North of Beautiful (2 page)

Purgatory wasn’t an ugly, godforsaken place. Hardcore sports enthusiasts actually consider the Methow Valley a destination hot spot: mountain biking in the spring and summer, ice climbing and skate skiing in the winter. Sunset magazine named it the best place to buy a second home. Even the New York Times did a full-blown article on my halcyon hometown, which had the ironic effect of driving everybody but the business community crazy with the influx of tourists and vacation-home seekers. Now, we actually have traffic jams on Main Street.

So here we’ve been since I was four instead of Seattle, Dad’s hometown, or San Francisco, where Mom grew up. And all because of a map.

See, according to my brother Claudius, the only one who ever tells me anything, Dad had staked his considerable reputation on the theory that America had been first discovered by the Chinese — Zheng He, to be exact. That explorer led expeditions all through the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and apparently to America if you believed the bronze plate map that had been “found” fourteen years ago. My father, Dr. Grant Cooper, did. He himself had endorsed the China map —incontrovertible proof that the Chinese had landed on U.S. soil, predating Christopher Columbus by a good sixty years. His name, his research, his doctorate — Dad had gambled it all. So confident of its provenance, he even commissioned an expensive etching of Zheng He’s recovered map.

It took two years, but like the Vinland map before it — that calf hide map that supposedly proved that the Vikings had set foot on American soil in 1440 — the China map was also proven a fake. A clever fake. But a fraud nonetheless. I hadn’t seen Dad’s copy of the map since we moved. No one had.

Luckily, one day and seven classes were all that stood between me and Thanksgiving break. In thirty minutes, I’d ask Erik to drive me to the post office, where, with any luck, my early decision letter from Williams would be waiting.

When the bell rang, I wasn’t surprised at how fast everyone else jumped up, mouths hastily wiped of nap drool, notebooks slammed closed, sneakers pounding toward the classroom door. What surprised me was how reluctantly I got up to leave. After a full hour of feeling like some researcher’s private peep show, you would have thought I’d be elbowing my way out. Excuse me, pardon me, move it! But the idea of facing yet another empty post office box when I knew acceptance letters had been mailed last week made my heart work overtime even as every other muscle went flaccid, already on break.

Karin pointed to the compass on my jeans and said, “Cool. Can you do that to mine?”

I looked down at Karin, feeling gangly next to her scant five-foot-one. Not that she’d ever want to, but Karin could still shop in the kids’ department, she was that tiny and bird-boned.

“Sure.” I slung my backpack over one shoulder and grabbed my notebook while I ignored the panicked voice that demanded, And where the hell are you going to find a spare second, Terra? I couldn’t even keep up with my own doubled-up school load, not to mention I had already promised Erik I’d redesign the logo for his wrestling team sweatshirt over Thanksgiving break.

“Today?” she asked.

“Oh, I can’t. I’m working tonight, remember?”

“Oh, right. So this weekend?”

“Sure.” I sighed as I followed Karin to the door. The problem was, I had already committed virtually every working hour, Friday to Sunday, to the Nest & Egg Gallery. Not only was there a new exhibit to set up, but I still needed to update our Web site.

“You know,” Karin said thoughtfully, “you could make a killing doing art on people’s jeans.”

“This isn’t art.”

She frowned. “I think it is.”

It used to bother me how effortless Karin’s self-assurance was when my confidence was of the hothouse variety, carefully cultivated under highly regulated conditions. One wrong look, one mean comment, and my façade would wither. Nothing fazed Karin though — not a presentation in front of the entire school, not even podcasting when she didn’t have a clue how to do it.

I was so close to the door and the post office and my future when Dr. Holladay called, “Terra, one second.”

What now? I’d seen that well-meaning expression on Dr. Holladay’s face before, which always prefaced the did-you-know-there’s-something-wrong-with-your-face conversation. Why, no, I never noticed I wore a quarter-inch-thick layer of makeup on my face; thank you so much for pointing it out to me.

A self-preservation instinct — no doubt a gene some geneticist would isolate and identify one day — took over. I yanked the door open and hissed, “Come on,” to Karin, before shooting over my shoulder, “I’m sorry. I’ve got to get to work.”

“This is important,” she insisted.

And then, Mrs. Frankel — traitor, our biology teacher who had been completely silent during the entire class — miraculously recovered her voice. She now chimed, “Remember what I talked to you about last week?”

God. Last week, Mrs. Frankel actually had the gall to tell me privately, “You know, you’d stop breaking out if you didn’t suffocate your skin under all that makeup.” Being holier-than-thou about skincare is an easy position for the wrinkle-free to take. After all, Mrs. Frankel might be approaching fifty, but you’d never know it. Even her lips were naturally plump as a young woman’s, though they were now pursed into an earnest line.

The last person I wanted to witness an intervention for my face was Erik, but Karin qualified as a close second. So I muttered to her, “I’ll call you later.” Thankfully, she nodded and left.

Without preamble, Dr. Holladay said, “My sister has a port-wine stain.” Her fingers brushed a delicate path from her temple to her inner eye and then, finally, a clean sweep of her entire cheek. “A V2 distribution, like yours.”

I gritted my teeth. Did she actually think that telling me this made her open-minded? That throwing around a dermatological term to describe my condition made us instant friends? Or that we, God forbid, shared a karmic bond?

“That’s nice,” I mumbled.

“No, it’s not!”

I stepped back, blinked hard at Dr. Holladay’s ferocity. Then I lobbed an accusing glare over at Mrs. Frankel. With a wry smile and hands folded neatly on her desk, Mrs. Frankel explained so carefully she could have been testifying in court, “Noelle’s sister was one of my best friends growing up.”

“So you told her about me?” I asked, my voice going squeaky and high, a mouse caught in a trap. God. And Karin and Erik both wondered why I was in such a rush to get out of our small town? I might as well string a welcome sign around my neck with an arrow pointing north:
TOURIST TRAP AHEAD
.

“Look, I didn’t mean to upset you. My sister had laser surgery a few months ago.” Dr. Holladay approached me cautiously, the way you would a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. One wrong word and it would be forty-five minutes of soothing and backpedaling. “You can’t even see her birthmark anymore.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The surgeon is right in Seattle. . . .” Her voice drifted off, expectantly.

I just smiled politely back at her.

Dr. Holladay’s eyebrows furrowed, unable to comprehend why I wasn’t beyond excited. “You’re not interested?”

“Not really.”

She cast a bewildered look over at Mrs. Frankel. “I thought you said she’d want to know.”

I shook my head. Sorry, no.

Mrs. Frankel stood up behind her desk. “You wouldn’t have to hide anymore, Terra.”

“I’m not hiding.” The sharp corner of my notebook cut into my chest, so tightly was I holding it, this flimsy shield of paper. Quickly, I lowered it to my side.

Dr. Holladay asked, “Do you realize what this could mean? Your entire life could change. You’re really not interested?”

“I’m really not,” I told her truthfully. There was a time when Mom and I obsessed over every last technological advance — the newest laser, the latest techniques. That was before I went to a convention about port-wine stains in downtown Seattle almost four years ago, when I was twelve. For months after Mom had heard about the conference, she planned our trip, a military assault orchestrated down to every last minute. She compiled hit lists of specific surgeons for us to hunt down. Sessions we would divide and conquer to maximize our time: Hemangiomas and malformations (me). Laser therapy (Mom). Smart Cover Cosmetics makeup clinics (both of us).

“Look, I appreciate your concern, but nothing has worked,” I told them.

“But this is a new procedure.” Dr. Holladay crossed her arms, disapproving now.

“They all are.”

“Don’t you know what’s going to happen?”

“Yes.” That single word was whip-sharp, the way Dad sounded on a bad day, but I didn’t care. As if I could forget how some of the conference attendees had looked wistfully at my smooth face while their birthmarks were hardened and purpled and cobblestoned? How they’d comment offhandedly that sometimes their birthmarks bled spontaneously, stigmata without any hope for redemption. How I knew that looking at them, I might as well be staring at my own reflection as I grew older. I gripped my notebook to my chest again to stop from shuddering.

“Then why?” Dr. Holladay’s smooth forehead wrinkled with dismay. Like all judgmental people, she thought she knew best, and that I was simply wallowing in my small-town ignorance.

I wondered briefly what she would say if I told her the truth, played out the scenario: Okay, let’s say I wanted the surgery. Let’s say I told my mom about it. Oh, and let’s remember that a gossip columnist is better at keeping secrets than my mom. So, of course, Dad finds out. Did Dr. Holladay have any idea — even the tiniest inkling what could happen if my father — Mr. I’m Not Wasting Another Penny on Your Face — found out? I think not. But I didn’t say a word, because in my family’s unwritten code of conduct, what goes on at home, stays at home.

“I’ve got to go,” I told them.

Dr. Holladay shrugged in what I wrote off as defeat, but she had one last volley in her: “This totally changed my sister’s life. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t want yours changed. No matter how beautiful we thought she was, she always felt like an impostor.”

The truth of Dr. Holladay’s words stuck to me like thick glaze, unpleasant and hard to shake off. Flustered, I couldn’t move, not even an inch off the square grid of linoleum where I stood. For all adults go on and on about beauty being skin deep, let’s be honest here. When your dermis is filled with rogue blood vessels that have been herded under the thin skin of your face, you get mighty suspicious whenever anyone mentions anything that sounds remotely like Inner Beauty.

Dr. Holladay went to her laptop computer then, and I thought she was just powering it off, packing up to leave, her job here done. Instead, she dug inside her briefcase and brought a brochure to me in five efficient steps. “At least take this. The dermatologist’s information. In case you change your mind.”

“I won’t,” I told her even as I reached for the brochure, ever the sucker for lotions that infomercials vowed would make blemishes disappear. Ever the collector of treasure maps that promised the world but led nowhere.

Chapter three

Reference Points

BY THE TIME I MADE it outside, Erik was in his truck, one of the last ones in the parking lot. As usual, the thumping bass emanating from his pickup was so loud, I could have been approaching the town pub on karaoke night. Erik didn’t notice me, too busy playing the drums on his steering wheel, until I opened the passenger door.

“Sorry I’m late.” I practically had to shout to be heard over the music. I shoved my backpack, bulging with my usual library of books and binders, onto the floorboard.

“What took you so long?”

“A guest speaker wanted to talk to me after class.” While I turned the volume down, I waited for Erik to ask me for more information, but he just nodded and threw the truck into reverse.

“I got a new idea how to drop three extra pounds before the season starts,” he said.

“How?”

“I’m gonna wear a plastic bag over my parka. See if I can sweat off my weight that way.”

“Good luck with that. Hey, could we drop by the post office first?”

“Sure.” He was so easy, my Erik. I felt like an idiot and an ingrate for being annoyed because all he could talk about was wrestling, making weight, and building lean muscle mass. I knew better than anyone it was a minor miracle he chose to be with me.

My palms, clammy when Erik drove up to the post office (please be an acceptance letter) were corpse cold when we pulled away. How was it that every bill collector and catalog company had found a way to contact us, but not Williams College? I stuffed the junk mail into my backpack, so disappointed I couldn’t muster the energy to think of a single thing to say to Erik.

As the truck trembled in neutral in front of the Nest & Egg Gallery, I looked over at him, wanting him to say something to me. To assure me that a letter would arrive tomorrow. That my dad would be so proud he’d send me to Williams, no problem. But that was as much wishful thinking as Erik actually asking me why I’ve been compulsively checking the mailbox for six days in a row. He was singing to the radio under his breath, off-tune and always a word behind.

I grabbed my backpack with one hand, the door handle with the other, my body executing an escape plan I hadn’t realized I wanted. As I slid out of the truck, though, Erik called, “Hey, Terra.”

Hopeful now, I turned and waited. Tell me, Erik, say the right thing. “Yeah?”

“You forgot something.” He scooted over to the warm spot I had just vacated, meeting me more than halfway, and kissed me.

The first five seconds of that kiss did everything I’d hoped his words would: anchored me in the here and now. Stress vanishing, I breathed in Erik’s scent, knowing I’d always associate fresh-cut wood and worn leather with him. I wrapped my arms around him, toying with the short hair on the nape of his neck, softer there than anywhere else on his body. His hand snaked under my jacket, grazing the side of my breast in a way that made me want to slip into the narrow backseat with him, but his hand continued its one-way path down my back to slide inside my jeans. I don’t know why it irritated me now when from the first time we hooked up, his hands had been Lewis and Clark, exploring north and south of my waistline, all expansion ho! Not that I ever did anything to stop him.