North of Beautiful (3 page)

Only today, I pulled away. A slight, confused frown creased Erik’s forehead.

“I’m late for work,” I said with a chagrined smile.

“You’re always so busy, working, studying.”

“I’ll make it up to you later.”

His chagrin turned into a full grin. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, reaching for me again. I kicked myself for letting him grope me, because he slid the brochure from Dr. Holladay out of my back pocket. “What’s this?”

“Nothing.” I reached for the brochure, but Erik blocked me with his shoulder while he glanced through it, flipping it from one side to the other before handing it back to me.

“So,” he asked, “you going to do it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why not fix your face?”

That question yanked out every memory of my being called ugly, each episode a different reference point that made up my map of reality. Like the time when my brother Claudius was studying French in high school and hit upon a term he didn’t understand — jolie laide. Dad had translated, “Pretty ugly,” and then continued, laughing, “like our Terra.” He might have chuckled, and that laugh may have blunted his words, but it only sharpened his message. As mapmakers and adventurers alike know, all you need to figure out where you stand is a single reference point on a map.

I sucked in sharply now. Like all those times at home or after my laser treatments when I couldn’t wear my usual makeup, I didn’t show my surprise, couldn’t show my hurt. How could I if I was going to be impervious to Dad? If I wanted to continue to be the ballsy, unflappable girl Erik thought I was, the one who snagged him on Halloween night over a year ago?

Karin’s dad lived for one day all year, and that day was October 31. To say Mr. Mannion decorated for Halloween would be like saying that Colville is small. Two years ago, the utilities company actually issued a warning for the sheer wattage his 60,000 orange lights consumed. So last year, Mr. Mannion had restrained himself by constructing a mock cemetery lit by old-fashioned lanterns for Karin’s annual Halloween party — Ghouls Gone Wild.

By the time I arrived the morning of that party, Karin’s bedroom had transformed from podcasting studio to Museum of World Fashion, beginning with Cleopatra’s robe, complete with asp, hanging from her door. On her bed lay an exhibit of colonial America as interpreted by Hollywood — a Native American dress (very short, beaded, and made of faux deerskin) and its Puritan counterpart (very long, white collared, and made with yards o’ faux cotton).

Karin pointed to them. “We could go as Thanksgiving.”

And guess who would be wearing the Mayflower muumuu, all guts, no glory? “God, I might as well dress as a turkey.”

“That could be cute.” She looked thoughtful.

“I was kidding.”

“You know, Dad’s got a brown bodysuit from the time he went as Dirt, and Mom and I went as paparazzi, remember?”

“How could I forget?”

“I’d bet anything Mom has some feathers somewhere.”

Between Mr. Mannion’s vast costume collection and Mrs. Mannion’s crafts supplies for the preschool she ran in their home, I started to get scared, very scared. More firmly, I said, “No.”

“It would be sexy.”

“Peacocks are sexy. Turkeys get eaten,” I answered, and decided it was time to take my costumed fate in my own hands. “What’s this?” I held up the black gown draped on her desk chair, slinky as snakeskin.

“Oh, that’s too small.” Karin had moved on to the mermaid hanging on one of her bookshelves. “I could be the S&M Starbucks mermaid, carry a whip and a tray of Kahlua shots? What do you think?”

“Podcast-worthy.”

So while she ran downstairs to snag a serving tray from her mom and the Zorro whip her dad had scored off a costume designer in Hollywood, I slipped into the gown. Even if the dress covered me from neck to toe, I might as well have worn nothing at all, it was that sheer and that body hugging. Just as I fixed the hip-length black wig over my head, Karin returned. Embarrassed, I started removing the wig until I noticed, for once, Karin was eyeing me enviously.

“Oh my God,” she said, inching slowly toward me as though I were a mirage, half-visible and on the verge of disappearing. “You look like Angelina Jolie in her Billy Bob gothic era.”

“I do?”

“I’ll bet you a hundred bucks no one’s going to recognize you.”

Secure in my white Goth makeup, I let myself dance that night the way I do in my bedroom alone, arms in the air, hips swirling. I felt someone watching me. Which wasn’t exactly a new feeling. What was new was the appreciative look on Erik’s face, his lips quirked into a sexy smile, shaking his head every once in a while like he couldn’t believe what he saw. And this, from a guy who hadn’t said more than “hey” to me since he started school here four years ago.

Discomfited, I made my way toward the back door. But Erik was at my side like a lost adventurer chasing the North Star.

“Who are you?” he asked, peering hard at me.

“Someone you should know,” I said, not recognizing the sassy girl who used my mouth to answer him.

“Really, who are you?” And then, surprised: “Terra?”

I nodded, ready to run.

Instead, his eyes ran down my figure. “So that’s what you’ve been hiding.”

“C’mon, that’s Terra,” said one of his friends, Derek, a beefhead who had lost more than a few brain cells in football scrimmages. His chest puffed up like he was leading a rescue mission of national importance, and he nudged Erik hard. “Dude, you got beer goggles on.”

My preference for guys ran to the lean types, guys who were cross-country runners, skate skiers. Guys who kayaked and played soccer. Not barrel-shaped boys who considered the gym their vacation home. But suddenly I saw the allure of a bulky build, because without warning, Erik threw a punch at Derek, adding just enough muscle so his friend — his friend! — reeled back into the wall. The body that made Erik perfect for wrestling, football, and mountain biking — his bulky arms, solid chest, and thick legs — also made him perfect for standing up for me.

You could say I didn’t fall for Erik or even his assumption that I was hiding my body, not my face. But that I fell for the comfort of his muscles and the confidence of his power. If Dad’s verbal pushes ever came to physical shoves, I’d be ready. With a rush of gratitude, I closed the gap between us and kissed him until my head reeled and the shy girl I usually was floated away.

“You’ve got a lot of balls for a girl,” Erik said against my lips.

“That’s not what I have.”

“You sure?”

“You can check for yourself,” I said, and led him toward one of the gravestones. I glanced back just once and caught my reflection receding in the glass door, a figure in a tight black dress that left nothing to the imagination.

Chapter four

God’s Wings

WHAT WAS MY PROBLEM
? I thought as Erik pulled away before I had a chance to wave a last goodbye. Vaguely irritated because he was always leaving first, I sloshed through the thick frosting of snow and ice on the boardwalk in front of the Nest & Egg Gallery. As Karin pointed out last night when we were studying DNA, I was lucky. I repeated that now: I was lucky. Erik was a great guy — pretty cute, way athletic, and best of all, into me. So how come it sounded like I was convincing myself?

The fairy lights I had strung around the gallery windows winked cheerily in the gray afternoon. Nest & Egg was the only modern building on Main Street — that is, the only one that looked built for this century with its exposed wood beams and pitched roof. Every other building was saddled with our town’s faux circa-nineteenth-century Wild West motif and country-cowboy façades, right down to their regulation storefront signs: names carved in wood, the letters painted in faded hues chosen from a pre-approved color palette.

I skidded on the treacherous boardwalk, swearing under my breath for forgetting how prone these historically accurate walkways were to becoming ice rinks in the winter. One more tourist to fall and bruise his tailbone, and there would be mutiny on the city council’s hands, led by the co-founders of the gallery, better known as the Twisted Sisters for their commando knitting group. No one in town knew how these unassuming-looking older ladies had strong-armed their way (or sweet-talked, depending on your opinion of their building) past all the town ordinances. But I did. My girls didn’t take kindly to losing any battle — whether it was their building design, the art they curated for our various shows, or the college I would attend.

“Hello!” I called as I opened the door and simultaneously stamped the snow off my feet. The industrial carpet lining the entry was starting to smell musty from getting wet and drying, a cycle that repeated itself at least ten times in a day, more if we were having a good tourist day. Note to self: steam-clean this place early next week. Otherwise, on first whiff, all the tourists would whip around and visit the upstart glass-blowing studio across the street.

“So . . . ? Any news?” called Lydia, the oldest of the Nest & Egg cofounders, from the lofted studios. She had probably cranked her hearing aid, listening for my arrival.

As she started toward the staircase, I muttered under my breath, “Oh God,” and hustled past the handmade note cards and small crafts up front in our gift shop, bypassing the café and espresso cart on my left. With my eyes on her, I called, “Just stay there, Lydia.”

But did she listen? Do flat maps depict the Earth accurately?

In a town where everyday dress was backcountry camping — the tourists in SPF clothing and high-tech hiking boots, the locals in beat-up T-shirts and water sandals — Lydia took it upon herself to personify local color. She was an artiste, damn it. So in a flurry of torrid purple and teal batik (her designs, naturally), Lydia picked her stubborn way across the catwalk in her ridiculously dainty shoes.

I rushed across the open gallery space now. “Lydia, stop!” At the bottom of the steps, I added more loudly this time, “I’m heading up.”

The fewer trips Lydia made on the staircase, the better. Whether she admitted it or not, her footing had gotten less sure in the last year. Just six months ago, she stumbled in the parking lot out back and broke her wrist. Then two months ago, she missed the curb altogether and tripped. Luckily, she hadn’t broken anything else then. No matter how much the other Twisted Sisters and I nagged her, Lydia refused to move to one of the ground floor studios or to wear orthopedic shoes despite being eighty-nine.

“Did you hear something?” she asked at the top of the stairs, her faded green eyes gleaming expectantly behind her purple glasses.

I shook my head and took the stairs two at a time while holding onto the steel railing fashioned into sinuous vines.

“You’ll hear soon enough,” she said. “It just takes longer for mail to reach us here. But, really, you should be going to —”

“Rhode Island, I know.”

“My grandsons attended RISD,” Lydia announced as though this were news to me. The way Lydia spoke, her syllables overly articulated, the Rhode Island School of Design was the only place in the world worth attending for anyone with artistic talent. “You still have time to put in your application.” And then with a condescending sniff: “I suppose if distance is an issue, there’s always Cornish in Seattle.”

Distance was the deciding factor for choosing Williams — the farther from home the better. Until three months ago, when Mrs. Frankel handed me the application to Williams, I’d never even heard of the college. But then I read the materials, learned about its reputation for being a small, highly respected school, one that had more art majors than any other, one where you could study art history as well as have studio time, one that graduated titans of business. One that was 2,800 miles from home. Williams College was tailor-made for me. I couldn’t let anything derail my escape out of Terra Nullis, the empty wasteland of my home. Not even Lydia.

“I can do art without art school,” I said lightly as I hugged Lydia. “You did.”

“But —”

“Oh!” I pulled back from her, pretending I had just remembered something incredibly important. “I need to finish the poster.”

“What poster?”

“The one for next year’s shows, right?” I ambled down the catwalk, deliberately slowing my normal race-walk pace so that Lydia wouldn’t have to work to keep up. While she detailed the information that had to be included on the poster, I slid the door to my studio space open, dropping my backpack on the floor. It landed with a thunk next to my foot.

The artist spaces at Nest & Egg weren’t large or lavish but resembled the Japanese sleeping pods I read about in one of my travel magazines: tiny compartments I couldn’t wait to rent someday like other businesspeople. I’d catch some Z’s for a couple of hours before attending a meeting or hopping onto another flight. Two people could barely fit in my treasure box of a studio, but Lydia followed me inside. Lack of space was only one of the reasons I cast a worried look at Lydia. Mostly, I didn’t want her to see the collages I was working on, not until they were done. Maybe not even then.

How were the Twisted Sisters — Lydia, Beth, and Mandy — going to take it that I had created collages of their lives, stolen from stories they shared with each other over the last three years with me listening in? As soon as the gallery opened, I started hanging out, uninvited and probably unwanted. I mean, really, a twelve-year-old lurking around a gallery doesn’t do much for art sales.

Anyway, on a day when they were all twittering and flustered about a new graphic design program (Lydia even smacked the monitor as if that would change the font), I shooed them away. One newly designed invitation for an artist’s reception later, I became the first Nest & Egg “intern,” paid in free art materials and studio space. As soon as I was of age, they promoted me to Goddess of All Things Technical, the official title on my business card, and a bona fide paid position.

I was too slow to hide the canvas on my table. Lydia immediately spotted my work-in-progress, scrutinizing it intensely just the way Dr. Holladay had studied me earlier today. Worse than feeling vulnerable, I felt like a traitor, because it was Mom’s life I had on display, naked and exposed when she wanted nothing more than to gloss over her life with an impermeable all-American sheen.