The boiling in my blood started making its way to my brain, and I started doing some crazy things.
I watched Gerardo and Nikki dance, so I danced harder with Marshall. I watched how close they danced in the slow numbers, and I pulled Marshall that close to me whether he liked it or not.
"Uh, Cara, I think we should sit this one out," Marshall said.
"No," I told him. "You said we're gonna have a good time, and I say I want to dance."
I half expected him to storm away, but he didn't.
Then, as the night got later, and all the dances started to become slow, the jealous vein throbbing through my body just hemorrhaged, until it was all I could feel.
And that's when I saw it.
I saw Gerardo look into Nikki's eyes, and pull her into that perfect embrace in the middle of a slow song. They kissed, and kissed, and didn't stop.
I looked to Marshall. He looked at me with some kind of terror in his eyes, but I didn't care. I grabbed him by the tie, pulled him toward me, and planted a kiss on him, the likes of which he will never forget.
With all of his jock strength, he could not pull away. I had him locked in that kiss like a boot on a car tire―and the couples around us pulled back until we were there, standing by ourselves. His arms, which had at first been struggling, were now limp, weak, like a rag doll.
That'll show him, I said to myself. That'll show Gerardo. He can have Nikki, but look at me. I've got Marshall Astor!
Finally, I let Marshall go, and he stepped away, catching his breath. His mouth opened and closed a few times, like a fish that had flipped out of its bowl.
"Uuugggghhhh!"
He brought the back of his hand up to his mouth, wiped his lips, and didn't stop there. He practically put his whole hand in his mouth, rubbing at his gums and teeth, as if he could just pull the kiss out. And when he realized that the kiss just wasn't going away, he started to go a little bit pale.
"Forget this," he said. His eyes were locked on me, and the expression of horror and helplessness on his face made me, for the first time, truly feel like the monster they said I was.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his car keys, and hurled them at me. They hit my dress and jangled to the ground.
"Nothing is worth this," he said. "Tell your father he can keep his car! I don't want it!" His face started to pass through several shades of green. His cheeks swelled.
Then he turned, looking for the nearest trash can, but the closest thing he found was, unfortunately, the punch bowl.
I didn't think he would do it, but that kiss must have been so disgusting to him, nothing could stop nature now. And before the whole school, Marshall Astor threw up into the homecoming punch bowl.
10
Tempest and a teapot
I tore out of the party faster than Cinderella at midnight, and I left no shoe behind. I didn't leave those car keys behind, either; I picked them up before I headed out. The jealousy I felt just moments before had played itself out, and all that remained was humiliation. This time those kids in there hadn't played a trick on me―I had played the trick on myself.
I didn't know who to be more horrified by: myself for what I had done; Marshall, for finding me so utterly repulsive; or my father, who, in his misguided desire to see me happy, had offered Marshall Astor a used car from his lot in return for taking me to the homecoming dance.
Is that the going rate for spending time with me? I thought. A Chewy for your troubles?
Well, I had the keys to that car now. The lot was speckled with rain, and a chill in the wind made it clear that these were the first drops of a storm. Let it rain, I thought. Let their tailored suits and chiffon dresses get drenched and ruined. Let lightning strike and take down the power, so there'll be no more slow dancing for anyone.
I got behind the wheel and peeled out of that parking lot before anyone could come out and stop me. When Momma had taught me to drive, she angled the mirrors away from me. But these weren't. I caught my eyes in the rearview mirror. It shattered. Little bits of glass were next to me on the front seat, and I thought of the sliver of glass Gerardo had kept. Did it mean anything at all to him? Did he think of it once while he was in there with his lips firmly pressed against Nikki Smith's freshly cleaned teeth like a sucker fish? The fact that I even cared just made me feel worse.
I knew I couldn't go home. I couldn't face my parents now, especially my father, knowing the part he had played in this. There was only one person to talk to now. The woman whose clouded eyes couldn't see me.
It started to rain heavier, and the windshield wipers pounded out a drumbeat, primal and ominous. Now the tears I'd been holding back―not just today, but all my life―burst from my eyes, so that I could barely see. The tears were full of all the things I could never be. All the dreams denied me because of a face too hideous to see its own reflection.
The sobs came with such strength, I couldn't catch my breath. The tears blurred my vision even more than the rain. I never even saw the gate of Vista View Cemetery until I plowed through it, crashing it open. I flew around the curves of the road winding up the hill and skidded to a halt at the top, right in front of Miss Leticia's house. A white van and an expensive car were in the driveway. I didn't stop to think what they might be doing there. Instead I ran to the front door and pounded and pounded and pounded until she finally answered.
"Cara? What are you doing here? You shouldn't be here, honey, this ain't a good time at all." She looked careworn in a way I'd never seen before.
"Please, Miss Leticia―let me come in! I have to talk to you, I just have to!"
She looked past me, into the rain. "You here alone?"
"Yes."
She sighed. "All right, then. Come on in―but only for a bit."
She led me quickly past the darkened living room and into the kitchen. "Whose cars are out front?" I asked. "Do you have guests?"
"Yes," she said. "Guests." She pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and practically forced me down into it. "You sit right here, and I'll be back in a minute. Don't you move from that spot!"
"I won't."
I was so relieved to be there, out of the rain, away from my life, it didn't hit me how odd she was acting. I was cold and her house was warm, that's all I cared about right then. Then I saw something else that could warm me up. Miss Leticia's tea tray was right there on the kitchen table. I poured myself a cup. The tea was light-colored―not like the tea she usually made. When I picked up the cup, there was no steam coming from it. It was cold. Well, I thought, her tea was something special, hot or cold. I brought it up and smelled it, trying to identify what kind it was. It had a grassy, bitter smell.
Suddenly I heard a scream, and I looked up to see Miss Leticia racing toward me. She swung her hand and sent that teacup flying across the room, and it smashed against the wall. I stared at her in shock.
"That tea is not for you!" she said. "Did you drink any?"
"No," I said weakly. I was confused and more than a little bit frightened now.
"That's good, then. That's good." She relaxed. That's when I noticed she had a little wicker suitcase. It had been packed so hastily, the sleeve of a flowery blouse was sticking out of the side. "Maybe you just better go. I know you got troubles, but so do I. Now's just not a talkin' time."
My brain, which had been in power-saver mode since I got there, finally kicked in. It wasn't so much the suitcase or even the quivering tone of her voice that clued me in. It was the look on her empty-eyed face. That look spelled a hundred things, none of them good.
"Miss Leticia," I asked slowly, "what happened here?"
She clamped her hand over her mouth as if to hold back a wail, then took a deep breath. "That van is from the hospital. The car belongs to a doctor. I can't recall his name."
"Hospital?" I said. "Are you sick?"
"Not that kind of hospital."
It took a moment, but then I understood. Even before she said it, I knew why they were
here.
"My son and that awful wife of his―they signed papers, and had me committed. Didn't even have the decency to come themselves―they sent the doctor to come here and take me away." She gripped her arms, obviously cold like me, even in the heat of the room. "Old age does terrible things to you . . . but the things we do to each other are worse."
I stood up and looked out the kitchen door toward the dark living room. The truth was dawning on me much faster than I wanted it to. It wasn't just my life that had fallen apart tonight.
Wise and wonderful Miss Leticia Radcliffe suddenly wasn't so wise, and wasn't so wonderful. I took a step forward.
"Don't you go in there!" she shouted.
For a brief instant a lightning flash lit up the living room. I saw a hand hanging over the arm of a high-backed chair. The hand wasn't moving.
"Miss Leticia . . . what did you do?"
And helplessly she said, "I made them some tea."
Thunder rolled like the breath of a beast and echoed back from the mountains.
"It was only supposed to put them to sleep, so I would have time to get away," she said. "But I used too much lily of the valley! I made it too strong."
I stood there, unable to say anything, because my insides had started a war.
See, there's a part of you that's an enemy of the mind. It's the heart of inspiration and imagination... but it's also the heart of terror and paranoia. That part of me welled up at that awful moment and said to me, This is your fault. You cursed this poor old woman, just like you cursed your family. Your ugliness touched her and grew into this ugliness. No amount of sensible, rational thought was going to make that voice go away.
"Where will you go?"
"I got old friends in old places," she said. "I can still catch the late bus if I leave now."
"I'll drive you!"
"No!" she said, her voice like the thunder itself. "That would be aiding and abetting, and I will not bring you into this." Then her voice became quiet again. "I know where the Greyhounds stop, and I can see well enough to get there. You best leave here," she told me. "Go home."
"I can't go home."
"Then go someplace else. I'm sorry, Cara, I can't help you anymore." Then she picked up her little suitcase and left.
I stood there in the middle of her kitchen, unable to do anything but listen to the rain pounding on the windows like it was the start of the great flood. And then something occurred to me. Something awful.
"Miss Leticia! Wait!"
I raced to the door, not daring to look toward the living room. I burst out into the rain and looked around. It was dark, but I could make her out. She was waddling her way across the hill, taking a shortcut to the main road.
Got a grandson calls me Nana Cyborg, she had said, on accounta all this metal.
She was a single figure in the open grass, while up above the sparking clouds roiled like it was Armageddon.
"Miss Leticia! Stop!"
I raced out to the waterlogged hill. She didn't stop, she didn't turn.
"Come back!"
And then the heavens exploded. All I saw was a blinding white flash. I felt the thunder more than heard it, and the electric charge knocked me off my feet. It sizzled through me like scarabs beneath my skin, and then it was gone. I knew I had felt only a hint of the lightning. The inky darkness returned, and the stench of ozone filled the air. I ran to Miss Leticia. The grass around her was singed and smoking, even in the rain. She was sprawled on the ground, trembling. Her dress was smoldering like the grass.
"C . . . C . . . Cara."
"We've got to get you inside!"
I looked around. The nearest structure was the greenhouse, its back entrance just about fifty yards away. I tried to lift her, but she was too heavy. In the end, I had to drag her across the hill by her armpits. I pulled open the door of the greenhouse, and was laid low by a stench more awful than anything I could remember. Miss Leticia groaned, then grinned. I pulled her over the threshold, and we collapsed in a bed of begonias.
That smell―it was like the horrible stench of meat left to rot in the hot, hot sun. A smell like my roadkill room, only ten times worse, and there were flies everywhere.
"It bloomed," Miss Leticia said weakly. "It finally bloomed."
There, just a few feet away from us, I could see the corpse flower's huge bloom. It had the shape of a teacup, but three feet wide and four feet high, surrounding that six-foot stalk.
Flies buzzed over the brim, in and out, in and out, pollinating the hideous thing.
Now it was complete. Now everything in the world had gone rancid.
"Isn't it wonderful?" she said.
"We've got to get you help."
"No help. No help. Already got my wish," she said. Her arm fluttered slightly. I took her hand. "The good Lord saw fit to keep me where I want to be. I got a plot waiting on the south side of the hill. It's good there. It's good."
I wanted to tell her to hold on. I wanted to tell her she'd come through, but it would have been a lie. "Please don't go," I begged, even though I knew I was being selfish. Because I needed her. She must have known what I was thinking, because tears came to her clouded eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "I promised I would be here to see your destiny." She gripped my hand with the last of her strength. "Go find it," she said. "You go find the answers."
She didn't go limp. She didn't even loosen her grip. But in a moment her eyes, as lifeless as they had seemed before, became truly glazed with the emptiness of death, and I knew she was gone. I rolled her gently onto her back, closed her eyelids, and folded her hands over her chest. Then I tore two massive petals from her beloved corpse flower and covered her body.
I cried for her. They say when you cry for the dead, you're really crying for yourself and maybe partly I was. My life had become one betrayal after another. Gerardo, Marshall, my parents. Now fate itself had stolen the only person in my life who hadn't betrayed me. I was alone now―really alone―and in that dark lonely moment, I dared to tempt fate. Not just tempt it, but challenge it.
The lights of the greenhouse were reflected in its many windows. At night, in the rain, you couldn't see anything beyond the glass. I pushed aside the big rhododendron and fern leaves until I caught my own gaze in the glass: my rain-drenched hair, my sagging gown, my awful cheeks and chin and teeth, all reflected painfully back at me.
Then that glass did what nature told it to. It shattered―and not just the window in front of me: It began a chain reaction around the entire greenhouse. One pane after another crackled and blew out, until the air was white with falling crystal, jabbing the plants and ground, piercing my dress, my skin.
And I screamed, not out of physical pain, but a pain much deeper, and much greater.
When it was done, the greenhouse was nothing but a skeleton. All that remained was the iron frame and the shredded fragments of plants.
I could have crumbled, too. God knows I wanted to. Just fall into a heap until they found me there.
But it's in those moments when your world falls apart that you discover what you truly are made of. And I was not made of broken glass.
One by one, I pulled the shards from my arms and shoulders and scalp, dropping them on the ground. Then I walked out of that place, got into the Chevy my father had so unwittingly provided me, and left town.
11
Northwest
I had no money, I had no destination, but that didn't matter.
When your only desire is to leave, any direction you take is the right one, as long as you don't turn around. I was still bleeding from the greenhouse glass, but I made myself believe it didn't matter. I would close the wounds with the sheer force of my will.
My life as I knew it was gone. It was now a blank page―that white void waiting to be carved into a new form by brush and ink. Who I would be was still a mystery, and in that car, in transit between a horrible past and an unknown future, I felt the terror and excitement of a babe at the moment of its
birth.
A powerful sense of determination overtook me. Maybe it was just shock and loss of blood, or maybe it was something else. It felt magical―like a string was wrapped around my soul and pulling me forward, and if I didn't stomp on that accelerator, heading down those country roads to God knows where, that string would have pulled me right through the windshield to wherever it wanted me to go.
Like I said, any direction would have been fine, as long as it took me away from Flock's Rest―but I wasn't going in just any old direction, was I? I realized that pretty quick.
I was heading northwest. And this time, for the first time, I didn't resist the pull.
There were few cars out on a night like this, and with every mile I put between me and Flock's Rest, I began to feel my spirits lift.
Every few miles on that rain-drenched highway, I saw reminders of what I was leaving behind that made me kick up the rpm and push the Chevy harder. It was those signs by the side of the road, blooming in my headlights. Those old faded billboards advertising my father's cars.
Ten miles out, I saw my father's smiling face. The billboard read DEFIDO MOTORS: CLASSIC CARS FROM CLASSY TIMES.
Nineteen miles out, there he was again, the billboard showing him sitting on the roof of a used car, holding an American flag― as if buying used cars and patriotism were one and the same. DEFIDO MOTORS TRIED & TRUE.
Twenty-seven miles out, a billboard featuring my momma in her pink Cadillac, pointy tail fins and all. DEFIDO MOTORS, WHERE FINS STAND FOR STATUS.
I realized that the gravity was pulling me due west now. But there were no roads that went that way. Although I couldn't see them, I knew what was west of me. The mountains. The nearest road that crossed them was miles away.
I was approaching the county line. Just a few more of my father's old signs, and I'd be out of his sphere of influence for good. My gas tank was full. My mind was set. And nothing could stop me from escaping forever that hideous place "where fins stand for status."
Duckling Ugly Page 7