The Changeling's Lament by Shira Lipkin
I have studied so hard to pass as one of you. I've spent a lifetime on it. I have tells. Blisters, tremors, bruises, all the signs that I was not meant for your world, was not meant to be contained in your clothes, your shoes. I have this terribly inconvenient allergy to cold iron. Hives, really. Welts. I stand out. When I was little, I asked my alleged mother, what's a girl? She said you, you're a girl, and she laced me into dresses (that I tore off in the school parking lot, in line for the bus). Laced me into ballet shoes that left blisters and bloodied my feet until I had calluses. Which she had filed off, beauticians pinning me down, because it's not beauty if you don't bleed. My dancing was different. My dancing was swaying treelike, or launching myself across the room, spinning madly, but that is not what girls do, not human girls, not ladylike, not contained. And everything is about containment is about being d...