"Beautiful girl," he says to me with his hands from down the hall,
a smile on his face to see me there. I smile back and duck my
head to hide a blush, trying to squash the automatic suspicion
that crawls to life in the back of my head. The denial, old and
familiar, like a scar or a birthmark on my body, whispers into my
ear next.

"Not me," I want to tell him. Not me, my cousin. I want to bring
out the family pictures, to show him my cousin, the beautiful one,
and myself the tall, gawky, ugly, awkward and intelligent one in
the back row, looming over the carefully groomed women of my family
with guarded eyes and strange hair. Even so many years from my
grandmother's late night recitations of my cousin's near triumph in
a childhood beauty pageant, I can't shed the tight skin of the
conviction that beauty, like a house in the suburbs, 2.5 kids, or
expensive sports cars, is for other people, not me. I am the brain
of the family, nose always in a book, witty and sarcastic, yes, but
not the pretty one, not me. The idea that someone might find me
beautiful ambushes me from around the blind corners of my self image,
making me blink and start. I turn it over in my mind like a
scrambled Rubik's cube, bemused and mystified. It is hard to
believe, even with my normal, conservative, military hair, and adult
weight and muscle filling out the long bony lines into curves.


Table of Contents
Part Two: Friday the Thirteenth
Part Four: Real Life Intrudes