. The handle was made of what might have been mother-of-pearl, now yellowed and brittle. There was no price tag.
She picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, cold. She approached the elderly man behind the counter, who was reading a newspaper with intense concentration.
"Excuse me," she said, her voice timid. "How much for this?"
The man peered over his glasses, his eyes scanning the mirror without interest. "That old thing? Broken. Must have gotten mixed in from the back. Tell you what, pay what you want for it. A dollar. Five. Whatever."
She almost put it back. A broken mirror? Seven years of bad luck was the last thing she needed. But something made her hesitate. A whim. She held it up, not really to look at herself, but to push a stray strand of lank hair behind her ear.
Her breath caught in her throat.
The hair in the reflection was different. It wasn't just neatly tucked; it looked fuller, shinier. She leaned closer, her heart beginning to thump a strange, irregular rhythm against her ribs. Her teeth. In the cracked glass, her smile was even. The slight overlap of her front teeth was gone. It was a trick of the light, a distortion in the broken glass. It had to be.
She turned and hurried to a small, grimy mirror hanging by the changing room. The woman who looked back was the same old Stellar, with the asymmetrical face and the tired eyes. Disappointment, sharp and familiar, pricked at her. She looked back into the hand mirror. The improved version of herself was still there, gazing out from the web of cracks. It wasn't a distortion. The mirror was showing her something… better.
Her hands trembled as she raised the mirror again. She stared, not at her hair or teeth, but at the skin around her eyes. As she watched, the faint lines of stress and sleepless nights seemed to soften, to smooth out. The sallow tone of her complexion warmed to a healthy glow. It was happening. It was real.
She fumbled for her phone, opening the front camera. The image on the screen was blurry, but clear enough. The changes were there. Her face was subtly but undeniably different. Prettier.
The shopkeeper's voice cut through her astonishment. "No pictures in the store, please." He had looked up from his paper, and his expression had changed. The bored indifference was gone, replaced by a genial, almost surprised warmth. He smiled at her. "Find everything alright?"
In that moment, Stellar knew. The mirror was special. It was magic. It was the answer.
"I'll take it," she said, her voice firmer than it had been in months. She pressed a ten-dollar bill into his hand, not waiting for change, and clutched the mirror to her chest as if someone might try to snatch it away.
She practically ran home, the cold weight of the mirror a secret talisman against her body. The rain didn't matter. The crowded subway didn't matter. She had found the key.
Back in her apartment, she placed the mirror carefully on her dressing table, propping it upright against a pile of books. She stood before it, her breath fogging the glass for a moment before clearing. She struck a pose, a slight, awkward tilt of her head.
And she watched.
It was not a sudden transformation. It was a slow, subtle rewriting. It was like watching a time-lapse video of a flower blooming, but compressed into minutes. The slight asymmetry of her face began to balance, the weaker side of her jawline firming, the set of her eyes becoming more level. The pores on her nose seemed to shrink, the redness around them fading. Her lips, usually thin and pale, gained a fuller shape and a natural rosy tint. It was her face, unmistakably, but it was her face as it might have been drawn by a kinder artist, a version where every feature was pushed just a fraction closer to perfection.
She couldn't look away. She shifted her posture, standing straighter, and saw the hunch in her shoulders ease. She smiled, and the smile was brilliant and even. A laugh bubbled up in her throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy she hadn't heard from herself in years. She was beautiful. Not "interesting despite," not "quirky," but genuinely, conventionally beautiful.
She stayed there for what felt like hours, watching the changes settle. She would look away, check her phone's camera to confirm the reality of it, then look back into the mirror, hungry for more. Eventually, the changes stopped. The reflection was static. A perfect, finished product.
She spent the next hour taking pictures. Dozens of them. Hundreds. She didn't need filters, didn't need perfect lighting. Every shot was a revelation. She imagined posting them. The likes, the comments, the followers. The brand deals. She would be successful. She would finally have the life she watched through her screen.
Exhausted and exhilarated, she finally put the mirror down, leaving it perched on the table. She collapsed onto her bed, her mind racing with plans. A YouTube channel rebrand. A new TikTok series. She fell asleep with a smile on her perfect new face, the world finally within her grasp.
She did not see her reflection in the mirror, which remained upright on the dressing table. She did not see how it continued to hold her image, long after she had turned away. She did not see the reflection's smile, which remained fixed on its face, a little too wide, a little too knowing, the corners of the mouth stretching into a territory that was no longer human. It was a smile that held secrets, a smile that was waiting. The reflection watched the real Stellar sleep, and its gaze was patient, and hungry. The gallery, for a moment, had been opened.