Нил Шустерман: Duckling 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."