Нил Шустерман: Duckling Ugly

Like magic.

I gasped, and reached into my pocket, pulling out the shim­mering note. I had been running my fingertips over its soft tex­ture day after day, and my fingers had been healed. Repaired. Beautified. It was definitely a hint of something magical and mys­tical, but how far it went―how deep it went, was still a mystery.

"I'm not going."

"What do you mean you're not going?"

My momma was practically on her hands and knees, begging. "He is the handsomest boy in your grade, and if he's taken a lik­ing to you―"

"He hasn't taken a liking to me," I told her. "Face it; there's something else going on here."

She put her hands on her hips. "Well, how do you know he isn't into ugly girls?"

The very concept completely derailed my train of thought.

"In this world," my momma said, "there is a man for every woman. You go to the mall, you look at people. Half the time they look so mismatched you wonder what's going on. But to them, they fit perfectly."

Vance sat in the recliner just enjoying the whole thing. Dad was in the kitchen, pretending not to listen, but I know he was.

"What are you gonna do for the rest of your life, Cara?" Momma asked. "You gonna lock yourself in your room? You gonna climb out that window and go walk around the cemetery your whole life?"

I snapped my eyes to her..

"You think I don't know you do that? I know every time you climb out that window, but I never say anything because I figure you've got a right to do the things you do."

"Fine. And I have a right not to go with Marshall anywhere," I said, but my resolve was failing. Then I got to thinking, if this whole thing wasn't some scheme of Marisol's, and if she truly didn't want Marshall to take me, then how could I pass up this chance to make her miserable? I thought about Gerardo, too. He'd be there with Nikki. Certainly, she wouldn't stand for him dancing with most other girls, but what about me? If Gerardo danced with me, would Nikki see that as him being noble? I could swallow my pride and pretend to be some social charity case if it meant Gerardo would dance with me. Then again, would he even ask? I'd never know if I stayed home.

I think Momma knew I was on the verge of giving in, because she got quiet. Serious.

"Honey, life does not throw you many opportunities," Momma said. "Don't go and squander the ones you get."

"But I don't like Marshall Astor."

"You don't have to," Momma told me.

And the look in her eyes when she said it struck home, be­cause I knew she wasn't talking about me and Marshall. She was talking about her and Dad.

There were good things I could say about my momma and bad things. But the sadness I saw in her right then made me feel selfish thinking about myself.

"Go and be happy, Cara," Momma said. "I need you to be happy."

That fence I was sitting on had become too uncomfortable, so I finally jumped off. "Okay," I said. "I'll go."

I didn't tell Gerardo. I had planned to, but then he started talk­ing all about how he and Nikki were going to the dance, and he asked me what I thought he should wear. After that, I didn't want to talk about it. No matter what awful fate awaited me at that party, it would be worth it to see the look on Gerardo's face when I walked in with Marshall!

The day before homecoming, Nikki went to get her teeth cleaned, determined that if she couldn't outshine the likes of Marisol and her beauty-queen friends, she could at least outsmile them. While Nikki's motormouth was being worked over, Ger­ardo had the afternoon free. So I took him to Vista View to meet Miss Leticia.

"This here's a good girl," Miss Leticia told him. "You treat her right, you hear?"

Gerardo put up his hands. "Hey, I'm not gonna treat her at all."

"Well," said Miss Leticia, "that's fine, too."

Miss Leticia seemed worried about something today. She wasn't saying anything, but it was right there in her body language.

"Are you okay?" I asked her.

"Oh, I'm fine. I got my son and that wife o' his comin' over tomorrow, and they always set me on edge."

I didn't ask any more questions. Miss Leticia had told me how, every time they come over, they bring brochures from nurs­ing homes―not good ones, but the cheap ones that give you a room, a bed, and, if you're lucky, something edible once in a while. The kind of place you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Okay, maybe your worst enemy, but no one else.

"Maybe the corpse flower will bloom and chase them away," I suggested.

She laughed at that. "Maybe so, maybe so. It sure is gettin' ready."

"The what flower?" asked Gerardo.

"Come on, I'll show you."

Miss Leticia went inside, leaving us to walk through the green­house. There was a sour smell in the air, like dirty socks, as we got close to the corpse flower. Its stalk was now almost six feet high. You could see the crack where the flower would start to unfurl. "When it blooms it smells like dead bodies," I told him.

"Cool," he said. "I hope she opens up the doors so the whole town gets a whiff. The ultimate stink bomb!"

I thought it would be perfect if we were holding hands as we walked among the plants, but I knew that wasn't going to hap­pen. Still, I tried to keep my hands in full view, hoping he'd no­tice how nice they'd been looking. He didn't, but he did make another observation.

"You know, I don't know why they call you the Flock's Rest Monster," Gerardo said. "There's nothing monstrous about you. Except maybe for the way you look, but looks don't make a monster. It's the things a person does."

"I don't know," I told him. "I've done some pretty monstrous things."

"Tell me one."

And so I told him all about how I got Marisol expelled from school.

"Hmm," said Gerardo when I was done. "Well, you didn't do anything monstrous at all. Marisol brought that on herself."

"So what about you?" I asked him. "What bad things have you done?"

He looked away from me then, tugged off a loose fern leaf, and fiddled with it.

"I've done some stuff."

"Tell me."

He kept his eyes on the fern in his hands instead of me.

I could tell there was something he wanted to say, yet didn't want to say at the same time. I wondered which part of him would win out.

"Go on, it's okay," I told him.

"No, it's not," he said. "But I'll tell you anyway." He took a deep breath. "You know, I almost got expelled, too. It was last year. They weren't just going to expel me, they were going to send me to juvie."

"I didn't know that." And then I asked as gently as I could, "What did you do?"

"I hacked into the district's computer. I didn't change grades or anything. I just got onto the teachers' Web sites and had some fun. I put pictures of monkeys in place of their faces, stuff like that."

I grinned. "I didn't know you were a computer geek."

He shrugged. "I'm not. It's just a hobby, you know."

"Well, that's not so bad," I told him.

"Yeah." Then he paused. "I swore I'd never do anything like that again. But about a month ago, your friend Marisol asked me to hack into another computer."

"Marisol wanted you to fix up her grades?"

He shook his head. "No. She wanted me to do something else."

I still didn't get where this was going. Usually, I'm quicker, but not this time. I just stood there cluelessly waiting to hear what despicable thing Marisol had asked him to do.

"Anyway, she pulled out a stack of bills from her purse. I don't know where she got it from. I tell her no, but she keeps peeling off twenties ... until I finally say yes."

"So what did she ask you to do?"

He looked at me like I should already know... but when I looked back at him, still clueless, he finally said: "She had me hack into a certain computer, and put in a secret wireless Web connection, so I could control the computer from my laptop ... and choose the words it was asking people to spell..."