Duckling Ugly

by Нил Шустерман

  "If you want to know why we hate each other, ask her to spell mitochondria," I told Gerardo.

  "Huh?"

  "Mitochondria. Ask her to spell it."

  "What'll she do if I ask?"

  "Probably claw your eyes out."

  "No thanks, I'll pass." .

  Then Gerardo looked at me―and not just a sneaky sideways glance. I get those kinds of glances all the time―people stealing a look like they might check out a circus freak. This look from Gerardo wasn't one of those, though. His eyes scanned my face, taking in all my features.

  "You know, there's stuff they can do for a person's face these days," he said.

  "Really?" I said. "Like what?"

  "I don't know. Surgery and stuff. I saw this one show―they took a guy who was like the Elephant Man and made him look halfway decent. Not that you're the Elephant Man or anything."

  He was right; he wasn't insensitive on purpose, just by acci­dent. I could respect that. "Yeah, right, surgery," I said. "Maybe if my parents win the lottery."

  "I guess that kind of thing costs an arm and a leg, huh?"

  "Yeah," I said. "They charge an arm and a leg, and all they give you is a face. Pound for pound, not a very good trade, is it?"

  "Guess not," he said. "But there's gotta be some guys around who'd go for a girl... like you."

  Normally, I'd be insulted by this conversation. But Gerardo was saying it like he cared about the answer.

  Suddenly Gerardo snapped his fingers. "Hey, what about that one kid, uh ..." He looked up, trying to remember his name. "Started with a T. Tad. Todd."

  "Tud," I said, miserably. "And that wasn't his name, it was a nickname."

  "Yeah, whatever happened to him?"

  "Gone," I said, and offered nothing more.

  "Too bad, you two coulda been a pair."

  Any inroads Gerardo had made with me were now gone. I turned my attention to my plate and didn't look up. I just scarfed down my creamed gopher.

  "What? Did I say something wrong?" Gerardo asked.

  I could tell him, but the telling would require an explanation, and I just didn't feel like it. "You can go now," I said. "Time off for good behavior. I'm sure Nikki will be satisfied."

  "Nope, the bell hasn't rung."

  I shrugged. "Suit yourself."

  I didn't say another word to him.

  Finally, the bell rang, he got up and left, and I knew, like all the others who had come for their own selfish reasons, he would never grace the mercy seat again.

  Tud. Tuddie. A kid I hadn't thought about for more than two years, and hoped never to think about again. You could say I had blocked out his memory, but that afternoon, thanks to Gerardo, Tuddie was all I could think about as I walked home.

  Tuddie was as ugly as me―maybe uglier, if you can imagine such a thing. He had ears that stuck out like fleshy funnels, a crooked underbite like a badly bred bulldog, pasty skin, and sad, sagging eyes. Like me, there was no actual physical deformity to him, he just had an unnatural case of butt-ugliness. I couldn't even remember what his real name was. Everyone just called him Tud, which was short for "That Ugly Dude."

  He used to try to hang out with me when we were still in grade school, thinking we had something in common. I tried to be nice to him―I really did―but the truth was, I hated him as much as I hated the beautiful people like Marshall or Marisol. Maybe I hated Tuddie more, because he saw us as kindred spir­its―as if ugliness loved company the way misery did. Well, I could live with my own face, but I didn't have to live with his. Eventually, I started ignoring him, giving him the cold shoulder, trying to be anywhere he wasn't. Still, he'd always find me―and then people started calling me Tug. "That Ugly Girl," which to me was far worse than any of the other nicknames folks gave me. "The Flock's Rest Monster"―at least that had identity to it. "That Ugly Girl" did not.

  Finally, I snapped. I pushed that boy away―told him to crawl back under whatever rock he crawled out from, and never come out again.

  And so he did.

  One day he just disappeared. Some say his daddy put him out of his misery. Others say he ran away to join a freak show. Ralphy Sherman said he got sold into slavery in Madagascar. Whatever the truth was, Tuddie was gone, and I was glad for it. Once he was gone, they stopped calling me Tug and went back to calling me the Flock's Rest Monster, which was fine by me. Better a solitary monster by choice than a pathetic pair of repulsives.

  But with each step I walked that afternoon, there came an­other memory of Tuddie's tragic, festering face, and my own sense of despair began to deepen. Looking at him was the closest I could come to looking in a mirror. His sorry fate, whatever it was, couldn't be much different from what mine would eventu­ally be.

  By the time I got home, I was feeling lower than low. The last thing I expected was to find my destiny waiting on the kitchen table.

  5

  Question and answer

  "Something came in the mail for you, honey," Momma said the second I got home. She left it for me on the kitchen table, all by itself, so I couldn't miss it when I came in. It was a little white square right in the center of the big brown circle of the table.

  The letter was addressed in a sweeping handwriting I couldn't imitate even if I had the finest brush. The words were like wispy clouds blowing across a windswept sky.

  Miss Cara DeFido.

  My name had never looked so beautiful.

  "Who on earth do you think it's from?"

  I just shrugged. I think Momma was more curious than I was about it. Who with such handwriting would be writing to me?

  I picked up the creamy white envelope. The paper must have been expensive, soft to the touch, like velvet. I flipped it over to see who it was from, but there was no name, just an address: 1 Via del Caldero, in a city named De León.

  I tried to rip the envelope open, but it wouldn't tear. I tried to peel it back from where it had been sealed, but the glue held tight.

  Momma handed me her fancy letter opener. Carefully, I in­serted it into the corner and slit it across. The paper resisted for a moment, then cut with no noise, as if I was cutting through a living membrane. I shivered.

  "Go on, go on, see what's inside," Momma said.

  I reached in and pulled out the letter. It was on the same creamy white paper. There were no marks or letterhead to reveal the sender―and only three words on the page, written in the same sweeping handwriting.

  "Well, what is it?" asked Momma impatiently. "Is it a letter from someone we know? Is it an invitation?"

  I held the page out of her sight.

  "It's none of your business," I told her. When she realized I was serious, she huffed and left the room. Mom's curiosity would have her stewing all afternoon, but I didn't care. This, I knew, was a personal message, not meant for anyone's eyes but mine.

  I sat down at the table and took a few deep breaths. I was get­ting light-headed, and my fingers were getting cold. An inexplic­able excitement was being pumped through my veins. I looked at the smooth white note once more.

  Three words. That's all. No signature, no explanation.

  Those three words were a challenge, and deep in my heart, I knew it was nothing so simple or easy as a spelling bee. This was the challenge of my life.

  I moved my index finger across the page, feeling its velvety smoothness, and traced the letters with my fingertip.

  FIND THE ANSWERS

  The three simple words that changed my life forever.

  Miss Leticia's greenhouse was different during the daytime than it was at night, but it was just as beautiful. When I got there, the sun was shining through the great glass dome of its center sec­tion, casting lines across everything like the bars of a cell. I could now see the tops of the trees in the dome. To me, it was a re­minder that this enclosed oasis was nothing but captured beauty. A false reality to be sure, yet easy to lose oneself in, as Miss Leti­cia had been lost all these years.

  Today she was tending to lilies of the va
lley, blooming around a little indoor pond. Her hands were covered with dirt.

  "They're beautiful," I told her, and then I felt bad, because I knew she couldn't really see them.

  "Beautiful, yes," she said, "but poisonous as a cobra. Let me go wash my hands, and I'll make us some tea."

  When she came back, I told her all about the letter.

  "What do you think it means?" I asked.

  Miss Leticia held the letter in her withered hands. She moved her fingers across its surface, as if it were Braille.

  "My, my," she said. "This is a fine weave. Not quite paper, not quite cloth―something else." She smelled it, but I already knew it had no scent. I'm sure all she could smell was the rich aroma of all of her blooming flowers. Her prize corpse flower had not yet opened, so everything still smelled sweet and calming, like the flavor of her tea.

  "Do you think it's for real?" I asked. "Or do you think it's a joke?"

  "Jokes don't come on paper like this. Give me the envelope."

  I put it into her hands. She rubbed her thumb on the corners.

  "No stamp? Is there a postmark?"

  "No."

  "That means it was hand-delivered."

  "Someone must have just put it into our mailbox."

  "You said the town is De León?"

  "Yes," I told her. "And in our state, too."

  "I don't know such a place."

  She handed me the letter and leaned back in her chair. As she crossed her ankles, I could hear the gentle clink of her leg braces touching each other. "I don't know where the letter came from, but I can tell you this: Whoever sent it means for you to take it very seriously. They truly mean for you to find the answers."

  "How can I 'find the answers' when I don't know the questions?"

  And then Miss Leticia took my hands in hers. I flinched, thinking she might grip me with her nails again, but instead she rubbed my hands gently.

  "You should start with just one. What do you think the most important question is?"

  I didn't answer her. Maybe because I was more afraid of knowing the question than the answer.

  When I got home, Vance was fighting with Dad over the control of the living-room TV. Dad was, of course, watching RetroToob. An awful episode of the show Nine Is Too Much, about a huge fam­ily in the 1970s that apparently had an electronic laugh track fol­lowing them wherever they went.

  "How can you watch this garbage?" Vance said. "I mean, look at how they're dressed―they look like clowns."

  I glanced at the TV. He was right. Striped pants and flowery shirts, all in colors that didn't match, and everyone's hair hung long in all the wrong places.

  "When we were growing up," Momma said patiently, "those were the fashions. At the time it looked good to us."

  Dad pointed his lecture finger at Vance. "You watch―when you have children, they're going to laugh at the way you wore your pants, and the strange things you did to your hair."

  I walked past them, my hand in my pocket, still holding the mysterious note. I had no desire to be a part of the family festivi­ties tonight.

  "Honey, where have you been?" Mom asked, just notic­ing me.

  "Out," I answered, and went toward my room, to find that my door was closed. This wasn't unusual in itself... but I did see something that gave me pause. There was some cloth wedged beneath my door. I recognized it as one of my sweatshirts. It was blocking the space under the door so no air could get through. Who had put it there?

  I pushed open the door, and was attacked by a stench so foul, I fell back against the hallway wall.

  "Oh, yuck!" I heard Vance say from the living room. "What is that reek?"

  Holding my hand over my nose, I forced myself to enter my room. I saw it immediately. It was everywhere. Bloody masses of fur and rot tacked to my wall, all over my ink drawings.

  Roadkill.

  Opossums, raccoons, rabbits. It wasn't just on the walls, but in my drawers, too, every single one. It was all over my clothes, and everything I owned.

  This was a violation. A horrible, evil violation of one of the few places in the world I actually felt safe from the outside world. By now Vance and my parents were at the threshold. "Honey?"

  I closed the door on them. I didn't want them to see this. Roadkill in my dresser, roadkill in my closet. My clothes were ruined. Even if I could get out the smell, I'd never get out the stains. And it wasn't over yet―because there was a lump be­neath my covers. A large lump. As I approached it, I steeled my­self for what I might find, and before I could change my mind, I pulled back the covers.

  The coyote in my bed looked like it had met up with a semi. This coyote, however, had a dog tag around its neck. And the name on the tag said: CARA DEFIDO.

  I slipped out of my room, not letting my family see inside.

  "Honey, what's going on in there?" Momma asked, trying to peek around me. "What's that awful smell?"

  "Nothing," I told her calmly. "I'll take care of it."

  "Doesn't seem like nothing to me," Dad said.

  "I said I'll take care of it. Just get me some trash bags."

  Like the mysterious letter, this was my business. My problem. But unlike the letter, this was no mystery. This was Marisol.

  I spent the rest of that day and halfway into the night in rub­ber gloves, disposing of the mess and scrubbing down my room. How had things come to this? One escalation after another ...

  I should have realized she'd get revenge for her ink-stained blouse―but this was beyond a single shot of ink thrown in the heat of anger. This was premeditated, and carefully planned. She had to know when no one would be home, and she'd need ac­complices to do the dirtiest of the work. How could someone so beautiful be so mean-spirited? As I scraped up nasty bits of fur, I thought back to the one and only time Marisol had been nice to me. Even then she had had an agenda.

  "Cara, I know we haven't really been friends, but I think that can change."

  It was seventh grade. We had just gotten pink slips to go to the principal's office. Something about cheating on a science test.

  "The thing is," Marisol said, "I was sick before the test." She gave a little fake cough. "That's why I couldn't study. So I thought just this once I could borrow some answers from some­one smart. Someone like you."

  Then she went on to give me this whole sob story about how she was once "framed" for cheating, and if she got caught this time, the punishment would be bad.

  "So what do you want me to do about it?" I asked her.

  "Well, Cara," she said sweetly, "you've never been in trouble, so I figure if you admit to cheating off of me, they'll go easy on you. You just look at them with those sad eyes―how can they help but feel pity?"

  "And what do I get in return?" I asked.

  "My friendship," she said, "and a promise that one day I'll pay back the favor."

  Ten minutes later, we were in the principal's office, and the principal told us exactly what we expected to hear, in exactly the tone of voice we expected to hear it. "Blah blah blah identical tests, blah blah blah zero tolerance." And then he waited to hear our response.

  "Well," said Marisol, letting it all roll off her back, "I know nothing about this. Maybe Cara has something to say."

  The principal looked at me. I took a long moment to think about this one, knowing full well what the consequences would be, either way. Finally, I said, "Every word is spelled right."

  "Excuse me?" the principal said.

  "The written answers. Every word is spelled right. I'm the county spelling champion, five years running." I looked at the questions on the test in front of me. Question number six was: What do you call the engine of a human cell? "Why don't you ask Marisol to spell mitochondria?"

  The principal took away both tests so Marisol couldn't see. "All right, Marisol," he said. "Spell mitochondria."

  "Well, I don't see a reason―"

  "Just do it," said the principal.

  Marisol gripped her chair. First she went pale, then she
started to go beet red. "Mitochondria," she said. "Mitochondria. M...I...T...O...K...O...N...D...R...Y... A."

  The first time Marisol had been caught cheating she got a three-day suspension. This time she was expelled, and she spent the rest of seventh grade homeschooled.

  She was back at school in the fall, though, and it had become her life's mission to make me pay.

  Well, now she had. I had a trash can full of dead animals to prove it―and I knew I'd be a fool to think it would stop there.

  When I was done cleaning, I took a long, hot shower, but no matter how much I scrubbed, I just didn't feel clean. I could never wash away pretty filth like Marisol Yeager, just like I could never wash away my hideous face.

  I threw out my clothes. I threw out my covers. Even my mat­tress was ruined, so I slept on the floor that night, clutching in my hand the shimmering satin note. My one ray of hope was that letter.

  Find the answers.

  It seemed like a lifeline that could somehow save me from this terrible, terrible town.

  6

  Are we there yet?

  That night I dreamed about the boy with blue eyes so intense, I couldn't see the rest of his face. I didn't know where I was at first, but as my vision cleared, I saw that we were in my special place. The green valley where all my troubles didn't seem to exist.

  The boy held my hand, and we strolled down the winding stone path. His hand was soft, and the air was warm and full of wonderful floral smells, just like in Miss Leticia's greenhouse. I wished that she would appear in the dream so I could show this place to her, but she didn't.

  "Are we there yet?" I asked the boy, even though I didn't know where "there" was.

  "Almost," he answered. "Keep your eye on your destination."

  But just as before, I couldn't. I tried to turn my head, but it seemed my eyes were locked on his. He didn't look away, the way most people do anytime I stare.

  "How can you look at me?" I asked him. "I'm horrible."

  He didn't answer, but he didn't look away, either. So I took the bamboo brush that had suddenly appeared in my hand and gently brushed it back and forth across my face. Instead of leav­ing a line of black ink, the brush erased me. I could feel my fea­tures blur into nothingness.