Her words left a mark on my mind just as black as the ink stain I had left on her blouse. I wanted to scream, but it came out as a weak warble. I ran for the nearest exit―but as I neared the doors, the school security guard stepped in my way. He scowled at me with a face that was little more than a bloated pustule. "Where do you think you're going?" he said. "Get to class."
With every exit guarded, I was trapped within this pageant of monstrosities.
How do you judge beauty? They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that's not true. Beauty is in the spirit of the world in which you live. It's where your world tells you it is―the beholder has no choice in the matter... and if your world finds beauty in the black pit of ugliness, then that's where your beauty lies. Ugly is the new pretty. The thought followed me through the rest of that horrible day. For the people of Flock's Rest, it wasn't just their faces and bodies that had changed, but the yardstick by which they judged.
At lunch, I found myself at a table alone. Sure, there were others there to start with, but bit by bit they drifted away. Everything was back to the way it had been before. I was the only beautiful girl in town―and yet I was alone, untouchable, while all around me kids with the faces of ghouls laughed and enjoyed themselves,
I was so lost in my thoughts, I hadn't realized someone had sat down at the table―and when I looked up, there was Gerardo in the mercy seat.
"Hi," he said.
Gerardo hadn't been spared. He was just as repulsive as everyone else. I didn't want to accept that I had done this to him. "Things didn't turn out the way I wanted."
"They never do," he said.
"You do see what's happened, don't you? No one else seems to notice―but you must see it."
And then he shrugged. "Yeah. You get used to it, though."
"Used to it? But how do you get used to this?" I grabbed his ear that looked more like a cauliflower. "And this?" I grabbed his chin, which stuck out unevenly from his face.
He smacked my hand away. "Some things give a face character, all right? I don't expect you to understand that. Your face is just creamy smooth. No character to it. All right, I'll admit it: I thought that new face of yours was pretty for a while―but now when I look at you, it doesn't do a thing for me. It's like looking at a bowl of sugar. Sure, it's sweet. But it's got no flavor."
"Why'd you come over here, Gerardo?"
"To warn you," he said. He looked to the door of the cafeteria, and now when I glanced around, I could see that most of the kids had cleared out, even though the bell hadn't rung. "They're planning something," he told me. "I thought you should know. And I wanted you to know that I had nothing to do with it."
"But you're not going to stop it, either."
He shook his head. "No, I'm not."
Then he took my hand and gently placed into my palm a sliver of broken glass. It was the piece of the mirror I had broken for him. The piece he said he would keep forever.
"Good-bye, Cara."
When I stepped out of the cafeteria, I was faced with a gathering of dozens of kids. They stood on either side of the hallway, waiting for me to pass between them. At the far end was the exit, wide open and waiting, with no guard or teachers in sight.
I strode forward, and felt something soft and wet hit my shoulder. A rotten strawberry. Then something else hit my back. I looked down to see a moldy orange on the floor.
In an instant, it became a storm. I was pelted from all angles by rotten fruit, rancid meat, and containers of sour milk that exploded on me like water balloons. Someone hurled a rotten melon, which burst painfully upon my chest―but I weathered this storm, walking forward, holding my head high against the gauntlet of grunge, until I finally reached the end of the hall, where their chief conspirator stood between me and the door.
"You've never been one of us," said Marisol. "You'll never be one of us ... and you don't belong here."
She held in her hand an onion, spotted green from mildew, soft, slimy, and dripping. She hefted it in her hand, ready to hurl it at my face, but then she said, "You know what? I'm not gonna waste this on you." And then she lifted the onion to her mouth and took a big, healthy bite.
To this day, I can still smell that putrid onion on her breath when she said, "Get out."
23
The ugly places
Harmony had been right. Aaron had been right. There was no place for me in the outside world, and there were worse things than being ugly. I should have known what would happen when I left, but I was too headstrong to realize the truth. I doubted Flock's Rest would ever return to the way it had been. Everyone there was cursed to the kind of ugliness that shattered mirrors.
The true curse was not with them, however. I was the one cursed. I was a thief of beauty, and the only place I could ever live in peace was De León. The ghetto for those too beautiful for this world.
For weeks, I had blocked out my thoughts of De León. I had chosen not to think about anything or anyone there, but now those thoughts and feelings came flooding back. I missed everyone―but most of all I missed Aaron. After all he had done for me, I had chosen to abandon him. That was as cruel as what I had done to Marshall. He didn't deserve that! I didn't know if he'd ever forgive me, but I knew once I'd made it back, I'd have an eternity to make it up to him.
I didn't feel the pull this time, as I had when I'd first left town, but I knew where to go. I walked, my feet aching in my shoes. By dusk, the wind had shifted and the smell of corpse flower faded. I walked until my feet were blistered. I didn't get offered any rides. I didn't look in the windows of any passing cars, for fear of the face I might see. I took a heavy coat from the coatrack in a roadside diner once night fell, and kept on walking well past midnight. I allowed myself only a few hours to sleep in the shelter of a sad, abandoned barn that looked even older and more abandoned at dawn.
Just like Harmony, I was now wiser than when I left. Just like Harmony, I had gained that wisdom the hard way. Abuelo had accepted her back, hadn't he? He would accept me back as well; I had to believe it, because it was the only thing that kept me going.
A few hours later, I finally found what I was looking for. The fading billboard with my mother's Cadillac and her smiling face, from the days when she and Dad were happy, and their lives were full of hope.
DEFIDO MOTORS, WHERE FINS STAND FOR STATUS.
My mere presence made the faint image fade into nothingness. Gray peeling paint against gray warping wood.
The path behind the billboard was overgrown, but it was still there. I took that path, climbing the foothills until those hills got steeper and turned into mountains. They weren't the kind of mountains you need heavy equipment to climb, but they were steep enough to make the process slow and exhausting. I was at the end of my endurance, but it wasn't muscles that drove me now. It was the knowledge that soon I'd be among the beautiful people of De León. Soon I would be home.
The air was colder and thinner the higher I climbed, until I saw in the distance, on a hill just a few miles away, a white stone building. I knew it was the monastery that Aaron had spoken of.
Turn west when you see the monastery, he had said.
I hiked through the night, stumbling, bruising, but never stopping. Scaling these treacherous hillsides in the dark was a dangerous thing. I could have slipped and broken my neck at any time, and put an end to my fragile eternessence―but I found I didn't care. De León or death, I told myself with every step. De León or death.
Then, finally, at dawn, I came to the valley. I knew, because I recognized the yellowed hillside and the bald spot where the monks picked up the weekly garbage.
I took only a moment to rest and breathe in my relief at finally being home. Where should I go first? I thought. Should I find Aaron? That's what I wanted to do, but I decided that I needed to pay respect where respect was due. My first stop would be Abuelo's mansion. I would bow before him. No―I would get down on my knees and beg for his forgiveness. I would cry, sincer
e tears of repentance, and the anguish of a lesson painfully learned.
There, there, Abuelo would say. No tears here in the valley. The Caldero sheds all the tears we need―and they are all tears of joy. He would touch my chin, and I would look into his handsome, ancient eyes, and he would smile. Welcome home, Cara, he would say. Now come and create our own sweet language.
The valley stretched out before me, hidden beneath a blanket of low, soft clouds. Filled with a joy I hadn't felt since before I left, I descended the hillside, into the cloud bank.
When I emerged from the clouds, the rest of the valley was there before me . . . but something was very wrong. This was still the town of De León, but it was not the way I remembered.
The hills that had been so gloriously green when I had left were now the color of mud, and the beautiful homes were no longer white. In fact, they seemed not to have any paint on them at all.
As I got closer I could see the warping, aged wood of each building, as gray as the homes I had left behind in Flock's Rest. The gazebo in the center of the beautiful park had fallen apart.
I couldn't catch my breath. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Decay had crept into this beautiful valley so quickly, it looked like it had been abandoned for decades.
"Hello!" I called out. "Aaron! Harmony! Anybody!"
But no one was there to hear me. The town was deserted. At the far end of the stone path, Abuelo's mansion was gone. It had burned to the ground, and all that remained were black cinders and the charred memory of beams.
Then, as the clouds lifted just a bit, I saw the hillside above the ruined mansion, and my heart, as sick as it was, found a glimmer of hope―because there, high on the hill, was a patch of green!
It was near the spot where Aaron and I had picnicked, at the entrance to the cave that led to the fountain.
Of course, I thought to myself, that's where they've all gone. The fountain must be fading, and they've all gone down there to nurture it.
With renewed strength, I climbed to the plateau. The grass there was yellowing, but for every yellow blade, there was still a blade of green. There was still beauty here.
I found the entrance to the cave, stumbled in the darkness until I found a torch and matches to light it. Then, following the path Aaron and I had taken once before, I wended my way down, down, down, into the heart of the mountain, where the air was stale and hot.
I heard no skittering sounds of creatures around me this time, and as I neared the cavern Abuelo called the Cauldron of Life, I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my soul. Because I didn't hear any voices.
When I finally came to the great cavern, the truth hit me as hard and as heavy as my first sight of the dead valley.
There was nobody here. It was without question the loneliest moment of my life.
The cavern itself was as dark as any other, with no gentle shimmering glow from the stones. The only light came from my torch. The place was dead. Panic welled up inside me. It locked my joints in place, and there were no words I could spell that could push me forward. In the end, it was the fear of my torch burning out that got me moving.
As I neared the dangling stalactite, and the stone basin into which the fountain had dripped, I saw something white on the ground in front of it.
It was a dress. My dress, folded into a perfect square, its swan-gossamer fabric shimmering with the light of my torch. It was the only hint of the beauty that had once been here.
On top of it was the ink brush they had made for me, and a letter with my name on it.
Sticking my torch into the dying, mulchy ground, I knelt down and opened the letter. The handwriting was not the sweeping flourishes of Abuelo's hand. It was Aaron's handwriting.
Dear Cara,
It's been two weeks since you left. Where are you? Harmony says something must have happened, that maybe they didn't let you leave Flock's Rest. Or worse, that you died on your way there or back―but I won't let myself believe it. You can't imagine how much I miss you―and how frightened I am for you.
The fountain is drying up. Everything around us is dying. Abuelo says not to worry, that he senses in his bones where the fountain is going next, and everyone says he's always been right before. He won't tell us where we're headed, but he does say to prepare for a long journey. We've been bottling water from the fountain to take with us. Enough to last us until we get to wherever we're going. He's furious at you for leaving, Cara―but I know if you come back to us, he'll forgive you. Abuelo never stays angry for long.
The monks have already left to prepare our way, so I'm leaving this by the fountain, because it's the only place I know for sure you'll look. We leave tomorrow at dawn, but I'm not giving up hope. Wherever we go, I'll be waiting for you. Find us, Cara.
Love always,
Aaron
My tears wet the pages and the ink began to run. Carefully, I folded the letter and put it in my pocket, took my Aaron-hair brush, my dress, and picked up the torch.
Clinging to the slim hope that Abuelo was wrong, I held the torch high to see the tip of the stalactite―maybe there was still life dripping into the fountain, and they'd all come back. But as glistening wet as the stalactite had been before, it was now dry as a bone. In the basin beneath it, there was a single spot of moisture. I reached toward it with my finger, but even as I did, the moisture was sucked up by the stone. Then the basin cracked and started to crumble.
I stepped back, and I felt the ground around me begin to shake. Little bits of stone fell from above. Sensing what was coming, I leaped back, but not quickly enough. The massive stalactite broke off from the cavern roof and crashed to the ground, shattering into a million pieces, burying me beneath the rubble.
I was bruised and battered, but not broken.
I picked up my torch, which was almost out, fanned it until it was full flame again, and made my way back to the surface.
They had left without me.
I could have been with them, if only I had kept my promise and returned. The truth of it hurt more than the cuts and bruises from the fallen stalactite, and I cried until there were no tears left inside me, and my eyes went as dry as the ruined fountain.
I stepped out of the cave, into the light of a gray day, and stood there on the plateau, desperately trying to get a sense of direction. Where had they gone? Back when the fountain had been strong, I'd been able to feel it pulling me, coaxing me up in the middle of the night, leaving me facing northwest―but that was when the fountain was close by. Perhaps Abuelo could still feel it in his bones, but I wasn't Abuelo. I felt no pull, no gravity, no sense of direction at all. Wherever the fountain had gone, it was out of my reach.
As I stood there, I watched as the last of the green grass turned yellow, then brown.
And in my hands, my beautiful dress, woven from the gossamer down of swans, disintegrated into strands that blew away like cobwebs in the wind.
"Hello, pretty lady."
I didn't go back the way I came. Instead I continued west across the mountains and ended up at the same gas station where I had first been dropped with the garbage. Now the same gangly gas-station attendant greeted me. Greasy hands, goat hair sticking out of his Adam's apple, but right there, right then, he seemed like Prince Charming.
"Second time I seen you here with no car," he said. "I'm startin' to think you're just comin' to see me!"
And as I looked at him I thought, This boy is not so bad. I could find a place for myself in this tiny rest stop of a town. He wasn't Aaron. He wasn't even Marshall or Gerardo. But after what I had left behind, I would rather take dumb and homely over bleak and hideous any day.
Then, to my horror, I quickly came to realize that there would be no rest for me here, or anywhere else . . . because as I looked at him, I could see the features of his face already beginning to change. His Adam's apple, already large, started to bulge forward like a buzzard's neck, the hairs in his nose began to grow, curling outward―and I knew if I stayed here any le
ngth of time at all, it would be Flock's Rest all over again. This place would just become a creepy roadside attraction where no one would dare stop, even for gas.
He smiled at me, and I swear I could see his teeth starting to twist out of line. "Look at you," he said. "I do believe you're getting prettier by the second!"
I backed away from him quickly.
"I can't stay," I said. "I've got to get out of this place. I've got to get out now!"
"Suit yourself," he said. "The Greyhound bus stops at the Denny's down the road a bit. You can still make it if you hurry."
And so I did. Scrounging together what money I had in my pockets, and what money I could beg from people coming in and out of Denny's, I got myself bus fare and rode that bus as far as it would take me.
That was a long time ago. I've been riding ever since, crisscrossing the country, zigzagging the world, searching for a hint of where they might have gone. My only belongings are the clothes on my back, a journal in which I write the words of a new language that no one has yet to speak, and the brush I use to write them, made from the hair of my one true love.
I will find them.
They could be anywhere. It's a big world to cover―but I've got an eternity to do it. It may take me a thousand years, but I will find them.
Until then, I will ride buses, and stow away on trains, and steal plane fare as I weave my way through the world, leaving every place a little less beautiful with my passing―although I may catch the faces of my fellow passengers when they get on board, I won't dare look at the monstrosities they've become once they get off.
So if, by chance, your travels happen to leave you seated beside the most beautiful girl in the world, don't ask questions, don't make small talk―just leave your luggage, tear up your ticket, and run.
Because I am one of the beautiful people, and my beauty is the blackest of holes.
Don't make me spell it out for you.
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