Invisible Monsters

CHAPTER THIRTY -ONE

Jump to this one time, nowhere special, just Brandy almost dead on the floor and me kneeling over her -with my hands covered in her Princess Alexander partytime blood.

Brandy yells, "Evie!"

And Evie's burned-up head sticks back in through the front doorway. "Brandy, sugar," Evie says, "This all's been the best disaster you've ever pulled off!"

To me, Evie runs up and kisses me with her nasty melted lipstick and says, "Shannon, I just can't thank you enough for spicing up my boring old home life."

"Miss Evie," Brandy says, "you can act like anything, but, girl, you just totally missed shooting the bulletproof part of my vest."

Jump to the truth. I'm the stupid one.

Jump to the truth. I shot myself. I let Evie think it was Manus and Manus think it was Evie. Probably it was their suspicion of each other that drove them apart. It drove Evie to keep a loaded rifle around in case Manus came after her. The same fear made Manus carry a butcher knife the night he came over to confront her.

The truth is nobody here is as stupid or evil as I let on. Except me. The truth is I drove out away from the city on the day of the accident. With my driver's side window rolled halfway up, I got out and I shot through the glass. On the way back into town, on the freeway, I got in the exit lane for Growden Avenue, the exit for La Paloma Memorial Hospital.

The truth is I was addicted to being beautiful, and that's not something you just walk away from. Being addicted to all that attention, I had to quit cold turkey. I could shave my head, but hair grows back. Even bald, I might still look too good. Bald, I might get even more attention. There was the option of getting fat or drinking out of control to ruin my looks, but I wanted to be ugly, and I wanted my health. Wrinkles and aging looked too far off. There had to be some way to get ugly in a flash. I had to deal with my looks in a fast, permanent way or I'd always be tempted to go back.

You know how you look at ugly hunchback girls, and they are so lucky. Nobody drags them out at night so they can't finish their doctorate thesis papers. They don't get yelled at by fashion photographers if they get infected ingrown bikini hairs. You look at burn victims and think how much time they save not looking in mirrors to check their skin for sun damage.

I wanted the everyday reassurance of being mutilated. The way a crippled deformed birth-defected disfigured girl can drive her car with the windows open and not care how the wind makes her hair look, that's the kind of freedom I was after.

I was tired of staying a lower life form just because of my looks. Trading on them. Cheating. Never getting anything real accomplished, but getting the attention and recognition anyway. Trapped in a beauty ghetto is how I felt. Stereotyped. Robbed of my motivation.

In this way, Shane, we are very much brother and sister. This is the biggest mistake I could think would save me. I wanted to give up the idea I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone.

I slowed down for the exit and pulled over onto the shoulder, what they call the breakdown lane. I remember thinking, how apropos. I remember thinking, this is going to be so exciting. My makeover. Here was my life about to start all over again. I could be a great brain surgeon this time around. Or I could be an artist. Nobody would care how I'd look. People would just see my art, what I made instead of just how I looked, and people would love me.

What I thought last was, at last I'll be growing again, mutating, adapting, evolving. I'll be physically challenged.

I couldn't wait. I got the gun from the glove compartment. I wore a glove against powder burns, and held the gun at arm's length out my broken window. It wasn't even like aiming with the gun only about two feet away. I might've killed myself that way, but by now that idea didn't seem very tragic.

This makeover would make piercings and tattoos and brandings look so lame, all those little fashion revolts so safe that they themselves only become fashionable. Those little paper tiger attempts to reject looking good that only end up reinforcing it.

The shot, it was like getting hit hard is what I remember. The bullet. It took a minute before I could focus my eyes, but there was my blood and snot, my drool and teeth all over the passenger seat. I had to open the car door and get the gun from where I'd dropped it outside the window. Being in shock helped. The gun and the glove's in a storm drain in the hospital parking lot where I dropped them, in case you want proof.

Then the intravenous morphine, the tiny operating room manicure scissors cut my dress off, the little patch panties, the police photos. Birds ate my face. Nobody ever suspected the truth.

The truth is I panicked a little after that. I let everybody think the wrong things. The future is not a good place to start lying and cheating all over again. None of this is anybody's fault except mine. I ran because just getting my jaw rebuilt was too much temptation to revert, to play that game, the looking good game. Now my whole new future is still out there waiting for me.

The truth is, being ugly isn't the thrill you'd think, but it can be an opportunity for something better than I ever imagined.

The truth is I'm sorry.