Duckling Ugly (24 page)

My tears wet the pages and the ink began to run. Carefully, I folded the letter and put it in my pocket, took my Aaron-hair brush, my dress, and picked up the torch.

Clinging to the slim hope that Abuelo was wrong, I held the torch high to see the tip of the stalactite—maybe there was still life dripping into the fountain, and they’d all come back. But as glistening wet as the stalactite had been before, it was now dry as a bone. In the basin beneath it, there was a single spot of moisture. I reached toward it with my finger, but even as I did, the moisture was sucked up by the stone. Then the basin cracked and started to crumble.

I stepped back, and I felt the ground around me begin to shake. Little bits of stone fell from above. Sensing what was coming, I leaped back, but not quickly enough. The massive stalactite broke off from the cavern roof and crashed to the ground, shattering into a million pieces, burying me beneath the rubble.

I was bruised and battered, but not broken.

I picked up my torch, which was almost out, fanned it until it was full flame again, and made my way back to the surface.

They had left without me.

I could have been with them, if only I had kept my promise and returned. The truth of it hurt more than the cuts and bruises from the fallen stalactite, and I cried until there were no tears left inside me, and my eyes went as dry as the ruined fountain.

I stepped out of the cave, into the light of a gray day, and stood there on the plateau, desperately trying to get a sense of direction. Where had they gone? Back when the fountain had been strong, I’d been able to feel it pulling me, coaxing me up in the middle of the night, leaving me facing northwest—but that was when the fountain was close by. Perhaps Abuelo could still feel it in his bones, but I wasn’t Abuelo. I felt no pull, no gravity, no sense of direction at all. Wherever the fountain had gone, it was out of my reach.

As I stood there, I watched as the last of the green grass turned yellow, then brown.

And in my hands, my beautiful dress, woven from the gossamer down of swans, disintegrated into strands that blew away like cobwebs in the wind.

“Hello, pretty lady.”

I didn’t go back the way I came. Instead I continued west
across the mountains and ended up at the same gas station where I had first been dropped with the garbage. Now the same gangly gas-station attendant greeted me. Greasy hands, goat hair sticking out of his Adam’s apple, but right there, right then, he seemed like Prince Charming.

“Second time I seen you here with no car,” he said. “I’m startin’ to think you’re just comin’ to see me!”

And as I looked at him I thought,
This boy is not so bad.
I could find a place for myself in this tiny rest stop of a town. He wasn’t Aaron. He wasn’t even Marshall or Gerardo. But after what I had left behind, I would rather take dumb and homely over bleak and hideous any day.

Then, to my horror, I quickly came to realize that there would be no rest for me here, or anywhere else…because as I looked at him, I could see the features of his face already beginning to change. His Adam’s apple, already large, started to bulge forward like a buzzard’s neck, the hairs in his nose began to grow, curling outward—and I knew if I stayed here any length of time at all, it would be Flock’s Rest all over again. This place would just become a creepy roadside attraction where no one would dare stop, even for gas.

He smiled at me, and I swear I could see his teeth starting to twist out of line. “Look at you,” he said. “I do believe you’re getting prettier by the second!”

I backed away from him quickly.

“I can’t stay,” I said. “I’ve got to get out of this place. I’ve got to get out now!”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “The Greyhound bus stops at the Denny’s down the road a bit. You can still make it if you hurry.”

And so I did. Scrounging together what money I had in my pockets, and what money I could beg from people coming in and out of Denny’s, I got myself bus fare and rode that bus as far as it would take me.

That was a long time ago. I’ve been riding ever since, crisscrossing the country, zigzagging the world, searching for a hint of where they might have gone. My only belongings are the clothes on my back, a journal in which I write the words of a new language that no one has yet to speak, and the brush I use to write them, made from the hair of my one true love.

I will find them.

They could be anywhere. It’s a big world to cover—but I’ve got an eternity to do it. It may take me a thousand years, but I will find them.

Until then, I will ride buses, and stow away on trains, and steal plane fare as I weave my way through the world, leaving every place a little less beautiful with my passing—although I may catch the faces of my fellow passengers when they get on board, I won’t dare look at the monstrosities they’ve become once they get off.

So if, by chance, your travels happen to leave you seated beside the most beautiful girl in the world, don’t ask questions, don’t make small talk—just leave your luggage, tear up your ticket, and run.

Because I am one of the beautiful people, and my beauty is the blackest of holes.

Don’t make me spell it out for you.