She Is Beautiful

Two

Two
Appearance

Protruding round eyes that looked like they would fall off any moment. Flat bridge nose. Both her eyes and nose she got from her Asian Mom.

Five feet. Two hundred and twenty-seven pounds.

Thighs thrice or more as fat as her calves. Waist as wide as her hips. All over belly fat. Slender ankles. Round face.

Heaving, Alona carried the large full-length mirror and turned it around. No need for more reminders that her body's disgustingly ugly. Her face too. Her acne became more severe. Her pimples were more red and visible. Her eyes, creepy as usual. Her flat nose, just flat. Her height, the same. Her weight, she gained fifteen pounds in one month. After that "I don't date UGLIES'' in the school's cafeteria, she had overindulged herself in everything. Food. Spicy, salt, sugar. Horror. Blood, body, beasts.

She was fat. Even strangers in crowded buses stare at her because they knew, so she herself knew that she was fat. And now that she was two hundred twenty-seven, the word fat would be a misjudgment.

Alona fell back in her bed. She was ugly. She knew that since she was seven when she saw how flat her nose was while the other girls had sharp, high bridge ones. And her eyes were beyond normal.

Even at a young age, Alona was no stranger to people's disgusted glances. At her. At her Mom. She was seven when she first heard someone her age call her a "mammoth bogeyman." There were only a few half Asian-half white in her school. She was not entirely Asian-looking like her brother. She was not entirely white either. She was a mix of both. And it was not beautiful.

Mammoth bogeyman. She had never forgotten those two nouns. Even when more nouns and adjectives followed as she grew up, those two names stayed at the back of her head, having a life of their own. When Alona thought she was forgetting them, they emerge and move like roundworms feeding on her emotions.

For Alona, she was the epitome of ugliness. Not those geeks with dark spots on their cheeks, wearing glasses and bright sweaters and long patterned skirts like their grandmother's. Not those ugly girls portrayed in movies with thick brows and unruly hair, red freckles and moles who become "beautiful" after a make-over. That remove the glasses, cut the hair, trim the eyebrows, put on blush, apply lipstick, wear a knee-length dress and heels to finish it off. They weren't ugly. She was.

Alona cursed all those stupid hopes those genres had given her. She switched to horror movies and horror books now. No spark. No romance. No stupid stupid love. She threw them all. Burned them. No more of them.

"Alona! Aren't you supposed to be at Mrs. Neil's by now?! Did I not tell you to stop watching those rubbish?!"

Alona grumbled. She checked the time on her phone. 4:03. She was twenty-seven minutes late. But she didn't want to move. Her mourning heart was still mourning.

Alona had been friends with Mrs. Neil ever since she began her volunteer work at the community library. She delivers books to elderlies and persons with disabilities. Mrs. Neil was a woman in her early thirties. Had sepsis, had her legs amputated, her husband ran away, couldn't take care of her, her son occasionally visits, but altogether, she was alone. Except when Alona drops and picks up her borrowed books, except when she spends her Friday nights at her place when her Mom's out working, except when she sometimes does her groceries and she would stay over for an hour or two to talk about random things.

The wall clock in her mother's room ticked louder. She counted each tick. At one hundred, she grabbed a jacket from the pile of clothes behind her door, took two steps at a time down the stairs and jogged the rest of her way from the house to the library located uphill, to the very end of Crimson Street. Three blocks downhill to the next street from the library was Mrs. Neil's house.

As she neared the library, the cold November wind penetrated through the thick layers of her skin. It was the chilly fall, what about winter then? She nagged her Mom for a car a couple of times before, but she reasoned out that trains and buses were better. Lesser chance of accidents. Alona knew it was a lame excuse. If only she still had her Dad.

"Oh, Alona! Overslept?"

Alona mumbled a yes at Susan. She thanked her for stacking the books for her then pushed the cart out of the building towards the first house, the biggest house in the area that was facing the left side of the library. Mr. Sanders' house. Mr. Sanders was a man in his eighties. Living with his grandchildren Sander, Sandra, and Sanda. Alona used to confuse the two girls with the other though they were not twins, and they did not look alike at all. It was just their names. Sandra's hair was sandy brown, Sanda's was more pale brown. Sandra was taller, Sanda's chubbier. Sandra was a year older, Sanda's sixteen, Alona's age.

Sander's the only male among the three. The oldest. Eighteen. Finance major. Inherited the business gene of their parents who were often out of the country.

Alona rang the doorbell and waited. She was envious of Sander's family. They were well-off. The parents and Sander got reputable careers, Sandra and Sanda attended a private school, their big house had an indoor pool, got a wide front lawn and a backyard nursery where all kinds of shrubs and herbs grow.

"I was about to pick them up myself. I thought you're not coming." Sander opened the door wider, but Alona didn't go in.

"I'll converse with him sometime. I have more houses to drop by to." Alona took the eight books by four's and passed them onto Sander's hands. "See you."

"Alona! Give me a second!" Sander laid the books down on the carpet and ran up the pavement where Alona had stopped to look back at him. "Are you free tonight?"

Alona shrugged. "I'll be studying."

Sander clasped his hands. "You see, our department's organizing an event. A dance event. And I have no one to go with. So, can I take you?"

"Take meee??" Alona laughed so hard she choked. "Tell you what, I'll be a roasted pig when I go, and you'll be a roasted laughing stock for bringing me." Alona tightened her grip on the handle and carefully thrust her way downhill. She heard Sander yell that he really had no one to go with, but Alona refused to turn around as she blinked to keep back her tears. She was just a leftover. Every food was chosen but her, so the predator had no choice but to take her as his prey. After all, when you are starving, you cannot be picky. There isn't a food not tasty for a person who's hungry.

Each passing second, the autumn days colouring fall and the gentle breeze sweeping through the fallen leaves, they were only refreshing Alona's feelings of unwantedness.

She stopped by three more houses before going to the last one. She thought of spending the evening at Mrs. Neil's before going home. But she changed her mind after she pressed the doorbell and instead of Mrs.Neil, it was Charles Felix who came out of the door.