Duckling Ugly

It wasn't just Nikki's compact mirror that broke that day. A bar­rier inside of me had broken as well?and Gerardo deciding to keep that little piece of glass made it even worse. I was feeling an emotion I had never allowed myself to feel for anyone. It was dangerous. The thing is, Gerardo acted real with me. He would act one way with his friends, another way with Nikki. But he didn't need to put up a front with me, because I was nothing to him. I guess, strangely, being nothing made me all the more im­portant?and although he began as nothing to me, too?just another short-time occupant of the mercy seat?that was chang­ing. Sure, he only sat with me once or twice a week, but on those days that he didn't, I began to feel a longing that would follow me through the rest of the day. All these years I'd kept my feel­ings for others covered as completely as the mirror in my room, but now that was changing.

Part of me knew those feelings would eventually choke me. But when something takes root, you can't stop its growth. It wasn't any old thing that was growing, either. My feelings for Gerardo were just like Miss Leticia's corpse flower: all ripe and ready to blossom into something that Gerardo would surely find repulsive.

8 Into ugly

The letter was just about burning a hole in my pocket. I could feel it there every minute of every day. Sometimes I could swear it was moving, rubbing itself against my leg to remind me it was there. Whenever Marisol walked by, giving me a sneer, in­stead of sneering back, I just reached into my pocket and brushed my fingertips across the smooth, soft paper. You have a destiny, that paper said. Marisol can torture you all she wants, however she wants. No amount of roadkill will ever take that away.

I stopped by the library after school one day, to do some in­vestigating. I got on the Internet and searched for a town called De Leon. I found six of them, but all in different states, none in ours. So then I opened up the atlas?you know the one?it's so big that the library's got to have its own special stand for it. I searched every inch of our state on the map. No De Leon.

It had been two weeks since I got the letter, and I was still no closer to figuring out who had sent it or why.

I tried not to think too much about it, but the questions in my head just kept coming. How could somebody in some far-off place know what I needed to find? Have they been watching me? Should I be frightened? And what if, after all my searching, this was just another one of Marisol's stupid tricks, designed just to drive me crazy?

I pulled out the note and looked at it again. No. Marisol did not have a sweeping handwriting like this. Her letters were all happy and round. She dotted her i's with hearts. And the paper?this wasn't the kind of paper you found in any stationery store. There was true magic in this note?I knew it in my heart, even if I didn't have any evidence. Yet.

'Can I help you?' the librarian asked.

'Huh?'

'You seem a bit confused; I was wondering if I could help you.'

I looked around and found that I was standing in the quiet reading room, facing a blank wall. I hadn't even remembered walking there. I must have been wandering while looking at the note. It was just like the way I would wake up and find myself standing in the corner of my room. I had gotten used to that particular weirdness, but this was the first time I ever remem­bered wake-walking. I felt strangely unsettled and couldn't look that librarian in the eye.

'I'm fine,' I told her.

She left, not all that sure that I was.

I'm so stupid?it's just three words, I told myself. Why should three words have such control over me? It was like some sort of magic spell.

Then I got to thinking about what Miss Leticia had said about words, letters having a magic to them when they were in the right order. Spells and spelling are one in the same. Spelling. Let­ters. The idea struck me at dinner one night so suddenly, I dropped my spoon right into my soup, and it splashed across the table, right into Vance's eye.

'Hey!'

'Excuse me.' I got up, dinner suddenly forgotten, and went to my room, locking my door. My parents didn't question it, since I did it so often. Maybe they were glad to have me gone from the table. It was breakfast that Mom was determined to make a family meal. By the time dinner rolled around, she was too tired to care.

The second my door was locked, I went to my desk, pulled the note out of my pocket, and set it on my desk. Then I took out a piece of paper, my brush and ink. I let the tip of the brush soak in the silky blackness, then I closed my eyes, trying to feel a connection to the words. From my mind to my hand, to my fin­gers, to the tip of the brush. Then I opened my eyes and wrote in smooth simple strokes:

FIND THE ANSWERS

Even before I took the next step, I could sense I was onto something. It wasn't just the words, it was the letters. The letters and the spaces between. It was the spelling. It was the spell. I took the letters and began writing them down in different com­binations.

FIND THE ANSWERS

DITHERS IN WRENF

STAINED WN FRESH

TRAIN WEDNES SHF

RAINS WHEN FEETS

THERE WINS FANDS

WHERE FINS STAND

That gave me a moment's pause. 'Where Fins Stand.' It didn't make any sense, yet somehow it sounded familiar. I searched my mind for the meaning, but I couldn't grab anything from those words. Still, there was some connection.

FIND THE ANSWERS

WHERE FINS STAND. . .

I shook my head to shake the thought loose and kept on play­ing with the letters, but no other combinations stood out in my mind. Eventually, I had to face the fact that I was on a wild-goose chase. As sure as I was that there was something hidden in those letters, logic told me to forget it. I closed the ink and crumpled the paper.

As for what happened next, well, I should have been smart enough to see it coming?or at least to step out of the way before I was hit. But I was so obsessed with figuring out the note, I never saw all the forces around me coming together. It wasn't so much a conspiracy of things as it was separate events weaving themselves together into a net that snared me sure as an animal trap.

The next day was a bad one. For one, all that time I'd been spending obsessing over the note kept me from studying, so I failed a math test. Then at lunch Gerardo spent the whole time talking about Nikki, and how good things were between the two of them. Well, they say bad news comes in threes?and when I got home on that day, I found my dad sitting on the sofa, across from none other than bad news number three: Marshall Astor, Marisol's boyfriend and accomplice in crime. My heart took a long, slow fall into my gut.

'What's he doing here?'

'Cara, honey,' Dad said, standing up, 'that's no way to talk to a guest.'

'That's no guest, that's vermin. I'll get the rat poison.'

Dad laughed nervously. 'She's got a biting sense of humor, doesn't she? You two talk. I got some, um, business I have to take care of.' Dad was out of that house at light speed.

I looked around, hoping Momma and Vance were there. Any­thing to keep me from being alone with Marshall, but they were nowhere to be found.

'So what do you want?' I asked. His foot was no longer ban­daged, though he did still walk with a little bit of