Ballerinas don't wear glasses

My new blue plastic glasses had tiny white stones embedded in each corner of the frame, sparkles that caught the light when I turned my head just right. They were "cat's eyes" glasses, my sister said, their edges slanting up to a sharp point near my temples. She had chosen plain black frames, boring and clunky, while mine changed the world I saw through them. And that was a very good thing for me.

I became the Queen of England with those glasses, or a ballerina creating magic on the stage. Life took on the gentleness I longed for, its hard edges sanded down as I put them on every morning that summer. I didn't even notice their weight, heavy on my nose, the thick lenses forcing their way through the back of the frame. All I knew was that my world had been transformed. I was someone else, maybe a girl everyone liked.

But when autumn was a mere hint in the air and school started again, I found out that ballerinas don't wear glasses. Even ones with tiny flashing stones.