Grime coated the delicate fabric in a shell, hiding its glory. The once alluring ruffles now hung down like aged skin, sagging and wrinkled. The seams down the sides were loose, and elastic was poking its was out of the collar. You could just make out a row of rusty-colored splatters across the stomach. My costume hung in the very back of the closet, waiting to be worn.

XxX

The curtain opened, my guts were in my knees and I was sure that I wouldn’t ever to be able to move again. But when the music blared over the speakers, electricity jolted my body to life, and I was dancing like no one before. I jumped higher, spun faster, and smiled brighter, and though my exuberance was hidden by ‘Of course you didn’t mess up!’s and ‘I’m sure no one noticed!’s, I knew I had been the best.

I tried to stay asleep, to remember every detail of the night before, but the sun bursting through the window won the war. When I finally opened my eyes, my face felt sticky from make-up I hadn’t taken off, and my hair was frizzy from hairspray. I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head of the haze of last night’s dance recital. The only thought that stayed clear in my head was, I can’t wait to get to school.

When I entered the classroom, I felt like a movie star. Everyone who went to my dance studio was crowded in a corner, exchanging stories of costume mishaps and embarrassing moments. I glowed as they ooohed and aaahed over my accounts, laughed at all my jokes, and graciously congratulated me on my performance. For the first time in my awkward fifth grade year, I felt accepted.

"Emily, you're so lucky you're always put in the front!" one girl gawgled;

"It’s because she so tiny! Everyone loves watching munchkin Emily!" Another one added, looking down at me and conveniently resting her elbow on my head. I looked up at her; there was almost a foot height difference between us. I looked around the circle, and everyone was at least a head taller than me.

"That’s right!" I giggled, hoping I didn’t sound vain, "Everyone loves munchkin!" I took the opportunity to drop into the splits, smiling enormously at the girls above.

That night, I quickly poked ‘Yahoo!’ into the web bar, and happily made a new account with the e-mail: Everyone loves munchkin, at yahoo dot com.

XxX

Three Years Later

XxX

"If I ever see a box again I’ll die!" I flopped down on the wood floor, my brother quickly doing the same. "The next time we move, I’m just going to sit against the wall and do nothing," He said, and I didn’t blame him. We had moved four times in the last five years, and I was thankful we had finally bought a house. "Josh! Emily! I need you to unpack your rooms, or we’ll never get this house clean!" My brother and I exchanged sympathetic glances, and then headed down the hallway in opposite directions to follow our mother’s orders.

When I reached my room, the only thing could manage was a sigh. When I unpacked the first box, my fingers hesitated a moment at the bottom before I pulled out the dress. It was as beautiful as I remember it, with long white ruffles in the skirt and lacy sleeves that billowed and bounced. I ran my fingers over the soft velour leotard, remembering every step I had done in it. It had lived through days of being worn to friends’ houses and parties, even survived a share of rain and hail, but it was still in perfect condition.

‘It fit me before I packed it... the first time,’ I mused, sure that it would still fit me now. ‘I’ve barely grown at all since fifth grade. I’m practically the shortest seventh grader the school has, and everyone still calls me munchkin...’ I hurriedly shut the door, then peeled off my sweaty shorts and tee-shirt. I slipped one foot into the leg hole, holding the dress like the crown jewels of England. I stepped into the other side, and pulled it up my legs. I had to bend my arms backwards to fit into the arms, and I couldn’t breathe very well with all the buttons, but it still fit. And that was all that mattered. I let out my breath, and with the speed of a navy jet, the top three bottons popped of collar, the fabric tore down the middle, and huge rip gaping across my stomach. The lace of my left sleeve caught on my fingernail, rapidly unraveling in the chaos. And I screamed bloody murder.

For just a second, my world froze. It couldn’t not fit me. It couldn’t. I had lost a part of myself, the part of me that everyone teased and laughed at for being so tiny had simply disappeared, and I would search for it forever and never find it. I was stuck in a horrifying limbo, somewhere between disbelief and despair. And then I snapped. It felt like everything I had ever bottled up in my life was pouring down on me, an endless waterfall of memories and my clock was spinning out of control, never knowing when to stop or how to believe what was happening. I don’t know how long it was that I sat on the floor, squeezing my eyes shut and crossing my fingers and legs like a kindergartner. But when I emerged from the daze, it worse than before. There was no way I could deny it now, no way for me to wish that this wasn’t happening. Every step that I took seemed to echo in my head how empty I felt.

When I placed my fingers on the keyboard of the computer, it took every effort to push each key down to slowly form yahoo dot com. I deleted every e-mail I had ever received, one by one, growing more determined with each click. Finally, after going through more than a thousand messages, I hit "Cancel account". And that was that.

But I could sew, I could sew it back together and make myself fit into it. I squeezed the costume closer to my body, willing it to melt into my heart. But the fabric just slipped out of my hands to the floor.

It took me more than two hours to get all of the patching done, and you could still see where I had pricked myself with the needle and tainted the fabric with blood. But I didn’t want to see it like that, a rag when it deserved riches, so I stuffed it in the back of my closet. I never thought that I'd end up living my life in the back of a closet... but I guess that's adolescence for you, and what can a 13 year old really do?

XxX