“You know, no boobs. No butt. Boring. Sits behind you.”
I covered my hands over my mouth, but no sound came out. I couldn’t move. I think I even stopped breathing. My stomach clenched tight and my ears perked up, waiting for more, while at the same time wanting to make a break for it.
“Oh yeah. Now I remember. She looks like my dog, but not as hot.”
The boys snorted in laughter. The tardy bell rang, and from a distance I heard a locker door slam, and the voices faded away as they shuffled toward class. Our class.
My face fell, deflated, along with my heart. I wrapped my hands around my stomach, sliding down the wall to sit with my knees bent. I sat in stunned silence for several minutes, my heart pounding, running the words he had said over and over again in my head; cementing them a permanent fixture in my brain.
‘’She looks like my dog, but not as hot.’
What did that even mean? The boys had laughed like they had known what it meant. Those boys who I had sat by, passed papers to, and even smiled at when they made jokes in class. They laughed at me.
Chase had said I looked like a dog. Uglier than a dog. Tears leaked from the corner of my eyes, the sting burning the creases as footsteps sounded down the hallway. I averted my face and discretely wiped at the tears.
“Penny, are you sick?”
Turning, I looked at Mrs. Norris, the school counselor, as she approached. I nodded up at her, in my dazed stupor. She had a history of wearing the brightest colors imaginable, and today’s orange was no different. Her arm jangled with bracelets as she placed her hand on my elbow and helped me to stand.
“Let’s go to the office and we’ll call your mom.”
A few minutes later, I sat alone in the nurse’s office, waiting for my mom to pick me up. As if the fates were all conspiring against me, across from where I sat was a full-length mirror. I squinted at myself to get a better view. My brown hair lay limp and stringy just past my shoulders. My braces pushed against my lips, making them poke out just a bit. At my count that morning, I had a total of eleven zits running across my face.
Was it all true?
I had never thought of myself as ugly. I always figured, if I were ugly, my family would have told me. Or at least given me that impression. Even though I compared myself to Matt’s good looks, I always figured I would catch up someday. Ugly. What did that word even mean? Why did it hurt so bad thatChasehad implied it? Was it because I had been so delusional in thinking that he liked me? Not in a girlfriend way, but in a ‘friend’ kind of way. He had tossed me a secret note. Wasn’t that a friend thing to do? Yes, I was about to ask him to a dance, but that was it. I didn’t expect anything else. I thought he was cute, but I knew he was out of my league. It all just felt like a giant stab in my bulging backpack full of candy bars and cheesy rhymes. Gina and Matt would be going to the dance without me.
I didn’t have boobs. That part was true, though I still remained hopeful. I had no curves. Pete thought I was boring.
Chase thought his dog was hotter than me.
It took several weeks for my fragile, middle school heart to patch back together. I had been burned. Tossed into the inferno, only to spit me back out into social studies with Chase and Pete. I no longer held interactions with them beyond the necessities. I didn’t laugh at their jokes, I no longer found them funny. Those moments were gone. But there was also a moment—albeit several days later—that begged for the ‘Pretty Woman moment.’ Gina’s mom had that movie in her secret stash that she didn’t know we knew about. One afternoon, to cheer me up, Gina snuck it away and we watched it together. There was a moment in that movie, when Julia Roberts went back into the high-end store that she was kicked out of days earlier, only to rub it in their faces that she could have bought them out. She showed them that they shouldn’t have judged her based on her looks. Then, she had her grand finale statement to the snobby shop workers, where she said, ‘big mistake. Huge.’
Gina and I had cheered when she said that. We had clapped as she spun around and walked away. Maybe that would be me and Chase some day—when I found my confidence. My moment.
First, I had to find out—What could a person be, if not pretty?
Chapter 1
All four tires on my trusty Toyota Corolla spun loudly, putting up a decent fight. Eventually, they lost the battle. Amidst prayers and swears on my part, I stomped on my breaks to keep from rolling backward and careening off the mountainside. The car slid back a few inches before stopping. I held my breath, muscles tensed, as I tried to figure out my next move. The snow pelted down like a scene from Star Wars. It was also pitch-black outside. Did I mention that? Instead of leaving for the cabin at a sensible time, like three in the afternoon, I left after work. At seven at night. In the winter. During a huge snowstorm.
‘Okay, don’t panic,’ I told myself. ‘Stay calm, think.’
My first inclination was to call my dad. Ten years after graduating high school and moving out of my childhood home, Istillcalled him to fix all the broken things. I had datedplentyof other men (three other men) and nobody responded as promptly, and with such attention to detail, as my dad. He was a ’Jack of all Trades’ too. It didn’t matter what it was; the garbage disposal, the leaky sink, or the front door that refused to shut properly. Dad could fix it all. Too bad my parents were in London visiting my sister and her husband for the Christmas holiday. There was nothing he could do from that far away, except worry.
My next thought was to call Gina. After all, she had been the one who invited me to her cabin the week before Christmas. Then I remembered, she was on a cruise with my twin brother Matt and their young family. That’s right, my twin brother married my best friend Gina, and we all graduated high school together. We were just one big, happy, All-American family. Well, except,theyhad a family. I did not.
I’m getting off track.
Knowing I would be alone, Gina offered me the use of her family’s remote cabin in the mountains of the Salmon-Challis National Forest in Idaho. Once they were back on land, they planned to meet me at the cabin on Christmas Day, to spend the holiday together. I was under a deadline for my third book, and a week by myself in a snowy, cozy, fire drawn cabin had seemed like a slice of heaven.
However,now, in the black of night, alone, on a steep, snowy mountain road, all I could think about was serial killers, chainsaws, and… Bigfoot.
The car slid backwards a few more inches and I gripped the wheel in alarm.
The only sensible thing for me to do was to park the car somewhere to the right of the road. I could move it the next morning. The cabin couldn’t be too much further. If I remembered correctly, the road ended at the cabin, so no other cars should be on the road.
I put the car in reverse and slowly turned my wheel, letting up on the break slightly. The car jerked backwards. Squealing, I slammed on the breaks. To my relief, the car was now in a better position, and had inched more toward the mountainside, instead of the cliff.