The neon-pink fabric of the bikini served only to frame the catastrophic devastation of my body.

From my collarbone down to my upper thighs, wrapping around my ribs and cascading over my back, my skin was a violent, chaotic landscape of unimaginable trauma.

Massive, thick, puckered keloids—raised ribbons of shiny, discolored flesh—mapped the path where third-degree burns had melted me to the bone. The skin on my left shoulder was tight and heavily grafted, like melted wax.

A jagged, mottled purple scar slashed across my abdomen, a permanent testament to the surgeries that had saved my internal organs from failing.

I wasn’t a girl in a bikini. I was a walking, breathing monument of agony.

Chloe froze at the edge of the pool. The smug, victorious smile didn’t just fade from her face; it melted off, instantly replaced by a look of sheer, uncomprehending, mind-shattering horror. Her eyes bulged, darting wildly over the ruined landscape of my torso, her brain struggling to process visual information that completely defied the reality she’d lived in for a decade.