Born Ugly

by Beth Goobie

  The rainbow is dead, she thought, turned to the first eastern support arch, and began to climb. When she reached the peak, she unzipped her gym bag and got out a bran muffin she had packed with her lunch. After nibbling her way through it, she simply sat, her head resting against the pillar as she watched the sun inch across the sky through half-closed eyes. Gradually, the bridge’s shadow stretched east across the water and the air grew cool; in the distance, she could hear the city going about its business. Some time later, she didn’t know how much, there came a soft sound overhead. Startled, she leaned out stiffly from the pillar and glanced upward. The sun had moved deep into the western half of the sky, and the blueness above her was now tinged with gray, forcing her to squint to make out the details of the face that leaned over the bridge’s guardrail.

  “Hey,” said Finlay, grinning down at her.

  “Hey,” she managed to reply.

  “I brought you a Twink,” he said, holding a package of cupcakes over the rail. “Want me to drop it down to you?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I’m drunk. Well, hung over. I’d miss it.”

  “Okay,” he said casually. “I’ll bring it down. Just a sec.”

  His head disappeared, leaving her blinking at empty sky.

  Fourteen

  Shir watched, her mind like dull sludge, as Finlay climbed the arch, then knelt and stretched an arm around the third pillar to hand her a Twinkie. “Hey,” he said, flashing her a grin. “You’re on my arch today.”

  Ducking her head, she angled the fall of her hair across her face before reaching for the cupcake. “I threw up on the other one,” she mumbled, “so I moved to this one.”

  “Oh,” said Finlay, obviously taken aback. “Well, I’ll have to sit on this side, then. Shove over and I’ll come around the pillar.”

  Panic blew, wide and heated, through Shir. If Finlay came around the pillar, she thought frantically, he would see. It would all be there, close up and personal—the regular day-in day-out ugliness plus the tears and hangover. For three thundering heartbeats she stared rigidly downward, then slid a meter from the pillar and swung her feet over the arch’s east side. Filled with dread, her face turned desperately toward the opposite bank, she listened to Finlay work his way around the pillar and settle into place beside her.

  “So,” he said, his voice elaborately casual, “if you’ve been here long enough to get skunk drunk, you must’ve skipped the whole afternoon.”

  Eyes still glued to the opposite shore, Shir couldn’t tell if Finlay was looking at her. But the warmth of his shoulder, now only centimeters away, felt enormous, and the breeze, which had been brushing her face for hours, suddenly seemed alive. Without warning, a heat flickered through her—soft and undefined, a gentle fire, touching her from the inside.

  “All day,” she mumbled, keeping her face turned away. “Decided to take it all off.”

  “Didn’t miss much,” said Finlay as he slid the second Twinkie from its package. “Today I learned about the Magna Carta and the proper way to make a basketball chest-pass. Problem is, I don’t have a chest … at least that’s what I’ve been told. Anyway, that was my education for the day—the Magna Carta and the no-chest chest-pass.”

  Peeking around her curtain of hair, Shir flicked him a quick glance. Cupcake in hand, Finlay was studying it with a calculating grin, working out his plan of attack. He seemed awfully … chipper, she thought, watching him. As if getting here with his Twinkies was a big deal. As if, on arrival, he had been expecting …

  At that moment, perhaps feeling her gaze on him, Finlay turned and looked directly at her. Instantly Shir’s gaze darted away, but not before she saw the first second of shock widen his eyes. Immediate shame swallowed her, sick heated waves of it, and she turned to stare fixedly across the river. In the short silence that followed, everything pulsed—the air, her skin, the blood inside her skin.

  Gently, tentatively, something brushed the side of her head. With a gasp, Shir jerked away, so quickly she almost lost her balance. “Hey!” said Finlay, catching her arm and steadying her. “Hold still—just for a bit, okay?”

  In spite of his request, she continued to pull away and, reluctantly, he let go of her arm. For one long, terrifying moment, they sat wordless, side by side; then in that vast uncertainty, Finlay reached out again. Shuddering, Shir tried to keep herself from whimpering as he lifted thin strands of hair from her tear-streaked cheeks. Slowly his gaze took in the tell-tale details of her face—the puffy eyes, the raw patches that underlined them, the tear smudges. And, if her nose was working right, the faint scent of dog shit still clinging to her skin.

  “Whoa!” he said finally, his voice croaking. “What happened to you?”

  “Hung over,” she said weakly, trying for a shrug. “I already told you.”

  “Uh uh,” said Finlay, withdrawing his hand. “I know hung over—my dad’s permanently tanked. You’re …” He paused, searching for words, then added quietly, “Fragile. You feel fragile, like one of my granny’s delicate china cups.”

  “Fragile?” Shir echoed disbelievingly.

  “Yeah,” Finlay said thoughtfully. “Something beautiful that you have to be very careful with, or it’ll shatter.”

  Immediately, Shir’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m not beautiful,” she said gruffly, brushing at them.

  “Of course you are,” insisted Finlay, staring out over the water. “I could feel that about you the first time I met you. You love trees. You can’t love trees if you’re not beautiful. You wouldn’t even know about loving trees if you weren’t beautiful.”

  Dumbfounded, Shir turned and stared at him. Calm and steady, Finlay gazed back over a large-but-not-gargantuan nose. Beautiful, thought Shir—it was the last word anyone sane would use to describe either of them. “Look,” she said heavily, “let’s just face it. On a beauty scale of one to ten, I’m a negative integer.”

  “Oh, that,” Finlay said carelessly. “I’m not talking about bone structure. You want to worry about whether your cheekbones are a seven or a two, that’s up to you. I’m talking about beautiful. You know—the way you think, the way you are.”

  Slumped into absolute weariness, Shir sat watching the water ripple gently past. “I’m a drunk,” she said slowly. “A complete loser. My life is shit.”

  “Maybe,” said Finlay. “But you’re still beautiful. Like I said, I could tell that about you right away. Anyway,” he added, his awkwardness obvious as he carefully patted her shoulder. “What happened to you? Why … were you crying?”

  Her breath was a hook, snagging her throat. The ugliness of what had been done to her that morning—she could feel it in her gut, heated, eating her from the inside. “Kids bug me at school,” she muttered finally, fighting the urge to shake his hand from her shoulder. “Today was extra bad, I guess.”

  “What did they say?” asked Finlay.

  “It wasn’t what they said,” she replied guardedly. “It was what they did. They …”

  She paused, swallowing.

  “They what?” prompted Finlay.

  Again she paused, the memory of the event coming at her so violently that, for a moment, Myplace vanished and she was back beside the school exit, bodies shoving in around her, panting, laughter, all that hate. Then the memory faded and Myplace moved in to surround her, a breeze nuzzling at her hair, the air opening freely outward.

  “Well,” she said, releasing a slow clutching sigh. “This morning some guy brought dog shit to school and rubbed it in my face.”

  Beside her there was only silence, not even the sound of breathing. Cautiously, Shir shot Finlay a glance and saw him staring at her, eyes wide with shock. “That’s awful,” he said, his voice trembling slightly.

  More tears stung Shir’s eyes. “I guess,” she said, ducking her head. “They do a lot of stuff like that. They always have. But that was the worst that’s happened to me, I think.”

  “Where were the teachers?” asked Finlay.

  “
It happened outside,” Shir said hastily. “There were kids around, but the teachers were all inside.”

  “Didn’t anyone help you?” pressed Finlay.

  “No,” said Shir. “They probably didn’t want to get shit on themselves. Besides, it wasn’t something one kid could stop. A bunch of kids swarmed me; it happened fast, and then they were gone. And, y’know, it doesn’t really matter who they were, exactly. Something happens every day, and every day it’s someone different. So, really, it’s everyone. Not that everyone rubs shit in my face, I don’t mean that. But no one …”

  She hesitated, considering. Never before had she told anyone this; she hadn’t even allowed herself to think it. “Well,” she said faintly, staring off over the river. “I guess no one is my friend, really. Not at Collier, and not at the schools I went to before Collier. Except for maybe a few kids I knew in the early grades—they were okay. They let me hang around, fool myself into thinking they were my friends. But it didn’t last. In grade five, it all changed. And then it changed again, even more, in grade six. In grade six, no one would let me pretend anything. Somewhere over the rainbow was over. It’s because of the way I look, of course. If I looked different, things would be different. They would be different.”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” Finlay said decisively. “They might treat you different, but they wouldn’t be different. Not inside themselves. Not in their souls.”

  For a long moment, Shir stared off across the river, thinking her tired, aching thoughts. “Maybe not,” she agreed finally. “I watch kids a lot, y’know—because no one talks to me and there’s nothing else to do. And I see them doing to other kids what they do to me—not as bad, of course, but still …”

  She waited before continuing, trying to get an exact fix on what she was thinking. “It’s as if there’s something invisible above them all,” she said pensively. “Some kind of huge, big mind that runs all of them, and it decides who’s in and who’s out. Y’know—who gets to be popular and noticed and the center of everything, or even just a part of things, and who has to sit on the sidelines and shut up. And most of it has to do with the way kids look. Bone structure, I guess, like you said. Kids who are a three or four on the bone-structure scale are allowed to be around and no one bugs them really, as long as they don’t get any ideas about being center stage with the nines and tens. But the negative integers? The negative integers have to sit off by themselves, alone and drooling in a corner. There’s no changing that, not if you’re ugly. Born ugly.”

  From beside her came another immense silence. Listening to it, Shir swallowed hard, wondering if she could carry on, push deeper into it, go where she most needed to go. “I want to think life could be beautiful,” she said softly. “I want to wake up in the morning, thinking I could be happy. But no one will let me. Everywhere I go, someone is always taking a chunk out of me. I feel as if they’ve stolen something from me. The people in my life, they’ve stolen who I am. And they’ve left me with something that I’m not. I don’t know how to get myself back.

  “But it’s even more than that,” she added helplessly. “Y’see, my mom hates me. She really hates me. So does my sister. Both of them, all the time, they hate me.”

  Beside her, the silence continued. Glancing warily to her right, Shir saw Finlay frowning intensely across the river. “Y’know,” he said carefully, “every group needs somewhere to dump its shit. I figured that out in grade three, and I also figured out that a lot of the time, it was going to be me. The bone structure thing, y’know? And along with that, I figured out that I was going to have to make myself happen. Other kids had people to help them—their friends and families—but no one was going to do it for me. I mean, Dad’s always drinking, and Mom … Well, my mom’s in a psych ward. Permanently. And Dad’s always telling me I’m just like her. So it was pretty easy, really, to figure out that I was going to have to do it on my own.”

  With a quick breath, Finlay turned to Shir, his eyes so fierce she almost flinched. “You exist, Shir Rutz,” he said fervently. “You’re alive. Not just some thing, a piece of shit someone crapped onto this earth. And if you don’t get that through your head—that you’re beautiful, and worthy, and …”

  He faltered, searching for words, then burst out, “ … that the earth loves you, that the sky and air and trees love you … then all you’ve got left is those kids rubbing shit in your face. But they’re not everything, y’know. They’re not everyone on this planet. Did you know there’s a guy in the Czech Republic named Vaclav Halek, who’s written over two thousand pieces of music— film scores, symphonies for orchestras, all kinds of things—and every one of them was inspired by listening to mushrooms sing?”

  Absolutely dumbfounded, Shir stared at him. Not a thought budged in her head. “Pardon me?” she asked faintly.

  “Yeah,” said Finlay, his face flushed. “He’s this guy who’s so sensitive, he can actually hear mushrooms sing. He says each mushroom sings differently; they’ve all got their own individual songs. They won’t sing them to just anyone, though—you’ve got to be someone they trust. So he’s written down thousands of their mushroom songs, and arranged them into music for people to listen to. And, y’know, if he’d spent his time as a kid worrying about his cheekbones and what people thought about him, especially what they thought about him listening to mushrooms, he never would’ve written anything.”

  Open-mouthed, Shir gaped at him. Equally open-mouthed, Finlay gaped back. “Yeah,” he repeated, his gaze darting out over the river. “Not one song—that’s what he would’ve written. Nothing. But he didn’t pay attention to what other people thought. He thought for himself. He made himself happen, and he happened. Thousands and thousands of songs is how he happened.”

  Side by side they sat, listening to the breeze, the sound of their own breathing. “This guy,” Shir asked cautiously. “Vaclav—is he ugly?”

  “I don’t know about his bone structure,” Finlay said emphatically. “But I know for sure that he’s beautiful.”

  Again Shir sat, listening to herself breathe. “The mushrooms,” she said finally. “Do any of them sound like Celine Dion?”

  “Celine Dion?” repeated Finlay, looking confused. “I dunno. I hope not. One of her is definitely enough.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Shir. “Actually, I’d say one of her is more than enough.” Lifting her Twinkie, she took her first bite. “Don’t watch me,” she muttered, angling her hair across her face as she chewed. “Make me feel like a goof.”

  “Not a goof,” said Finlay, shifting his gaze politely to the river. “A moose head. A moose head from New Brunswick.”

  “Uh huh,” grinned Shir, sucking half the icing from the top of her cupcake. “A moose head from New Brunswick.” A sensation flickered through her as she spoke—lightness, happiness? The feeling was so unfamiliar, she couldn’t place it.

  “When I’m eighteen,” Finlay said musingly, “I’m going to go to New Brunswick. I’m going to buy a lot of Moosehead beer and I’m going to drink it all, and then I’m going to go into the woods and listen to mushrooms sing.”

  “Huh,” said Shir, trying to imagine it. “I’d come with you, except I don’t know if I’ll be alive that long. My mom’s going to kill me when she finds out I skipped an entire day of school.”

  “Just tell her why,” Finlay said quickly. “She couldn’t possibly get mad if you told her what happened.”

  “Maybe,” said Shir, letting the last sweet mouthful of Twinkie dissolve onto her tongue. The sugar rush was hitting her bloodstream, and in spite of her hangover, things were beginning to look up. “She said she’d kick me out of the apartment if I ever skipped again.”

  “She won’t,” Finlay said firmly, as if he had a private through-line to God on this one. “Not if you tell her why.”

  Shir took a long breath, letting air deeper into her lungs, feeling it. Sometimes Finlay sounded so sure about things she couldn’t imagine being certain about. “Can you …?” she started to ask, th
en hesitated, flushing.

  “Can I what?” asked Finlay, his eyes intent, watching every moment of her face.

  “Can you … smell it?” faltered Shir. “The dog shit? Is the smell still there?”

  Holding herself rigid, she tried not to flinch as Finlay leaned forward and snuffled dramatically at her hair and face. “Dove soap!” he announced triumphantly. “And Pantene shampoo, right? But nope, I can’t smell the teeny tiniest whiff of dog shit.”

  A giggly sigh lifted through Shir, releasing a last faint bit of ugliness. It was gone. At least for the present, what had happened to her today at school was gone. Through his talking, and his Twinkies, and his snort-snuffling in her hair, Finlay had managed to reach invisible hands inside her and lift this morning’s ugliness out and away.

  “You’re right,” she said, studying an icing smear on her hand. “The whole world isn’t like those kids at school. There’s Vaclav and his mushrooms, and trees …”

  Shir paused, glancing sidelong at Finlay, then added, “And there’s you.”

  A flush blew across his face, followed by the shy corner-hook of a smile. “Yeah,” he said, his voice abruptly hoarse. “There’s me.”

  Fifteen

  It was the following day and Shir was sitting a block and a half from Collier High, her back to a tree as she ate lunch. The tree, which stood on the edge of someone’s front lawn, afforded a clear view for blocks; as long as she remained on guard and kept her eyes peeled, no one was going to get near her with a dog turd, a toonie, or anything else a sadistic teenage mind could think up.