She looks at me with that critical frown only dressing room attendants can pull off, deep valleys creasing her forehead, eyebrows angled just so, lips doing something I can't quite parse. It leaves me with two certainties: she knows something I don't, and I desperately want to make her happy.

There it is again. My tilt-shift is broken, slipping from confident to approval-seeking. But lately there's a new sensation that makes me shiver and twist, a frozen half-smile stuck on my face. It's an evolved feeling, the evil stepmother of weird, with me as her unwanted surrogate.

I think it's self-cringe.