The utter panic in the big man's eyes at the question was almost comical. "I just catch them," he mumbled.
"Still, I'll bet you have a theory about it."
Again, panic. Then he was saved by a tug on his line. "Excuse me." He reeled in his catch. I don't know much about fish, but I do know that I'd never seen anything like this one before. It was least two feet long, with a blood-red head, fading to a neon- blue body, blending into a tail as green as the oak leaves shading the pond from the unseasonably warm sun. It made me think of the Galapagos Islands―a place off the coast of South America so isolated, it gave rise to creatures seen nowhere else in the world.
"So," I said, gaping at the unearthly fish, "is that what they mean by a 'rainbow trout'?"
He quickly strung up his fish with the other equally odd specimens he had caught, said "good day," and left like a man racing from a tornado.
And now I had mystery number seven: an order from Abuelo to leave a perfectly good drawing wall untouched, with no explanation. Perhaps it was less grand then the other mysteries, but it was just as frustrating. They all knew things I didn't―I was certain of it. It was all a reminder that I was the chimp at the table.
The day after Abuelo's surprise visit, Aaron came to take me out for a picnic. I knew right away that this was different from the other times we had done things together. I could tell because he was apprehensive, maybe a little bit excited. This is a date, I thought. The only other date I'd been on was that infamous and miserable night with Marshall Astor―but this was something else entirely. I didn't know whether I was more excited or terrified.
Aaron led me from my end of the valley to the other, where Abuelo's mansion stood, then he took me up the steep slope behind it, as if we were climbing out of the valley.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"You'll see."
The soft grass gave way to harsh nettles as we got higher, and soon the rough brush gave way to jagged rocks. The valley was not easy to get out of, or to get into, for that matter.
The shoes they had given me were not meant for climbing this kind of terrain. I wanted to ask Aaron where we were going, but he had this look on his face―a slight grin of anticipation, and I could tell that whatever he wanted to show me, it was a surprise.
Finally, Aaron stopped at a plateau, the mountainside still looming ahead of us.
"Have a look," he said, then gently grabbed my shoulders and turned me around.
I hadn't realized how high we had climbed until I looked out to see the valley spread before us.
On either side of the valley were dense clouds. I could hear distant thunder and see lightning flashes within the grayness. It was storming in the outside world, but the clouds never flowed over those hillsides into the valley of De León.
We sat down and ate sandwiches made from home-cured ham and fresh-baked bread. My clothes had gotten dirty from the climb, but I noticed that Aaron's didn't have a trace of dust. I reached over and touched his sleeve. I did it to feel the fabric, but then I realized I was gently rubbing his arm. I pulled my hand back, a bit embarrassed.
"No, it's okay," he said. "You like the way it feels, don't you? It's made of swan gossamer."
I looked at him like I hadn't heard him correctly. "Swan what?"
"Swan gossamer," he said. "Once a year the swans come in the spring to mate. Hundreds of them. We brush through their feathers to collect the soft down, and then spin it into thread."
"It's so beautiful."
"It never gets dirty. It never wears out."
"I wish I could wear it," I said.
He smiled at that, then reached up and touched my face, looking, as he always did, right into my eyes. It would have been a wonderfully romantic moment, but my face, which had always been my enemy, chose this moment to launch an offensive―and when I say offensive, I truly do mean offensive.
They say acne is caused by pores swelling up, becoming infected. When a pore is clogged with dirt, it becomes a blackhead. As the infection grows, it becomes a whitehead. And every once in a while, one of them turns into Mount St. Helens. If you have acne, you know exactly what I mean. And if you don't, just be thankful.
Aaron quickly pulled his hand away when he realized he had inadvertently popped a zit. For a brief, brief instant, he looked at me with the same nauseated disgust that I got from the rest of the world. Then he looked away from me for a moment, forcing that feeling away. He wiped his fingers on a rock. "Don't worry about it," he said. "It happens."
I couldn't look at him now. I was too humiliated. I pressed the back of my hand to my face, just in case I wasn't done erupting. I felt tears of embarrassment coming, so I let my hair dangle in front of my face so he couldn't see it.
"No," he said, sounding a little bit angry. "Don't you do that. Look at me."
I shook my head. What a fool I was to think that I could have anything resembling a normal relationship with someone who looked like Aaron. All my weeks here, pretending I could ever belong―but I was just deluding myself―and the people here weren't helping, they were just feeding that delusion―even Aaron. As he sat across from me, I realized he was just taking the mercy seat. The school cafeteria was gone, but the mercy seat would always be there no matter where I was.
Then Aaron said, "You don't remember me, do you?"
That made me look up. "Remember you?"
"I thought you eventually would, but you didn't. Maybe this will help." He brought his hands to his face. "I don't know if I can do it anymore. It's been a while, but I'll try."
He put his thumbs behind his ears and pushed them forward so they stuck out like funnels. With his index fingers, he lifted up on his eyebrows. With his pinkies, he pulled down on his cheeks, so his eyes took on a mournful droop. He sucked his cheeks in, pushed his lower jaw out so that his bottom teeth stuck out in an underbite. Then he pushed his lips forward and pursed them so they looked like a pink hair scrunchie.
Suddenly it hit me.
"Tuddie?"
He let go of his ears and his eyes and put his jaw back in its natural position.
"That nickname stuck so well," he said, "no one even knew my real name was Aaron."
I looked at that face, that beautiful face, and although I could see a hint of the resemblance to That Ugly Dude, as everyone called him, it was hard to believe this was the same boy. I'd be lying if I said I could recognize him from his eyes, because back home I never looked into Tuddie's eyes. No one did.
"But... your face ..." I said. "How... ?"
Aaron just shrugged. "You could say I grew out of my awkward stage."
Then he told me how he had run away, much the same way I had, at that defining moment when he could no longer stand how he was treated. He was on the run for months, until he found this place.
"I dreamed about it, though," he told me. "I knew the direction I had to go, but I had no hints to help me along. It took a while, but I finally found my way here. At first Abuelo wasn't going to let me stay. He said I was too young. This society didn't have room for people our age―but you see, they were getting bored. One party, one picnic, had gotten just like every other. So I started making up new things for them to do. Abuelo chose to let me stay... then I thought of you."
Now I couldn't look him in the face again, but this time for a different reason. A different kind of shame.
"Why would you think of me? I was so nasty to you."
"So was everyone," said Aaron.
"But coming from me, it must have been worse."
"It was. But after a while I stopped blaming you for it. See, Cara, I understand. I know what it's like to hate your face so much, you wish you could be out of your own skin. And so when you looked at me, how could you help but hate me, when I only reminded you of yourself?"
His unconditional forgiveness made me feel less deserving of it. "Well, as you can see," I said bitterly, "I have not grown out of my awkward phase, and all your charity isn't going to change it."
"You know what your problem is? You spent too much time listening to all those idiots in Flock's Rest who made you feel worthless. That girl―what was her name? Marissa?"
"Marisol," I said, growling it out like it was a foul word.
"You still think about her, and all the others, don't you?"
"Sometimes."
"Well, don't! I never think about any of them―not at all. Because I am not Tuddie anymore, and you don't have to be the Flock's Rest Monster!"
"Tell it to the mirrors!"
I realized I was shouting, and I looked down, even if he didn't want me to. "I'm sorry," I said. "It's not you I'm mad at."
"So who are you mad at?"
"I don't know. Everyone? No one? God?" I reached up the sleeve of my dress to blot my tears. And the fabric got stained, not just with tears, but with a spot of yuck still oozing from my popped zit. "Let's just go back," I said, disgusted. "Picnic's over."
But he didn't move. Instead he said: "I know something that'll help your acne."
"No, you don't," I told him. "Nothing can help it. Believe me, I've tried everything."
And then he whispered, "You haven't tried this."
Aaron got up and began to climb higher up the steep, rocky slope behind us. "C'mon," he said. "It's not far." Then, when I didn't move, he said, "Or are you just gonna sit there and feel sorry for yourself?"
That got me moving. Like I said, I didn't like to wallow in self-pity, and here I was doing just that. "Okay," I said, "wait up."
After only about two minutes of climbing, we came to a deep crack in the mountain face. I could feel warm air rising from its depths and smell earth, like in the first moments of a rainstorm. This wasn't just a crack in the stone, this was the mouth of a cave.
Aaron stepped into the darkness, but I hesitated. Standing in the stark daylight, I couldn't see him in the cave ahead of me, but I heard his voice coming from inside. Now, without seeing his face, just hearing his voice, I truly recognized him as the boy I once knew as Tuddie.
"I can't force you to follow me," he said. "You have to come because you want to."
Want. There were a lot of things I wanted right then. Too many to put into words. I was a big empty bucket of want.
"You've trusted me this far," he said from the darkness. "Will you trust me a little bit farther?"
There was something important about all of this. Then it occurred to me that being at the mouth of this cave was no coincidence. Whatever was down there in that cave was the reason we came all the way up this mountainside for the picnic. M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.
I felt like I did when I stood in my room, before my mirror, daring myself to tear away the sheet. Spelling the words in my head always helped move me forward. D-E-C-I-S-I-V-E.
One step more, and I entered the mouth of the cave. D-E-S-T-I-N-Y.
I reached into the darkness, felt Aaron grab my hand, and he pulled me out of the light and into the bowels of the earth.
15
The cauldron of life
We lingered in darkness for a moment, then I heard the whoosh of a flame, and I could see his face again, lit in orange flickering light. In one hand he held a torch.
When my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the cave, I could see a narrow slope leading deeper into the mountain. He didn't speak as he led the way down.
"What's down here?" I asked.
"Best to see for yourself."
We went through one cavern after another, and when I thought we had reached the bottom, there was yet another deep, winding pathway taking us farther down.
"Stay close to the light," he said when I started to lag too far behind. "There are things living down here."
"What kinds of things?"
"They don't have names―but they won't come near the light."
I tried to imagine what could possibly live here beside bats and rats, but my imagination hadn't prepared me for the "things" Aaron was talking about.
We rounded a bend, and only for a moment I saw it scuttle up a wall and out of sight. It looked something like a koala, with soft, furry eyes, a small snout. . . and eight spidery legs that clung to the wall as it scurried away I groaned slightly. Seeing that was more information than I needed, and from that moment on I stayed as close to the light as I could possibly get. Even Aaron seemed frightened by it, but only slightly―or maybe he was only being brave for me.
"No one's ever been hurt by the things down here."
"Always a first time," I told him.
The caverns, which began as empty stone chambers, slowly began to change their nature the deeper we got. Massive stone formations, almost bonelike in shape, stretched from floor to ceiling around us. Stalagmites grew from the ground like jagged teeth, and stalactites dangled from above us like limestone icicles. They all shimmered like they were covered with diamond dust, reflecting Aaron's torch in every color of the rainbow. The fear I had when I began our descent was slowly replaced by wonder.
Finally, we reached the most magnificent cavern of all, and Aaron doused the torch because he didn't need it anymore. The walls themselves were glowing, giving off a strange light as bright as moonlight on snow. It was hot and humid here; my clothes stuck to my body, and yet it wasn't an unpleasant sensation. The air hung motionless, smelling like mint and eucalyptus and cinnamon wrapped together in a rich earthy peat. Miss Leticia would have liked this place.
Aaron spoke in a whisper, but here the softest voice sounded loud. "Abuelo says God needed a cauldron to brew up creation, and here it is. We call this cavern EI Caldero de Vida―the Cauldron of Life. After He was done, God might have cast the cauldron aside, but it's never entirely empty."
We walked forward into the cavern. The floor was covered with moss greener than the grass in the valley. I couldn't imagine anything green growing down here, about a mile down, and yet it did.
"Take off your shoes," Aaron said.
As I remembered from my days in Sunday school, that's what Moses had to do when he approached the Burning Bush. "Why?" I asked. "Is this holy ground?"
Aaron shrugged. "Maybe." Then he smiled. "But I just like the feel of the moss on my feet." He was right about that. Once I took off my shoes, it felt like I was walking on plush green velvet.
"Abuelo believes the earth itself is a living thing, and this is where its soul lives." Looking at this place, I could see why the old man felt that way.
"Do you believe that?" I asked.
Aaron thought about the question and, rather than answering, said, "Abuelo is sometimes very crazy, and sometimes very wise. It's hard to figure out which is which."
We stepped forward across the massive domed cavern. In the very center, hanging from the ceiling, was a single stalactite, tapering down from the roof and coming to a pinpoint about ten feet above the floor. It was glistening wet, and I got a shiver, because it reminded me of something, and I didn't know what. I stopped walking, but Aaron gently took my elbow and urged me forward.
I slowly approached the great glistening stalactite. The only sound now was the squelch of my feet against the soft moss and a rhythmic drip of water. Suddenly it occurred to me what the stalactite reminded me of.
An uvula. That strange dangle of skin at the back of your throat.
Beneath it was a stone formation growing from the cavern floor. It looked like a pedestal widening into a basin, like a bird-bath just a foot or so wide, full of water. Moisture had collected on the stalactite, and every five seconds or so a single drop of water fell from the tip into the basin, with a delicate plink. The sound was like the faintest, highest note struck on a xylophone.
There was a mist across the surface of that little pool of water. The closer I got, the more I could feel its heat.
Plink.
"Mineral water," Aaron said. "Just what your face needs. It'll open those pores and get rid of that acne."
"You think so?"
"Oh," said Aaron, "I know so."
Plink.
> Then he put his finger in and swirled it around. "It's just right," he said. "Body temperature." The steam cleared away as he stirred, and colors played in the water like the aurora borealis―the northern lights captured in a shallow stone bowl. When he took his finger out, he wiped the water beneath one of his eyes, and then the other, as if it were invisible war paint. Then he licked his fingertip.
Plink.
The surface of the water was glassy, and for a strange instant I had the impression that someone was in there looking out at me, until I realized that it was my own reflection. I was just as horrible as ever. There was mustard on my lip from our lunch, and smudges of dirt from touching my face after touching the cavern walls. It was the longest I'd ever been able to see my own reflection, because this water did not cloud.
Plink.
"Go on," Aaron whispered, standing right behind me now. Then he brought his lips as close to my ear as he could without actually touching it and whispered, "Your face is dirty. Wash it off."
Plink.
Between one drop of water and the next, I dipped both my hands deep into the pool and splashed the water onto my face. Once. Twice. Three times.
It burned. Not like the heat of water, not like the heat of flames, but a different kind of heat that soaked in through my pores, like fine needles penetrating so deep I could feel it all the way to the tips of my toes.
I opened my eyes, thinking they would sting, but they didn't. And when I looked at my hands, the water had already dried up, absorbed into the dryness of my skin.
"There," said Aaron. "All your skin needed was a good deep cleaning. No more acne for you."
The shimmering lights were gone from the pool, and it had misted over again. Another drop plunged from the pointy tip of the stalactite into the stone bowl.
Plink.
"Come on, Cara," Aaron said. "Let's go home."
16
Unveiling
Duckling Ugly Page 10