Duckling Ugly

18 Return to the flock

Traveling as garbage was not a highlight of my life, but some­times you do what you have to do. The monks never knew I was there. I suppose I wasn't much heavier than what they were used to hauling. The fur around me kept me warm, but not warm enough. I shivered most of the way, and wondered if I would die of hypothermia and end up as part of the garbage after all. Trashes-to-ashes, I thought. It almost made me giggle, which, under the circumstances, would have been disastrous. The jour­ney took a day and a half, and although they rested, I barely slept. I was hungry and, even more, thirsty. It was unbearable. Finally, toward the end of the second day, my bag was hurled into a hard, rough place, where I landed with a bruising crunch.

I let the pain peak, then fade, clenching my teeth so that I didn't make a sound. Then, when I was sure they were gone, I pulled myself out of the bag.

I was in a Dumpster. I stood up to get my bearings. I was out behind a gas station, and it was after dark. It was chilly, but nowhere near as cold as it had been in the higher altitudes as we crossed the mountains.

I climbed out and walked around to the front of the station, trying to stretch my cramped arms and legs. The second the gas-station attendant saw me, he swaggered over to me.

"Hey, little lady," he said. He was just a couple of years older than me, nineteen at the most. "What can I do you for?"

He was all goggly-eyed, and it took me a moment to realize he didn't see the Flock's Rest Monster when he looked at me. He saw someone beautiful. It amazed me that he didn't seem to no­tice I was covered in garbage.

"Which way to Flock's Rest?" I asked.

"No easy way to get there from here," he said. "That's clear over the mountains. The nearest road that crosses over is twenty-five miles away."

So the monks had taken me in the other direction. Well, that was just a minor inconvenience. I could still get there, and make it back, in time.

He smiled at me, showing me a cracked tooth, and tried to act all charming. "I get off in a couple of hours. I could give you a ride if you like. I know where it is; I was just there 'bout a month ago."

Something told me it wouldn't be a good idea. "No thanks," I told him, and he seemed a little hurt.

"Hey, I understand," he said. "A pretty girl like you―why would you take a ride from a guy like me? Right? 'Cept, of course, I got a really good car. Tiger-skin seats." He winked at me, and I rolled my eyes. Is this what pretty girls had to put up with all the time? "Runs like a dream," he said. "Just got it last month down at DeFido's. That's how come I know Flock's Rest."

I laughed at that. "If you got your car at DeFido's, then you got ripped off," I told him. "Trust me, I know. He's my father."

Suddenly he started snapping his fingers like something was wrong with him. "You―you―you're that missing DeFido girl. Holy Mother of―no friggin' way! I gots to call the cops, that's what I gots to do."

"No," I said. "No, don't!"

But he wasn't listening. "Oh yeah, they got a reward out for you."

"My parents offered a reward?"

I was actually impressed, until he said, "Five hundred dollars. Get myself some spinners for my car."

Five hundred bucks, I thought. Is that what I was worth to them? I knew people who offered higher rewards for their lost cats.

He ran into the gas-station office, and I ran after him. "No, stop," I said. He was already picking up the phone, but then he stopped when he looked at the "Missing" poster taped right there on his window. It didn't have a picture of me, because there were no pictures. Instead there was a police sketch. It was ugly, it was awful. It was me. Or at least the old me.

"Hey, hold on. This ain't you."

He looked to the poster, then to me, then to the poster again.

"No, you're right," I said, thinking quickly. "That's my sister. My sister's the one who's missing. Not me."

He looked at me, the expression on his face souring. "I guess there's no reward for you, is there?"

I shook my head. "No. Sorry." And I hurried out before he could offer me a ride again.

Five days, I thought as I walked down the road, and two already gone. Not much I could accomplish in what little time I had. But I didn't need to accomplish anything, did I? All I had to do was have a nice long sit-down with Mom and Dad. Maybe pack a bag of what few things I cared about, and leave forever. If I had time, maybe I'd go out to Vista View, find Miss Leticia's grave, and pay my respects.

The gas station was on a lonely road, with only a few homes nearby. I changed out of my garbage-covered clothes in someone's toolshed, took a long drink from the yard hose, then hosed myself off with its freezing water, and took some clothes that were hang­ing out to dry in the backyard. Then I started walking.

About five miles down the road, my feet were hurting some­thing awful, and although a number of folks stopped to offer me a ride, I didn't take them up on it―mainly because they were all guys of varying ages, with their tongues practically hanging out like wolves when they looked at me. That wasn't the kind of at­tention I wanted from strangers, and I wasn't foolish enough to get into a car with any of them. It was a different world for me now. I had to get used to that.

Finally, a family in a minivan pulled up next to me.

"Honey, are you all right?" the woman asked, leaning out of the passenger-side window. "You know, it's dangerous to be on the road like this after dark. You might get hit by a car. Would you like a ride somewhere?"

This was a ride I felt safe taking, so I smiled, thanked them, and hopped in.

I sat in the back with the kids. A little boy no older than six, sucking on some sticky candy that made his lips blue, smiled at me. "You're pretty," he said.

And I laughed, because it was true!

Flock's Rest wasn't exactly on their way, but they didn't have the heart to leave me by the side of the road somewhere. That's an­other thing about being beautiful: People go out of their way to help you. It was almost midnight when they reached Flock's Rest. I had them drop me at the entrance to my trailer park.

Dad would be sitting with a beer, watching RetroToob and dreaming of his lost youth. Momma would probably still be up reading. Vance would be asleep, if he hadn't had too much pop at dinner.

As excited as I was, I was scared, too. My father always said, "You can't make a Ford a Ferrari," and yet here I was, all shiny and new. Cara: the sports model. I could give them no explanation for the change I had gone through. I couldn't tell them where I'd been, or about the water of the fountain, no matter how much they asked.

I knocked on the door. No answer at first, so I knocked again. Finally, Momma answered it and looked at me, squinting her eyes.

"Hi," I said.

She wasn't shocked. She didn't even seem surprised. She just seemed a little put out over answering the door in her robe at midnight. "Can I help you?" she said.

I stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. She had no idea who I was.

"Momma, it's me."

She looked at me blankly, her mind trying to mesh what she saw with what she knew.

Then she backed up and went kind of white.

"Franklin," she said, her voice all wavery. "Franklin, come quick."

Few things would lift my dad off the couch once he had settled in. But that tone of voice did the trick. As he came to her, I stepped inside. Now Vance was standing at his bedroom door, half-awake, wondering what was going on.

"It's me," I said. "It's Cara." And then, just for effect, I flicked my hair the way models do. "Don't you recognize me?"

Just silence for the longest time.

Vance was the first to react. "No. Way."

"Honey?" Dad said in the same wavery voice that Mom had.

And then it was like whatever was holding them back just fell away. Momma rushed at me and took me in her arms.

"My baby, my baby," she cried.

Even Dad cried. "We thought you ran away," he said. "Or worse."

"I did," I told them. "But it's okay now."

While Momma and Dad were still hugging me, Vance came over and looked me up and down. "What happened to you?"

And then, to my surprise, Momma turned to him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and looked at him sternly. "Don't you ask that! I'm sure Cara will tell us in her own time, won't you, honey?"

I nodded, knowing that I wouldn't. Maybe Momma sensed that, because she said, "Besides, true miracles don't always have explanations. Otherwise they wouldn't be miracles."

Vance looked down. "Yes, ma'am."

I told them I was only back for a little while―that people were waiting for me.

"I understand," Momma said, even though we both knew she didn't.

We all hugged and hugged. Momma whispered things you whisper to babies, and when all the hugging was done, I went to my room.

I thought they would have changed it in the months that I had been gone. I figured they'd turn it into a reading room, or a sewing room, or something. Make the memory of me go away. But they hadn't. It was just as I had left it. I even found the little "find the answers" note―a reminder that the answers had been found, and were waiting for me back in De León. Back home.

Before going to bed, though, I went up to my dresser and, for one final time, played my old familiar game. Would Cara do it to­day? Was today the day she would win? Without the slightest hesitation, I grabbed the sheet that covered the mirror and pulled it down. No more mourning in this house! At last I looked at myself in my own mirror. As far as I was concerned, I could have looked forever.

The next morning, we ate our family breakfast like usual, but there was a certain air of terror all around the table, because miracles are frightening things. No matter how much Momma wanted to follow a don't-ask-don't-tell policy with regard to my metamorphosis, it demanded some explanation. Dad began to delicately ask about it. It was like playing a game of twenty ques­tions around a time bomb.

"Was it something. . . surgical?" Dad asked, without looking up at me.

"Not really," I said.

"Herbal, then? They're making amazing strides in vitamin therapy these days."

That was actually closer to the truth. I wondered if the foun­tain could be considered an herbal treatment.

"Vitamin therapy doesn't straighten teeth," Momma said. "That takes some sort of... intervention."

"So we're back to miracles again," said Dad, a bit frustrated.

No one said anything for a bit, and then Vance mumbled, "I think maybe Cara made a pact with the devil."

Momma brought down her fork so hard it cracked her plate in half.

"Sorry," Vance said. Momma didn't scold him. Maybe be­cause she secretly felt it was in the realm of possibility.

"Actually," I said, with a completely straight face, "I was ab­ducted by aliens."

Stunned silence from everyone . . . until I couldn't hold it anymore and cracked a smile. Vance was the first to laugh, then Dad, then Mom, and before long, we were all engulfed in a giggle fit that lasted at least three or four minutes. After that, they stopped asking.

I finished my breakfast quickly and asked if Momma could take me to school early. If I was going to accomplish anything during my single day in Flock's Rest, I'd have to use the time wisely―and the more I thought about it, the more things I real­ized I wanted to do . . . because this wasn't just about saying good-bye. This was also about saying "good riddance."

19 The new girl

Momma brought me to school and told the office staff I was her niece, Linda. I might be moving into town, she said, and could they be darlings and let me sit in on class while I was visiting? She sold them on me like my dad sold a car―not a word of truth, and bought for the highest price possible. I didn't mind being Linda DeFido for a day. After all, Linda was my middle name.

There was still plenty of time before the bell rang, so I went out into the yard to size up what had changed since I had left. As I suspected, nothing had changed. The same kids in the same groups. Of course, some girls were hanging on different boys' shoulders, but even then, the shoulders on which they hung were the predictable ones. One couple, however, had stood the test of time. Marshall and Marisol. They were all slithered around each other in the yard, like always. I made a beeline straight toward them.

"Excuse me," I said innocently, getting their attention.

I had Marshall's eye immediately. Marisol already looked worried.

"Aren't you Marshall Astor, of the famous Astors?"

Marisol answered for him. "That's none of your business. Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, as sweetly as could be. "I'm Linda DeFido. I'll be moving here from Billington." I kept my eye on Marshall, totally ignoring Marisol. "I remember you from one of last year's football games. I have never seen a run that long. I re­member wishing that you were on our team."

Marshall just smiled dumbly. I made sure I had a lock on his eyes like a tractor beam. "So you're moving here?" he asked.

"And she's a DeFido?" said Marisol. "That family is a bunch of losers."

"Oh, we're all right," I said, still smiling. "Except, of course, for my poor cousin, Cara―wherever she is."

Marshall broke eye contact and looked down. "The DeFidos don't like me much. They think I'm the reason their daughter ran off. Your cousin, I mean."

"Oh, they don't think that," I said. "They know that Cara brought it on herself. They don't blame you at all."

Marshall smiled. "Really?"

"You should come by and talk to my uncle. I'm sure he'll be very forgiving."

"Yeah," he said, still smiling. "Maybe I'll do that."

"You will not," said Marisol. "You don't need to talk to trailer trash."

"Not all trash lives in trailers," I told her. She started going colors I didn't know the human face could go. "What's the mat­ter, Marisol?" I asked. "You didn't choke on your gum, did you?"

"How'd you know my name?"

"Oh," I said, "you've got a reputation. Even as far as Billington."

"What?" Her mouth opened, and she just looked at me, her head shaking slightly, like her pea brain had just popped its one blood vessel.

Marshall looked at her like she was suddenly something un­clean, and I went on my merry way. This was the start of a won­derful day!

I was the center of attention in every class, and when I walked into the lunchroom, all heads turned, boys and girls alike. They were whispering about me. By force of habit, I looked for my usual empty table―but without the old Cara here, creating her aura of untouchability, there were no empty tables.

I thought I'd find Marshall and Marisol again, and play with their meager minds some more―but then I spotted Gerardo.

I'd known I would see him today, and I thought I'd be okay with it―that I was beyond all those mixed-up feelings I had for him―but I was wrong. It only took a moment for all the feelings to come back.

It didn't make sense to me―I had Aaron now, didn't I? Ger­ardo was a flyspeck compared to Aaron, and yet he made me numb and light-headed in a way that Aaron never quite did. It made me mad, but not mad enough to turn and walk the other way.

I went to the table where he sat with his friends―and let me tell you, they made a space for me like I was Moses and they were the Red Sea.

"You need a place to sit?"

"Sit here!"

"No, sit here, he smells!"

"I've got lots of room for you on the end!"

"Don't listen to those idiots, you can sit wherever you want. As long as it's next to me!"

I smiled, and didn't accept any of their invitations. I knew just how to play this. "Someone told me one of you boys knows something about computers?"

And all of a sudden all five boys at the table were computer experts. I knew for a fact at least three of them weren't, but that didn't stop them from practically climbing all over one another to impress me with their know-how.

I didn't know all that much about computers, but I knew enough to be able to weed out the poseurs.

"Good," I said, "because I need to find a way to install a thirty-two-bit sound card in a sixteen-bit slot."

Sudden silence from four of the five. But Gerardo perked up.

"It sounds like you need to upgrade your motherboard. I could do that for you."

I put out my hand and smiled at him.

"Hi, I'm Linda."

"Gerardo," he said, shaking my hand. "I was a friend of your cousin's."

For a second it caught me by surprise. Then I realized, in a high school, news traveled at the speed of pheromones. Probably every boy in school heard that I was a DeFido. Of course, they didn't know which DeFido I was.

"Gerardo ..." I said, pretending to think about his name. "I think Cara talked about you."

"She did?"

"She was in love with him," said one of the other boys.

Gerardo shrugged. "We were just friends."

"Yeah, that's what she said. She said you were dating Nikki somebody."

"Ah," said Gerardo, "that was months ago."

I looked down at my plate, then picked up my brownie and put it on Gerardo's plate, like I used to do back in the ugly days.

He looked a little creeped out for a second. "Just how much did Cara talk about me?"

I didn't answer him; I just gave him a wink. "Have a nice lunch." Then I stood up and left with the grace of a swan.

There's this expression. I think it's French. Femme fatale. It means "deadly woman," but really means more than that. It means a woman so beautiful, she can twist the world around her finger.

That was me now, and until today, I had no idea how much fun twisting could be. The problem was, I only had today to do it, and it frustrated me. I wanted to take on this school like a tornado, and leave people quivering in my wake―but with only one day, I'd be little more than a passing breeze. I was already trying to fig­ure ways to stretch out my visit―if only for a few more hours.

I knew Marisol had started spreading nasty rumors about me. Marshall was already preening to get my attention, and when I waved to Gerardo in the hall a little bit later in the day, he walked right into a locker. Femme fatale. In a way, it was so much more satisfying than just being one of the beautiful people in De León.

By the end of the day, Marshall had already asked me on a date, and I'd accepted―mainly because I knew once Marisol found out, she'd gnaw her own limbs off. Unfortunately, the date was for Saturday, so I wouldn't be able to follow through. It burned me that Marisol would have the satisfaction of my per­manent disappearance.

Gerardo wasted no time, either. He showed up at my house right after school.

"Hi, is Linda home?"

"Who?" said my idiot brother, who had answered the door. "Oh. Linda, right. Yeah, she's here."

I ducked into my room and tried to get the sudden flush to leave my face. I didn't even think he knew where I lived. When I stepped out, I had the poise and presence of a movie star.

"Gerardo," I said. "How nice to see you!"

"Hi. I came over to fix that computer problem you were having."

"Excuse me?"

He held up a bag of cables and components. "Your mother­board?"

"Oh. Oh, right." The thing is, I didn't even have a computer. "Well, that's all right. We sent it to the shop already. But thank you."

He looked disappointed. "Oh. Okay. Well. Bye."

He turned to leave, but I put my hand on his shoulder and stopped him.

"Would you like a drink?" I said.

He smiled. "Sure."

I figure he would have said "sure" to whatever I offered him. He wanted to stay as much as I wanted him to.

I got him some pop from the fridge. We sat there for a long time, just sipping, and trying to burp up the bubbles quietly enough so the other wouldn't hear.

"So," he finally said.

"So," I said back to him.

He looked at me and looked away, then looked back at me again. "Why don't you give me your number? Maybe I'll call you or something."

"My cell phone, you mean? I don't have one."

"Okay, then give me your home number."

I thought it was an odd request because he already knew the number here. But then, maybe by asking for my number he was testing the waters, to see where he stood. If I gave him the num­ber, it meant it was all right for him to call me―and that was one step short of asking me out. I wished he would have done it right then and there, but when it came to girls, I guess Gerardo wasn't quite as pushy as Marshall. I smiled at him, grabbed a pen and paper from the counter, happily wrote down the number, and handed it to him.

He looked at it closely. "Hmm. Right." Then folded it and put it in his pocket. "Well, see you in school, Linda."

He left, and the second he was gone, I went into my room and did a little victory dance. And then I remembered, if he did work up enough nerve to call me for a date, I wouldn't be here. I'd be back in De León. I flopped on my bed, cursing the unfair­ness of it all. If I could have just one date with Gerardo, just one, I could leave this place forever and be happy, couldn't I? But that wasn't going to happen.

That night, as I tossed and turned in bed, a war began in my mind. On one side were Aaron and Harmony and Abuelo―all the people of De León. I was truly one of them. I felt accepted, I be­longed―I truly did miss Aaron―and besides, I had made him a promise that I'd be back in five days.

But there was that other side. The side that said, What's a few more days gonna hurt? Finish what you started. Get your revenge on Mar­shall and Marisol. Have that one night out with Gerardo. Twist them all around your finger until you're satisfied. And then you can go back to De León forever.

The war raged inside me, and with the hours counting down until I had to leave to meet my deadline, I had no idea which side was going to win.

I woke up the next morning and found myself standing in the corner, facing northwest. I had sleepwalked again. I was still drawn to De León. It was time to say that final good-bye and be­gin my journey back.

When I turned around, I saw Vance standing at my door, watch­ing me. He didn't wisecrack, he just watched me. He seemed al­most afraid to come in.

"The place you went," he said. "It's in that direction, isn't it?"

I nodded. First I was pleased that he had figured it out, then I got worried.

"You won't tell anyone, will you?"

He didn't answer me. "Are you going back?"

"Yes," I told him.

"Good."

Then he walked off. He would never understand-―and nei­ther would anyone else. That's why I had to get back to De León.

But did I have to leave right then? I could stay for part of the day, couldn't I? If I left after school, and came home to say good­bye, I could get a ride to the old billboard before dark. If I had a bright enough flashlight, I could walk through the night and shorten the two-day trek a bit. I still might be a little bit late in getting back to De León, but at least I'd get there.

I looked at the mirror above my dresser, studying my face. Right away I could see that I wasn't a hundred percent this morning. It was just bed hair, and the kind of droopy eyes and dark circles you have when you first wake up―but ever since washing in the foun­tain, I had never had messy hair or droopy eyes in the morning. I always woke up like they do on TV―looking perfect. It wasn't a big deal at all, but it bothered me... so I took a deep breath and shook my head so that my hair flung to the left and right.

And the strangest thing happened. My hair fell into perfect place―the rings under my eyes faded―and I swear to you, for the briefest instant, it was as if the sunlight in the room dimmed, and the colors on the wallpaper faded just the tiniest bit.

I decided it was just my imagination, but deep down, I knew that it wasn't.

The big news at school was that Marshall and Marisol had broken up last night. From what I heard, Marshall just couldn't keep himself from bragging about our upcoming date to his friends. It got back to Marisol. Word was they had a breakup so vicious, somebody should have called Animal Control. It happened at the bowling alley. Marisol confronted him, so he accused her of sneaking around with other boys. She chased him down lane twelve with a bowling ball, he slipped, went flying into the pins, and got himself a strike. Now he had a bruise on his forehead from where the automatic pinsetter kept coming down, trying to pick him up.

That should have been all the victory I needed, but I was now like a shark after smelling blood.

Marisol followed me before class started. She was trying to keep me from seeing her, but I knew she was there, so when the bell rang, I ducked into the girls' bathroom, knowing she would follow. Let her think she had cornered me.

Sure enough, she came in about ten seconds later. It was just the two of us in there, and Marisol had a look in her eyes that was as murderous as any I'd ever seen.

"Good morning, Marisol," I said brightly. "Having yourself a good day?"

Her hair was unkempt, a little straggly, like she hadn't been using her salon-approved conditioner. I guess she had more things to worry about now than just her hair.

"You listen and you listen good," said Marisol. "I know you are not who you say you are, 'cause I've been checking with folks I know, and there's no Linda DeFido from Billington High."

I calmly dipped my hands under the faucet and washed my face. Was that a zit I saw trying to come through on my left cheek? No―it couldn't be.

"You're right, Marisol," I told her.

"So you had better tell me who you really are."

I smiled and took my time. "Don't you know? I'm the girl who just stole away your boyfriend and made a fool out of you. Your reign as the queen of Flock's Rest High is over."

Then the fury in Marisol's eyes took a strange turn. "You know," she said, "we don't have to be enemies." It was the same expression she had on that day in seventh grade when she had asked me to take the fall for her cheating ways. "People don't un­derstand girls like us," Marisol said. "Not really. Why spend all our time tearing each other down when we could share everything?"

"I don't share anything with you, and I never will." I started to move toward her slowly, and she backed away until she hit the tile wall. She was still angry, yes, but fear was taking over.

"You still don't recognize me, do you? Maybe because you never really looked at me."

"I don't understand," said Marisol.

"You don't? Well, let me spell it out for you. G-R-O-T-E-S-Q-U-E."

And I saw in her eyes the moment she figured it out.

"No! It's impossible ... Cara?"

Her face began to stretch in horror and disbelief. I took an­other step closer.

"A-B-O-M-I-N-A-B-L-E."

She couldn't speak now. Her throat had closed up; she could barely breathe.

I grabbed her by her pretty little sweater, pushing her hard against the wall. And that's when things, as strange as they were, went to a whole new level, as I spelled one more word for her, looking her dead in the eyes.

"M―"

The color of her eyes went from bright blue to a muddy gray.

"O―"

Acne began to rupture forth from her skin like the earth pushing up mountains.

"N―”

Her earlobes drooped, and one whole ear started to sink lower than the other.

"S―"

Her strawberry blond hair with the pretty highlights lost its sheen and started to tangle.

"T―"

Her pouty little lips drooped and cracked.

"E―"

Her teeth began to fade to a sickly shade of gray.

"R!"

I let go of her, and stepped back to look at her transforma­tion. I should have been horrified, but all I could feel was satis­faction as deep as the Caldero cavern.

"My, my, Marisol―you're as ugly as ... roadkill!"

Marisol reached up, feeling the change as she touched her face, and she screamed. "What did you do?" she wailed. "What did you do to me?!" Even her voice had changed. It was the raspy screech of a hag.

She caught her reflection in the mirror, but only for an instant before the mirror shattered. Then she ran into a stall to hide, sobbing, as if it was the end of the world.

I stepped gently over the broken glass, feeling it crackle be­neath the soles of my shoes, and I picked up a mirror shard from the ground, catching a bit of my own reflection in it.

There was no zit on my cheek―not even a red spot. I must have been wrong. My complexion was creamy pure.

I was filled with absolute contentment as I strode out of that restroom. That was the moment I knew that I wasn't going back to De León. Not tonight, not tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. No matter what I had promised―no matter how much I would miss Aaron, what I had now in Flock's Rest was worth the cost.

Harmony had been wrong. She said there would be no place for me in my old life, but I now knew otherwise. In De León, I was one face in a crowd of beautiful people, but here I was the star. And I was going to enjoy it.

20 Uglifications

Sometimes you make decisions that you know are wrong, but you make them anyway. When you're a little kid you think, Should I hit my brother and make him cry, even though I know I'm going to get in trouble for it? But the force of your will wrestles down the sense in your head and you do it anyway.

When you get older, the situations aren't quite as simple, and although you tend to have more sense, you tend to be more will­ful as well. Sometimes that sense wins out, and other times you set yourself up for a world of suffering.

My parents seemed happy that I had chosen to stay, although I think they, like Vance, would have been relieved if I didn't. It wasn't so hard making the transition to being Linda DeFido. My father knew a guy who knew a guy who could make all the com­puters in the world believe you were Marilyn Monroe, if that's what you wanted. He even managed to get fictional records transferred over from Billington High, with grades not quite as high as my real ones. Like that mattered now.

As for what happened to Marisol, I didn't understand at the time how I had "uglified" her. I thought that maybe it was like Miss Leticia had once said: Spells and spelling weren't all that different―maybe I had a little bit of witch in me after all. Maybe the fountain had brought it out.

She stayed in that bathroom stall all day long. The counselor couldn't get her out. The principal couldn't get her out. In the end, her parents came and her daddy kicked the door open.

I wasn't there to see the commotion when they saw what she looked like. All I know is they rushed her off to the hospital. The rumor was that she had come down with some rare disfiguring disease, like acute leprosy or something.

I had my date with Marshall that Saturday. He talked about himself, bragging mostly. I made up stuff about my fictional life as Linda DeFido.

He walked me home, his arm around my shoulder.

"I'd like to spend more time with you," he said. "Marisol wasn't right for me. I mean, I feel bad about her getting sick and all, but, hey, I've got my own life, right?"

He smiled at me. There was a gentle look in his eyes. Was Marshall Astor falling in love with me? I wondered. How deeply would he have to fall until I could effectively break his heart? I thought about that painful night at the homecoming dance. True, a lot of what had happened was my own fault, but I still couldn't wait to make him feel as miserable as I had felt when I ran out that night. Maybe then he'd have a glimpse of what it had been like to be me.

"Sure, Marshall," I said, gently rubbing his arm. "I'd like to see you again."

The moment became awkward, and he looked off―and pointed at the window boxes. The ones that held my mom's marigolds.

"Someone oughta water those," he said.

I looked at them. They had completely lost their petals. They were all stem and seedpod―twisted leggy things with little round black heads.

"I guess everything around here can't be as beautiful as you," Marshall said. Then he left me at my front door with a kiss that didn't make him puke.

"Was that Marshall Astor?" Momma asked as I stepped in.

"Yes. And Dad didn't even have to give him a free car to go out with me."

Dad grumbled from his spot on the sofa.

"First that boy Gerardo . . . and now Marshall," Momma said. "Exactly which one are you dating?"

"Both of them," I told her. "Any of them. All of them." And why not? I could date as many boys as I wanted. I'd earned that right. And if me seeing Marshall would make Gerardo jealous, all the better.

"Oh, by the way," I told Momma, "you need to replace your marigolds."

She wrinkled her brows. "Replace them? Why? They were fine this morning."

Gerardo never called me. Even though he had my number― even though I made it clear that I wanted him to call, he never did. It was just plain frustrating. Marshall asked me out again, though―and so I agreed to go to the movies with him, if for no other reason than to spite Gerardo.

At the movie, Marshall held me a little too close, tried to go a little too far, and I slapped him a little too hard. After that, he acted like a scolded puppy for the rest of the night.

He left me at my door, I let him give me a good night kiss, and I accepted his apologies graciously. I didn't tell him that his weren't the kisses I wanted.

There was something different about Marshall now. Maybe it was just that I was seeing through new eyes, but he didn't seem quite as good-looking to me anymore.

It wasn't just him, either. I found imperfections in everything and everybody at school. This boy had bad breath, that girl had bad hair, this one's fat, and that one's got an odd-shaped head. Was it just my imagination, or were all those things getting a little bit worse each day?

I even saw it in my family. Since when did Vance's eyes look so beady, and his two front teeth look so big? Since when did Dad's cheeks look so sunken in? And Momma's hair―had it always been so thin?

People didn't change like that, I told myself. It was all in my head. Could it be that I was surrounded by so much beauty in De León that the rest of the world paled by comparison?

I went out with Marshall four more times, making sure I con­trolled how far things went on every date. Then, after the last one, I heard the words that every girl longs to hear.

"I love you, Linda," Marshall said, and I knew that he meant it. I don't know if he had ever even said that to Marisol.

I broke up with him the next day without explanation. He was devastated.

Now, with Marisol and Marshall taken care of, I turned my at­tentions to Gerardo. I thought that maybe he was keeping his distance, thinking I was really interested in Marshall. I made it clear around school that I was now available, and although every other boy in school began fighting to carry my books or sit with me at lunch, Gerardo wasn't one of them.

There were times I caught him watching me, though. During classes we had together, he would steal a peek, then look the other way and not look at me again for the rest of the period. I would squeeze my way into his lunch table, and within a minute, he would excuse himself and go sit somewhere else. Winning him over should have been easy, but now I realized this was trick­ier than vengeance.

When I started finding love letters shoved into the vent of my locker, I thought for sure they were from Gerardo―that he had finally come around. But no, those letters were all from Marshall, professing his undying love, hoping beyond hope to win me back. I sent his letters back to him with his spelling corrected.

Most popular. Most attractive. Most desirable. I was all of those things, but it simply wasn't enough. Well, if I could strip Marisol of her beauty, then I could strip Gerardo of his resis­tance. I knew I could!

I caught up with him one day after school walking home, and I matched his pace, even though he was trying to walk faster.

"I thought you were going to call me."

"What for?" he said. "It looks like you've got all the boys you can handle."

I shrugged. "I'm still waiting for the right one."

"Well, good luck finding him."

He took a shortcut through a weedy yard and into an alley. I followed. "You've been avoiding me, and you know it," I told him. "I just want to know why."

"Because I don't think you're good for me," he said. "In fact, I don't think you're good for anyone." That was Gerardo, all right. Always honest.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Yeah, you do. You toyed with Marshall, and now he's even more of a blithering idiot than he was before. You did something to Marisol, too, didn't you? I can't prove it, and I don't know what it was you did―but you did something that's keeping her out of school."

"Gerardo," I said, still forcing sweetness into my voice, "you make me sound like a monster."

"Yeah," he said, "the Flock's Rest Monster."

I pursed my lips, keeping my mouth shut. He looked at me then, for the first time in our whole conversation.

"Yeah, I know who you are, Cara. Maybe no one else does, but I do, so you can drop the act."

At first I was going to deny it―but what good would that have done? I took a deep breath and let it out. "When did you find out?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little slip of pa­per, handing it to me. It was the phone number I had writ­ten down for him on my first day back. Like an idiot, I had written "Cara" instead of "Linda."

"At first I didn't believe it," Gerardo said. "But the more I watched you, the more I realized who you were. You knew too many things about too many people."

Okay, I thought, it was time to change strategies now. No more deceit. It was time for honesty. "I can tell you how it hap­pened―how I changed."

"I don't want to know." He hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder and picked up his pace again. "Everything about you scares me, Cara. The way you look, the way you act..." I wasn't expecting to hear that―not from him. "You got yourself a whole school to play with," he told me. "So go find yourself a guy who can only see your face, and not the rest."

"Why are you treating me like this? I'm still the same person I was before."

He shook his head. "No, you're not. You were just ugly on the outside before. But your inside and outside kind of switched places, didn't they?"

His words were like a brutal slap. I wanted to strike back, but I held my temper because I knew it would chase him away. In­stead I turned on my newfound charm. "You could be dating the most beautiful girl in Flock's Rest," I said to him. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"How long before you spit me out like you spat out Marshall?"

"You're not Marshall," I told him. "I would never do that to you."

Suddenly I heard a twang of metal, and Gerardo's lip began to bleed.

He put his hand up to his lip and took it away, seeing the blood on his fingers. The blood had now spread across his braces. The wire on his top teeth had sprung and was sticking out at a weird angle. One of those teeth was turned funny. Just one―like it had fought so powerfully against the wire trying to hold it in place that the wire busted.

With his hand held to his mouth, he said, "You see, Cara? Nothing good happens when you're around."

And he hurried across the street to get away from me.

What does it take to turn a heart black? One too many cruel tricks? One too many rejections? Or maybe it's something we do to ourselves. Evil people never think of themselves as evil. Maybe because they still remember themselves as good―or perhaps they see a future self resting peacefully in a time and place of goodness. A place where they can repent for all the awful things they did to get there.

I can't say exactly where I was, or what I was on the inside. All I knew was that I was stunning to the eye, and it blinded me to so many things. After that day, I took to brooding about Gerardo, the way that Marshall brooded about me, and feeling more and more miserable about how things had turned out. I didn't notice that fewer and fewer boys were wanting to sit with me at lunch, and that fewer and fewer girls wanted to talk with me after school. I did start to notice other things, though.

Flock's Rest had never been the most beautiful town in the world, but it wasn't an eyesore, either. Or at least I had never seen it that way. Just as with people, I was seeing our town through completely different eyes. Eyes that had known the sim­ple, perfect beauty of De León.

I had been home for about six weeks when I really became aware of it. Driving in the car with Momma one day, I spent some time looking―really looking at the state of our town. Lawns were patchy and yellow, and the paint on the houses wasn't just peeling, it was fading like someone had come in the middle of the night and robbed the color. The houses themselves had a weariness to them. Their windows looked like old eyes. Their porches seemed like mouths hung open in exhaustion. Every building in town sagged under its own weight, as if it was just longing to crumble to the ground.

"Momma," I asked, "has Flock's Rest always looked this bad?"

"Well, honey," she said, "a town gets old."

It was more than that, though. I pointed out a garden we passed. "Just look at that!" I remembered that garden―it used to be all full of rosebushes, but now it was half-dead, and the few hardy plants still alive looked like the weeds that pop up in a highway divider.

Momma shrugged. "It's just the time of year, dear. Even though we're not in a snow zone, not all that many things grow in the winter. And besides, maybe the owner likes it growing wild."

I would have argued, but just then we hit a pothole that nearly ejected me from the car and completely rattled my thoughts. Seemed to me there were more ruined roads in town, too.

I looked at the barren gray streets and sad, sallow faces around me, day after day, and I began to long once more for that place of color and light. That valley more beautiful than a painting. Because I might have been the queen of Flock's Rest, but I couldn't imag­ine a life where there was no beauty to see except for my own re­flection.

On Valentine's Day, I walked home from school alone, just as I had in the days when I was ugly. I had begun to feel sick halfway through school that day, but I had become so good at denial, I told myself it was nothing and believed it.

When I came through the gate of our trailer park, I had to do a quick double take to make sure I was in the right place. Our park, which wasn't too attractive a place to begin with, had fallen into the realm of utter squalor. The lawn blight sweeping through town seemed to have begun here. It had killed much of the grass, but no one cared. They were as untroubled as my mother was with her window boxes, which now grew nothing but mil­dew and toadstools.

When I stepped inside the door, Momma was standing there, holding the phone and looking a bit ill herself.

"Yes," she said. "I understand. Our prayers will be with them."

"Prayers?" I asked. "Who are we praying for?"

"Sit down, honey."

It's never a good thing when one of your parents tells you to sit down. Especially in that deeply understanding tone of voice. I did as I was told.

"I'm afraid something awful has happened," Momma told me. Then she took my hands in hers. "It's Marshall Astor," she said. "He's had a horrible accident."

21 Consumption

The whole story came over the phone line in bits and pieces that night from neighbors and family friends. I sifted the truth out of rumor and exaggeration, and had a pretty good idea what hap­pened.

Marshall Astor had taken his mother's car out for a joyride. He went speeding on bald tires and lost control on a bridge, halfway across the river―the same bridge where his father had gone sailing off into oblivion. The county, however, had rein­forced the guardrails after his father's accident, so instead of crashing into the river, Marshall ended up with a smashed front end, a deployed air bag, and an unspecified number of broken bones. Although everyone called it an "accident," and a "coinci­dence" that it happened to be on the same bridge, I don't think there was anything accidental about it. . . And I don't think Marshall ever once lost control of that car.

I went to visit him the next evening, after he got home from the hospital. I wasn't sure what to expect from him, but I knew that I had to go.

His mother looked at me with frightened, distrustful eyes― like she might have looked at me when I was still ugly.

"Come in," she said. "Let me tell Marshall you're here."

I waited in the living room until Marshall rolled out in a wheelchair a few moments later. He had black eyes from the punch of the air bag against his face. Both of his ankles were in casts. The impact had broken them.

"Hi, Linda."

"Hi, Marshall."

As sweet as revenge had felt a few weeks before, it felt empty now. Empty and dark. Just by looking at him, I knew that I was really the one who had driven him off the bridge. He was in love. People in love do desperate things. My own responsibility in this was almost impossible to bear, because no matter how black my heart had become, it was still beating. No matter how deep a coma my conscience was in, it couldn't ignore this.

We sat there for a long time, not saying anything. I tried to look everywhere in the room but at him, and yet I kept being drawn back to his gaze.

"Why did you do it, Linda?" he finally said. "I loved you. Why did you do what you did?"

I thought about all the answers I could give him―or, more accurately, all the ways I could worm out of answering him. "It's complicated," I could tell him―or "We weren't right for each other." But I knew I owed him far more than an excuse.

"Why, Linda?" he asked again. And so I told him.

"Because my name isn't Linda. It's Cara."

His face went through a whole series of emotions. Disbelief, denial, and finally acceptance. All in about five seconds.

"Cara DeFido," he said, and repeated it, maybe just to make sure he heard himself right. "Cara DeFido."

I nodded. "I'm sorry." It was lame to say it now, but still, I had to do it.

As I watched him, I saw his face going red. He began to bite his lower lip, and tears began to flow from his eyes. Not just flow, but gush. "You had a good time that night, didn't you?"

"What?"

"The homecoming dance. I promised you'd have a good time, and you did, right? At least until I puked in the punch bowl."

He laughed the tiniest bit through his tears.

"I did have a good time," I admitted. "I wish I hadn't ruined it."

Marshall tried to wipe away his tears, but he didn't have much luck, because they just kept on coming. "I agreed to do it be­cause of the car," he said. "I guess that makes me a creep."

I tried to put myself in his place. If someone offered me a car to go on a date with Tuddie―with Aaron―a few years ago, would I have done it? Even if I was the most popular girl in school? When it comes down to it, who wouldn't?

"I'm no one to judge," I told him.

"For what it's worth, I had a good time that night, too," he said. "I wasn't expecting to, but I did."

By now he had gotten his tears under control. He moved his legs and grimaced slightly. So I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper. A paper that was woven from strands of swan gossamer.

"Here," I said, handing it to him. "Tear this in half, and slide a piece of it inside both of your casts," I said. "It will help you heal."

He rubbed it between his fingers. "Feels nice," he said. "What does 'find the answers' mean?"

"Nothing," I told him. "Nothing at all."

As I walked home from Marshall's that night, I felt dizzy, weak, and feverish. My head pounded, and it took all my strength just to make it home. Harmony had warned me of this. Why hadn't I listened?

"Did you see Marshall?" Momma asked as I came in. "How was he? Is he all right?"

"He'll be fine," I told her.

Then she took a good look at me. "Cara, are you feeling all right? You're not looking yourself."

I was afraid to think about what that meant. "I'm fine!" I pushed my way past her, went into my room, and tried to lock the door behind me, but this was one day that Momma wasn't giving me my privacy.

"Honey," she said, "what happened to Marshall isn't your fault. He's a troubled boy."

"He's a shallow boy," I told her. "He wasn't troubled until I came along to trouble him."

Momma smiled slightly. "Don't give yourself that much credit, dear. You may be beautifrd now, but you're not Helen of Troy."

I lay down on my bed and thought about that. The face that launched a thousand ships. A woman who brought two empires into bloody battle. I wondered if Helen of Troy had been to the fountain herself.

"Momma," I asked, "did you like me more before? Has being beautiful made me horrible?"

"I love you the same either way."

I found it both comforting and unsettling. It was good to know I was loved before, but now I wanted to be loved more.

Momma sat down beside me and touched her hand to my forehead. "Cara, you're burning up."

"It's just exhaustion," I told her. "I'll sleep it off."

She looked doubtful, but she let me be, promising to check in on me during the night.

My body was aching, and I knew that whatever this illness was, it wasn't something that anyone could do anything about. I closed my eyes and felt myself falling into a troubled, fevered sleep, from which I was afraid I'd never wake up.

When I finally opened my eyes, I was in Abuelo's mansion, standing in his grand reflectorium―but Abuelo wasn't there. I was alone. Then I heard an unexpected voice.

I will make it my business to be there when your destiny comes calling.

It was Miss Leticia! I turned to see her right in the center of the room, seated at her little garden table, with a pot of tea.

"Come, child," she said. "Tea's waiting. Drink it before it gets cold."

"But... but you're dead."

Miss Leticia laughed and laughed. "Not so dead that we can't have a nice visit."

I sat across from her, knowing that this had to be a dream, but also knowing I wouldn't awake until we had had our little visit.

She poured a single cup of tea, but it was clear as water, and when I looked into the cup, it was swirling with colors, like the northern lights.

"Hurry," she said. "Drink your destiny before it's too late."

I picked up the cup and looked down into it, but the water was gone. Instead it was full of mud. Mud swarming with worms. I tried to drop the cup, but my hands wouldn't move.

Miss Leticia sighed. "My, my, my," she said. "Will you look at that. Nothing more rancid than ruined destiny Y'still gotta drink it, though―and the longer you wait, the worse it'll get."

Then she was gone, the wormy cup was gone, and I was alone, surrounded by Abuelo's many mirrors, reflecting my beautiful face.

One mirror wasn't beautiful, though. One mirror showed me the ugly girl I had once been. This dream mirror held that awful reflection and was strong enough not to break. Then a second mir­ror showed my old face, and a third. Soon half the mirrors showed me as I once was, while the other half showed what I looked like now. Slowly I walked toward one of the offensive mirrors, and with each step, I felt hotter and hotter, my fever growing―more than just fever, I felt anger as I looked at that horrible face.

"How dare you come back!" I told it. "After all I've been through, how dare you show your ugly face around here."

"There are worse things than being ugly," the nasty reflection said, but I wasn't going to listen to a thing it said. It had no con­trol over me.

"I'm stronger than you!" I told it.

It didn't answer me―it just waited to see if I truly was. And so I closed my eyes and reached to the core of myself, pulling up all the strength I could muster.

It wasn't enough. I could feel myself losing the battle. I knew I had to pull strength from somewhere else, but how could I? Suddenly the answer came to me.

"I am not ugly!" I declared out loud. "Not inside, not out." And I began to summon strength from beyond myself. "B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L."

Spells and spelling. Words. My words. They had the power. "R-A-V-I-S-H-I-N-G."

I could feel strength coming to me now. I was drawing it from the room around me!

"S-P-L-E-N-D-I-F-E-R-O-U-S."

Beyond the room, I was tapping into the earth itself.

"G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S."

It felt like flood waters spilling into an empty vessel. "G-R-A-C-E-F-U-L."

A powerful energy filled me, and when I was full to the brim, I opened my eyes. Then I spelled my final word to my hideous reflections.

"D―"

I pushed the ugliness away with all the force of my soul, and―

"I―" —one by one those mirrors changed, until every face I saw was a face of absolute beauty.

"E!"

A beautiful face everywhere I looked. I had killed the ugliness. I had won! I had won!

I woke to the grating sound of my alarm clock, and turned it off. It was morning, and my fever was gone. There was a stench in the air, though. It was faint, it was foul, and I couldn't quite place it. I got out of bed and did what I always did since the day I'd gotten back. I caught my gaze in my mirror, tossed my hair until it fell into perfect place, smiled that million-dollar smile. I thought about the dream. No cup of worms for me! I had beaten the illness, Marshall would recover, I would get over Gerardo. Things would be fine. I went out to join my family for breakfast.

The smell was worse in the rest of the house, reminding me of the roadkill that had once filled my room. "What is that god­awful stench?" I asked as I walked into the kitchen.

"What stench, dear?" Momma said.

She was at the sink, washing dishes, and Vance had his nose in the refrigerator. Only Dad was sitting down, the paper open wide in front of him.

So I sat down across from him, and when Dad lowered the newspaper, what I saw made me scream.

At the sound, Momma dropped a glass, and it crashed on the floor.

"Cara! What in God's name?"

Exactly what I thought. What in God's name? Because the face before me was not the one I'd known yesterday. My father's teeth, always a little bit yellow, were practically green now, and twisted in his head like tilted tombstones in a forgotten grave­yard. His nose hooked miserably to one side. And he had a Ne­anderthal ridge on his forehead.

I looked at Momma for an explanation, but what I saw there was even worse. Hollow gray cheeks, eyes too close and sunk deep in their sockets, a dangling piece of skin on her neck like a turkey, and tufts of blond hair so thin you could see her pink peeling scalp.

I gasped and put my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming again.

Nothing more rancid than ruined destiny.

"Honey, you don't look right," said Momma. "Have you still got a fever?"

I could only shake my head. How could I begin to explain?

When Vance turned to me, I wasn't looking at my brother. What stared back at me from the fridge looked more like a rat than a human being. Those front teeth of his that had always had the slightest of overbites now stuck so far out of his mouth he couldn't get his lips around them.

"What's up with her?"

"Look at yourselves!" I shouted. "Don't you see?"

Momma turned to Dad. She squinted her sunken eyes and said, "Honey, you really should shave before you go off to the car lot."

"Shave?" I said. "Shave?!"

I stood up, and the chair behind me fell over.

"You gonna eat that waffle?" said the rat boy in my brother's clothes.

I bolted out of there, running through a trailer park twice as decrepit as it had been the day before. What was it that kept them from seeing the change in one another? I couldn't explain it any more than I could explain the transformational power of the fountain. Then I thought of my dad, and his old TV shows. Strange hair, ugly clothes, weird talk, all of which had been per­fectly normal in a certain time and place.

Is that what had happened just now? Did my parents and my brother come to see this new ugliness as normal, instantly getting used to it, just as they had gotten so used to that horrible stench that filled the air?

That stench!

I was out of the trailer park now, and in a neighborhood of once-beautiful homes. But now the well-tended yards were choked with weeds, and the pavement was cracked and pushing up at awk­ward angles. The homes had a sagging sadness that nothing short of a bulldozer could repair. The smell kept growing stronger, and now a buzzing sound filled the air as well.

Then, when I rounded a corner, I saw where the sound and the smell were coming from.

Vista View Cemetery.

There were flowers on the hillside of Vista View. Miss Leticia's roses and ferns had all dried up and died . . . but one flower had gone to seed. What was it Miss Leticia had said? That the sweet and the rancid both have their place in the world? But what hap­pens when the sweetness is drained away?

Now covering the hill were dozens upon dozens of corpse flowers. Big, huge, brown petals around oozing stalks. I recog­nized the buzzing as the sound of a million flies, swarming around the massive blooms, practically blackening the sky.

I covered my nose, my mouth; I tried not to breathe. I turned in the other direction, running away from it, but there were fresh seedlings in every yard―maybe only six inches tall now, but growing. According to Miss Leticia, the foul plant took three years to bloom―but ugliness now had its own timetable. The way scar tissue filled a wound, something had to fill the space left when what little beauty this town had had was sucked away.

Sucked away by me.

It began with Marisol. I had taken her looks by force, so it happened in an instant―but the rest of the town had faded slowly―too slowly for me to really see at first. I was too busy looking in the mirror to notice. Then came the illness―and I now understood the vision I had had during my fevered dream. Harmony had warned me, but I hadn't understood.

Consumption.

What a perfect name for this strange illness―because in the throes of fever, something was most definitely consumed. The fire of beauty now burns within you, Abuelo had told me. It was a fire . . . and like every fire, it needed to be fueled. There in De León, the fountain didn't just give us beauty, it fueled it. The water was in the grass, in the trees, in the very air of the valley. But once I left, the flame of beauty had to find its fuel elsewhere. I suppose if my will had been weaker, the flame would have died. My face would have sagged, my ugliness would have returned. But that didn't happen. I was strong, and my beauty was predatory. And so in the depth of my fever, I began to steal beauty around me, con­suming it like a wildfire in the wind. Consuming it like . . . a black hole. My face now truly was a black hole, draining away the beauty of anything that came too close.

Just how far did this go? Was it just the neighborhood around the trailer park―or did it go farther? There was only one way to find out.

I ignored the awful stench and unsightly visions around me, and I stumbled my way across the jagged, root-cracked pavement of my ruined town until I reached school.

22 Gauntlet of grunge

The beige bricks of Flock's Rest High had gone black, as though they'd been covered in soot. Grime filled the corners of every window. The flagpole leaned like the mast of a sunken ship, and the flag that waved there was tattered and twisted.

If I'd had any doubts, they were gone as I walked through the halls of my school. Every face I saw was grotesque and stomach churning, and I wondered if after today there would be any mir­rors left intact in town. Then I came around a bank of lockers and found myself staring into the bulging eyes of the one person I never wanted to see again.

Marisol Yeager.

Her exile hadn't lasted long. She was back with her friends, laughing, talking, smiling with teeth so gray they could have been made of asphalt. When she saw me, she became quiet. They all became quiet.

"Well, look who's here," she said. "The Flock's Rest Monster."

Her clothes, which had always been so pretty, were a wild mishmash of colors and textures.

"I'm sorry," I told Marisol. I never thought I'd say that to her. And even if I said it, I never thought I'd mean it. I looked at the freak show of faces all around me. "I'm sorry. This is not what I wanted. I never meant to make you all so . . . so . . . ugly."

They looked at me and at one another, not understanding what I was talking about―except for Marisol. She knew who I was; she knew what I had done. Maybe she couldn't explain it, but she knew.

"Hasn't anyone told you?" she said, with a nasty gray-mouthed smile. "Ugly is the new pretty."

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, sincere 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 length 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.