Нил Шустерман: Duckling Ugly

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."