Ugly, page 12
“Do you have friends you can talk to?”
I chuckled bitterly, bile forming in the back of my throat. “Not really.”
“Listen, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but you should consider changing the way you present yourself. Being unique is fine, but people aren’t always sure what to make of people who step too far out of the norm. You might be happier if you make some changes.”
I stared at him, my ears ringing. “So, what you’re telling me is that, if I conform, I’ll suddenly be happy, and everyone will love me. Mm-hmm, sure.”
He sighed. “Nic, get to work on your project.”
“Okay.” I detailed the throwing arm part of the trebuchet.
He walked away, and I wondered if I would really not do the project.
Chapter 32
I waited for math to start, with only about half the class there. I thought about how at least not everyone knew about the whole Sam and Zach thing. Or at least, if they did, they didn’t know about my involvement. The humiliation of everyone knowing I’d been foolishly pining after him for months—a year?—would be unbearable.
Idiot.
I looked up at the sound of people moving close and accidentally made eye contact with Carlos, who looked away. Kyle’s face slipped into a smile right behind him, and I stared at my desk, burning with humiliation again.
Yes, it would be worse if anyone knew I liked Zach. Only two other people knew about Carlos, and that was bad enough.
I mean, if Sam had known how I felt about Zach, I guess it’s possible she wouldn’t have said yes when he asked her out, and I could hardly be mad at her for it since she didn’t know. I held no claim on him.
But I was so glad Zach didn’t know. God, that would be so awful.
“Put your books and notes away,” Mr. Martinez said.
Oh, shit. I’d again forgotten about the test. I’d studied a little last night, but I’d been so fixated on working up the courage to ask Zach to hang out today that I hadn’t spent very much time on it.
And then today, I’d spent my lunch hour in the bathroom and then concentrating on not crying or puking in the library.
I put everything under my desk except for my pencil and eraser. Hopefully I could do what was needed.
Mr. Martinez passed out the sheet, and I looked it over. It didn’t look too bad. I should be able to do everything okay.
I started off with the section on irrational numbers. These were all easy ones—no, of course the square root of two was not a rational number, but four was.
You know what else wasn’t rational? Me. It was insane to have thought Zach could like me.
I set my pencil down and closed my eyes to focus on keeping calm and breathing evenly and quietly, because I could feel excessive emotion coming on.
In the library, Sam had seemed so happy. Had she liked him all along, too?
Okay, maybe if I concentrated on the test I’d feel better. I opened my eyes and looked at it again. Just polynomial arithmetic from here on out. This wasn’t hard, just time-consuming, because you had to show your work in case you messed something up. I’d had Mr. Martinez last year for geometry, too, and knew he was good about partial credit.
I worked the first one, getting halfway through before thinking of what Sam and Zach would get up to on their date. Would he kiss her?
Argh. Of course he would. When?
I gritted my teeth and muddled through the rest of the question. Then I got going a little and whipped through the rest. I looked at the clock and there were still fifteen minutes left, so I took the test up to Mr. Martinez and sat back down, left to my own horrible thoughts.
Being in my head sucked.
Carlos and Kyle took their tests up, and I avoided looking in their direction. Finally class ended and we filed out.
I headed to my locker to grab my backpack and then headed toward the bus. When I pushed the outside door open, I almost ran smack into this older boy who’d been about to open it himself.
“Whoa there, man,” he said. Then his eyes narrowed as he studied me for a moment while I tried to get around him. “Wait, are you a girl?” he asked.
A couple other boys who’d been watching this whole exchange laughed, and I blushed and squeezed past him and out toward the bus.
Why did I always have to blush? Why couldn’t I just be like, “Fuck you,” and carry on?
I hated being me.
Chapter 33
Monday night was the worst. I went straight to my room when I got home, and out of habit sat down at the keyboard, which I realized I could never look at again. I crammed it into the back of my closet behind some boxes.
How could Sam do this to me?
It didn’t matter that I hadn’t told her—she should have known. And why had she believed me today, anyway? We were best friends, after all.
I tried to do some figurine painting but faced the same problem. Everything reminded me too much of Sam.
I also had to avoid social media, because what if Sam posted stuff about Zach on there? It would kill me.
I didn’t know why she hadn’t texted me yet. I figured she’d want to text or even talk.
Was she busy texting with Zach.
I went to pee at one point and accidentally looked in the mirror.
I looked seriously bad. I mean, I was my normal ugly, but then I was also extra pale, and my eyes were swollen as if my face knew I was going to cry.
Which is exactly what happened when I got back to my room. I couldn’t get back out of bed.
Eventually, Izzy knocked on my door for dinner, and I realized Sam hadn’t got in touch with me yet, which seemed weird. Izzy left me, and I went into the bathroom again. My eyes were red and swollen. Great.
If I didn’t go down, there’d be questions, though. So I headed down. I could hear Izzy talking about something that had happened at school. Some kid broke his arm at recess, it sounded like. She seemed excited about this.
There was a casserole on the table that Mom had made and Dad had heated up. Dad wasn’t much of a cook, but he could operate the oven.
Izzy was still going on about the kid, who’d apparently cried. Her fork was waving in the air. She talked with her hands like I did. As I pulled the chair out next to her, she looked over.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I stared at the casserole and sat. “Nothing.”
“Why were you crying?” Izzy asked.
“I wasn’t.” I served myself a piece—it looked like some hamburger and potato thing, with cheddar cheese.
Izzy stood up and hugged me, which made me feel both better and worse. I was about to cry again so I muttered, “Enough. Thanks.”
I looked over at Dad, who was focused on his plate, probably glad to avoid a conversation about emotions. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Caleb smirking, though he said nothing.
I seemed to have killed the mood because everyone was quiet.
So I ate and disappeared upstairs, where I couldn’t stop myself from crying the rest of the night. It’s how I fell asleep. Full of dread for the next day.
Chapter 34
Tuesday morning I somehow dragged myself out of bed, all crusty eyes and raw cheeks. I was tempted to try to stay home, but I didn’t want to draw parental scrutiny upon myself. So I powered through getting ready, then through the morning classes, and headed to lunch.
I went through the line and almost got a hamburger, but it reminded me too much of Sam, so I got a piece of pizza.
I had decided would eat at a table for once, but then Sam saw me before I found one.
“Let’s go to the stairwell,” she said, clearly wanting to talk, judging from her excited tone.
What could I do? We went to the stairwell.
We sat in our regular spots, and I started eating my pizza while staring at the floor, wishing I could sink into it.
“We saw Super Z last night,” she said.
My heart hurt. “Oh yeah? I hadn’t realized it was out yet.” I’d read the book but didn’t pay a lot of attention to movies.
“Yeah, it was good. But Nic, he held my hand!”
“Yeah? Cool.” Torture. I dropped the pizza onto the plate.
The door opened, and I looked over and saw—to my horror—Zach.
Both their faces lit up with glowing eyes, and he said, “Hey,” while staring right at her. I wasn’t even there.
But then he looked over and said, “Hi, Nic. How are you?”
“Fine,” I muttered while he sat on Sam’s other side.
They stared at each other some more. Honestly, I’d never seen two people mooning over each other before, but that’s what this was.
Then he laced his fingers through hers.
I looked down at my ugly fingers and wiped at a grease spot with my napkin.
Sam said, “I was just telling Nic about Super Z.”
He asked, “Are you going to see it?”
“I don’t know.” No, not a chance because it will remind me of you two. “The book was probably enough. Was it true to the book?”
“Mmm, not really,” Sam said. “They changed a lot.”
“I never read it,” Zach added.
They continued talking about it, and I tuned them out, not able to unsee the way Zach’s thumb moved back and forth on Sam’s hand.
It felt like there were a hundred knives trying to escape from my stomach. I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up and announced, “I’ve got to go.”
They both looked up, surprised. I guessed they’d forgotten I was there.
“Okay, see you later,” Sam said. She sounded like her normal self.
“Bye,” Zach said as I pushed the door open.
Once away from them, I could breathe a little better, but I was still feeling like I might die. Just fall over from a broken heart.
Chapter 35
Wednesday, I managed to avoid Sam and Zach.
I felt bad about it and also missed her, but it was necessary for my sanity.
On my way to art class, I saw Alyssa of the makeover across the hall in the crush of kids. She saw me, and we made eye contact, but she didn’t say anything.
Like I should have been surprised.
Once I got to class and sat down, Mia smiled at me.
Maybe she could replace Sam as my best friend. We had at least one thing in common.
Then she looked at me, and I realized I was staring and quickly averted my eyes while my cheeks warmed.
Now she probably thought I was a freak.
I went over to the cubbies where we kept our stuff and grabbed the colored pencil drawing I was working on.
It was a desert landscape I was doing based on a full-page photo from a magazine. There were some small scraggly bushes in the shot, but mostly it was dunes with the sand gradations to recreate. I could relate to it, with the apparent simplicity of the scene masking all sorts of other stuff going on underneath. The drawing was challenging but I’d been enjoying it. At least until Monday.
Still, I was sure I’d be able to enter this in the contest. I was planning to do a charcoal drawing eventually, but I needed to pick a subject. They were usually people or objects. Maybe I could do a stylized dragon. I could sketch one out in pencil first and then work it in charcoal. That could be cool.
I wondered what Mia was going to enter since we were allowed to bring stuff we worked on outside of class. I didn’t know what she got up to at home. She spent most of her class time in pottery, probably because there was free use of a kiln. And free supplies, too.
Would Sam enter something?
Just thinking of her made me ache again. How was I going to survive this?
Besides, she wouldn’t even be here. I don’t know how I could forget that.
“Are you okay?” Mia broke into my reverie.
I stared at her a second, trying to reorient myself. “I’m fine.”
“You look a little gray.”
“Not having the best week.” Once again, I’d misinterpreted a boy’s behavior. And this time the reminders weren’t limited to two classes a day.
“Maybe working on your drawing will help. It’s coming along nicely.” She smiled again.
Okay, maybe she didn’t think I was a total freak.
I started back on the drawing, thinking about the dragons languishing at home. I should work on that again. Anything to keep my mind occupied.
I’d hoped to finish the landscape drawing this week, but it wasn’t going to happen because I couldn’t do anything. I just stared at it, picturing Zach holding Sam’s hand. Then I had to deal with two of my favorite people in the world in math class before I could finally go home.
I sat down at the dining room table for the first time in a while and looked at the drawing. There was some dust on it that I had to brush off. I should have covered it. But it seemed okay. No harm done. Thank God.
I took stock. The only piece that was completely done was that little shrub. The next one I did would be on fire, right next to it. I started filling it in, but nothing I did was any good, and I had to erase several times.
My phone dinged. I checked it and saw a text from Sam. My hand gripped the case, and I dropped it on the table.
I stormed over to the cabinet and yanked a trash bag out of it to lay it over the picture. I set the pencils and other tools on top of it to hold it in place.
There, that was better. Now I could go upstairs and ignore Sam’s texts while lying on my bed feeling horrible.
Chapter 36
Somehow, against everything I wanted, I’d been convinced to go to another party Saturday night with Sam and Zach. And of course Evan. A guilt trip combined with no energy to fight back. I didn’t expect anything good to happen. I just wanted to get through it.
Sam now sat in the front with Zach, so it was Evan and me in the back. We got in at the same time when he switched with Sam and in the process of leaning over to fasten our seatbelts, we bumped heads. He jerked back and glared, like I’d somehow ruined his life. I knew he was thinking how horrible it was to be touched by such an ugly girl. He probably was all offended because he assumed I must like him, which I definitely didn’t, but I knew that’s what he thought. Evan had himself plastered to his door. There’d be no double-dating here, for sure.
I was glad I was sitting behind Zach this time, because I couldn’t look at him in the mirror and miss the fact of him looking back. Of course, now I was staring at the back of his head, instead.
At least I could do that without anyone knowing.
Sam and Zach chattered away in the front about I don’t even know what, because I was trying not to listen.
When Zach parked the car, I felt none of the excitement or even nerves I’d felt only eight days earlier, when everything seemed poised for greatness. I was numb. Even my feet felt dead. We trekked down the sidewalk, Sam and Zach holding hands and Evan and me single file behind them.
My heart started speeding up as we neared the house. The nerves were back. I suspected tonight would be a repeat of last week, where I’d been hiding out the whole time. I hoped it wouldn’t be worse than that.
We came into hearing range of the music, making me even shakier. But then we got to the door and went inside.
Evan dove into the crowd, unable to get away from me fast enough.
“You guys want beers?” Zach asked.
Maybe if I had one, things would go better. Just one. So I nodded.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Just one, though. Nic and I can share.”
“Um, actually, I think I’m going to try to mingle. I’ll take my own.” I shuffled my feet.
Sam looked at me like I’d gone crazy and Zach took off.
“What? I’m supposed to be trying, right?”
“Yeah. I’m just surprised. So how’ve you been this week? It feels like I’ve hardly talked to you.”
By design. I’d wondered if she’d notice. “Mm, yeah, I guess I’ve been keeping myself busy. I started on the dragon drawing again.” Technically true, even if I’d made no progress.
“Oh, that’s cool. It’s going to look so awesome when you’re done.”
“I hope I don’t mess it up. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good idea to leave it out, too. With Izzy and Caleb and their friends coming and going.”
“I’m sure it’s fine. Izzy’s into art and Caleb’s not that much of a jerk.”
That was true. Izzy loved it, and at one point, Caleb and I had even been close. When we were both little. We were only a year apart, after all.
But then he turned into a total guy, who I, of course, couldn’t understand.
Zach returned with the beers, and I took one and took a quick gulp. Gross, but, liquid courage. And I needed some of that. Plus some distraction from reality.
Zach took off and Sam said, “Come on, let’s go.”
“I’ll go try to mingle,” I said. How the hell was I going to do this?
She narrowed her eyes for a second, then followed Zach.
I wondered if she had forgotten about OSIN.
I took another sip and failed to suppress a grimace. There were a couple of couches in the living room covered with people and of course loads of people standing around, talking and laughing and having a good time.
What would it be like to enjoy socializing? I could deal with being around people, but if there wasn’t some purpose beyond socializing—like we were there to discuss the art club or volunteering or whatever—it was painful. It felt like there was a wall between me and everyone else that I couldn’t get past. Socializing for the sake of socializing was a nightmare.
And that’s what parties were. What had I been thinking, coming to this?
I was still standing in the foyer, so I had to move when the door opened. A couple boys came in. One was—oh, wonderful—Carlos, whose shocked face when he saw me gave him away before he started looking anywhere but at me. But the other was a guy I’d never seen before. He was in these holey black shorts and green flip-flops, with a wrinkled purple t-shirt completing the ensemble. He had black hair but pale skin.
