Duckling Ugly

made sense to me then. Ink drawing was the Chinese version of spelling! I even went as far as to learn the seven basic strokes of Chinese writing and use only those strokes in the things I drew, so it all had a mysterious Zen look about it.

I wasn't a master artist or anything, but that didn't matter. I didn't draw for others. I did it because of how it made me feel. I could lose myself in those brushstrokes?and as my brother had so rudely guessed, that's exactly what I did when I got home from the spelling bee.

My favorite subject to draw was 'Nowhere Valley,' or at least that's what I called it. You see, there are two places I like to go when the outside world becomes too cruel. Nowhere Valley is one of them. It exists only in my head: a hidden place of rolling hills covered in hundreds of shades of green. I imagine myself walking along a meandering stone path, breathing in the smells of wildflowers and orange blossoms. People wave to me from their pastel-colored houses as I pass, and I wave back. I hear voices filled with joyous laughter, not mocking laughter. Some­times I see the valley in my dreams, but more often I see it in my daydreams. My simple brush drawings can almost capture the essence of the place. I wouldn't dare add color, because there's no pigment in the world that could do justice to what I see in my mind. Adding color would be sacrilege?like colorizing a classic old movie.

Today, however, my heart was not in my brush. No matter how I drew the hills and paths, my imaginary valley gave me no comfort. So I rinsed off my brush, capped the ink, and decided to visit that second place I go to when life gets the better of me. It was the only place I knew where the residents didn't care how ugly you were. That's because they were dead.

'Vista View' has to be the worst name ever given to a cemetery. First of all, the word vista already means 'view' in Spanish, so the name is really 'View View.' And second, when you're six feet under, you've got no view, except for maybe your own toes, so pointing out the beautiful view is kind of insulting to the dead, don't you think?

Vista View hasn't always been a cemetery. Back in the day, it was a botanical garden?the most beautiful in the state. Winding trails and beautiful trees and flowers from all over the world filled the place. Our town of Flock's Rest got its name because of Vista View. Flocks of all kinds of birds would make their trek over the mountains and be drawn to the lush greenery of the botanical garden, where they'd fill the trees and ponds, making a racket that could be heard for miles. The woman who owned the place entertained bird-watchers in her little white house on a hill, smack in the middle.

But then the place went bankrupt. An undertaking conglom­erate bought it and decided it was a fine place to plant people in­stead of trees. Now rich people from all over bury their loved ones there, paying more for a little burial plot than most people pay for homes. The beautiful trees and stuff are still there?only now those winding paths are all lined with gravestones. As for the old woman, they let her stay on in her house, but I don't know if I'd want to live in the middle of dead people, no matter how nice the view-view was.

I told my parents I was taking a nap, then I locked my bed­room door and climbed out of the window. I was careful to slip out the back way of our mobile-home park so they wouldn't see me. Let my parents think I was brooding in my bed, wallowing in self-pity. They didn't need to know everything I did.

It was dusk when I got there. It was the time of day when the colors of the earth bow out and let the colors of the sky take over. This was my favorite time of day, because shadows get long, and with a face like mine, shadows are your friend.

There was a strange smell in the graveyard today. Something chemical that I couldn't place at first. Then, when I heard the metallic rattle followed by a long smooth hisssss, I knew what that smell was. Spray paint.

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