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  Without preamble, Dr. Holladay said, “My sister has a port-wine stain.” Her fingers brushed a delicate path from her temple to her inner eye and then, finally, a clean sweep of her entire cheek. “A V2 distribution, like yours.”

  I gritted my teeth. Did she actually think that telling me this made her open-minded? That throwing around a dermatological term to describe my condition made us instant friends? Or that we, God forbid, shared a karmic bond?

  “That’s nice,” I mumbled.

  “No, it’s not!”

  I stepped back, blinked hard at Dr. Holladay’s ferocity. Then I lobbed an accusing glare over at Mrs. Frankel. With a wry smile and hands folded neatly on her desk, Mrs. Frankel explained so carefully she could have been testifying in court, “Noelle’s sister was one of my best friends growing up.”

  “So you told her about me?” I asked, my voice going squeaky and high, a mouse caught in a trap. God. And Karin and Erik both wondered why I was in such a rush to get out of our small town? I might as well string a welcome sign around my neck with an arrow pointing north: TOURIST TRAP AHEAD.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to upset you. My sister had laser surgery a few months ago.” Dr. Holladay approached me cautiously, the way you would a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. One wrong word and it would be forty-five minutes of soothing and backpedaling. “You can’t even see her birthmark anymore.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The surgeon is right in Seattle. . . .” Her voice drifted off, expectantly.

  I just smiled politely back at her.

  Dr. Holladay’s eyebrows furrowed, unable to comprehend why I wasn’t beyond excited. “You’re not interested?”

  “Not really.”

  She cast a bewildered look over at Mrs. Frankel. “I thought you said she’d want to know.”

  I shook my head. Sorry, no.

  Mrs. Frankel stood up behind her desk. “You wouldn’t have to hide anymore, Terra.”

  “I’m not hiding.” The sharp corner of my notebook cut into my chest, so tightly was I holding it, this flimsy shield of paper. Quickly, I lowered it to my side.

  Dr. Holladay asked, “Do you realize what this could mean? Your entire life could change. You’re really not interested?”

  “I’m really not,” I told her truthfully. There was a time when Mom and I obsessed over every last technological advance — the newest laser, the latest techniques. That was before I went to a convention about port-wine stains in downtown Seattle almost four years ago, when I was twelve. For months after Mom had heard about the conference, she planned our trip, a military assault orchestrated down to every last minute. She compiled hit lists of specific surgeons for us to hunt down. Sessions we would divide and conquer to maximize our time: Hemangiomas and malformations (me). Laser therapy (Mom). Smart Cover Cosmetics makeup clinics (both of us).

  “Look, I appreciate your concern, but nothing has worked,” I told them.

  “But this is a new procedure.” Dr. Holladay crossed her arms, disapproving now.

  “They all are.”

  “Don’t you know what’s going to happen?”

  “Yes.” That single word was whip-sharp, the way Dad sounded on a bad day, but I didn’t care. As if I could forget how some of the conference attendees had looked wistfully at my smooth face while their birthmarks were hardened and purpled and cobblestoned? How they’d comment offhandedly that sometimes their birthmarks bled spontaneously, stigmata without any hope for redemption. How I knew that looking at them, I might as well be staring at my own reflection as I grew older. I gripped my notebook to my chest again to stop from shuddering.

  “Then why?” Dr. Holladay’s smooth forehead wrinkled with dismay. Like all judgmental people, she thought she knew best, and that I was simply wallowing in my small-town ignorance.

  I wondered briefly what she would say if I told her the truth, played out the scenario: Okay, let’s say I wanted the surgery. Let’s say I told my mom about it. Oh, and let’s remember that a gossip columnist is better at keeping secrets than my mom. So, of course, Dad finds out. Did Dr. Holladay have any idea — even the tiniest inkling what could happen if my father — Mr. I’m Not Wasting Another Penny on Your Face — found out? I think not. But I didn’t say a word, because in my family’s unwritten code of conduct, what goes on at home, stays at home.

  “I’ve got to go,” I told them.

  Dr. Holladay shrugged in what I wrote off as defeat, but she had one last volley in her: “This totally changed my sister’s life. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t want yours changed. No matter how beautiful we thought she was, she always felt like an impostor.”

  The truth of Dr. Holladay’s words stuck to me like thick glaze, unpleasant and hard to shake off. Flustered, I couldn’t move, not even an inch off the square grid of linoleum where I stood. For all adults go on and on about beauty being skin deep, let’s be honest here. When your dermis is filled with rogue blood vessels that have been herded under the thin skin of your face, you get mighty suspicious whenever anyone mentions anything that sounds remotely like Inner Beauty.

  Dr. Holladay went to her laptop computer then, and I thought she was just powering it off, packing up to leave, her job here done. Instead, she dug inside her briefcase and brought a brochure to me in five efficient steps. “At least take this. The dermatologist’s information. In case you change your mind.”

  “I won’t,” I told her even as I reached for the brochure, ever the sucker for lotions that infomercials vowed would make blemishes disappear. Ever the collector of treasure maps that promised the world but led nowhere.

  Chapter three

  Reference Points

  BY THE TIME I MADE it outside, Erik was in his truck, one of the last ones in the parking lot. As usual, the thumping bass emanating from his pickup was so loud, I could have been approaching the town pub on karaoke night. Erik didn’t notice me, too busy playing the drums on his steering wheel, until I opened the passenger door.

  “Sorry I’m late.” I practically had to shout to be heard over the music. I shoved my backpack, bulging with my usual library of books and binders, onto the floorboard.

  “What took you so long?”

  “A guest speaker wanted to talk to me after class.” While I turned the volume down, I waited for Erik to ask me for more information, but he just nodded and threw the truck into reverse.

  “I got a new idea how to drop three extra pounds before the season starts,” he said.

  “How?”

  “I’m gonna wear a plastic bag over my parka. See if I can sweat off my weight that way.”

  “Good luck with that. Hey, could we drop by the post office first?”

  “Sure.” He was so easy, my Erik. I felt like an idiot and an ingrate for being annoyed because all he could talk about was wrestling, making weight, and building lean muscle mass. I knew better than anyone it was a minor miracle he chose to be with me.

  My palms, clammy when Erik drove up to the post office (please be an acceptance letter) were corpse cold when we pulled away. How was it that every bill collector and catalog company had found a way to contact us, but not Williams College? I stuffed the junk mail into my backpack, so disappointed I couldn’t muster the energy to think of a single thing to say to Erik.

  As the truck trembled in neutral in front of the Nest & Egg Gallery, I looked over at him, wanting him to say something to me. To assure me that a letter would arrive tomorrow. That my dad would be so proud he’d send me to Williams, no problem. But that was as much wishful thinking as Erik actually asking me why I’ve been compulsively checking the mailbox for six days in a row. He was singing to the radio under his breath, off-tune and always a word behind.

  I grabbed my backpack with one hand, the door handle with the other, my body executing an escape plan I hadn’t realized I wanted. As I slid out of the truck, though, Erik called, “Hey, Terra.”

  Hopeful now, I turned and waited. Tell me, Erik, say the right thing. “Yeah?”
/>   “You forgot something.” He scooted over to the warm spot I had just vacated, meeting me more than halfway, and kissed me.

  The first five seconds of that kiss did everything I’d hoped his words would: anchored me in the here and now. Stress vanishing, I breathed in Erik’s scent, knowing I’d always associate fresh-cut wood and worn leather with him. I wrapped my arms around him, toying with the short hair on the nape of his neck, softer there than anywhere else on his body. His hand snaked under my jacket, grazing the side of my breast in a way that made me want to slip into the narrow backseat with him, but his hand continued its one-way path down my back to slide inside my jeans. I don’t know why it irritated me now when from the first time we hooked up, his hands had been Lewis and Clark, exploring north and south of my waistline, all expansion ho! Not that I ever did anything to stop him.

  Only today, I pulled away. A slight, confused frown creased Erik’s forehead.

  “I’m late for work,” I said with a chagrined smile.

  “You’re always so busy, working, studying.”

  “I’ll make it up to you later.”

  His chagrin turned into a full grin. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, reaching for me again. I kicked myself for letting him grope me, because he slid the brochure from Dr. Holladay out of my back pocket. “What’s this?”

  “Nothing.” I reached for the brochure, but Erik blocked me with his shoulder while he glanced through it, flipping it from one side to the other before handing it back to me.

  “So,” he asked, “you going to do it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not what?”

  “Why not fix your face?”

  That question yanked out every memory of my being called ugly, each episode a different reference point that made up my map of reality. Like the time when my brother Claudius was studying French in high school and hit upon a term he didn’t understand — jolie laide. Dad had translated, “Pretty ugly,” and then continued, laughing, “like our Terra.” He might have chuckled, and that laugh may have blunted his words, but it only sharpened his message. As mapmakers and adventurers alike know, all you need to figure out where you stand is a single reference point on a map.

  I sucked in sharply now. Like all those times at home or after my laser treatments when I couldn’t wear my usual makeup, I didn’t show my surprise, couldn’t show my hurt. How could I if I was going to be impervious to Dad? If I wanted to continue to be the ballsy, unflappable girl Erik thought I was, the one who snagged him on Halloween night over a year ago?

  Karin’s dad lived for one day all year, and that day was October 31. To say Mr. Mannion decorated for Halloween would be like saying that Colville is small. Two years ago, the utilities company actually issued a warning for the sheer wattage his 60,000 orange lights consumed. So last year, Mr. Mannion had restrained himself by constructing a mock cemetery lit by old-fashioned lanterns for Karin’s annual Halloween party — Ghouls Gone Wild.

  By the time I arrived the morning of that party, Karin’s bedroom had transformed from podcasting studio to Museum of World Fashion, beginning with Cleopatra’s robe, complete with asp, hanging from her door. On her bed lay an exhibit of colonial America as interpreted by Hollywood — a Native American dress (very short, beaded, and made of faux deerskin) and its Puritan counterpart (very long, white collared, and made with yards o’ faux cotton).

  Karin pointed to them. “We could go as Thanksgiving.”

  And guess who would be wearing the Mayflower muumuu, all guts, no glory? “God, I might as well dress as a turkey.”

  “That could be cute.” She looked thoughtful.

  “I was kidding.”

  “You know, Dad’s got a brown bodysuit from the time he went as Dirt, and Mom and I went as paparazzi, remember?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “I’d bet anything Mom has some feathers somewhere.”

  Between Mr. Mannion’s vast costume collection and Mrs. Mannion’s crafts supplies for the preschool she ran in their home, I started to get scared, very scared. More firmly, I said, “No.”

  “It would be sexy.”

  “Peacocks are sexy. Turkeys get eaten,” I answered, and decided it was time to take my costumed fate in my own hands. “What’s this?” I held up the black gown draped on her desk chair, slinky as snakeskin.

  “Oh, that’s too small.” Karin had moved on to the mermaid hanging on one of her bookshelves. “I could be the S&M Starbucks mermaid, carry a whip and a tray of Kahlua shots? What do you think?”

  “Podcast-worthy.”

  So while she ran downstairs to snag a serving tray from her mom and the Zorro whip her dad had scored off a costume designer in Hollywood, I slipped into the gown. Even if the dress covered me from neck to toe, I might as well have worn nothing at all, it was that sheer and that body hugging. Just as I fixed the hip-length black wig over my head, Karin returned. Embarrassed, I started removing the wig until I noticed, for once, Karin was eyeing me enviously.

  “Oh my God,” she said, inching slowly toward me as though I were a mirage, half-visible and on the verge of disappearing. “You look like Angelina Jolie in her Billy Bob gothic era.”

  “I do?”

  “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks no one’s going to recognize you.”

  Secure in my white Goth makeup, I let myself dance that night the way I do in my bedroom alone, arms in the air, hips swirling. I felt someone watching me. Which wasn’t exactly a new feeling. What was new was the appreciative look on Erik’s face, his lips quirked into a sexy smile, shaking his head every once in a while like he couldn’t believe what he saw. And this, from a guy who hadn’t said more than “hey” to me since he started school here four years ago.

  Discomfited, I made my way toward the back door. But Erik was at my side like a lost adventurer chasing the North Star.

  “Who are you?” he asked, peering hard at me.

  “Someone you should know,” I said, not recognizing the sassy girl who used my mouth to answer him.

  “Really, who are you?” And then, surprised: “Terra?”

  I nodded, ready to run.

  Instead, his eyes ran down my figure. “So that’s what you’ve been hiding.”

  “C’mon, that’s Terra,” said one of his friends, Derek, a beefhead who had lost more than a few brain cells in football scrimmages. His chest puffed up like he was leading a rescue mission of national importance, and he nudged Erik hard. “Dude, you got beer goggles on.”

  My preference for guys ran to the lean types, guys who were cross-country runners, skate skiers. Guys who kayaked and played soccer. Not barrel-shaped boys who considered the gym their vacation home. But suddenly I saw the allure of a bulky build, because without warning, Erik threw a punch at Derek, adding just enough muscle so his friend — his friend! — reeled back into the wall. The body that made Erik perfect for wrestling, football, and mountain biking — his bulky arms, solid chest, and thick legs — also made him perfect for standing up for me.

  You could say I didn’t fall for Erik or even his assumption that I was hiding my body, not my face. But that I fell for the comfort of his muscles and the confidence of his power. If Dad’s verbal pushes ever came to physical shoves, I’d be ready. With a rush of gratitude, I closed the gap between us and kissed him until my head reeled and the shy girl I usually was floated away.

  “You’ve got a lot of balls for a girl,” Erik said against my lips.

  “That’s not what I have.”

  “You sure?”

  “You can check for yourself,” I said, and led him toward one of the gravestones. I glanced back just once and caught my reflection receding in the glass door, a figure in a tight black dress that left nothing to the imagination.

  Chapter four

  God’s Wings

  WHAT WAS MY PROBLEM? I thought as Erik pulled away before I had a chance to wave a last goodbye. Vaguely irritated because he was always leaving first
, I sloshed through the thick frosting of snow and ice on the boardwalk in front of the Nest & Egg Gallery. As Karin pointed out last night when we were studying DNA, I was lucky. I repeated that now: I was lucky. Erik was a great guy — pretty cute, way athletic, and best of all, into me. So how come it sounded like I was convincing myself?

  The fairy lights I had strung around the gallery windows winked cheerily in the gray afternoon. Nest & Egg was the only modern building on Main Street — that is, the only one that looked built for this century with its exposed wood beams and pitched roof. Every other building was saddled with our town’s faux circa-nineteenth-century Wild West motif and country-cowboy façades, right down to their regulation storefront signs: names carved in wood, the letters painted in faded hues chosen from a pre-approved color palette.

  I skidded on the treacherous boardwalk, swearing under my breath for forgetting how prone these historically accurate walkways were to becoming ice rinks in the winter. One more tourist to fall and bruise his tailbone, and there would be mutiny on the city council’s hands, led by the co-founders of the gallery, better known as the Twisted Sisters for their commando knitting group. No one in town knew how these unassuming-looking older ladies had strong-armed their way (or sweet-talked, depending on your opinion of their building) past all the town ordinances. But I did. My girls didn’t take kindly to losing any battle — whether it was their building design, the art they curated for our various shows, or the college I would attend.

  “Hello!” I called as I opened the door and simultaneously stamped the snow off my feet. The industrial carpet lining the entry was starting to smell musty from getting wet and drying, a cycle that repeated itself at least ten times in a day, more if we were having a good tourist day. Note to self: steam-clean this place early next week. Otherwise, on first whiff, all the tourists would whip around and visit the upstart glass-blowing studio across the street.