Duckling Ugly

by Нил Шустерман

  I heard their voices just in time and ducked behind a tall gravestone. Cautiously, I peered out of the shadows to see them.

  Marshall Astor shook the spray can in his hand, then dotted the I's and crossed the T's of something nasty he had sprayed on a gravestone.

  Lately the gravestones had been smashed and defaced by kids too stupid to find something better to do with their time. I hated it, because spraying rudeness on tombstones was the opposite of what I did with brush and ink.

  I should have known Marshall Astor was the one who'd been doing it. And sitting right beside him on a little stone mourner's bench was Marisol Yeager, his partner in crime. They were the undisputed king and queen of Flock's Rest High. He was hand­some, she was gorgeous, the world smiled on them, and they smiled right back. The way I see it, when you've got those kind of looks you have a choice: You can either use the brains God gave you, or you can skate through life on your looks and never let your brain develop much beyond dog intelligence. Marisol and Marshall had chosen the latter.

  "Ooh, this place is so spooky," Marisol said. "I love it."

  Marshall went on to another grave and shook his spray can, preparing for another round of vandalism.

  "Can I try?" Marisol asked.

  "Okay," Marshall said. "But you got to think up something clever to write."

  Marshall Astor was rumored to be distantly related to the fa­mous Astors―you know, the rich ones who went down on the Titanic. If it was true, then some other distant cousins must have gotten all the money and class. Still, it had never stopped Mar­shall's father from wearing the name like he was royalty―that is, until the day he had too much to drink, drove off a bridge into the river, and went down with the Buick.

  Marshall was half as smart and twice as useless as his father ever was―but he was strong, had a winning smile, and good hair in a stiff wind. Around here, that's enough to make you mayor, which his father was until that fatefiil day.

  "How about this?" said Marisol, still pondering what to spray on the tombstone. "'Why do I always wake up with dead hair.' Get it? 'Dead hair'?"

  Make that fly intelligence. Marisol had always been one of those baby beauty queens, with platinum blond hair that had probably been bleached from birth. Our hatred of each other was deeply ingrained, but I'll get to that later.

  These two were the source of much misery around Flock's Rest High. They were what I call master-means. Not master "minds," because that would be giving them too much credit― but they did have a way of motivating other people to do their thinking for them.

  As Marisol sprayed her message on a nearby gravestone, I tried to figure out how I could get out of there without being no­ticed. It wasn't dark enough yet to escape unseen, and I wasn't quiet enough to slip away unheard. But maybe if I waited, the shadows would take over and I could scurry away before they started the make-out session that I knew was coming. Maybe the sound would startle them enough to make them leave and go swap saliva somewhere else, which was fine by me.

  But before I could plan a suitable getaway, Marisol came around the tombstone, looking for another one to spray, and saw me lurking there. She let out a scream that could wake the dead around us.

  I jumped back at that ear-piercing shriek, hitting a tree―but when I turned, I saw it wasn't a tree at all. It was Marshall, who stood there like an oak.

  "Well, look what we have here," he said. "Nothing to be scared of, Marisol. It's just the Flock's Rest Monster."

  I grimaced at the nickname. It had been with me for as long as I could remember.

  My grimace must have looked like a wolf baring its teeth, be­cause he said, "Look at that, I think it's got rabies."

  "What do you think you're doing," Marisol said, "spying on people?"

  "I wasn't spying, I was just―"

  "You're sick," Marshall said.

  "No, no, what was the word?" Marisol said slowly. "She's an . . . abominationl"

  That caught me off guard. Had they been there that day―or had they only heard? Or were they the master-means behind it?

  I lunged toward Marisol, wanting to rip that pretty skin off her face, but Marshall held me back and then tossed me against a gravestone so hard it almost toppled over. I felt the impact of that stone in every joint of my body.

  "Don't you touch Marisol," he said. "You ain't got a right to touch her. Or me. Or anybody."

  I tried to get away, but he pushed me back against the stone again. "Where you going, piggy girl? Don't you want to spy on us some more? Maybe I'll get you a camera. Hey, will it break if you're the one snapping the picture, too?"

  Then something swung out of nowhere and slammed against Marshall's ear. He stumbled back.

  Suddenly there, in the half-light of day's end, was a woman who had to be at least ninety years old, brandishing the blunt end of a pitchfork.

  I knew who it was right away. Most folks just called her "the crazy woman of Vista View" and left it at that, but I knew her name: Miss Leticia Radcliffe. She was the one who lived in the house. The one who didn't leave when the place became a ceme­tery.

  "Hey!" yelled Marshall, holding his ear. "What are you, nuts?!"

  "You stay back or I'll swing it again. And next time I'll use the business end."

  And, just to make her point, she swung the blunt end one more time. It didn't come anywhere near him. In fact, she wasn't even facing him directly when she swung it, and I wondered why.

  "Marshall, let's just go," begged Marisol. "That witch'll kill you soon as look at you."

  But Marshall was not the kind of guy to back down from a fight, especially with a feeble old woman. He stepped forward, sticking his chest out.

  "You get outta here," he said to Miss Leticia. "Go on back to your house. This ain't none of your business."

  "This used to be my land," she said, "so I make everything that happens here my business. You leave this girl alone, and get out the way you came."

  "And if we don't?"

  Then Miss Leticia Radcliffe did the most wonderful, wicked, unbelievable thing I'd ever seen. She took that old pitchfork and jammed it right through the tip of Marshall's left Nike!

  Marshall wailed in pain. "Ahhh, my toe!"

  Then the old woman leaned close to him and whispered, "Next time . . . it'll be your heart."

  She pulled out the pitchfork, and the fight blew out of Mar­shall like he was a balloon that had been popped. He took off with Marisol, limping and moaning all the way.

  When they were gone, Miss Leticia turned to me―and now I could see why she hadn't looked right at Marshall when she had swung that pitchfork. Miss Leticia had cataracts as gray as an April storm. She could see enough to tell night from day, I guessed, but not a whole lot more. She must have known Vista View like the back of her hand, and she didn't need to see much to know what was going on when she got there.

  She looked toward me, but not quite at me. "Now I'm just guessing, mind you―but from what that boy called you, I would say that you're the DeFido girl."

  "Cara," I told her. "So you heard about the nickname."

  "Oh, believe me, I've been called a whole lot worse than that." She let loose a long, hearty laugh. "The Flock's Rest Monster' ain't all that bad, considering. It sounds legendary. Dignified."

  She planted the pitchfork firmly on a grave and took my hand. "You come on in. I'll make us some tea."

  3

  The sweet and the rancid

  Although I didn't actually know her before that day, Miss Leti­cia had always been of interest to me. Maybe it was because she was an outcast in town, rumored to have killed her husband when he sold this land, which had been in her family for genera­tions. That was long before I was born, but the rumors still hung like sheets on a clothesline, twisting more and more the longer they stayed in the wind.

  Her whole life now was spent in her cottage, and the huge greenhouse behind it that had once been the centerpiece of the botanical garden. It was a grand Victorian greenhouse, with a high cry
stalline dome, and smaller wings on either side.

  She didn't take me to the cottage―instead she took me right to the greenhouse, which was even more spectacular inside than out. Strange black orchids grew from the dark soil, and up above hung carnivorous pitcher plants so big they could drown a rat. I took a deep whiff. Every inch of the place was alive with aromas. Turn your head and the scent would change to something else.

  "Being as I can't quite see the things I grow anymore," she told me, "I cultivate things that appeal to the other senses." The green­house was full of flowers that not only smelled sweet, but were soft to touch as well. Some of the plants grew exotic berries that danced on your tongue when you tasted them. I could see Miss Leticia more clearly in the greenhouse lights now. She was a heavy woman, but she wore her weight well. She had skin like dark chocolate, and her hair was a mess of steel wool pulled into a bun.

  She led me to a little cast-iron table and chairs surrounded by staghorn ferns and lilies, but she walked a little too close and banged her shin against one of the chairs with a nasty clang. I gri­maced, practically feeling it myself.

  "You all right?" I asked.

  "Yep. It wasn't me anyway―it was this thing." She lifted her skirt a bit to reveal steel braces that ran up either side of her shin, practically up to her knee. She had them on both legs. "Metal on metal―that's why it sounded so loud. I got steel rods in my back, too―and a pacemaker. Got a grandson calls me Nana Cyborg, on accounta all that metal." She laughed so conta­giously, I had to laugh, too. "Then, after all that, I got these cataracts in my eyes, and I said, 'No more!' There'll be no more doctors touching this here body less'n it's to pretty it up for my wake." She laughed again. It seemed strange that she could joke so easily about dying, but then, when you're as old as Miss Leti­cia, death stops being the enemy.

  "Now you just sit yourself down, and I'll go get that tea," she said. She went off into her cottage and returned a few minutes later with a tray.

  "It's good to have a guest," she told me. "No one comes around but my son and that horrible wife of his. And all they want to talk about is putting me in a home. But I tell them I got a home."

  I breathed in the steam of her tea, then took a gentle sip. Al­though her cloudy gray eyes had been disturbing at first, after I'd been sitting and drinking with her for just a few minutes, any sense of discomfort faded away. "Now you tell me your trou­bles," she said, "because my guess is you got no one else worth tellin' em to."

  "I just had a bad day, is all." I didn't say anything more, hop­ing I wouldn't have to get into it―but Miss Leticia wasn't going to let me off the hook.

  "Hmm," she said when she realized I wasn't talking. Then she rapped her knuckles against one of her leg braces. "These braces here give me support. I don't mind, on account of I know my legs need it―otherwise they hurt something awful. I know you're hurting as well. Ain't no shame in needing a little sup­port." She took a long, slow sip of her tea. "Now, why don't you tell me what happened that's got you so upset?

  "Clammed up, are ya? Hmm. Must be a lot going on in that head of yours."

  Then she smiled a little too mischievously for a woman of her age. "What could it hurt to let some steam out of that pressure cooker?"

  I sighed. "Well, I was in this spelling bee, and―"

  "Ah," she interrupted, "I knew you were the type for casting spells!"

  "No, not casting spells," I told her. "It's about spelling words."

  "Spells, spelling; it's all the same," she said. "Puttin' letters in order is no different than puttin' words in order. There's a magic to both of them, true enough."

  Though I knew the notion was crazy, it was exciting to think that something as ordinary as spelling could have a kind of power. Maybe there was more to me than offends the eye!

  When I told her about the words I'd been forced to spell, she pursed her lips and said, "My, my, my, what a place we live in. I think the people around this town are just unnaturally cruel."

  "No," I told her. "People are the same everywhere, whether it's here in Flock's Rest or in some other town. They take one look at me, and they just can't control the things they say and do."

  Miss Leticia waved her hand. "Don't you give no mind to the things people say. It's just a whole lotta quacking from a whole lotta geese."

  "Yeah," I said, "but what about the things they do?"

  Miss Leticia didn't have a quick answer for that one. "All I can say about that is what goes around comes around. You may never get to see it, but those kids who played that evil trick on you to­day, they will get theirs. And if it's not in this world, it will be in the next."

  She said it with such certainty, it made me feel better. After that, I began talking about everything, as though a floodgate had opened inside of me. I went on and on about the things people said about me―to my face and behind my back. I told her about how most strangers treated me―as if touching me would some­how make them unclean. I even told her things about my parents that I'd never told anyone. Like how years ago, when my momma was sick, my dad had to take me to work with him. I spent a week with him on the car lots, and that was the week people stopped buying his cars.

  "Within a year, all of his lots, except for one, went out of business, and we had to move to a trailer park. We've been there ever since. He never said it out loud, but I know he blames me. He thinks my face cursed his business."

  "Hmm," said Miss Leticia. "Tell me, is your father an honest salesman?"

  "Not really," I admitted. "His cars are mostly pieces of garbage."

  "Well, then, his business deserved to be cursed."

  I told her about my ink drawings, and the green valley I go to in my mind, where the people don't seem to notice my face― and how the flowers of her greenhouse reminded me of the gar­dens I imagine there.

  "Tell me, child―do you sleepwalk?"

  I hesitated. First, because it was an odd question, and second, because I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to answer. "No," I fi­nally said.

  "All right, then. I had thought that maybe the place you was seeing is real, and maybe it was calling to you. That happens, you know."

  I was going to tell her about the problem I had with mirrors and cameras, but I stopped myself―maybe because I was afraid to hear what she might say.

  "You talk about being so ugly," Miss Leticia said. "I wish I could see you to tell you that you're not. But all I see these days are shadows, like I'm lookin' through a shower curtain."

  "That's all right," I told her softly. "If you saw me, you proba­bly wouldn't even let me in here."

  She laughed at that. "Is that how little you think of me?"

  I didn't answer her. I knew now that Miss Leticia was a great soul, but there were some things I didn't think even a great soul could stand.

  "Come here, Cara. I want to show you something."

  Then Miss Leticia took my hand and led me through the green­house to a far corner. We pushed our way through a row of dense, lacy ferns to see the strangest growing thing I'd ever seen.

  It was a pod, about three feet high, with a fat stalk pushing its way out of the top.

  "Now tell me what you think this is," Miss Leticia said with a smirk.

  "I have no idea."

  "It comes from the rain forests of Sumatra. That stalk will grow six feet before it opens up into a flower. Take a deep whiff."

  I did, but all I could smell were the sweet blooms growing elsewhere in the greenhouse.

  "I don't smell it."

  "No, not yet, but you will." She reached over and gently brushed her hand along the smooth stalk like it was a beloved pet. "I've been nursing this one for years, and this is the first time it's going to bloom. The Titan Arum, it's called... but some folks call it the Corpse Flower. You know why?"

  I shook my head.

  "It's called that," she told me, "because when it blooms, it smells like the rotting dead."

  I shuddered at the thought. "I guess the cemetery's the per­fect pla
ce for it, then," I said nervously. Why on Earth, with all the wonderful-smelling plants she had, would she choose to grow this thing?

  She must have read my mind because she said, "Oh, the scent of roses and gardenias is fine, but everyone needs a break from all that cloying perfume. Now and again I treasure the scent of something... other."

  I took in another breath, trying to imagine what the flower would smell like once it bloomed, but I guess my imagination wasn't pungent enough.

  "The beautiful and the terrible, the sweet and the rancid―it's all part of God's glory and has its reason to be," Miss Leticia said. "Just like you, Cara."

  Suddenly she grabbed my wrists so tightly I could feel her nails cutting into my skin. "You have a destiny, child," she said. "Don't let anyone tell you that you don't."

  Then she looked at me, and I swear she could see me through the deadness of her cataracts. "You came to me in your dark time, confiding in me, and that binds us," she said. "And so I will make it my business to be there when your destiny comes calling."

  All the way home, I felt the sting of Miss Leticia's nails. I knew her nail marks would be in my forearms for days―but I didn't mind.

  You have a destiny; she had said. Those marks were a reminder.

  Miss Leticia was weird, but she was wise in a way few people could understand. Whether she knew things or just suspected things, I didn't know―but then, to a person with intuition, sus­picion had to count for something. No one had ever suggested I had a place and a purpose in the world. My parents, who on their best days saw life as an inconvenience, had never―could never― make me feel the way Miss Leticia had in the short time I had known her.

  It was around 9:30 at night when I climbed back through my bedroom window. My parents were always respectful of my pri­vacy, so I don't think they even knew I'd been gone. They proba­bly just thought I'd wallowed myself to sleep―as if self-pity was some kind of narcotic.

  Well, okay, maybe I did feel a little sorry for myself, but that never made me want to wallow in misery. It just made me mad. It made me want to do something about it, if only I could find the right thing to do. The satisfying thing to do.