I have this thing and it’s kinda embarrassing, but I gotta say it somewhere. This is stupid but sometimes I feel like my hands are wearing out. Like my insides are too big for them or something. I’m only like, seventeen, and already they ache. All the time. Like after school, when I’m chopping stuff for dinner at the restaurant, it’s like a dull buzz under my skin. Like static, but it hurts. My mom’s a chef, a REAL good one. And her hands are like, magic. She can chop an onion so fast it’s just a blur, or make these tiny little garnishes that look like art. I wanna be like her, that’s why I started working with her. Learning how to do it right. But when she’s not looking, I gotta kinda shake my hands out, or press them against the cold metal counter to make the buzz stop. Sometimes my grip just… slips. Not like I drop anything usually, but it feels like the knife is heavy, too heavy for me. Last week, I almost dropped a plate. A whole plate of that fancy sea bass with the tiny vegetables she makes. It was right before she had to send it out, and I felt my fingers kinda give out. She turned around and saw me, just for a second. Her eyebrows went up. She didn’t say anything, just took the plate from me and put it on the pass. But I felt it. The look. Like she knew. Or like she was disappointed. And it’s not even like, a HUGE deal, it happens sometimes when you’re tired, right? But it felt BIG. Like a crack in something. My friends are all talking about college apps and what they wanna be. My best friend wants to be an architect, and she’s always drawing these intricate blueprints. Her hands are always busy making cool stuff. And I just think about my hands and how they feel like they’re already old. Like they’ve done too much work for a kid. This city is so expensive, and I know Mom works so hard. I wanna help her, make enough money so she doesn’t have to work 16-hour days. But how am I gonna do that if my hands are already giving out on me? It just feels… messed up. Like I’m already broken before I even started.