Feral Beauty

1

M

ore than anything, Stephanie Zeller wanted to be beautiful. Eighteen years of ugliness had worn her out. There was not a thing about herself she, or any boy for that matter (aside from maybe Charlie Hubbard), found attractive. Not her small breasts, not her acne-riddled cheeks, not her scrawny frame, and most definitely not her shit-brown eyes. With resigned acceptance, Stephanie Zeller had acquired the title of nerd: she was a girl who made straight A’s, who was a fashion victim of the highest order (she didn’t feel pretty enough to wear anything cool like torn or skinny jeans or stylish tank tops that showcased her willowy arms), who was so alone she felt a little bit special if anyone said hi to her, if anyone even acknowledged her existence aside from making fun of her.

In her senior year at Clear Water High School, Stephanie Zeller’s loneliness had taken on new meaning. The popular girls had nicknamed her Spaghetti-Faced Stephanie and Miss Pizza Face. Missy Peterson had at least been original by calling her Queen of the Dorks. The worst was at lunch, though, because Stephanie had two choices: sit alone in the cafeteria and feel like a big loser in public or go outside and eat her lunch somewhere along the walkway and feel like a big loser in private, hoping nobody saw her. There were times when the typical Houston, Texas, heat and humidity grew so heavy she was drenched in sweat by the time lunch ended and she had to walk to English class in E building, and she was always the first person in class, staring straight ahead, her hands laced together upon her desk, her sweat-slicked hair stuck to her neck and ears. The only thing Stephanie Zeller was missing to make her the perfect specimen of dorkiness was Coke-bottle glasses. Strangely, she’d been blessed with twenty-twenty vision, which would have been cool if only she had pretty eyes.

It wasn’t fair the way beauty was distributed to the absolute worst among the female species, like Kitty Martine, for example. God, Stephanie hated Kitty. Everyone gave Kitty the utmost attention, saying hi and turning their heads in awe when Kitty sashayed past as though she were prancing upon a catwalk at all times, awarding her Most Beautiful year in and year out, crowning her Homecoming Queen and Prom Queen voting her head cheerleader. Kitty’s parents had even bought her a black BMW 228i coupe for her first car, for goodness’ sake.

Stephanie still remembered the stupidity of Kitty Martine cartwheeling out in front of the gymnasium filled with fellow students during cheerleading tryouts to begin her moronic cheer session. Ready? Okay!

All Kitty’s friends had sat in the front row, cheering her on. Go, Kitty! All right, Kitty!

Not that they needed to, because the whole crowd had been conditioned into rooting for Kitty anyway, erupting in a roar at every inane movement of hers.

But it’s almost over, Stephanie thought, eating her brown-bagged lunch on the walkway close to D building. Only a little while longer and I’ll never have to set foot here again. With that thought, almost as if it were a trigger of some sort, Stephanie heard, Look, it’s Miss Pizza Face.

It came from behind her, and Stephanie didn’t dare look back. It was best to pretend she hadn’t heard the rotten nickname. She hunched over her lunch and continued eating her peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Awww, she’s eating lunch all alone. Stephanie recognized that voice: it was Aberdeen Davis, a junior who hung out with seniors, who supposedly a lot of the senior boys had passed around as a sort of play toy amongst friends.

Through her peripheral vision, Stephanie could make out Kitty Martine standing to the side of her. Stephanie turned and looked at Kitty and her gaggle of girlfriends. Kitty had her black leather purse slung over her shoulder, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wore distressed jeans and a tight V-neck T-shirt to showcase her tanned skin and medium-sized breasts. It felt like Kitty’s jade-green eyes were staring straight through Stephanie, and Kitty’s upper lip was curled in disgust and disapproval. Eating lunch alone was sacrilegious to these girls, akin to walking into a party with your finger in your nose. Not only that, but Stephanie had brought her lunch in a brown bag, another mortal sin.

Wow, Miss Pizza Face, Kitty said, her voice a lilt that made her words sound kind even when she was insulting you. It’s about time you got your shit together. This outfit—Kitty waved her hand in a circle, encompassing everything Stephanie Zeller was or would ever be—"I mean, have some pride, for Chrissakes. You look like you went shopping at Salvation Army. Grunge is out, girl."

The other girls erupted in laughter.

Stephanie was simply wearing Converse sneakers, baggy bluejeans, and an oversized plain white T-shirt.

And eating lunch on the walkway alone, Kitty added, is just flat-out pathetic.

She’s a loser, Amber Jordan said. I bet she’s never even kissed a guy.

Stephanie Zeller lowered her eyes. Her stomach was turning into a ball of snakes that slithered about inside her. Tears surged in her eyes.

"Well… have you ever kissed a boy?" Kitty asked Stephanie.

Stephanie wet her trembling lips without answering.

"Have you ever seen a boy’s cock? Kitty said cock with a flourish of her tongue, like it was some special French word that had to be pronounced a certain way. Have you ever been fucked? Kitty’s girlfriends were laughing behind her. She’s blushing. You’re right, she’s never kissed a boy. I mean, who would kiss her, anyway."

Stephanie balled her hands into tight little fists. A single warm tear escaped her right eye and rolled down her cheek. She could almost smell its saltiness, and it dilated her stinging nostrils. The girls standing in front of Stephanie—Kitty Martine, Amber Jordan, Missy Peterson, and Aberdeen Davis—were shaking, as if the earth were rattling beneath them. She saw that Violet Holt, the final member of their clique, had finally joined them, and was laughing at Stephanie for no reason other than to fit in with her friends. Violet clearly didn’t know what they were laughing about, other than it had something to do with Stephanie, and wasn’t anything about Stephanie funny?

Leave me alone! Stephanie screamed. Just leave me alone! She screamed it so loud her throat burned afterward.

The girls laughed even harder, putting their hands over their mouths and trailing away toward their next class, the bell ringing just after Stephanie had screamed. The tears were streaming down Stephanie’s cheeks now, and suddenly a shadow covered her. She wiped away the tears and looked up to find Charlie Hubbard gazing down at her.

Are you okay, Stephanie? he asked her. I heard you scream. Those girls can be such assholes. I mean, they make fun of me a lot too, you know?

Charlie held out his hand to help Stephanie up, but she said, I’m okay… thanks.

She got up and brushed herself off, part of her lunch still in the brown bag, uneaten, and picked up her backpack. Other students were passing by now on their way to class, many of them bumping into Charlie, probably on purpose. One of them stepped on what was left of Stephanie’s brown-bag lunch with a squish. A couple of students looked at her and laughed. She shrugged it off. She was done eating anyway.

Charlie Hubbard was almost the male version of Stephanie, only much taller, an inch or two over six feet. Beanpole Charlie a lot of the kids called him, so scrawny it looked like if you grabbed hold of his wrist and tried to break it, it’d snap apart like a twig. His lenses were so thick it was as if he were staring through magnifying glasses. He wore pants he must have gotten in junior high, highwaters that showcased his argyle socks and white tennis shoes. The boy was far from color coordinated, but he was sweet, something that Stephanie could appreciate even if she didn’t like him the same way he liked her, and she might have liked him if she could have felt some desire for her emanating from him, but all she ever felt around Charlie was a niceness, a too-safeness, and she imagined kissing him, which would have been her first kiss, would be something like kissing a wall, no electricity or feeling behind it whatsoever.

They moved from beneath the walkway onto the open campus and faced each other, Stephanie squinting against the slanting light of the sun, her head tilted back to look up at Charlie.

Charlie slid his hands in his pants pockets. No problem… you’re really pretty, you know. Charlie’s voice cracked when he said pretty, and it almost sounded rehearsed, like he’d been trying to say it for a long time and now had just forced it out, unable to find that right moment, the moment that clearly had never come. And I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go to dinner and a movie with me? He shrugged when he asked, and somehow that kept Stephanie from tap-dancing around the question, from giving him excuses and maybes. It was like he was saying, Nobody wants you, and nobody wants me, so maybe we should get together… right?

She said, No, I can’t… I’ve got a lot of studying to do for finals.

He shrugged again, an aw-shucks shrug, a goofy fake grin on his face. Okay, I was just thinking it’s close to the end of the year and…

I know, but I gotta get to class or I’m gonna be tardy.

2

Charlie Hubbard watched Stephanie go.

If only he could be his true self around her, and not this shy oaf he turned into in her presence. Well, not just her presence, but all girls. Charlie was just no good with girls. It seemed some people were born with a gift for girls. Mick Morris, quarterback of the varsity football team, was a case in point. Mick walked with his shoulders back and chin up, his eyelids half-closed over his sea-blue eyes, his dirty-blond hair swaying over his forehead whether there were gusts of wind or not. Girls seemed to flock to Mick as if they were metal and he a magnet. Charlie had tried walking like Mick Morris at home once, with the door locked to his small room, and had felt like an idiot even then. He and Mick had spent the same eighteen years on this earth, yet Mick was far more advanced than him, somehow above him in a rarefied air Charlie had never breathed. Charlie Hubbard just wasn’t cool, no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried.

People didn’t understand that Charlie’s clothes weren’t his fault. It was all his parents could afford, the same with his thick lenses. His family bought their clothes from the local Goodwill store, and they lived in the cheapest two-bedroom apartment they could find. His mom had never worked, and his dad worked two jobs, one as an overnight clerk at the nearby Rapier Hotel and the other as a janitor at the local elementary school, so they kept money tight. Charlie’s dad had dropped out of high school when he was sixteen, and he was always telling Charlie, Don’t do no stupid shit like I did, ya hear? Stay in school and learn to read good and do math good so you can get you a scholarship to some fancy school and get a good job. I thought partying was cooler than school… it was cool till my dumb ass needed a job because I was having you. Charlie watched his father, always seemingly exhausted, thick bags under his eyes, coming home from his second job to have a canned Pabst Blue Ribbon before sleeping for four hours or so and shuttling off to his next job in his beat-up Chevy Silverado. It scared Charlie into straight A’s, into just about the best grades in his class, but all the book smarts in the world couldn’t solve his loneliness. He could make an A on his calculus test, but he couldn’t figure out how to make a friend. He could ace his English paper on Macbeth, but he couldn’t get a date to save his life.

The closest Charlie got to dating girls was surfing the net and watching porn, and he only did that during moments of quiet desperation, like Friday nights when he was sure everyone else from Clear Water High was out partying or dating or doing something fun, while he was in his small bedroom, not a poster upon the walls, brushing up on a calculus equation or reading a classic novel like 1984. He’d watch the porn with a curious eye, an electric current rippling over his cortex, wondering whether the women in the films really liked the pounding the chiseled men with perfect tans gave them from behind. It was all pretty ugly, really, and every single time Charlie watched porn he ended up disgusted with everyone in the room. On those lonely nights, Charlie sometimes wondered what it’d be liked to be Mick Morris, driving his silver Toyota Tundra through the night, probably a couple of girls in the truck with him, the smells of spring drifting through the wound-down windows, rock and roll playing on the stereo. But there was no hope of that, not in this life… or ever.

After the tardy bell rang, Charlie finally got moving toward class. Who cared if he was late for once? He was so meek Mrs. Sampson would just nod at whatever excuse he had, true or not. Heck, if he pirouetted across the room in his Chemistry II class, Mrs. Sampson would probably quietly approach him toward the end of class and just ask if he was feeling okay. For all practical purposes, he was invisible.

He opened the glass door to B building, avoiding his ghostly reflection, and stepped inside the cool hallway, the smell of Clorox dilating his nostrils. Heading his way, Charlie saw none other than Mick Morris. Mick was swaying as he walked, snapping his fingers to an inaudible tune. Mick was somehow able to look cool even when he wasn’t trying, the asshole.

Charlie lowered his head toward the polished floor, watching his slope-shouldered shadow amble up the hall, hoping Mick wouldn’t pay any attention to him, but then he heard Mick’s stentorian voice.

Well, look who it is, Mick said. If it ain’t Beanpole Charlie. The hell you doing late for class, Beanpole, ya big fucking dork?

Charlie ignored him, pretending not to hear, and suddenly found himself rammed into a locker, a jolt of pain rippling up his spine. He looked up to find Mick mad-dogging him, the quarterback’s blue eyes furious, the depths of them seemingly without end. Mick wrapped his fist around Charlie’s throat and squeezed. Charlie tried to say something, like how sorry he was, but he could do nothing but gasp.

Listen to me, you little shit, Mick said. When I talk to you, even if I call you Shit-For-Brains or Fuckface or Turdbucket, you fucking listen to me and you look at me, got that?

Charlie nodded.

Mick loosened his grip a bit. You’re a nobody, Beanpole, a nothing. You’ve probably never even felt a tit. He curled his upper lip into a half smile. Get lost, you pathetic fuck.

Charlie scrambled up the hallway toward his class, trying not to cry. Was everything Mick said true? Was Charlie a nobody, a nothing? Truer words had never been spoken, Charlie was sure, and as he made it to his Chemistry II class and knocked on the locked door, his chin was trembling.

Mrs. Sampson opened up and angled her head to the side. Are you okay, Charlie? Is something wrong?

I’m o-okay, Charlie said, the words coming out broken.

You don’t look okay, she said.

The kids in class were looking at Charlie, some of them whispering to each other, a few others laughing at him.

Charlie closed his eyes, pressed his lips together, then said, I’ll be okay, Mrs. Sampson.

All right, come on in. I’m going to have to write you a tardy slip, though.

I know.

Charlie slid into his desk. Behind him he heard the words loser and beanpole and cunt, then he felt something wet on his forearm. He looked down. Someone had gleeked on him. The tears were surging in his throat now. He wanted to cry, to let loose, to scream, but he couldn’t do that here. He would just be made fun of even more. Instead, he took a deep breath and focused on Mrs. Sampson, tuning out all the insults that were being whispered about him.

It’s almost over, Charlie told himself. Just a little while longer and I’ll never have to come to this shithole again.

3

Mick ran bent over through the student parking lot toward his Toyota Tundra.

The school cop was usually patrolling the lot. The pig had nothing better to do with his jerk-off job, so he tried to bust students skipping out on class. Fucking pigs. Real shit was going on, people getting murdered, and they were trying to bust the coolest guy in school, the goddamned quarterback of the football team, for skipping class? As far as Mick was concerned, he should have been escorted to his truck by the cop if he wanted it. He damn sure shouldn’t need to hide from the asshole.

He made it to his truck, opened the driver’s-side door, and slid behind the wheel, dripping sweat due to the humidity. Just as he was about to turn the ignition, he saw the green-and-white cop car creeping up the lane toward him. Mick ducked and lay along the driver and passenger seats, cussing to himself. This was bullshit. He’d like to kick Officer Trujillo’s ass, rip off the cop’s bushy mustache, and piss in his mouth. Mick raised his head slightly above the steering wheel, then looked in the rearview mirror. The prick was gone, it seemed, probably off to eat another doughnut somewhere, the way oinkers liked to do.

Mick turned the ignition