Diary of an Ugly Duckling Page 7
fabric of her blouse. Audra’s breath caught in her
throat: She was wearing the same top Audra had
struggled so mightily to fit into the day before, but
clearly, based on the delicate bones of her shoulders
and the thinness of her, in a very much smaller size.
A tiny flare sprang to life in Audra’s soul, burning
with the unfairness of it all . . . and then the woman
locked eyes with her.
“Audra Marks,” Art Bradshaw turned toward the
woman, his eyes shining with an emotion Audra
thought must be desire, but she couldn’t be certain
in the low lights. “I’d like you to meet Esmeralda
Prince.”
Esmeralda Prince. Esmeralda Prince. The name
tripped off the tongue, made little skipping sounds
through the mind. It was a pretty name . . . one that
suited her, conjuring as it did the very kind of
smoky, distant beauty this woman was in possession
of. Audra stared at her, drinking in every detail of
her features, from the perfect café au lait of her skin
64
Karyn Langhorne
to the sculpted bones of her cheeks and the way the
designer blouse hung as perfectly off her shoulder
as it had on the boutique mannekin. Audra realized
that the top she’d wanted to buy wasn’t a top at all,
but a tunic—and Esmeralda wore it like a dress,
with nothing beneath it but a pair of stiletto heels.
Audra watched her green eyes, shadowed with dra-
matic makeup as they flickered with some unspo-
ken thought and wondered if there were enough
makeup on the planet to make her own face look
like that.
Esmeralda Prince appraised Audra dispassion-
ately as she quirked an exquisitely shaped eyebrow
over a lovely sea-green eye, then shook her dark
tresses.
“Nice to meet you,” she said in a husky, sexy
voice.
With a fresh stab of ugliness, Audra felt the con-
trast. Standing side by side, Esmeralda was like a
sunrise and Audra the deepest midnight; Esmeralda
was a leggy twig . . . and Audra a dumpy donut, a
hole in her center where her heart should have been.
But it wasn’t the voice or the woman’s obvious
beauty that made a sharp pain skewer her heart like
a shish kebab. It was the way Art Bradshaw’s hand
curved over the woman’s shoulder, the way his eyes
locked on her face when she spoke, even though she
wasn’t looking at him.
Art Bradshaw was completely in this elegant
woman’s thrall . . . in the same fascinated way Au-
dra was in his.
Queen of Denial . . . her mother murmured in her
ear. Queenie D . . .
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
65
Looking at the two of them was like a rock in the
face of her perfect fantasy. Audra watched her illu-
sions fracture and shatter like so much glass.
But there they were, staring at her, waiting for her
to say something. Audra suppressed the thousand
needles of mortifications prickling beneath her skin,
and tossed her head, diva-style.
“Charmed, darling,” she purred, offering a limp
hand in perfect imitation of the silver screen legend.
“Bette Davis,” Bradshaw said immediately, his
smooth low voice rumbling over the hip-hop beat
surrounding them. To Esmeralda: “Audra’s a fan of
the old movies.”
Esmeralda’s eyebrow arched even higher as she
said in a not entirely pleasant tone: “You two would
be perfect for each other.” She reached for a small,
shimmery handbag resting on the table. “I’ll be in
the ladies’.”
There was an awkward pause as she shrugged
Bradshaw’s hand from her shoulder and stalked
away.
Art Bradshaw frowned. “Don’t mind her,” he be-
gan, his eyes following the sway of the woman’s
hips as she disappeared. “She’s—”
“Rude,” a youthful voice completed the sentence,
replete with attitude.
Bradshaw turned toward the table behind him. In
the dim candlelight, a teenage girl in a relatively de-
mure black dress hunched over a soda, her shoul-
ders drawn tight to her shoulders, as though trying
to blend into the scenery.
“Cut it out, Penny,” Bradshaw said, warning in
his tone.
66
Karyn Langhorne
“But it’s true, Dad—”
“No, it’s not—”
“She only gets away with it because she’s pretty,”
Penny insisted. “The rules are always different if
you’re pretty enough—”
“That’s enough, Penny,” Bradshaw snapped,
sounding at the crust of his patience. “Now come
and say hello to Ms. Marks.”
“Do I have to?”
“Now!” Bradshaw barked, making it clear that
that remaining crust of his patience had now been
consumed. Even over the loud music, several youth-
ful heads turned toward them.
Penny slid out of her chair, rolling her eyes. “Gee,
thanks, Dad,” she hissed. “It’s bad enough we’re
throwing this stupid party in the first place, do you
have to humiliate me, too?”
She was nearly as tall as her father—at least five
foot eleven if not a full 6 feet—and as wide-
shouldered and muscular, without being fat, also
like her father. She had the man’s deep, amber eyes
and even, milk-chocolate skin, the kind of features
that would mature into a striking kind of female
handsomeness that would have its own admirers in
time. Audra couldn’t stop herself from thinking
how much she looked like her father, which pro-
bably would have been fine if the girl had been a
boy. Under the circumstances, however, Audra sus-
pected looking so much like Daddy might be a
problem.
“Audra Marks, my daughter, Penny Bradshaw.”
Audra hitched the yellow shawl over her shoul-
der again and fumbled with her tiny new purse,
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
67
pulling out the small wrapped box and stretching it
toward the girl. “Happy birthday.”
Penny Bradshaw blinked her light brown eyes at
Audra for a long second, then turned to her father,
shaking her head in dismay. “Oh, Dad,” she whined
in an utterly teenaged way. “Not again!”
Bradshaw’s frown deepened. “What are you—”
“I want to go home,” Penny announced, and
without so much as a “how do you do” she stomped
away from them, elbowing her way across the dance
floor and out of sight.
“And she calls other people rude,” Bradshaw
muttered under his breath, before giving Audra his
eyes for the brief second it took him to say, “Don’t
mind her. She’s sixteen.” He frowned toward the
ladies’ room, and kept his eyes in that direction as
he continued, “A drink?”
&nb
sp; I want to go home, too, Audra thought. Right now. I
want to rip off this stupid top and the silly pointed high-
heeled shoes and—
“No, I can’t stay,” she said quickly, before the last
of her bravura evaporated and she melted into a
puddle of snuffling tears. “Silly me, I forgot I had a
prior engagement. A . . . friend of mine . . .” she con-
tinued conjuring a quick lie. “Bachelorette party.
Wild night ahead, you know?”
Art Bradshaw wasn’t listening. His head swung
from the hallway where the lovely Esmeralda Prince
had disappeared to the dance floor, where his
daughter had vanished from view. “Uh-huh,” he
muttered.
Audra’s heart sank like the Titanic, settling itself
somewhere near the pit of her stomach. She felt tired
68
Karyn Langhorne
and sick and sad and lonelier than she could ever re-
member.
“I’ll just . . . put this . . . here,” she said, lowering
the birthday present to the table behind him.
Bradshaw sighed and swung his face toward
Audra.
“Sorry, Marks. She’s been acting like this ever
since Esmeralda showed up—”
“No problem,” Audra said, not wanting hear any
more about Esmeralda Prince than was strictly
necessary—especially since the only thing that re-
ally mattered about the woman was abundantly
clear from the expression of concern on Bradshaw’s
face—and the chick had only gone to the ladies’
room. Audra made her shoulders a little more
square and her upper lip a little stiffer than she felt.
“Good night, Bradshaw.” She made a perfect silver-
screen-star flounce door-ward, and even if he had
called out “Audra, wait!” romantic hero-style, she
would have been too far ahead to hear him.
“Nice meeting you, Penny.”
She was leaning against the wall, in the same spot
where the smoking girl had been, her sleeveless
brown arms crossed against the night’s chill. The
girl’s eyes met hers, as calm and steely as any a
grown rival’s.
“I wish I could leave,” she said.
“But it’s your party! Don’t you want to—?”
“These kids don’t like me. They laugh at me in the
halls. Call me Bigfoot. Sasquatch,” she said angrily,
but Audra could see tears glistening unshed in her
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
69
eyes. “Not one of the guys has even asked me
dance.” Her forehead crumpled. “I’m taller than
most of them, anyway. They’re just here to dance
and hang out.”
“Then why—”
“It was my father’s dumb idea. Same reason he in-
vited you. He actually thought it would help,” she
rolled her eyes. “But nothing helps. Nothing will
ever help,” she finished with teenaged drama.
Audra ignored it, her own dejection forgotten in
the girl’s self-indulgent revelations.
“I think it’s nice, your dad caring enough to
throw this bash for you,” she said slowly. “But what
do I have to do with it—?”
“Oh don’t pretend to be innocent!” The girl ex-
claimed. She inhaled as if gathering up all the attrib-
utes of her most grown-up self. “I know all about
this plan you and my father have cooked up.”
Audra blinked at her for a long second, recovering
from the pure shock of Penny Bradshaw’s accusa-
tions. Then she let her hand slip to her hip and shook
her head. “Look, sweetie. I’m not sure what you think
is happening here but—”
“I know exactly what’s happening here,” the girl
spat with teenaged venom. “You think you’re the
first ugly woman my father’s asked to ‘talk to me’?
You think this is the first time he’s invited one of
his homely co-workers or one of his ‘great person-
ality’ friends to meet me?” She shook her head.
“Please.”
Her words settled over Audra like a shroud.
Homely co-workers . . . “great personality” friends . . .
70
Karyn Langhorne
“What—what are you talking about, Penny?” she
demanded.
“The minute I saw you, I knew he was doing it
again,” Penny continued, almost as though she
hadn’t heard Audra’s question. “Trying to find me
someone to talk to about being a big, ugly giant. A
tenth-grade freak on the road to becoming a grown-
up freak—”
Audra’s heart stilled, stopped. Homely co-workers . . .
“great personality” friends . . . Talk to my daughter, he’d
asked her . Talk to my—
“I—I don’t believe your father thinks you’re a
freak—” she stammered in a tiny, uncertain voice.
Penny didn’t hear it. “Of course not. He’s my fa-
ther! He has to say that I’m beautiful—but I know
what he really thinks,” Penny railed on to the night,
seeming barely aware of Audra standing beside her
in her rage. “I know, because he keeps introducing
me to the ugliest women he can find!” Her eyes
found Audra’s, no longer hard with fury but wet
with unshed tears. “Women like you.”
It felt like the last straw—the last brick—bringing
down any remaining illusions Audra had about her-
self. Ugly, ugly, ugly . . . the word was coming at her
from all sides now . . . and there were no movie-
queen lines, no quips or character to erase it. That
was the reason she was here tonight. That was the
reason, of all the women in the prison, Art Brad-
shaw had invited her. It had nothing to do with her
sense of humor, the things they seemed to have in
common or even her sterling character. It was just a
matter of being the ugliest woman in the prison—
the ugliest woman he could find.
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
71
Fatigue, sudden and exhausting, settled over her
like a garbage bag, hot, stifling.
“You didn’t know, did you?” Penny Bradshaw
asked, suddenly grasping Audra’s arm.
Audra shook her head, not trusting her voice. A
lifetime of hurt, loneliness and pain seemed lodged
in her throat. Penny’s image swam in her wet eyes
and Audra thought she read in them the echoes of
her own pain.
“God . . . I’m sorry . . . I thought . . .” Penny whis-
pered. “Oh my God . . . you like him, don’t you?
And he didn’t tell you—about Esmeralda or—
anything?”
Audra cleared her throat, willing herself to
speech. “No.”
“It’s not quite like it seems. My dad isn’t a bad
guy, but—” the girl sighed. “He’s a guy. You and I
both know how they are. Niceness and goodness
and smartness don’t matter. If you’re pretty, you can
be a bitch,” she said, anger snaking beneath the
words. “You can be dumb as dirt, mean-spirited,
hurt people—and still, you’ll never be alone.” She
shook her head. “No one cares about what you’ve got
going on the inside—at least not until they like the
package on the outside. Forget character: the thing to
do is pretty up, like they say on TV. Pretty up by any
means necessary. My dad doesn’t get that—because
it’s different for him, being a man and all. But for a
girl . . . for a woman . . .” she sighed, as world-
weary as any sixty-year-old. “I’m sorry, Officer
Marks. I’m sure you’re a nice lady . . . but I don’t
want to be anything like you. Not ever.”
Penny shuddered, whether from the cold or from
72
Karyn Langhorne
the words she’d spoken or the thought of being like
Audra, Audra didn’t know. But with a quickly mut-
tered, “goodbye,” she disappeared back inside the
restaurant, leaving Audra very much alone.
Chapter 6
“My God, Audra! Do you have any idea what
time—”
Audra ignored her mother, thrust her arm deeper
into the junk-food cabinet and swept a four-pack of
mini-puddings, a canister of potato chips and two
bags of cookies into the waiting garbage bag with a
single swipe.
She knelt on the kitchen floor in her bra, the but-
ton at the waist of her tight black pants loose, her
new yellow chiffon top in a puddle on the floor be-
side the spikey high heels.
“What on earth are you doing?” her mother de-
manded, standing over her in her bathrobe, her
hairdo now concealed under a colorful do-rag.
“What does it look like?” Audra snapped, crawl-
ing deeper into the cabinet. “I’m going on a diet.
Again. Are you happy now?” She pulled out a small
bag of Halloween candy she’d forgotten was back
there. She dumped it into the waiting plastic bag
74
Karyn Langhorne
along with a half-eaten box of ancient crackers and
then rose, letting the cabinet door slam.
“You’re gonna wake Kiana—”
“I’m not gonna wake Kiana, Ma,” Audra said
tightly. She moved around the kitchen, opening
doors and drawers, pulling out a bottle of chocolate
syrup here and a package of marshmallows there
until the garbage bag was too heavy to hold any
more. She let it slip to the floor and turned toward
Edith, breathing hard with her efforts.
Her mother stared at her. For a brief time the two
women considered each other, then Edith shook her
head.
“So, I’m guessing it didn’t go well with your