One thing she loved to do was watch pageants, Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Universe, Miss World. The girls in those pageants competed for scholarships, but their sparkly dresses and big hair probably cost more than they’d ever win. The contestants danced sexily onstage and then talked about ending world hunger. Some of the girls probably weren’t even pretty before they applied all the hair spray, false eyelashes, and goo, and they did stupid talents like ventriloquism and hula dancing.
And yet, every time they crowned a new queen, the camera panned the audience, found their families. I knew those moms loved their daughters, loved them enough to take out a second mortgage to buy a case of hair spray. Which was more than my mother loved me.
So I was cherishing this mother-daughter moment even if it did involve hunting for chin hairs. “Move into the light where I can see you better. Maybe by the window.”
Where you can see me.
“Oh, okay. Let me put on my contacts first. I always take them off when I pluck, to help me see close. But then I can’t see anything. I can’t even see your face.”
“Sure.” I handed her the case. I would have stuffed the lenses into her eyes myself had it meant it would happen faster. Could she tell?
Finally, they were in. She blinked at me. “Okay, then, where did you want me?”
In my corner. She still didn’t seem to notice any difference. Was I so ugly that a little improvement didn’t help? No, she probably hadn’t adjusted to the contacts. “Come here.”
The sun was close to setting, and the western-exposed window filled the room with strained light. I stood close. “Tilt your chin up.” She’d be looking right at my nose in that position.
She obeyed. I held the tweezers, searching for hairs. None there. My perfect mother with a hair on her chinny-chin-chin? Impossible. But I pretended to search, waving the tweezers near her face, wondering if I should pretend to see something.
“Anything?” Her voice sounded breathless.
“I’m . . . not . . . sure.” Look at me.
“Violet, you must be very certain. I have a date tomorrow, someone new, someone rich. I can’t have . . . a hair.”
No reaction to my new and improved nose. But, of course, she was too fixated on herself, her wonderful self, as she always was. Maybe if I found a hair, she’d look at me.
“Oh, here it is!” I inched the tweezers up to one downy, blond, regular peach-fuzz hair. I grabbed it. “Got it!”
A moan escaped her lips, and with that sound, I gave the skinny hair a mighty yank. My mother gasped.
“There!” I held the empty tweezers in triumph.
“You’re sure that’s all?” she asked.
“Positive.” Look at me. Look at me!
But she turned away. I wanted to say something, anything else. Ask for help with my homework. Ask her to make me cookies? Hardly. Ask if she thought I was pretty. Ha. I knew the answer to that one without asking. I never would be.
Unless . . .
“Okay, Mommy, I have lots of homework.”
I did have homework, but for once, I let it slide. I could do it at school. One B was hardly going to wreck my average.
Had I just thought that? I’d gone ballistic about the group project, about anything less than an A.
But the difference was, then, I’d thought it mattered. Now, I knew it didn’t. Middle school grades didn’t matter. Grades didn’t matter. Or how smart you were. Or what college you got into. Nothing mattered if you didn’t have the one thing that did: beauty. I was going to get it, and I wasn’t going to wait.
I ran to my room and looked for a mirror. There was none over my vanity. I hadn’t wanted one. Now, I did. I needed the truth of my ugliness, laid out before me, to see my work. I had no compacts, no powders or blushers, nothing with a mirror in it. Finally, I spotted the little jewelry box my grandfather had given me. It played music when opened, a plastic ballerina whirling round and round, the mirror behind her reflecting her every move. I broke the ballerina off and threw her aside, leaning on the spring that had connected her to the box. It kept spinning even after the dancer was removed. I tried to examine my face.
I couldn’t see much in the tiny mirror, just my nose and my nonexistent lashes. How I hated my lashes! I tried to think back on the conversation with the witch, the conversation and what had happened before it. The boys. They’d attacked me, and suddenly, magical help had come. I remembered the other time the magic had come. The broken bird. What did those two experiences have in common? In both cases, I’d really wanted something to happen. Was that it? Was it enough? No. If merely wanting something to happen was enough, I’d be beautiful already.
And my mother would have a beard like Santa Claus!
No, it had to be more than wanting. There had to be some kick in the butt, something to jump-start the magic like cables on a car battery.
The anger. That would explain it. Maybe longing and need too. Ordinarily, I was what people in books called mild-mannered, accepting as an ugly girl needed to be. Pretty girls could have fits of pique, but girls who looked at me should be nice. Usually, I was.
But today, I hadn’t been. How could I have? Nor that day with the bird. I loved birds, and I hated the kids who would harm one. Someone who hurt an innocent little bird would hurt me, or anyone.
Hate.
I stared into the mirror as best I could, patted the spring that had now stopped wavering in the tiny gold frame. I hated my face, my eyelashes especially.
They weren’t hard to hate, sparse and pathetic, almost invisible. I’d told myself that my ugliness made me stronger, a survivor. Now I knew I’d lied. Ugliness wasn’t power. Beauty was. Those pageant girls knew it. So did the network execs who only hired beautiful airheads to do the news. They were making us stupid as a society And Greg, my poor Greg, forgetting his best friends because of the beautiful, evil Jennifer. Beauty was power, and I hated it, hated Jennifer and Nick and Nathan, hated all of them, everyone. I wanted the power to hurt them.
I felt a strange tingling in my face. I expected to see that my eyelashes had grown instantaneously, but they hadn’t. They were still short, still whitish. I squeezed my eyes shut against their hideousness, and I felt the room begin to whirl. The music box started playing Swan Lake, the story of a lovely swan. I remembered The Ugly Duckling. Me. I wanted to be the swan. The room spun around me, and when I opened my eyes, the colors kept swirling. I couldn’t see my face. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I dropped the jewelry box. It clattered to the floor, still playing, spilling its contents. I felt myself falling too. Then, everything went black.
I woke, sprawled on the mint-green Berber carpet. I pushed myself up.
I started to stand when I noticed the music box lying open on its side, on the ground. It was just out of my reach, but I crawled toward it, expecting nothing when I looked in its mirror. Sitting up, I held the box close to my face, peered into the mirror.
The eyes that met mine were unrecognizable. Or rather, I did recognize them. They were my mother’s eyes, deep blue, fringed with black. Whose eyes were these?
I struggled up. The clock said 7:30. Light streamed through the window. Time for school. I ran to the bathroom and peered into the sparkling, silver mirror above the sink.
It was still me. At least, most of it was me. Weak chin—check. Thin, fuzzy hair—still awful. But the eyelashes were the Maybelline-commercial lashes I’d wished for. The eyes themselves weren’t really that different. The lashes just made them look that way. But, it occurred to me, I could change them too.
I could change them. I had the power to change anything.
Anything.
I could be the most beautiful woman in the world.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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6
What I learned the next day in school was this: No one looked at me. Maybe they looked when I was younger, long enough to realize I was beneath their notice. But then, they stopped. So they didn’t notice my eyelashes or even my nose.
Knowing this would’ve been a big time-saver, had I realized it earlier. I thought of all the hours I’d spent washing, brushing, and blow-drying my hair, covering zits in tinted Clearasil, or choosing outfits that wouldn’t get made fun of. Had I known all along that I was invisible, I could have taken up a hobby. Or discovered a cure for cancer.
Even Greg didn’t notice the change in me. In fact, he didn’t look at me at all. Why did I care so much? Why did I still want him?
At least I was enthralled by my new look. I excused myself to look in the girls’ room during each class, and I went in between too, seeing the same people, the druggies, cutters, and truants each time. The third time, I saw this girl, Molly, a brunette I’d known since kindergarten. She squinted at me through what I was pretty sure was a pot-induced haze and said, “Don’t I know you?”
“Yeah, I’m Violet. We went to Coral Ridge together.”
Her eyes flickered with recognition. “Ohhhh, I remember. You were the freaky chick who picked up the dead bird.”
“It wasn’t dead. People just thought—”
“Noooo, it was dead. You made it come back to life. Poof!” She made a sort of abracadabra gesture with her hands. “But when I told people that, they said I was on drugs.”
“You probably were. How could I do that. I’d have to be—”
“A witch. I told them you were, but they didn’t believe me. They said just because someone has a bad nose doesn’t mean they’re a witch.”
Out of the mouths of potheads . . .
“Hmm, I see.” I turned toward the mirror. Even though she was acting suspicious, I couldn’t resist looking at myself.
“By the way,” Molly said, “you look really good. The first time you came in, I almost didn’t recognize you. You get a nose job or something?”
I nodded, watching myself in the mirror. I realized that, up until now, I’d wondered if the whole thing was my imagination. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. Thank you. Gotta get back to class.”
It was real! It wasn’t wishful thinking! It was real!
After school, I pushed through the crowds, past Nick and Nathan, who avoided me after yesterday. Once I was out of sight, I broke into a run. In minutes, I was walking up a driveway overgrown with roots and weeds breaking through the asphalt. The house’s steps were covered in weeds too. Did Kendra really live here? I peered through the grimy window. Inside was dark, abandoned. Had it all been my imagination?
I remembered Molly’s comments, the boys avoiding me. No. I hadn’t imagined it.
I reached for the cobweb-crusted door, avoiding the dead leaves and insect skeletons. I knocked softly. The sound seemed to reverberate around the empty porch. No footsteps, so I was startled by the door opening.
The girl—because that’s what she was—looked about my age with short hair that was actually purple. She wore a long, black gown that looked a hundred years old, and bizarre makeup with black sparkles highlighting dark eyes. She looked like a stunning vampire or something, a creature of the night. Was this even Kendra?
But she said, “Come in, Violet.”
“Is it . . . Kendra?”
“Oh, I forgot.” With a wave of her hand, she transformed into the older, dark-haired woman from yesterday, then back. “Everyone likes a change sometimes. Yesterday, I took a form that would make you comfortable, a middle-aged woman. But really, I can be anything I want.”
I stepped inside. It was like the Palace of Versailles, marble floor and glowing chandeliers, all brand-new. She led me to a little sofa covered in tapestry fabric. How had she done it all? Witchcraft, of course. Could I do it too?
My heart whispered that I could.
“I see you’ve been experimenting.” She focused on my eyes.
“What?” I tried to look confused. “No, I haven’t.”
She stared at me. “Of course not. I must be mistaken. Your eyes have always looked like the second coming of Elizabeth Taylor.”
“Who’s that?”
“Sorry, I date myself. She was an actress, lovely, violet-colored eyes, long, lustrous lashes. Some say she was the most beautiful woman on earth. Or the fairest one of all.”
“The fairest . . . huh?”
“Sorry. It’s something we used to say when I was a girl. No one says that anymore.”
The fairest one of all. Man, would that be something. I’d have been happy just not being ugly, but the fairest.
“Okay,” I admitted. “I guess I experimented with my lashes a little. I figured no one would notice, and no one did.”
“No one?”
“This one druggie girl. But my own mother didn’t.”
Kendra nodded. “How did you do it?”
I shrugged. “Don’t you know?” She’s probably been watching me in her mirror.
“I want you to tell me.”
“Okay. I channeled my feelings, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
“Once, when I was in fourth grade, two boys got into a fight in PE. Instead of getting mad at them, the coach told them to channel that anger into the softball game we were playing. Choke up on the bat, and hit real hard. And it actually helped. At least, one of them got a home run on his next at bat.”
“And this has what to do with you?”
“Just, that’s what I did—channeled all the anger, the rage over the way people treat me, at girls like Jennifer and Gennifer, who wouldn’t even let me play kickball with them in grade school, at Greg, for not noticing how awful they are, or not caring, anyway, for ditching me. I put all that in my head and concentrated on . . . my eyelashes.”
She laughed.
“It seems trivial, I guess.” I knew it wasn’t.
“No, eyelashes are very important.” She wasn’t kidding.
“Is that how it always works? Does magic come from rage and hatred? It did with Nick and Nathan too.”
But not with the bird. How had that happened?
“Maybe hatred and rage, maybe fear, maybe even love, though I’ve never tried that one myself. It comes from a strong emotion that overwhelms you like an ocean’s waves. For me, it began with desperation. When I was your age, a terrible plague swept through my town. My father died, mother too. Then, one by one, each brother and sister was taken from me until, finally, I had only one left, my youngest brother, Charlie. And Charlie lay dying in his bed.”
“That must have been terrible. No one could help?” I didn’t have siblings, only my mother. But the thought of losing her was too terrible to bear.
Kendra had a faraway look in her eyes. “No, no one could help. I was thirteen and alone. Half the town lay sick and dying. The rest mourned as I did. Every day, Mr. Howe, the gravedigger, brought his wheelbarrow down our street, asking if we had any dead to bring out, and one by one, my family left me.”
I shuddered. “What did you do?”
“I went to a woman, a healer in town. Her name was Lucinda, and she had been my friend, had told me that someday, I might be a healer like her. But she was gone too.”
“Was she dead?”
Kendra shook her head. “She’d just disappeared. At that moment, I felt more emotion than ever before, emotions crowding inside me, crawling over one another, clamoring to get out like Pandora’s box, anger, grief, desperation, loneliness, and they poured out of me and onto Charlie.”
I remembered the night before, the room spinning, my vision going purple.
“So the emotions were what triggered your magic?”
“I didn’t know at the time, but yes. When I woke the next day, Charlie was awake, alive. He was cured of his sickness as if nothing had
been wrong. This had happened to no one else. Everyone who had sickened had died. There was only one reason this could have happened: me. I had cured him.”
“Wow.” It was incredible to think that such powers existed, that I could have them too. “Wait. When was this?”
Kendra hugged herself, her slim hands crushing down the black fabric of her dress. “The year the plague struck England. 1666.”
“Sixteen sixty-six?” It was impossible. “So you’re . . .”
“Immortal, yes. All witches are.” With a wave of her hand, she transformed again, this time into a young girl from another era, blond braids streaming down her back. She wore a long, blue dress with full sleeves and a red apron. “It is a blessing, but a curse as well. One gets lonely. There are so few of us.”
From another room, I heard a clock ticking. “So nothing can kill you . . . us?”
“Nothing but the flame. I have managed to avoid it these three-hundred-odd years, sometimes just barely.” She waved her hand and was herself again, at least, the self I’d seen before. “Come now, let’s work on making some magic.”
I wanted to. I especially hoped to be able to work magic without passing out. Kendra made it look so easy.
“So, my friend, what should we try next? Something small.”
“Does it have to be small? People at school wouldn’t even notice if I showed up six inches taller. I’m invisible to them.”
“You’d be surprised what people notice.”
I thought of Molly from the bathroom. I nodded.
“And once people notice, they look for ways to use your magic against you. That’s how people like my friend, Lucinda, disappear.”
“But you said she was immortal, unless . . .” I shuddered, picturing someone being burned at the stake, the wood piled high around her, flames lapping at her feet. Would the fact that she couldn’t die except by burning mean she couldn’t asphyxiate, that her heart couldn’t burst, but rather, she would have to be burned alive, watching the skin peel off as painful first- and second-degree burns gave way to the blessed relief of death?
“No,” Kendra said, “she was not burned. She merely disappeared. Witches do. Now, let’s find something suitably small. Your complexion, perhaps?”