Duckling Ugly

by Neal Shusterman

  “Hey,” he said as he sat down with his tray.

  I just kept on eating.

  “So what do you think this is?” he asked, pointing to the lumpy white stuff slithering all over an English muffin on his plate.

  “Creamed gopher,” I suggested. “The Tuesday special.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, probably.” Then he sat there in an uncomfortable silence that irked me.

  “So, like, why do you sit here all by yourself?” he finally asked.

  I liked his direct approach, so I answered him. “I don’t sit all by myself. I just sit. Being all by myself, that’s other people’s idea.” More silence, and so I said, “Are you gonna ask me to the homecoming dance?”

  The look on his face was worth the price of admission and then some. It made me laugh out loud suddenly, and some creamed gopher came out of my nose. Seeing that made him laugh. I wiped the stuff off.

  “So you weren’t serious?”

  “Hey,” I said, “I’m serious if you are.”

  “Nah,” he said with a certainty that left no room for doubt.

  When it came to looks, Gerardo was no Marshall Astor, but he wasn’t bad-looking, either. He had dark, decent hair; a body that was a little bit scrawny, but not at all mealy. His teeth had once been crooked, but braces were taking care of that. All in all, Gerardo was an average-looking guy, and from what I could see, he always had the attention of a few average-looking girls. It didn’t take long for me to figure out what he was doing in the mercy seat.

  “So which girl are you trying to impress?” I asked.

  He gave me that openmouthed, shrug-shouldered I-don’t-know-what-you-mean expression, and so I gave him that tilt-headed, cross-armed, I-ain’t-buying-it look.

  A moment more, and he caved. “Nikki Smith,” he said with a sigh. “She thinks I’m not sensitive. I figured coming over here and talking to you might make her think different.” He looked at me for another second, then began to get up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was dumb.”

  On another day I might have let him go, but today I was feeling vulnerable. Although I had gotten used to being alone, some days were better than others when it came to accepting it.

  “Don’t leave yet,” I whispered to him. “If you really want to make it stick, you have to sit here with me until the bell rings. She’ll really be impressed by that.”

  He took on a cornered-animal look.

  “Yeah, I know, sitting with me for all of lunch is a fate worse than death.”

  “Well, not worse,” he answered, and he made himself comfortable in the mercy seat again.

  “So, are you?” I asked.

  “Am I what?”

  “You said you wanted to show Nikki that you’re sensitive. Are you?”

  “I don’t know. I guess.” He thought about it. “I’m not insensitive…or at least I’m not insensitive on purpose.”

  “Well, that’s better than nothing, I guess.”

  “Why do girls always want sensitive guys anyway?”

  “They don’t want their feelings hurt,” I told him. “They figure a sensitive guy won’t hurt their feelings, even if he breaks up with them.” I noticed that Gerardo had eaten his dessert first, so I spooned my Jell-O onto his plate. A reward for taking the mercy seat. “Of course, I’ve got no feelings left to hurt. An insensitive guy would be fine with me, as long as I got to smack him if he got too insensitive.”

  He laughed at that, then leaned a bit closer. “So tell me, because I gotta know—how come you and Marisol hate each other so much?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “Look at her, look at me.”

  Gerardo shook his head. “No—it’s more than that. It’s like you two have got…what’s it called…a vendetta.” Good word, I thought. V-E-N-D-E-T-T-A.

  “She sat next to me in science class in seventh grade.” And that was all I told him. I didn’t tell Gerardo how she got by in science by copying answers from the boys she flirted with—there were always one or two within cheating distance. That particular semester she got seated in a corner with just me next to her and Buford Brainard in front of her—a kid who had all of his brains in his name, and none in his head.

  So Marisol had a choice: Either she could study for the tests or cheat from me. You can guess which she chose. Up till then, Marisol’s nastiness was limited to the occasional cruel jab to keep me in my place. After all, her circle was so far above mine, most of the time she didn’t see me. However, things did not go well for either of us that semester, and our general feeling of dislike bloomed into something vicious.

  “If you want to know why we hate each other, ask her to spell mitochondria,” I told Gerardo.

  “Huh?”

  “Mitochondria. Ask her to spell it.”

  “What’ll she do if I ask?”

  “Probably claw your eyes out.”

  “No thanks, I’ll pass.”

  Then Gerardo looked at me—and not just a sneaky sideways glance. I get those kinds of glances all the time—people stealing a look like they might check out a circus freak. This look from Gerardo wasn’t one of those, though. His eyes scanned my face, taking in all my features.

  “You know, there’s stuff they can do for a person’s face these days,” he said.

  “Really?” I said. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Surgery and stuff. I saw this one show—they took a guy who was like the Elephant Man and made him look halfway decent. Not that you’re the Elephant Man or anything.”

  He was right; he wasn’t insensitive on purpose, just by accident. I could respect that. “Yeah, right, surgery,” I said. “Maybe if my parents win the lottery.”

  “I guess that kind of thing costs an arm and a leg, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They charge an arm and a leg, and all they give you is a face. Pound for pound, not a very good trade, is it?”

  “Guess not,” he said. “But there’s gotta be some guys around who’d go for a girl…like you.”

  Normally, I’d be insulted by this conversation. But Gerardo was saying it like he cared about the answer.

  Suddenly Gerardo snapped his fingers. “Hey, what about that one kid, uh…” He looked up, trying to remember his name. “Started with a T. Tad. Todd.”

  “Tud,” I said, miserably. “And that wasn’t his name, it was a nickname.”

  “Yeah, whatever happened to him?”

  “Gone,” I said, and offered nothing more.

  “Too bad, you two coulda been a pair.”

  Any inroads Gerardo had made with me were now gone. I turned my attention to my plate and didn’t look up. I just scarfed down my creamed gopher.

  “What? Did I say something wrong?” Gerardo asked.

  I could tell him, but the telling would require an explanation, and I just didn’t feel like it. “You can go now,” I said. “Time off for good behavior. I’m sure Nikki will be satisfied.”

  “Nope, the bell hasn’t rung.”

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  I didn’t say another word to him.

  Finally, the bell rang, he got up and left, and I knew, like all the others who had come for their own selfish reasons, he would never grace the mercy seat again.

  Tud. Tuddie. A kid I hadn’t thought about for more than two years, and hoped never to think about again. You could say I had blocked out his memory, but that afternoon, thanks to Gerardo, Tuddie was all I could think about as I walked home.

  Tuddie was as ugly as me—maybe uglier, if you can imagine such a thing. He had ears that stuck out like fleshy funnels, a crooked underbite like a badly bred bulldog, pasty skin, and sad, sagging eyes. Like me, there was no actual physical deformity to him, he just had an unnatural case of butt-ugliness. I couldn’t even remember what his real name was. Everyone just called him Tud, which was short for “That Ugly Dude.”

  He used to try to hang out with me when we were still in grade school, thinking we had something in common. I tried to be nice to him�
��I really did—but the truth was, I hated him as much as I hated the beautiful people like Marshall or Marisol. Maybe I hated Tuddie more, because he saw us as kindred spirits—as if ugliness loved company the way misery did. Well, I could live with my own face, but I didn’t have to live with his. Eventually, I started ignoring him, giving him the cold shoulder, trying to be anywhere he wasn’t. Still, he’d always find me—and then people started calling me Tug. “That Ugly Girl,” which to me was far worse than any of the other nicknames folks gave me. “The Flock’s Rest Monster”—at least that had identity to it. “That Ugly Girl” did not.

  Finally, I snapped. I pushed that boy away—told him to crawl back under whatever rock he crawled out from, and never come out again.

  And so he did.

  One day he just disappeared. Some say his daddy put him out of his misery. Others say he ran away to join a freak show. Ralphy Sherman said he got sold into slavery in Madagascar. Whatever the truth was, Tuddie was gone, and I was glad for it. Once he was gone, they stopped calling me Tug and went back to calling me the Flock’s Rest Monster, which was fine by me. Better a solitary monster by choice than a pathetic pair of repulsives.

  But with each step I walked that afternoon, there came another memory of Tuddie’s tragic, festering face, and my own sense of despair began to deepen. Looking at him was the closest I could come to looking in a mirror. His sorry fate, whatever it was, couldn’t be much different from what mine would eventually be.

  By the time I got home, I was feeling lower than low. The last thing I expected was to find my destiny waiting on the kitchen table.

  5

  Question and Answer

  “Something came in the mail for you, honey,” Momma said the second I got home. She left it for me on the kitchen table, all by itself, so I couldn’t miss it when I came in. It was a little white square right in the center of the big brown circle of the table.

  The letter was addressed in a sweeping handwriting I couldn’t imitate even if I had the finest brush. The words were like wispy clouds blowing across a windswept sky.

  Miss Cara DeFido.

  My name had never looked so beautiful.

  “Who on earth do you think it’s from?”

  I just shrugged. I think Momma was more curious than I was about it. Who with such handwriting would be writing to me?

  I picked up the creamy white envelope. The paper must have been expensive, soft to the touch, like velvet. I flipped it over to see who it was from, but there was no name, just an address: 1 Via del Caldero, in a city named De León.

  I tried to rip the envelope open, but it wouldn’t tear. I tried to peel it back from where it had been sealed, but the glue held tight.

  Momma handed me her fancy letter opener. Carefully, I inserted it into the corner and slit it across. The paper resisted for a moment, then cut with no noise, as if I was cutting through a living membrane. I shivered.

  “Go on, go on, see what’s inside,” Momma said.

  I reached in and pulled out the letter. It was on the same creamy white paper. There were no marks or letterhead to reveal the sender—and only three words on the page, written in the same sweeping handwriting.

  “Well, what is it?” asked Momma impatiently. “Is it a letter from someone we know? Is it an invitation?”

  I held the page out of her sight.

  “It’s none of your business,” I told her. When she realized I was serious, she huffed and left the room. Mom’s curiosity would have her stewing all afternoon, but I didn’t care. This, I knew, was a personal message, not meant for anyone’s eyes but mine.

  I sat down at the table and took a few deep breaths. I was getting light-headed, and my fingers were getting cold. An inexplicable excitement was being pumped through my veins. I looked at the smooth white note once more.

  Three words. That’s all. No signature, no explanation.

  Those three words were a challenge, and deep in my heart, I knew it was nothing so simple or easy as a spelling bee. This was the challenge of my life.

  I moved my index finger across the page, feeling its velvety smoothness, and traced the letters with my fingertip.

  FIND THE ANSWERS

  The three simple words that changed my life forever.

  Miss Leticia’s greenhouse was different during the daytime than it was at night, but it was just as beautiful. When I got there, the sun was shining through the great glass dome of its center section, casting lines across everything like the bars of a cell. I could now see the tops of the trees in the dome. To me, it was a reminder that this enclosed oasis was nothing but captured beauty. A false reality to be sure, yet easy to lose oneself in, as Miss Leticia had been lost all these years.

  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.