Born Ugly

by Beth Goobie

  “Don’t worry about that, I’ll finish it off,” he said. “Now, how much do I owe you—five hours, right?” Opening the second till, he counted out Shir’s wages and handed them to her. “You’re off,” he said with a grin. “Come in Friday, four o’clock. We’ll see you then.”

  “Yes, sir!” said Shir, relief hitting her like a tidal wave. With an enormous grin, she ditched the mop and bucket, and headed to the storage room for her jacket. So, she wasn’t about to be fired, she thought exuberantly. Even better, she was getting off work at ten to nine, a little earlier than usual. Eleven blocks north, the liquor store also closed at nine. If she booted it over there on her bike, she should be able to find someone still hanging around the area, willing to offload a few beers.

  Pushing open the storage-room door, she removed her work apron and dropped it into the laundry bin. Then she took her jacket from its hook on the wall. About to pull it on, she caught sight of an unopened Coke, sitting on a nearby counter. That’s odd, she thought, eyeing the can. It had to be the one Mr. Anderson had given Eunie, but why would she have left it here, unopened, if that was what she had come into the store for? And why had she used the back entrance when she left? Customers always used the front.

  A bizarre thought hit Shir and she grimaced in disbelief. Was it possible Mr. Anderson was having a secret red-hot affair with Eunie Jahenny? Back here in the storage room? Nah! she decided. They had only been back here five minutes—what could you do in five minutes? And why would Mr. Anderson be interested in a seventeen-year-old metalhead? There had to be at least three decades between their ages. Besides, from what Shir had observed, Eunie was a bit on the wild side—for Mr. Anderson, that is. Of course, anyone would be on the wild side for Mr. Anderson.

  At any rate, she thought, pulling on her jacket, she still had her job. Next to that, nothing mattered. Snorting under her breath, Shir pushed open the store’s rear door and took off down the alley.

  Six

  Gym bag over a shoulder, Shir headed out Collier High’s back entrance toward the school’s practice field. It was lunch hour, and all over the school grounds, students could be seen in pairs and small groups, enjoying the warm weather. Reaching the practice field’s outer boundary, Shir set her gym bag next to the fence, unzipped it, and took out her lunch and the can of Molsons wedged in behind it. Then she settled down for a long, undisturbed slurp, her butt planted firmly on her gym bag and her back cradled by the mesh fence that ran the length of the field.

  As expected, her mother had been engrossed in a tv movie last night when Shir had returned from work, and Stella locked in her room doing homework. So there had been no one to notice as she had shuffled carefully to her bedroom, still wearing her winter jacket, no one to freak out or nag, as she had unloaded her two-beer booty onto her bed. But just as she had been downing her first gulp, a knock had come at the door, scaring her so badly that her arm had jerked, spilling beer onto her jeans. Luckily, she had managed to shove the can under her pillow before the door opened, and it had only been Stella, wanting to borrow her Toronto Maple Leafs sweatshirt. Still, the incident had left her with the shakes; she had double-bagged the empty before stashing it in her gym bag, then decided to save the second beer for tomorrow’s lunch, when she could hopefully savor it without interruption.

  That was the problem with having a legal drinking age, she thought as she popped the tab. It caused so much hassle. Parents, kids—everyone got upset over it. If they just got rid of the damn thing so there was no legal age limit at all, it would solve a lot of problems.

  At the opposite end of the field, several guys started kicking around a soccer ball. This posed no immediate danger; she was sitting well away from them, and they didn’t appear to have noticed her. That was why she frequently came to this spot to eat lunch—no one else ever did. Moments with no one else in them came too rarely in a school day, and she had learned to treasure them like the sensation of the magic fluid flowing over her tongue.

  Idly, she watched the players. Most of them were in grade ten, guys whose names she vaguely knew and had never spoken to. At least, nothing that could be considered actual dialogue—just the usual, as in, Hey, it’s Dog Face. If she looks at you, she’ll turn you into dog shit. Or, Hide up my rear, ass zit. The kind of thing she had come to expect from the average kid.

  The Molsons was now one-third gone, and she was halfway through her first cheese sandwich. The sandwich was dry, without mayonnaise or margarine, but the beer got it down just fine. Eight AM, Shir thought lazily as she surveyed the field, is way too early to think about mayonnaise or margarine, or putting cheese between slices of bread. There should be a law that makes it illegal to force teenagers out of bed before noon. That would solve a whole bunch more problems.

  On the other side of the field, someone gave the ball a resounding kick, sending it skittering wildly toward Shir. Instinctively she tightened, drawing in her feet, even though the ball hit the fence ten meters to her right. A guy came running over, scooped up the ball, and glanced at her. Quickly Shir slid both hands around her beer, covering the label. No way was she sharing a drop of the magic fluid with any of those jerks.

  “Hey,” said the guy. “Dog Face.”

  Shir’s eyes narrowed. Glancing down, she held herself tight and waited.

  “Hey,” repeated the guy, coming closer. “I’m talking to you, Dog Face.”

  Gritting her teeth, Shir considered. Sometimes, if she glanced their way once—gave them that much—they were satisfied and went away. Reluctantly, she slid her eyes toward the guy. Shaggy-haired, sweatshirt, jeans, runners—he was someone she had seen around, but couldn’t put a name to. Tossing the soccer ball lightly into the air, the guy let it spin on a fingertip.

  “Just wanted you to know,” he said. “I voted for you.”

  Then he headed back to the others, kicking the ball ahead of him as he ran. Bewildered, Shir stared after him. Voted for me? she thought. What was that supposed to mean? There weren’t any school elections going on that she knew of, and anyway, she would hardly be running for anything. President Dog Shit, she could just see it. Treasurer Ass Zit. With a snort, Shir raised her beer and sucked it to the dregs. Then she bagged the empty can and tossed it into her gym bag. A warm sun was riding high in the sky, beer was toasting her insides, and for the moment, no one was hassling her. This is the life, she thought, sighing. Stretching out her legs, she closed her eyes.

  Within seconds, something smashed into the fence to her right, sending shock waves through the mesh. Jerking upright, Shir glanced to both sides, then twisted to look over her shoulder. There, on the other side of the fence, in the alley that ran this side of school property, stood a group of minor-niners. Hotshots, thought Shir, assessing them quickly. The kind who are already going steady by November.

  “Hey, Ugly!” called one of them, a guy with his arm draped heavily around a girl’s neck. A pretty girl, Shir noted, her eyes narrowing. Expressionless, she stared back.

  Don’t give them anything, she thought dully.

  The pretty girl giggled.

  “You’re way ahead,” said the guy, flashing her a broad grin. “Everyone’s voting for you. The others have only gotten one or two votes.”

  “Probably their friends,” said another guy.

  “Nah,” said the pretty girl. “They don’t have friends. Their mothers voted for them.”

  “Yeah,” agreed the first guy, “their mothers. Anyway, everyone else is voting for you, Ugly. You’ll get first prize, hands down.”

  Turning, the group sauntered toward the neighborhood convenience store, leaving Shir to stare blankly after them. Everyone’s voting for me? she thought, confused. Voting where? And why? Uneasily, she took an apple out of her lunch bag, then sat simply holding it. No way could she eat anything now, not with this on her mind. A memory of a kid snickering at her earlier in the hall came back to her, followed by one of a grinning group in her algebra class. She had assumed it had been the usual, noth
ing she needed details on. No one had said anything about voting.

  Voting for what? she wondered apprehensively.

  Panic ants began swarming her skin. Something was going on, she could feel it—something brewing deep inside Collier High’s two-thousand-plus minds, and it had to do with her. It always had to do with her. Awkwardly, she started to get to her feet, then sank back down again. No point in moving, she thought bleakly. Anywhere else on school property would bring her into closer contact with other kids … voters. Dully, her gut in a queasy roil, she sat and stared at the school’s rear wall until the first warning bell rang. Then, getting reluctantly to her feet, she started across the field.

  The guys with the soccer ball had already gone in, and the students currently pouring into the back entrance paid her little notice. Hanging back, she waited to let the majority of them pass, then started up the stairs toward the doors. But as she reached the fourth step, a voice behind her shouted, “Dog Face, watch where you’re going!” and a foot shot out, hooking her ankle. Arms flailing, she staggered into the guardrail.

  “Too bad,” said the voice, and a hand shoved her right shoulder, hard. “That’s where your face belongs, bitch,” the guy added. “Planted.” Then he took off up the stairs, laughing maniacally.

  Shir didn’t even bother checking out her attacker’s identity. The guy could have been any one of hundreds; what did it matter which one it was exactly? Head down, she waited until the last few stragglers had passed into the school, then followed them in. Here, under the eyes of the security cameras, she was supposedly safer. Picking up the pace, she made the trek across the building to the languages wing, where she ditched her gym bag, grabbed her binder, and headed to English.

  The afternoon passed in queasy five-minute lurches. Head down, her body rigid with anticipation, Shir sat through her classes, bracing herself for another comment about voting, an election, even candidates, but got nothing. If there was something brewing out there about Dog Face Rutz winning some kind of prize, the guy with the soccer ball and the hotshot minor-niners were the only ones who seemed to have heard about it. Gradually, centimeter by centimeter, Shir allowed herself to relax. Her fingers loosened their manic grip on her pen, her head came up slightly, and the invisible vise squeezing her brain let go. Forty minutes, she thought, glancing at the clock. Half an hour plus ten until Twentieth Century History ended and she was out of this place. Thirty minutes. Twenty. Ten, and she would be flying the streets on the Black, picking up a few beers from Gareth, and heading to Myplace. If the price of oil hadn’t gone up again, that is.

  The bell rang, freeing her from academic blah-blah about Vietnam and the Domino Theory. Instinctively, Shir waited in her seat, letting the rush of students precede her out of the classroom. Then she slowly approached the door. This was when she really had to be on her guard—after school, when kids were loose-ended and revved for any possibility. Cautiously, she started down the hall. The history department was on the second floor, half a building and several security cameras away from her locker—two endless corridors’ worth of comments, jeers, and catcalls … if she was lucky.

  “Hey, what d’you know,” a voice called abruptly on her right—a guy’s voice. “It’s Dog Face. Front-runner Fuck Face.”

  Head down, Shir picked up the pace.

  “Oh, yeah,” moaned a second guy. “For a toonie, I hear she’ll make it Suck Face.”

  “Suck Face,” said a third. “My kind of dog. Hey, Suck Face!” As a nearby security camera whirred, a hand grabbed Shir’s arm, jerking her to a stop. Immediately, she kicked out, but was surrounded, hands grabbing and pushing her into the wall. “Hey, Suck Face,” leered a looming mouth. “I hear it’s hands down, you’re gonna win.”

  “Yeah,” grinned another mouth. “What’re you doing on your feet, bitch? Don’t you know winners like you crawl?”

  “What’s going on there?” bellowed a voice from halfway down the hall—a teacher-type voice, ringing with authority. Instantly, the hands mauling Shir withdrew. Recovering her balance, she butted out with her head, jabbed with her elbows, and took off. Corridors zoomed by in a blur, her combination lock was three short spins, and then she was jerking open her locker, ditching her books, and grabbing her jacket. Not for one second did she consider telling a teacher what had occurred; if she did, this afternoon’s perpetrators might get into trouble, but they had a hundred buddies who would make her pay. No, better just to make tracks, she decided, and leave every Collier High kid eating her dust. Tears streaming down her face, swallowing and swallowing the bile that rose in her throat, Shir flew down the street on the Black, taking herself away from education, security cameras, the place they called civilization.

  Someone was sitting on one of the bridge’s support arches. A guy, thought Shir, staring up at him. It wasn’t the arch she usually sat on; rather, it was the one opposite, on the east side, but still … Gripping the Black’s handlebars, she stood at the base of the footbridge and glumly observed the boy. In the four years that she had been coming here, she had only seen kids on the support arches twice, and each time it had been a pack of them, competing to see who could make it across first. A scattering of shouts and jeers, a mad scrabble of feet on concrete, and they had been gone, leaving her alone with her personal patch of sky and the slow-murmuring river.

  But this guy had his butt planted. Around fifteen years old, with a black knit cap pulled low on his forehead, he was sitting completely motionless and staring out over the river, as if fixing to become a permanent part of the landscape. Resentment rose thickly in Shir’s throat and she took a step forward, then checked herself. What was she supposed to say to the guy—This is my bridge; you have to get off? Nothing about this place belonged to her; neither the bridge nor the river had offered her ownership rights. Wasn’t that what she liked most about Myplace—its solitary, independent hiddenness, the way it was sandwiched between busy downtown streets, yet completely separate, an in-between place?

  Shir wanted to open her gym bag, take out one of the three beers she had just bought from Gareth, and huck it at the guy. Aim straight for that cool black cap pulled down over his forehead, she mused, watching him. On second thought, maybe not so cool. The kid was a bit on the skinny side for a hotshot, and from what she could see, both his jacket sleeves and pant legs were riding high. The guy needed a cash injection into his wardrobe allowance, and he needed it fast. Still, he wasn’t getting any sympathy from her—not an intruder who was keeping her from a much-needed date with Molson Canadian. At $3.75 a can, too, Gareth having suddenly decided that he had obligations to the government to “tax” his financial transactions.

  Grimly, Shir turned the Black and headed back to the street. Much as she needed it—her entire body crying out for the magic fluid, in fact—for the present, Molson Canadian was going to have to wait. No other location granted her the kind of privacy that Myplace did at this time of day, not with kids running everywhere, footloose and fancy free. And at home, there would be Stella, poking her nosy face into everything. No, Molson Canadian was going to have to wait until later, when Mom was heavy into movieland and Stella finishing up homework in her room. That meant spending the next several hours in waiting mode—fidgeting, staring at the wall, and counting heartbeats until the moment of joy arrived. But that was what most of life seemed to be these days—just putting in time until she could pop open a tab, raise a can, and sluice a bit of golden happiness down her throat.

  With a morose sigh, Shir swung a leg over the Black, pushed off from the curb, and headed down the street.

  “What’s with all the voting crap going on at school?” asked Shir. Standing in the open doorway to Stella’s bedroom, she steadied her breathing, and forced herself to meet her sister’s gaze. It was 4:30, the apartment quiet, and their mother not yet home from work. Stella, a stack of homework in front of her, was flipping through a copy of Teen Vogue at her desk. Oddly enough, she had left her door unlocked, and it had come open with a gentle
push of Shir’s hand.

  “Why don’t you knock?” countered Stella, turning in her chair to face the doorway. For a second then, Shir saw it—a flash of fear on her sister’s face.

  “Just tell me what I want to know,” she said heavily. “I know you know about it. You always do.”

  Stella’s gaze flickered uneasily. “Know about what?” she asked reluctantly.

  “Oh, come on!” exploded Shir. Stella knew; Shir knew she knew. “Voting,” she said grimly. “All these kids keep telling me they’re voting for me. Voting for what? I’m not in any election.”

  Again, just for a second, something flashed across Stella’s face, but this time it looked more like sympathy. Instant fear roared through Shir’s brain. Stella never showed sympathy. Not once during the two years that they had both been attending Collier High had she shown the slightest inclination to let Shir in on any of the various Dog Face plots and conspiracies cooked up by their schoolmates.

  The sympathy—if that was what it had been—didn’t last long. “Don’t worry about it,” Stella said, shrugging coolly. “Probably just a couple of kids being stupid.”

  “It wasn’t just a couple,” said Shir. Voice rising, she stepped into the room. “And they didn’t know each other—it wasn’t like two buddies cooking up something together. Something’s going on and lots of kids know about it. Tell me what it is. C’mon, tell me.”

  This time, the fear on Stella’s face was obvious. Jumping to her feet, she took a step back. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said shrilly, one hand fluttering to her throat. “Just because Mom’s not home, you think you can come busting in here and throw your weight around. Well, you can’t. This is my room and I don’t want you in here. Get out! Just get out!”

  Motionless, the blood pulsing dully in her forehead, Shir stared at her sister. “I’m not getting out,” she said slowly, “until you goddam tell me what’s going on. That’s all I want—for you to tell me what’s going on.”