A knock at the door startles me out of my thoughts. I open it to find four women waiting for me on the other side. I don’t recognize any of them. I move to close the door, and one woman pushes it open again.

“Now, now, dearie,” she croaks. “No need to be nervous.”

They pounce on me instantly, and I push them away as they pull at my dressing gown.

“Mother!” I call out.

“For goodness’ sake, Sophia, they are dressers,” my mother says as she stands in the hall.

“Is this really necessary? I’ve been getting dressed on my own since I was seven. I’m sure I can manage.”

“You hush now and let them do what I’m paying them for.”

The women begin again. Two of them help me into a set of undergarments, while the other two rub scented oils into my skin. My mother oversees every detail, like the perfectionist she is.

“Make sure the garters are knotted tightly,” she says. “We can’t have her stockings rolling down.”

“Oh no. We can’t have that. What would people say if they knew about my droopy stockings?” I exaggerate every word, and one of the dressers cackles. My mother is stone-faced. I know I’m being silly, uncooperative, but I don’t see how my stockings make a single bit of difference in all this. They tug at the corset, and I let out a yelp as someone yanks the laces together. “Does it have to be this tight?”

“Yes,” says my mother. “We’ll need to move downstairs to fit the farthingale. There’s not enough room up here.”

The women buzz around me as I go downstairs. I’m trying to figure out what a farthingale is, while focusing on not breathing too deeply. The walls and ceiling switch places right before my eyes, and I hear a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Someone lightly tugs at my back, and then suddenly I can take a deeper breath. I gulp in air and glance at the woman behind me. She winks. I’m not going to faint, but vomiting isn’t completely ruled out.

The curtains in our front room are drawn, and a stool sits in the middle of the room. My mother brings in a petticoat and a camisole that I slip on. As soon as I stumble onto the stool, the women tug at my hair. Tears well up in my eyes as I tip my head back to keep them from pouring down my face.

“Aww, don’t cry,” says the woman who had loosened my corset. “You’ll catch a husband like a fish on a hook with a face like that.”

“No, it’s not that.” I try to slow my breathing and concentrate on not running out the front door. My mother watches me with concern in her eyes.

“We should straighten her hair with an iron,” one of the women says. “It would be prettier that way. And I’ve heard that the king himself prefers it.”

“Or we could leave it the way it is,” I say through clenched teeth. They all laugh as if I’d made a joke. It isn’t funny. It feels like another part of me is being changed to fit someone else’s vision of what is pretty. I especially don’t want to do anything the king prefers.

“Pull it straight and pin it up,” my mother says. “And use the ribbons.”

It takes hours for them to finish my hair. When they are done, they set to work on my makeup.

“Which one do you like?” asks one of the younger women. She holds up three small tins, each with varying shades of pink. “It’s for the lips.”

I reach out to touch the least ostentatious of the three when my mother steps in and chooses the color most akin to actual blood.

After the women finish my makeup, they bring in something that looks like a large hoop made from reeds with bits of fabric connected to the rim and gathered in the middle. They place it on the floor, then motion for me to step into the center. As I stand in the middle, they pull the hoop up, attaching the fabric strips around my waist like a belt. I can just barely touch the edges of the thing as it hangs around me.

“It looks wonderful,” my mother says.

“How am I supposed to sit down?”

“You don’t need to sit. You need to mingle. Dance, if you’re asked. The shape of the farthingale is accentuated when you stand.”

“Please don’t say farthingale anymore,” I say dryly. “It sounds like a torture device.” Which is accurate.

My mother goes into the next room and returns with the main part of the gown. She and one of the other women pull the light-blue frock out of its cloth sack. They slip the upper part over my head and adjust it before attaching the skirt to the hoop. The weight of it all holds me in place, like an animal in a trap.

When my mother brings out my shoes, I almost faint and not because I can barely breathe. The heels of the glittering monstrosities are nearly five inches tall, and the toes are so pointed that a normal human foot could never fill its proportions.

“Am I supposed to wear those?” I ask.

“Obviously,” my mother says.

I’m reminded that this isn’t about what I want or what I like. It’s about what everyone else thinks is best, and I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

My shoulders sit exposed, and the woman beside me dusts my décolletage with a fine pearly powder that sparkles in the dancing candlelight. I try to tune out their chatter about the king, the ball, how they had all met their husbands at an event just like this one, and how Cinderella herself had once sat by her prince to preside over the gathering.

“She was a beauty, to be sure,” says one woman. “And not just on the outside. She was a kind person. Heart of gold. Something about her shined. Everybody was drawn to her.”

“It’s a tragedy that she died so young,” says another of the women. “I think she would have loved to see all the young women following in her footsteps.”

“I picked the blue to honor her,” says my mother.

I look down at the dress. Its pale-blue color matches the descriptions of the dress in the story, but I think that is where our similarities end. Would Cinderella really have been delighted to see so many girls unhappy, dreading this moment?

“It’s all we can do now, isn’t it?” asks one of the helpers. “To honor her we have to do it in these small, sentimental ways. We used to be able to pay our respects in a more traditional way.”

My mother’s face grows tight, which always means someone is saying something they shouldn’t be.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

The woman sighs, and my mother shoots her a pointed glance. She continues anyway. “My great-grandmother told me that her grandmother had actually seen Cinderella’s tomb with her own eyes, that people used to leave flowers and trinkets for her.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why leave anything for her?”

The women all stare at me like I have two heads, and I stop talking. My mother looks like she might faint. Cinderella’s story is the reason I’m being forced to go to the ball, the reason my parents have gone into debt to provide me a dress and shoes and all the pretty things I could ever need. Her story is the reason why none of the things I want for myself matter.

“Are we finished?” my mother asks.

“Finished,” the woman says.

The other women step back, admiring their handiwork. They drag a full-length mirror into the room, and I gasp at the sight of myself. My painted face, the dress squeezing me in at the waist—it isn’t me. It can’t be. The dress, though beautiful, is not something I would have chosen. My hair and makeup are done in a way that I wouldn’t have picked. My eyes well up, and my mother rushes in to catch my tears on a handkerchief before they roll down my cheeks.