Нил Шустерман: Duckling Ugly

Today she was tending to lilies of the valley, blooming around a little indoor pond. Her hands were covered with dirt.

"They're beautiful," I told her, and then I felt bad, because I knew she couldn't really see them.

"Beautiful, yes," she said, "but poisonous as a cobra. Let me go wash my hands, and I'll make us some tea."

When she came back, I told her all about the letter.

"What do you think it means?" I asked.

Miss Leticia held the letter in her withered hands. She moved her fingers across its surface, as if it were Braille.

"My, my," she said. "This is a fine weave. Not quite paper, not quite cloth―something else." She smelled it, but I already knew it had no scent. I'm sure all she could smell was the rich aroma of all of her blooming flowers. Her prize corpse flower had not yet opened, so everything still smelled sweet and calming, like the flavor of her tea.

"Do you think it's for real?" I asked. "Or do you think it's a joke?"

"Jokes don't come on paper like this. Give me the envelope."

I put it into her hands. She rubbed her thumb on the corners.

"No stamp? Is there a postmark?"

"No."

"That means it was hand-delivered."

"Someone must have just put it into our mailbox."

"You said the town is De León?"

"Yes," I told her. "And in our state, too."

"I don't know such a place."

She handed me the letter and leaned back in her chair. As she crossed her ankles, I could hear the gentle clink of her leg braces touching each other. "I don't know where the letter came from, but I can tell you this: Whoever sent it means for you to take it very seriously. They truly mean for you to find the answers."

"How can I 'find the answers' when I don't know the questions?"

And then Miss Leticia took my hands in hers. I flinched, thinking she might grip me with her nails again, but instead she rubbed my hands gently.

"You should start with just one. What do you think the most important question is?"

I didn't answer her. Maybe because I was more afraid of knowing the question than the answer.

When I got home, Vance was fighting with Dad over the control of the living-room TV. Dad was, of course, watching RetroToob. An awful episode of the show Nine Is Too Much , about a huge fam­ily in the 1970s that apparently had an electronic laugh track fol­lowing them wherever they went.

"How can you watch this garbage?" Vance said. "I mean, look at how they're dressed―they look like clowns."

I glanced at the TV. He was right. Striped pants and flowery shirts, all in colors that didn't match, and everyone's hair hung long in all the wrong places.

"When we were growing up," Momma said patiently, "those were the fashions. At the time it looked good to us."

Dad pointed his lecture finger at Vance. "You watch―when you have children, they're going to laugh at the way you wore your pants, and the strange things you did to your hair."

I walked past them, my hand in my pocket, still holding the mysterious note. I had no desire to be a part of the family festivi­ties tonight.

"Honey, where have you been?" Mom asked, just notic­ing me.

"Out," I answered, and went toward my room, to find that my door was closed. This wasn't unusual in itself... but I did see something that gave me pause. There was some cloth wedged beneath my door. I recognized it as one of my sweatshirts. It was blocking the space under the door so no air could get through. Who had put it there?

I pushed open the door, and was attacked by a stench so foul, I fell back against the hallway wall.

"Oh, yuck!" I heard Vance say from the living room. "What is that reek?"

Holding my hand over my nose, I forced myself to enter my room. I saw it immediately. It was everywhere. Bloody masses of fur and rot tacked to my wall, all over my ink drawings.

Roadkill.

Opossums, raccoons, rabbits. It wasn't just on the walls, but in my drawers, too, every single one. It was all over my clothes, and everything I owned.

This was a violation. A horrible, evil violation of one of the few places in the world I actually felt safe from the outside world. By now Vance and my parents were at the threshold. "Honey?"

I closed the door on them. I didn't want them to see this. Roadkill in my dresser, roadkill in my closet. My clothes were ruined. Even if I could get out the smell, I'd never get out the stains. And it wasn't over yet―because there was a lump be­neath my covers. A large lump. As I approached it, I steeled my­self for what I might find, and before I could change my mind, I pulled back the covers.

The coyote in my bed looked like it had met up with a semi. This coyote, however, had a dog tag around its neck. And the name on the tag said: CARA DEFIDO.

I slipped out of my room, not letting my family see inside.

"Honey, what's going on in there?" Momma asked, trying to peek around me. "What's that awful smell?"

"Nothing," I told her calmly. "I'll take care of it."

"Doesn't seem like nothing to me," Dad said.

"I said I'll take care of it. Just get me some trash bags."

Like the mysterious letter, this was my business. My problem. But unlike the letter, this was no mystery. This was Marisol.

I spent the rest of that day and halfway into the night in rub­ber gloves, disposing of the mess and scrubbing down my room. How had things come to this? One escalation after another ...

I should have realized she'd get revenge for her ink-stained blouse―but this was beyond a single shot of ink thrown in the heat of anger. This was premeditated, and carefully planned. She had to know when no one would be home, and she'd need ac­complices to do the dirtiest of the work. How could someone so beautiful be so mean-spirited? As I scraped up nasty bits of fur, I thought back to the one and only time Marisol had been nice to me. Even then she had had an agenda.

"Cara, I know we haven't really been friends, but I think that can change."

It was seventh grade. We had just gotten pink slips to go to the principal's office. Something about cheating on a science test.

"The thing is," Marisol said, "I was sick before the test." She gave a little fake cough. "That's why I couldn't study. So I thought just this once I could borrow some answers from some­one smart. Someone like you."

Then she went on to give me this whole sob story about how she was once "framed" for cheating, and if she got caught this time, the punishment would be bad.

"So what do you want me to do about it?" I asked her.

"Well, Cara," she said sweetly, "you've never been in trouble, so I figure if you admit to cheating off of me, they'll go easy on you. You just look at them with those sad eyes―how can they help but feel pity?"

"And what do I get in return?" I asked.

"My friendship," she said, "and a promise that one day I'll pay back the favor."

Ten minutes later, we were in the principal's office, and the principal told us exactly what we expected to hear, in exactly the tone of voice we expected to hear it. "Blah blah blah identical tests, blah blah blah zero tolerance." And then he waited to hear our response.

"Well," said Marisol, letting it all roll off her back, "I know nothing about this. Maybe Cara has something to say."

The principal looked at me. I took a long moment to think about this one, knowing full well what the consequences would be, either way. Finally, I said, "Every word is spelled right."

"Excuse me?" the principal said.

"The written answers. Every word is spelled right. I'm the county spelling champion, five years running." I looked at the questions on the test in front of me. Question number six was: What do you call the engine of a human cell? "Why don't you ask Marisol to spell mitochondria?"