Duckling Ugly

by Neal Shusterman

“C…C…Cara.”

  “We’ve got to get you inside!”

  I looked around. The nearest structure was the greenhouse, its back entrance just about fifty yards away. I tried to lift her, but she was too heavy. In the end, I had to drag her across the hill by her armpits. I pulled open the door of the greenhouse, and was laid low by a stench more awful than anything I could remember. Miss Leticia groaned, then grinned. I pulled her over the threshold, and we collapsed in a bed of begonias.

  That smell—it was like the horrible stench of meat left to rot in the hot, hot sun. A smell like my roadkill room, only ten times worse, and there were flies everywhere.

  “It bloomed,” Miss Leticia said weakly. “It finally bloomed.”

  There, just a few feet away from us, I could see the corpse flower’s huge bloom. It had the shape of a teacup, but three feet wide and four feet high, surrounding that six-foot stalk.

  Flies buzzed over the brim, in and out, in and out, pollinating the hideous thing.

  Now it was complete. Now everything in the world had gone rancid.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” she said.

  “We’ve got to get you help.”

  “No help. No help. Already got my wish,” she said. Her arm fluttered slightly. I took her hand. “The good Lord saw fit to keep me where I want to be. I got a plot waiting on the south side of the hill. It’s good there. It’s good.”

  I wanted to tell her to hold on. I wanted to tell her she’d come through, but it would have been a lie. “Please don’t go,” I begged, even though I knew I was being selfish. Because I needed her. She must have known what I was thinking, because tears came to her clouded eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I promised I would be here to see your destiny.” She gripped my hand with the last of her strength. “Go find it,” she said. “You go find the answers.”

  She didn’t go limp. She didn’t even loosen her grip. But in a moment her eyes, as lifeless as they had seemed before, became truly glazed with the emptiness of death, and I knew she was gone. I rolled her gently onto her back, closed her eyelids, and folded her hands over her chest. Then I tore two massive petals from her beloved corpse flower and covered her body.

  I cried for her. They say when you cry for the dead, you’re really crying for yourself, and maybe partly I was. My life had become one betrayal after another. Gerardo, Marshall, my parents. Now fate itself had stolen the only person in my life who hadn’t betrayed me. I was alone now—really alone—and in that dark lonely moment, I dared to tempt fate. Not just tempt it, but challenge it.

  The lights of the greenhouse were reflected in its many windows. At night, in the rain, you couldn’t see anything beyond the glass. I pushed aside the big rhododendron and fern leaves until I caught my own gaze in the glass: my rain-drenched hair, my sagging gown, my awful cheeks and chin and teeth, all reflected painfully back at me.

  Then that glass did what nature told it to. It shattered—and not just the window in front of me: It began a chain reaction around the entire greenhouse. One pane after another crackled and blew out, until the air was white with falling crystal, jabbing the plants and ground, piercing my dress, my skin.

  And I screamed, not out of physical pain, but a pain much deeper, and much greater.

  When it was done, the greenhouse was nothing but a skeleton. All that remained was the iron frame and the shredded fragments of plants.

  I could have crumbled, too. God knows I wanted to. Just fall into a heap until they found me there.

  But it’s in those moments when your world falls apart that you discover what you truly are made of. And I was not made of broken glass.

  One by one, I pulled the shards from my arms and shoulders and scalp, dropping them on the ground. Then I walked out of that place, got into the Chevy my father had so unwittingly provided me, and left town.

  11

  Northwest

  I had no money, I had no destination, but that didn’t matter. When your only desire is to leave, any direction you take is the right one, as long as you don’t turn around. I was still bleeding from the greenhouse glass, but I made myself believe it didn’t matter. I would close the wounds with the sheer force of my will.

  My life as I knew it was gone. It was now a blank page—that white void waiting to be carved into a new form by brush and ink. Who I would be was still a mystery, and in that car, in transit between a horrible past and an unknown future, I felt the terror and excitement of a babe at the moment of its birth.

  A powerful sense of determination overtook me. Maybe it was just shock and loss of blood, or maybe it was something else. It felt magical—like a string was wrapped around my soul and pulling me forward, and if I didn’t stomp on that accelerator, heading down those country roads to God knows where, that string would have pulled me right through the windshield to wherever it wanted me to go.

  Like I said, any direction would have been fine, as long as it took me away from Flock’s Rest—but I wasn’t going in just any old direction, was I? I realized that pretty quick.

  I was heading northwest. And this time, for the first time, I didn’t resist the pull.

  There were few cars out on a night like this, and with every mile I put between me and Flock’s Rest, I began to feel my spirits lift.

  Every few miles on that rain-drenched highway, I saw reminders of what I was leaving behind that made me kick up the rpm and push the Chevy harder. It was those signs by the side of the road, blooming in my headlights. Those old faded billboards advertising my father’s cars.

  Ten miles out, I saw my father’s smiling face. The billboard read DEFIDO MOTORS: CLASSIC CARS FROM CLASSY TIMES.

  Nineteen miles out, there he was again, the billboard showing him sitting on the roof of a used car, holding an American flag—as if buying used cars and patriotism were one and the same. DEFIDO MOTORS TRIED & TRUE.

  Twenty-seven miles out, a billboard featuring my momma in her pink Cadillac, pointy tail fins and all. DEFIDO MOTORS, WHERE FINS STAND FOR STATUS.

  I realized that the gravity was pulling me due west now. But there were no roads that went that way. Although I couldn’t see them, I knew what was west of me. The mountains. The nearest road that crossed them was miles away.

  I was approaching the county line. Just a few more of my father’s old signs, and I’d be out of his sphere of influence for good. My gas tank was full. My mind was set. And nothing could stop me from escaping forever that hideous place “where fins stand for status.”

  Even in my weakened state, I couldn’t help but get stuck on that phrase. It kept coming back to my mind. DeFido Motors, Where Fins Stand for Status.

  Find the answers…Where…fins…stand…

  I slammed on the brakes so hard I fishtailed, and did a full one-eighty. I found myself facing the wrong way in the lane, with a truck bearing down on me.

  I hit the accelerator and pulled off the road, landing in a ditch. The truck barely missed me, its blaring horn changing pitch as it swerved past.

  Now my wheels spun in mud, and I knew there was no getting this car out of the ditch. Dizziness almost overtook me then. I clutched the steering wheel and closed my eyes until the feeling passed.

  Then I got out of the car and headed back to the billboard on foot.

  It was about a mile back. In the darkness, it looked completely black. Only in flashes of lightning could I see it now, and only for a second. My momma looked so happy in the picture, but that was a long time ago. Now the old billboard was falling victim to the elements. Another year or so, and a few more storms like this, and it would be down completely. One side leaned forward, the other side leaned back, the wood was pulling apart, and the paint had faded and peeled.

  Find the answers…where fins stand…

  Right behind the billboard was a narrow, weed-choked path leading through dense trees and up a hill into darkness. I took the path and headed off toward the mountains.

  The rain turned to sleet, and although the cold numbed the pain of m
y wounds, it also stole what little body heat I had left. I couldn’t feel my fingers, couldn’t feel my toes, could barely feel pain when I tripped and smashed my knee against a stone. I wanted to sleep more than anything, but I knew if I did, I’d die. It would be years before they found my body out here, if they ever found it at all. Resting was out of the question. The only thing to do was push forward, following the path, following the gravity until I reached its center.

  I stumbled up one hill and down another, over and over, each hill steeper than the one before.

  I can’t remember when I stopped walking. I don’t remember falling down. But I do remember the feeling of cold mud against my back. I do remember the stinging feeling of sleet hitting my eyes as I lay on the ground, making it hard to see anything.

  Now I can sleep, I thought. Now I can sleep, and I’ll be fine.

  And I do remember the angels looking down on me. Solemn faces and gray robes that must have been hiding their wings. They took me in their warm hands and lifted me up.

  Finally, I closed my eyes, satisfied, because I knew they were taking me to my reward.

  Part Two

  “Eternessence”

  12

  A Feast of Flowers

  You can’t wake up and still think you’re dead.

  No matter how strange your surroundings, there’s something about being made of flesh and bone that tells you instinctively you haven’t left it all behind. And so, when I opened my eyes to see a room with bright white walls and no windows, I knew I wasn’t in heaven—but I wasn’t anyplace on earth I knew, either. The light came from a large skylight above me, and through it I could see a clear blue sky. The rainstorm had passed.

  “Good morning!”

  I didn’t know anyone was beside me until I heard the voice. I turned to see him sitting there next to the bed. A boy. He wasn’t much older than me. He was clean-cut, had blond hair, a clear complexion, and pastel blue eyes. When he smiled I thought I recognized him, but knew I was wrong. His smile held no hint of deception; it was an honest smile, and I knew no one like that.

  I sat up, expecting to feel weak, but I didn’t. I felt completely rested.

  “Hi, I’m Aaron,” he said, and gently took my hand.

  His clothes were white, and at first I figured this to be a hospital—but the style of his clothes was not hospital-like at all. He wore an eggshell-white shirt, and an eggshell white vest. Even his pants were that same soft shade of white. It was such an odd combination, and yet it seemed so perfect, you might wonder why everyone didn’t dress like this.

  Aaron was handsome. Truly so. Not in a Marshall Astor kind of way, but in a way that went beyond mere good looks. I was happy just to gaze at him, then I silently scolded myself for being so foolish. That’s when I realized where I’d seen him before.

  “I…I’ve been dreaming about you!”

  He smiled gently, as if this were no surprise to him. “You probably have lots of questions,” Aaron said.

  I nodded.

  “Well, come with me,” he said. “Time to find the answers.”

  Like I said, I knew I was alive—no question about that, and yet when I stepped out of that little white room, I found myself in paradise. It wasn’t just any paradise, either—it was my special one. “Nowhere Valley.” This was the place I went when I closed my eyes. Oh, I didn’t get it exactly right in my head; the mountains around this valley were higher than the ones in my mind. The houses I had always pictured in soft tones of blues and yellows were all eggshell white, and built in little clusters around the valley, not evenly spaced like I had imagined. But otherwise, it was every bit the same. The valley was the greenest I’ve ever seen, about a mile long. A stone path began at the small one-room cottage where I awoke and wound like a lazy river from this end of the valley to the other. If this was my new life, then everything I had been through had been worth it!

  “Welcome to De León,” said Aaron. Then he took my hand without any of the hesitation a boy usually has when taking the hand of a girl, and he led me down into the valley.

  My body ached as I walked, but I was so focused on the sights it didn’t matter. At the first house we passed, a couple in their twenties was sitting on a porch swing, sipping lemonade, and they waved to us. Their clothes were the same shade of white as Aaron’s, which I now knew were soft as velvet, pure as satin. I looked down at what I was wearing. They had taken away my shredded gown and given me a white dress as well, but it wasn’t made of the same material as their clothes. What I wore was cotton, but their clothes made the purest cotton look as ugly as a potato sack.

  The couple came forward. “Good morning, Aaron,” the man said. “Hello, Cara. It’s good to have you here.”

  I looked at Aaron, gaping. “But…how does he know my name?”

  “Shhh,” Aaron said gently. “Just take it in. Enjoy it.”

  Then the couple clipped some flowers from their beautiful garden and threw them in the path in front of us. I tried to walk around them, but Aaron wouldn’t let me. “No,” he said. “Walk over them. Crush the petals beneath your feet so their fragrance fills the air.”

  And so I did.

  At every house we passed, people stopped whatever they were doing to say hello, and to throw flowers in our path. One woman came running out of her house to give me a gentle hug. “I’m so glad you pulled through,” she said. “My name is Harmony.”

  Harmony was beautiful—perhaps Momma’s age, but without the world-weariness that weighed on my mother’s face. In fact, everyone here was beautiful. It wasn’t a plastic, fake beauty, like fashion models, or like Marisol. Nothing so skin-deep. Like my ugliness, their beauty went to the bone.

  “I tended to your wounds, and Aaron and I took turns sitting with you,” Harmony told me. I could still feel those wounds from the greenhouse glass, which had cut me in so many places. I looked at the long gash on my arm. There was no bandage, even though the wound was still red and a bit swollen. It had been stitched closed by sutures so fine I could barely see them. In fact, all my wounds had been sewed the same way.

  “I did all the work,” Harmony said proudly. “Ninety-five stitches in all.”

  “Harmony’s our seamstress here,” Aaron said.

  The fact that I was sewn up by a seamstress didn’t sit well with me. “No offense, but…aren’t there any doctors here?”

  Neither of them answered right away. Then Harmony said, “We get by without.”

  I wanted to ask how—or more importantly, why—but Aaron gently urged me forward along the path.

  Along the way, more flowers were tossed at my feet by smiling residents of the valley, and the perfume of the crushed petals filled the air around me. I began to realize that this was part of some ritual. It made me think of a punishment I heard about from the olden days. When a soldier was found guilty of some criminal act, the other men formed two lines and the offender had to pass between them, while the other men beat him with their fists, or with sticks, or with whatever they wanted to use. It was called a gauntlet, and “running the gauntlet” left a man broken in more ways than one. Well, this was an anti-gauntlet, and the men and women on either side of the road delivered pleasure rather than pain, offering me good wishes and flowers before my feet. I had never felt so accepted in my life.

  You might think such a thing would feel good, but you have to understand I wasn’t used to acceptance. It felt strange. It was, in its own way, terrifying, and by the time I had come to the far end of the path, my hands and legs were shaking as if the men and women had beaten me.

  Aaron put his hand around my waist to give me support as we passed the last of the homes, as if he understood exactly how I felt.

  At the end of the path loomed a mansion—the last structure before the walls of the valley closed in. The double doors were wide open and inviting. I hesitated. Experience told me that sometimes the most inviting places are just to lure you to something awful. I tried to sense deceit or hidden intentions in Aaron. Eith
er there were none, or my intuition was broken.

  “Come on,” Aaron said, gently easing me forward. “He’s waiting for you.”

  “Who’s waiting for me?”

  Aaron smiled. “We just call him Abuelo.” Grandfather.

  The mansion had dozens of rooms. Through the open doors I saw a library, a sunroom, and a huge kitchen. Music poured from the entrance of a grand salon, harpsichord and violin. There was joyous laughter everywhere, and then it occurred to me that with all the voices I heard, both in the valley and in here, I had not heard a single child. It seemed Aaron and I were the youngest ones here. With so many happy couples, shouldn’t there be children? I thought to ask Aaron, but the thought was blasted out of my mind by the sight before me as we neared the center of the mansion.

  There was a wide marble staircase, leading up to a closed mahogany door adorned in gold. This was the only door I had seen in the entire mansion that wasn’t open.

  Aaron stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Aaron said. “Go on. He’s expecting you.”

  I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs, and I thought for sure it would burst halfway up, and I’d tumble back down the stairs. Still, I forced myself forward until I was at the top of the stairs, then I reached for the golden knob on the huge mahogany door and leaned against the door with all my weight.

  The door slowly creaked open, and I slipped through the gap into a huge oval ballroom. There were no windows, only a skylight, just like in the tiny room where I had first woken up. The walls here, however, weren’t white. They were painted black, and on every wall there were dozens of picture frames—rectangular, square, oval—and every single one of them was covered by the same soft white cloth everyone’s clothes were made of. I wondered what artwork could be so precious that no one was allowed to see it.

  “Finalmente!” said a voice both gentle and rough.