Duckling Ugly

with Marshall!

9 B-e-t-r-a-y-a-l-s

The day before homecoming, Nikki went to get her teeth cleaned, determined that if she couldn't outshine the likes of Marisol and her beauty-queen friends, she could at least outsmile them. While Nikki's motormouth was being worked over, Ger­ardo had the afternoon free. So I took him to Vista View to meet Miss Leticia.

'This here's a good girl,' Miss Leticia told him. 'You treat her right, you hear?'

Gerardo put up his hands. 'Hey, I'm not gonna treat her at all.'

'Well,' said Miss Leticia, 'that's fine, too.'

Miss Leticia seemed worried about something today. She wasn't saying anything, but it was right there in her body language.

'Are you okay?' I asked her.

'Oh, I'm fine. I got my son and that wife o' his comin' over tomorrow, and they always set me on edge.'

I didn't ask any more questions. Miss Leticia had told me how, every time they come over, they bring brochures from nurs­ing homes?not good ones, but the cheap ones that give you a room, a bed, and, if you're lucky, something edible once in a while. The kind of place you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Okay, maybe your worst enemy, but no one else.

'Maybe the corpse flower will bloom and chase them away,' I suggested.

She laughed at that. 'Maybe so, maybe so. It sure is gettin' ready.'

'The what flower?' asked Gerardo.

'Come on, I'll show you.'

Miss Leticia went inside, leaving us to walk through the green­house. There was a sour smell in the air, like dirty socks, as we got close to the corpse flower. Its stalk was now almost six feet high. You could see the crack where the flower would start to unfurl. 'When it blooms it smells like dead bodies,' I told him.

'Cool,' he said. 'I hope she opens up the doors so the whole town gets a whiff. The ultimate stink bomb!'

I thought it would be perfect if we were holding hands as we walked among the plants, but I knew that wasn't going to hap­pen. Still, I tried to keep my hands in full view, hoping he'd no­tice how nice they'd been looking. He didn't, but he did make another observation.

'You know, I don't know why they call you the Flock's Rest Monster,' Gerardo said. 'There's nothing monstrous about you. Except maybe for the way you look, but looks don't make a monster. It's the things a person does.'

'I don't know,' I told him. 'I've done some pretty monstrous things.'

'Tell me one.'

And so I told him all about how I got Marisol expelled from school.

'Hmm,' said Gerardo when I was done. 'Well, you didn't do anything monstrous at all. Marisol brought that on herself.'

'So what about you?' I asked him. 'What bad things have you done?'

He looked away from me then, tugged off a loose fern leaf, and fiddled with it.

'I've done some stuff.'

'Tell me.'

He kept his eyes on the fern in his hands instead of me.

I could tell there was something he wanted to say, yet didn't want to say at the same time. I wondered which part of him would win out.

'Go on, it's okay,' I told him.

'No, it's not,' he said. 'But I'll tell you anyway.' He took a deep breath. 'You know, I almost got expelled, too. It was last year. They weren't just going to expel me, they were going to send me to juvie.'

'I didn't know that.' And then I asked as gently as I could, 'What did you do?'

'I hacked into the district's computer. I didn't change grades or anything. I just got onto the teachers' Web sites and had some fun. I put pictures of monkeys in place of their faces, stuff like that.'

I grinned. 'I didn't know you were a computer geek.'

He shrugged. 'I'm not. It's just a hobby, you know.'

'Well, that's not so bad,' I told him.

'Yeah.' Then he paused. 'I swore I'd never do anything like that again. But about a month ago, your friend Marisol asked me to hack into another computer.'

'Marisol wanted you to fix up her grades?'

He shook his head. 'No. She wanted me to do something else.'

I still didn't get where this was going. Usually, I'm quicker, but not this time. I just stood there cluelessly waiting to hear what despicable thing Marisol had asked him to do.

'Anyway, she pulled out a stack of bills from her purse. I don't know where she got it from. I tell her no, but she keeps peeling off twenties ... until I finally say yes.'

'So what did she ask you to do?'

He looked at me like I should already know... but when I looked back at him, still clueless, he finally said: 'She had me hack into a certain computer, and put in a secret wireless Web connection, so I could control the computer from my laptop ... and choose the words it was asking people to spell...'

It was like getting hit broadside by a truck. You don't see it coming, and by the time you hear the crunch, it's too late.

We sat there for a long time, the sour-sock smell from the corpse plant getting stronger and stronger. We couldn't look at each other. The silence was so loud, if someone didn't break it, I felt I'd go deaf. Well, if he wouldn't do it, then I would.

'Don't sit by me in the lunchroom anymore,' I told him.

'Yeah. Yeah, right,' he said, then he set his hands in his pock­ets and walked away.

I felt the breeze as he opened the greenhouse door, then I heard him say, 'For what it's worth, those words I made you spell... I don't think any of those words apply to you.' Then I heard the door close, leaving me in a cell of captured beauty about to be overwhelmed by the smell of death.

I started walking home, my mind a storm of bad feelings and bad thoughts. Normally, I would have been able to stand up to this the way I stood up to most everything. I was good at not letting myself get hurt anymore. But this time I'd been careless. I'd become vulnerable, and Gerardo's betrayal, well, it hurt like a wound so deep it scraped bone.

I don't know if you would call what I had a blind fury, but whatever it was, I lost track of where I was, and where I was go­ing. Eventually, I got my feelings under control by thinking of my calming place. The lush valley, the pastel-colored cottages. The sense of belonging. I let it flow over me like a trance as I walked. When I came out of it, it was like waking up after sleepwalking. It took me a few seconds to get my bearings.

I had set out toward home, but somewhere along the way, I had changed directions. Now I was near the edge of the town, close to the interstate. I was just standing in an empty lot, facing the mountains.

What's more is that I felt an urge to keep on going, like a kind of gravity pulling me in a direction other than down. I stood there for the longest time, trying to understand that feeling. But the afternoon was wearing on. The sun was about to set, and I was feeling cold in a place deep inside. Finally, I gave up and turned around to head home?but not before I realized the di­rection I was facing. Northwest.

***

If I was gonna find the answers, I knew I wouldn't find them at the homecoming dance. Still, I went out with Momma to get a gown, and then I prepared for the first date of my life.