Born Ugly Read online

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  Beth Goobie

  Copyright © 2011 Beth Goobie

  EPub edition copyright © July 2011

  The author gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts grant that funded the writing of this novel.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of Red Deer Press or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5, fax (416) 868-1621.

  By purchasing this e-book you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any unauthorized information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Red Deer Press.

  Published by Red Deer Press

  A Fitzhenry & Whiteside Company

  195 Allstate Parkway

  Markham, ON L3R 4T8

  www.reddeerpress.com

  Edited for the Press by Peter Carver

  Cover and text design by Daniel Choi

  Cover Image Courtesy of Getty Images

  5 4 3 2 1

  We acknowledge with thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

  Quote by Masaru Emoto used with permission from Beyond Words Publishing

  © 2001 by Masaru Emoto. English translation © 2004 by Beyond Words Publishing. From the book The Hidden Messages in Water. Reprinted with permission from Beyond Words Publishing, Hillsboro OR.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Goobie, Beth, 1959-

  Born ugly / Beth Goobie.

  ISBN 978-0-88995-457-1

  eISBN 978-1-55244-292-0

  I. Title.

  PS8563.O8326B67 2011 jC813’.54 C2011-901435-1

  Publisher Cataloging-in-Publication Data (U.S)

  Goobie, Beth

  Born ugly / Goobie, Beth.

  [ 272 ] p. : 13.3 x 18.4 cm.

  Summary: A young girl struggles with her negative self-image and feelings of being a victim, as she learns to assert herself for the first time in her life.

  ISBN: 978-0-88995-457-1 (pbk.)

  eISBN 978-1-55244-292-0

  1. Bullying -- Juvenile fiction. 2. Self-perception in adolescence – Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  The earth is searching. It wants to be beautiful.

  — The Hidden Messages in Water by Masaru Emoto.

  One

  The house party rocked with sound. Standing in the back entranceway, a beer in one hand, Shir let her body fill with the vibrations coming from the living room stereo. Beneath her feet, the floor was pulsing; she could feel the bass traveling like a live thing through her soles, then up her legs and spine, to where it became one with the supersonic throb of her brain.

  Metallica, she thought. An old CD, but a good one. Yeah, this was good. This was really good. Grinning sloppily, she lifted her can of beer and let the dregs pour into her mouth. It was her third since her arrival an hour ago, but she was managing fine. She had always been good at holding her booze. “Drunk as a stone,” her mother often said, whether Shir had been drinking or not. But then, she had already been saying that way back when Shir was four years old and too young for anything except apple juice.

  Well, anyway, thought Shir, the night was yet young and she had brought a twelve-pack, which made it three down and nine to go. And based on the rate the rest of the kids at this party were downing their favorite fluids, it was either suck back those nine soon or kiss them goodbye. So, putting a hand to the wall, she began feeling her way tentatively along the back hallway toward the kitchen. Things were admittedly wobbly, the floor doing a slow waltz under her feet.

  Because it’s dark, Shir giggled uneasily to herself. That’s what you get when you stick a ten-watt bulb into the ceiling. Bunch of cheapskates running this place. Stumbling on a loose shoe, she straightened to find the kitchen doorway to her left, its sudden brightness gouging deep into her brain. God! she thought weakly, holding onto the doorframe as she stared blurrily at the overhead light. With the difference between the hall and kitchen lighting, it felt as if she had gone from ten to a thousand watts in half a teeny-tiny second. What was it with the interior decorating in this place?

  At that moment, several guys and a girl entered the kitchen from another entrance. Immediately, Shir shrank back into the hallway’s comparative darkness, watching in silence as the group opened the fridge and pawed through the booze stacked inside. The girl was familiar, having shared a math class with Shir last year, and the guys also attended her high school. Still, Shir waited without speaking until they had pulled their beers out of a Budweiser six-pack and left the room. Then, her eyes blinking in overdrive, she entered the kitchen and stood, letting her vision adjust to the light. This was the kind of situation, she thought fuzzily, staring around herself, that was murder to a brain on multiple beers—in addition to putting a thousand-watt bulb into the overhead socket, some no-brainer had painted the walls virgin white. The place was absolutely nuclear with light.

  “Headache,” she muttered, opening the fridge door and peering at its contents. Well, another beer would fix that soon enough. Coors—she had brought a twelve-pack of Coors Light, but she couldn’t see the label anywhere among the six- and twelve-packs crammed onto the bottom shelf. Some jerk must have filched the rest of her pack. Oh well, that gave her the right to filch someone else’s. She had brought twelve, she had the right to drink twelve. Molsons would do fine.

  Carefully, Shir slid a can out of the nearest pack and closed the fridge door. Then she leaned against the counter, steadying herself as she popped the tab. Molson Canadian, she thought, surveying the can with hazy satisfaction. Yeah, Molsons.

  But as she raised it to her mouth, readying herself for the first sluice of cold fluid, several guys entered the kitchen. As she caught sight of them, Shir instinctively lowered her drink and covered the label with both hands. Damn! she thought frantically. What if this particular can of beer belonged to one of these guys? Sure, there was lots of Molsons in the fridge, but sometimes kids marked their beer to make sure no one else drank it. Why hadn’t she thought to check first? Easing the can behind her back, Shir began a cautious sideways shuffle toward the back entrance.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” said one of the guys, a tall, blond grade-twelve student Shir knew from afar as Wade Sullivan. Part of the drama crowd, he was also in the school band and played on the soccer team. “Shirley Rutz, right?” he said
with a grin, coming toward her. “Don’t run away on me now. I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  Still holding the Molsons behind her back, Shir regarded him suspiciously. A proposition? she thought warily. What kind of proposition would Mr. Big-Shot Drama Star want to make her? This was her third year at Collier High, and try as she might, she couldn’t recall a single time previous to this moment when Wade had spoken to her, even glanced in her direction. So why the sudden interest? He didn’t look drunk. At least, not that drunk.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said cautiously.

  Reaching into his pocket, Wade pulled out a toonie. “Two bucks,” he said, holding it in front of her face.

  “Two bucks for what?” asked Shir. Glancing at the guys behind him, she felt a sinking sensation. Something was up, obviously. These guys weren’t subtle—it was written all over their sneering, leering faces.

  “Two bucks if you let me kiss you,” grinned Wade. “I’ve never kissed a girl as ugly as you, and I figure the experience would be worth that much.”

  Loud guffaws broke out behind him and a flush hit Shir hard as a cruise missile, blowing her brain to bits. “Fuck off,” she squeaked, her voice going high and crawling into the back of her throat. Ditching the can of Molsons, she lunged toward the back hallway.

  “Uh uh,” said Wade, cutting her off. “I really want to, Shirley. I figure maybe a kiss with you will change my life. Y’know, love is blind and all that. Maybe we’ll kiss and I’ll fall head-over-heels in love, and we’ll get married and have a couple of dog-faced, shit-ugly kids who’ll look just like you. And I’ll love them as much as I love you, because I’m so blind with love, I’m living my whole life by Braille.” Pursing his lips, he leaned toward her. “What d’you say, babe? This could be the moment we’ve both been waiting for.”

  He was so close, Shir could feel his beer-soaked breath on her face. Grunting low in her throat, she shoved him. Wade shoved back.

  “Shirley, Shirley,” he said, still grinning, but his eyes had narrowed. “You wouldn’t say no to blind love, would you?”

  Her mind a complete blank, Shir stared at him. Why hadn’t she seen this coming? she thought bleakly. There was always something coming. “Fuck off,” she hissed again, her flush deepening. “Just fuck off and leave me alone.”

  “Oooo, she’s hot for you, Wade,” said one of the guys behind him. “Look at that heat.” Reaching around Wade, he grabbed Shir’s right arm.

  “No!” she cried, trying to jerk away, but he tightened his grip. At the same time, Wade leaned closer, pushing her against the counter with his hip. He was hard down there, Shir thought, panicking—she could feel it. Fear oozed stickily up her throat.

  “Okay, leave it alone,” said a voice from across the room. “That’s enough.”

  Without backing off, Wade turned to look over his shoulder. “What for, Brett?” he demanded. “We’re just talking kissing, here.”

  “No making her,” said Brett, his eyes flicking uneasily across Shir’s face. Also in the school band / soccer team set, he was another of Collier High’s senior male students who had never before given her a second glance. “If she says no,” he continued, flushing slightly under the concentrated stares of the other guys, “that’s it, okay?”

  “C’mon, Brett,” grumbled Wade, but he took a step back. “That’s why I got Dana to invite her to this party. Why else would I walk into a house with a face like that in it?”

  “Tough luck,” shrugged Brett, turning back to the living room. “You asked and she said no. I guess love isn’t blind when it’s looking at you, Wade.”

  Another guffaw rocked the group, and they drifted carelessly out of the kitchen after Brett. No one paused to give Shir a backward glance, but she was already gone, squinting in the back hall’s ten-watt light as she fumbled through a pile of unfamiliar shoes. Shit! she thought desperately. Where had she left her runners? She was sure she had dropped them here by the back door when she came in, but now she couldn’t see them anywhere. Oh, well, these two shoes fit okay. A sandal and a Nike runner—who cared if they matched?

  Too bad about the nine missing beer, though.

  Shoving open the back door, Shir took off and ran like a scream.

  She woke to the sound of a different stereo, its muffled throb coming from across the hall. Celine Dion, she thought dismally, recognizing the familiar voice. That meant sister Stella was up and at ’em, raring to go, even on a Sunday morning. Probably had a five-star, next-year-it’s-the-Olympics sports meet or something. With a long-suffering groan, Shir stuck her head under her pillow. Faintly, from further down the hall, she could hear the living room TV, which meant her mother was up, too. Hadn’t anyone explained the purpose of weekends to these people—sleeping in, crashing out, digging your own grave, and crawling into a comatose stupor until Monday forced a return to consciousness?

  Lifting the edge of her pillow, Shir peered at her clock radio, then rolled carefully onto her side and sat up. Not bad for 11:10, she thought, assessing her body’s response. The usual headache was there, but at least it wasn’t slamming her like a tidal wave. Blearily, she tried to recall something from the previous evening. What had it been—a full six-pack night? No, not quite, she realized as memory started to kick in. After ditching that dickhead party at Dana Lowe’s, she had headed over to the alley behind the liquor store on 23rd Street, where there was always someone on a Saturday night, reselling beer to minors. At a fairly stiff hike-up of course, but she’d had enough on her to buy two cans, and this time she wasn’t stupid enough to leave them sitting around where they could get ripped off. No, the beer had all gone sluicing down her throat the way it was supposed to, and then she had spent the next hour weaving up and down back alleys, belting out fifty-proof opera as she took the long way home.

  “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”—it was the song she always sang when she got plastered. Over and over, the same dorky song and the same dorky tune. Her dad had been like that, too, except the song he had sung when he got ripped was “Rule Britannia.” It was the only thing Shir could remember about him now, even when she got out the sole picture she had of him and studied every detail—a bent, aging photograph that showed him in undershirt and jeans, holding her on his knee and grinning like a wild man. One glance was all it took to prove beyond the slightest doubt that they were father and daughter. The evidence was unavoidable, from the skimpy red hair and huge honker of a nose, to the thick wide lips and narrow face that looked as if it had been placed on a rack and stretched five or so extra centimeters. Their close resemblance hadn’t seemed to bother her dad—he was beaming at the camera like any proud father—but it hadn’t been enough to keep him around for more than a few months at a time, either. “Here today, gone tomorrow,” Mom used to say about him, and Shir’s fifth birthday had been the last time she had heard from him—a birthday card displaying an elephant with a balloon in its trunk, and the words Miss you Shirley written inside. She still had it, stuck into her photo album next to the photograph.

  “Probably dead,” was all Mom would say about him now. “Beer fight or driving drunk. That man never could hold his beer.”

  Well, Shir could hold hers, that was for sure. Five and a half beers, she thought groggily, and only a low-grade hangover to show for it. Cautiously, she got to her feet, then sat down again as the floor gave a mild warning wobble. Okay, she thought, reassessing the situation. Maybe today’s hangover was closer to medium—somewhere between several extra-strength Tylenol and slamming your head against a wall to give yourself something else to think about. But after an hour or two and a bowl of Cheerios, last night’s side effects would fade into history where they belonged. If only last night, and everything she was starting to remember about it, would fade into nothingness, too.

  Standing up again, Shir grabbed a sweatshirt from a nearby chair and pulled it on over her pajamas. Then she eased open her bedroom door, bracing herself as Stella’s stereo hit full force, Celine Dion’s voice attacking from e
very possible angle—cat squall after cat squall, scratching its way deep into Shir’s raw, throbbing brain. Briefly, she considered ramming her way through the locked door opposite and tossing her younger sister’s stereo out the window, but ditched the thought. It would be too much effort, way too much. Besides, Stella was taking a self-defense course at the Y. No, all things considered, thought Shir, the best course of action would be to skulk into the bathroom and give her mouth a thorough going-over with Crest before Mom got a whiff of her breath. If she wanted a future, that is.

  Morosely, she shuffled into the bathroom, where she flicked on the light, heard the fan kick in, and flicked the light off again. After the Cheerios, she thought, wincing, maybe she would be able to handle the fan—and the bathroom mirror, come to think of it. At that moment, without warning, a voice came into her mind, cutting off her thoughts. Two bucks if you let me kiss you, it said, clear as anything, and Shir’s mouth dropped soundlessly open as memory hit full force, bringing back the kitchen scene at Dana Lowe’s and the sensation of Wade Sullivan’s hip pressing her against the counter. Shirley, Shirley, she heard him jeer a second time. You wouldn’t say no to blind love, would you?

  Shir’s throat tightened and she pulsed with dull, slow shame. No, she thought heavily. This morning she was definitely keeping the bathroom light off and leaving the mirror until later—later this afternoon, later this week, maybe later this year. Fumbling in the dark, she used the toilet, then pulled a toothbrush out of the medicine cabinet, loaded it with Crest, and started brushing. The toothbrush probably wasn’t hers—it tasted different than usual and the handle felt wider—but it wasn’t as if anyone had to worry about catching an STD from her. Not now, not ever.

  Brushing furiously, Shir cleared last night’s ugly aftertaste from her mouth and spat it into the sink. Then she splashed her face with water and headed for the kitchen. As expected, she passed her mother en route, sitting on the living room couch and watching a TV church show. Every Sunday morning like clockwork, Janice Rutz tuned into TV preachers for what she called her “God fix.” Apparently, it made up for everything she said and did the other 167 hours of the week.