by Ryan Schow
A genuine smile lights Georgia’s face. “My God, you’re gorgeous. Look at those lips of yours! So luscious.”
I stare at my lips and they are luscious. They used to be flat, chapped and off-putting. I used to think of them as the least kissable things you’ve ever seen.
Not now.
“And your skin,” Georgia says, mesmerized. “It looks like the best cup of coffee ever. I swear I want to drink you.” She runs her fingers through my hair, which looks thicker and fuller, and is now an impossibly rich black that seems to look healthier with every treatment. “I cannot believe how much I love your hair.”
“I’m…pretty?” I say. Like a question I have to ask myself because only in dreams could this truly be possible.
Georgia says, “You are. But you’re not done yet. It’s still too soon.”
“You mean, there’s more?”
She nods. “More pain, too. If your treatments are anything like my treatments, there’s a lot more pain to come.” I feel myself smiling, dreaming impossible dreams. No. Not dreaming. Living them. I’m living my impossible dreams. I don’t care about the pain—I mean, I do—it’s worth it though. I would get run over by a truck every single day if it would make me someone new, the kind of girl someone like Damien would want. I would definitely do it, easy.
“What more is there to change?” I ask.
“When I’m gone, take off your clothes, look at anything that isn’t exactly perfect, and that’s what will change. More slowly than now. But you’ll change.”
Worthless Little Mutt
1
I follow Georgia’s beauty tips of layering on the makeup and using eye shadows I haven’t used before. I even do my hair sassy and throw on a beanie just to make myself look…less like my usual self.
The change is indescribable. Had my emotions not been sorted out weeks ago, I would have stayed in my room and cried all day, that’s how happy I am. All I keep thinking over and over again is Margaret is really going to love me now. Then I think about how much I hate her. A mother should love her child even if she’s ugly or pretty, chubby or thin. Her love should be unconditional. Yet Margaret wasn’t born that way. She’ll never understand unconditional love. Perhaps this is her greatest imperfection. The one no cosmetic surgeon can fix. I suppose she’s broken, too. Like me, but different.
I can’t walk down the halls without people staring. My disguise is laughable. Making myself look different only brings more attention to how much better I look from just yesterday. I’m thinking, thank God I forced Cameron to take down all the photos on her Facebook page otherwise she’d be vindicated in an instant.
People are asking me what I did different to myself. They’re saying words like beautiful and exotic and sexy which are not words anyone has ever associated with me before. Unless you count, “She’s not beautiful, not exotic looking and will never, ever be sexy like her mother.”
That’s the exception.
All this attention has me kind of freaking out. This new serum of Gerhard’s is working too fast. People who sided with me days ago are now switching to Cameron’s side, whispering how it’s true, that I am indeed a clone. My moment of glory, my transformation from the moth to the butterfly is getting soiled by that basic bitch, Cameron, her BFF (Julie Satan), and by the most excellent work of Dr. Wolfgang Gerhard.
When lunch time finally rolls around, I walk toward the cafeteria next to Brayden but we aren’t talking about anything noteworthy. Damien sees me, and like he did in class, he stares. I look somewhat like his step-sister—I’m looking more and more like her each day—but I’m also looking different. I don’t know what to make of his expression, but I think maybe, and this is a colossal maybe, he’s attracted to me. The moment is bittersweet as I hear the word “clone” leave someone’s lips yet again.
Brayden finally looks at me and says, “I didn’t expect you to change so fast.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I say. Already I know it is.
“No. I’m going to go talk to the others. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
He breaks off from me and b-lines over to Janine’s ugly four, leaving me standing alone, friendless in front of everyone. I’m so embarrassed. The fire ants, they’re marching again, but not because of something changing inside me, but because I can’t believe this great day of mine has gone to crap so quickly.
Then I hear the snap. Like the paparazzi snaps, but solo. The sound triggers something in me that’s been lying dark and dormant, something now awake and offended. All the horrible lies printed about me and my family, all the private truths never meant for public consumption, that paparazzi picture of my breasts for the world to see, the Tiffany’s box of puke, the words Disgusting Pig etched into my car door, Facebook—it’s all charging back to me as I locate the sound.
Julie.
With a camera.
A really, really nice camera with a long, expensive lens.
So apparently Theresa handed to reins to Julie. I stalk toward her, smacking the camera violently out of her hands. It hits the floor and the lens breaks off, rolling to the side. “Take my photo again and I’m going to shove that camera so far up your ass all you’ll have are pictures of the top of your colon.”
The horror of her broken camera, of the unbridled threat, it flips some switch inside her. She punches me closed-fist in the face so hard something barely-mended breaks. My legs give and I land hard on my butt on the ground. I put my hand to my new face, locate the pain, press lightly. A cracked eye socket I think. Already the flesh is swelling, tightening. I feel everyone staring at me. Like that first day in school when I puked in front of the buffet table. I stand up, refusing to be bullied anymore.
“That camera’s worth more than your life,” Julie snarls, shaking her punching hand like it hurt her more than me. Maggie is suddenly beside Julie, not smiling or frowning. Is she about to say something? Will she defend Julie? Or me?
“If my life is that worthless,” I say, touching my aching face, “then why document it for everyone to see? Don’t you and your friends have your own lives?”
“Because you’re a car accident happening in slow motion. People can’t stand looking at you, and they can’t stop staring. For such a worthless little mutt, you’re priceless.”
Maggie says, “That’s enough, Julie,” and puts a hand on her shoulder. Julie shoves her hand away and snarls, “Did you see what the bitch did to my camera?”
Right then I see Tuesday Hunnicut rushing over, a worried look on her face. She comes right for me. I stand poised and strong, my cheek swelling. She asks if I’m alright before firing Julie a nasty look. Maggie walks away. Julie starts in on her broken camera.
“Do you think your teachers don’t see what you put on Facebook?” Miss Hunnicut says. Her eyes are thunderheads on a dark horizon. “Do you think we just see you for an hour or two and never think about you as actual people with lives outside our classrooms? We know what your real personally looks like. What you look like when the mask comes off. I see you, Julie Sanderson, and it pains me to admit that you are as ugly in person as you are on Facebook.”
There is a chorus of oooohs and Omigods, and some kid with laughter in his voice saying, “Did you just hear what Miss Hunnicut said?”
The moment is priceless for me, crushing for Julie. It’s one thing to know a few of your peers hate you. You can write them off because they’re just idiot kids. But when your teachers call you ugly, when they tell you this in front of the whole school, that’s rough. It’s the kind of rough you’re going to need therapy for.
“Come on sweetie, let’s get you over to see Nurse Arabelle.”
Sitting in the waiting room with an ice pack on my face, Miss Hunnicut and I wait for Nurse Arabelle to finish with a sick freshman girl whom I don’t know. After that she thanks Tuesday for her help then says, “I’ll take from here.”
“It’s her orbital,” Miss Hunnicut says. “I think it’s fractured.”
In the back o
ffice, Nurse Arabelle says, “How did all of this happen?” I tell her the story. Even though I’m impossibly lost in her eyes, I search through the amethyst shine for a soul. All I see is my reflection. “It would be easy to fracture bone,” she says, “especially with last night’s regimen. How are you feeling?”
“In less pain now than I was last night.”
“This will be difficult week for you,” she says in her coarse Russian accent, “but changes are worth it. You see.”
“The teachers have to know what’s happening with me, these changes, yet none of them say anything. How come?”
“They are handed money for their blind eyes. Big dollars. No one wants to lose job that pays so much.”
“It’s money then.”
“Plus they know elite are having strange hobbies. Especially genetics.”
I see her studying my face.
“Do you think the bone needs to be set?” I ask. In her shitty, broken English, she says it doesn’t, that if it’s fractured, it’s fractured in the right place. I ask what that means.
She waves a dismissive hand. “I will get you healing shot.”
“What about tonight’s regimen?”
“Both work together.”
“How long will it take?”
“Are you in hurry?” she asks. If I took her temperature, she’d come back forty-seven degrees Fahrenheit.
“I wanted to eat lunch. I’m starving.”
She takes the ice pack off my eye, looks at it. “You missed lunch already, and you’re not going to PE—that is next class, right?” I nod my head. “You sit here with ice until next class.”
“But I’m freaking starving.”
She leaves the room and just as I’m about to start slinging mental cusswords her way, she returns with half a sandwich and a bottled water.
She says, “I know hunger. This emptiness you feel inside. But I feel it for all day, for weeks long, sometimes, when I grow up. When I was little girl in Ukraine, the girls like me did ugly things for water, for food for our family. Criminals sell us our water for half month’s pay. It was water or food. Not both. My uncle made me do terrible things until I was put on boat to America where I work as masseuse. Dr. Gerhard found me, like American slave. He took me from mamachka—the terrible woman who own me—and he take me to this place, fix me in all areas that I am flawed, but not mean. He treats me with nice, which I have not ever been accustomed to.”
“That was kind of him.”
“I see you children,” she says, “and you have everything. More than you need. I have envy for you. You are spoiled rotten. I don’t know the feeling. But today, I know your hunger like it is my own. Maybe, we are similar? You and me? But maybe for just this one minute.”
She says this and she smiles.
A second later I pick my jaw up off the floor and thank her. I say, “Do your parents love you?” Her purple eyes seem to lose their sparkle. She cannot meet my eyes. Slowly, painfully, she nods her head. “Then we have more in common than you think,” I say.
2
Even after my big confrontation with Julie, the taunting and photographing continues, albeit a bit more discretely. On the upside, they fixed my car, so there’s progress. My eye heals quickly, as Nurse Arabelle predicted when Gerhard gave me what Arabelle called “the special healing shot.” The damage of the punch, however, left my eyes black for two days. Low and behold, there was a picture of me looking bruised on Facebook, a keepsake for the Julie Satan fan club. The black eyes ended up being a blessing. A worthwhile distraction from the changes still taking place all over the landscape of my face.
My ugly nose, the one Margaret hated, is gone. Now I have this plastic surgery nose so damn perfect I feel proud. People are still talking, though, and my fan base from the Facebook hack and the fight I lost in the cafeteria is a constantly diminishing thing.
The word clone is thrown around with even greater frequency these days.
The good news is I now have a gun. I don’t know who Brayden knew or who they knew, but within two days of the scab-eater’s dorm invasion, Brayden was in my room handing me the black market pistol he got. It was wrapped in a brown bag he’d jammed inside his jacket pocket.
Brayden says, “It won’t kill anyone fast, but it will stop them.”
I say, “That was quick. Like, super quick.”
“If you knew what I had to do to get this,” he said. I lean in and kiss him on the cheek. Finally I feel safe again.
“If I would’ve known you were going to do that,” he says, sly and grinning, “I would’ve turned my mouth into it.”
I laugh and say, “That’s why I didn’t tell you, butthole.”
He unwraps the pistol, wipes the surface with his t-shirt and hands it to me. “Nowadays with the stupid laws,” he says, “you can’t kill someone for entering your home illegally, but you can shoot the crap out of them, and if they live, well, it’s no biggie. See those scratches on the gun? No serial number.”
“Why do I care about that?” I say. I really don’t know anything about criminal activity but what I learned from Brayden.
“In case we need to kill someone, they can’t trace the gun back to you.”
“We’re not killing anyone,” I say.
“It’s cool,” he says, looking hard, trying to look gangsta. “All we’d need is a chainsaw and some black bags and voilà, we’ve got a clean getaway.”
“We’re. Not. Killing. Anyone. Jesus, Brayden, what’s gotten into you?”
His faux-gangster expression softens to concern. “I’m worried is all.”
“That’s sweet.”
Later that night, sitting alone in my room, looking at my new gun and a box of bullets, the telephone rings. I pick it up and it’s Netty calling.
“Hello?”
“Girl, what the hell is going on up there?” she says, her Slavic accent thick with worry. Oh, how I miss her!
“What do you mean?”
“Who is Julie Sanderson? And Cameron O’Dell? And Theresa Prichard?”
“A few girls I’ve been having issues with.”
“Issues?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, there are pictures of someone with a black eye and they’re saying it’s you. But it doesn’t look like you. There are a lot of pictures of you that don’t look like you.”
“I know. I go to school with a bunch of Photoshop freaks.”
“They’re saying some awful things. That you are a clone. Theresa whatever, she has this photo album called ‘The Progression of a Clone’ and it starts with your picture. The you I know. Then slowly you become more and more beautiful. What kind of a person taunts you by making you look better on Facebook? That’s weird.”
“You don’t understand this place. I don’t even get it. Around here, everyday is opposite day.”
“So that’s not you.”
I hate lying to her, but with so much going on I can’t bear the weight of Netty’s concern, too. I say, “Photoshop.”
When she’s certain I’m not in any danger, and that I’m still the same ugly Savannah she knew from high school, we catch up on life. I tell her about the non-triplets—though I call them triplets—and how I met Brayden and he’s a lot of fun and it’s nice to have a guy friend. She tells me nobody will date Jacob Brantley now because of what she said about his wiener on Facebook and it’s kind of funny, but she’s thinking she might get into trouble for it. I tell her I don’t think that will happen. We talk for about an hour more then I tell her I miss her so much. I wish she was here with me, but then again, maybe I wouldn’t have met Georgia, Victoria and Bridget if she had been. When I tell her good-bye, I’m sad to hang up.
I log onto Theresa’s Facebook page and skim the latest photos she’s posting. Looks like she got all the photos Cameron was posting and started her own album. Apparently the FBI and Homeland Security threat stopped working. It was worth a try.
There’s a knock on my door. I don’t bother going for my gun b
ecause when my intruder had broken in, he didn’t bother knocking first. I open the door to Brayden.
“Jesus, girl, you really don’t look like you anymore.”
“Don’t say that.”
“No, it’s a good thing. You were totally ugly last month. But now…”
“Don’t start.”
“All’s I’m saying is I don’t mind if you’re a clone, I think you’re starting to get really hot and I’m glad we met in your ugly stages otherwise we might not be friends.”
I pull him inside, shut my door and say, “You know that’s not true.”
“Whatever.” He has a bag in his hand. He reaches into it, pulls out a smoke detector that looks exactly like the one in Gerhard’s office. “It came today. You ready?”
“I am. Did you figure out the key situation?”
“Totally.” He shakes the bag, says, “It’s all in here.”
“Are you sure we should be doing this? I mean, if we get caught, we’re going to jail for sure.”
“After tonight,” he says, half his mouth grinning, “we’ll be legit. We’ll have street cred.”
I roll my eyes, blow out a breath and say, “Omigod, Brayden, stop with the gangster rap. Seriously. You’re freaking Caucasian. Your pants don’t even sag. And you look more like a guy who pops his popcorn before watching Glee than a guy who pops rival gangsters over turf wars, or drugs, or whatever it is gangs shoot each over other these days.”
“Chillax, babe. I’m just lightening the mood.”
“How’s this for lightening the mood? I called the Placer County Sheriff’s Department and asked what leads, if any, they had on the Whitaker murder and you know what they said?”
“No. What?”
“They said they would have to pull the file because the two detectives on the case are no longer with the PCSD. One’s retired and the other was killed in a traffic accident. When I asked for information on the retired detective, it turns out he hung himself in his garage last year.”