Нил Шустерман: Duckling Ugly

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."

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.