Diary of an Ugly Duckling by Karyn Langhorne Read Free Book Online

swan in Kiana’s fairy tale.
    “You . . . want me there?” she squeaked.
    “You’ll come? Please?”
    Audra nodded, transfixed by the image of herself
    reflected in the man’s shining eyes.
    “Sure,” she heard herself mumble. “Just name the
    place—”
    “Saturday night. Eight. Caverna—it’s a restaurant
    in Brooklyn. She picked it. It’s sort of . . .” he gri-
    maced like he tasted something sour, screwing his
    gorgeous face into a wrinkled mush of lips and
    nose. “Trendy,” he finished distastefully. “Hip.”
    Audra smiled. Trendy, hip. Handsome, strong,
    silent-type Art Bradshaw had just invited her to join
    him at a trendy, hip club in Brooklyn, Audra
    thought, skipping over the stuff about his daugh-
    ter’s party or that there was something she was sup-
    posed to talk to the girl about once there. The
    unpleasantness with Haines was forgotten, as were
    her own nagging feelings of doubt.
    See, Ma , she telegraphed her mother in her mind,
    DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
    45
    as she lifted her chin toward Bradshaw, batting her
    eyes like a Hall of Famer. Life can be like a movie . . .
    “Hip, huh?” Audra put a hand on her upper thigh
    and curled her lips into a Mae West smirk of a smile.
    “I got plenty of hip, big boy. But what on Earth will I
    wear?”
    Chapter 4
    “Something fancy and hip. Fancy and hip,” Au-
    dra sang the words over and over like a
    mantra, as she boarded the subway and squeezed
    into the little space between a chunky, sour-faced sis-
    ter who grimaced as though Audra had attacked her
    and a white man who snapped his newspaper
    around him like a shield. Audra ignored them both,
    pushed Princeton Haines and the brutality charge to
    the back corner of her mind, and whispered, “Some-
    thing fancy, something hip,” softly to herself, hop-
    ing for a vision.
    Fancy .
    Hip .
    She had to keep saying the words to keep up her
    courage to do what she had to do. It would take
    courage to do this kind of shopping: the kind that
    would require branching out of the safe world of
    elastic-waist pants and loose sweatshirts in drab
    solid colors. Because everyone knew “hip” meant
    DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
    47
    come-hither, form-fitting, and “fancy” meant color-
    ful or sparkly or something more elaborate than the
    everyday blacks, navy blues and grays. It meant—
    for one evening—the chance to be a days-gone-by
    diva, dressed to the nines, surrounded by gaiety and
    laughter. It meant swishing about in too much costly
    fabric, with glittering jewels in ears and on neck and
    in hair while sipping highballs and making witty
    repartee with Art Bradshaw, her captivated host. Au-
    dra closed her eyes, letting the rocking train lull her
    deeper into her dream until the hard subway bench
    around her transformed into an elegant forties-style
    divan, the clattering roll of the car’s wheels into the
    tinkling of piano keys and clinking martini glasses,
    and the aroma of sweaty bodies into the smell of cig-
    arette smoke dense in the air. Audra imagined her-
    self an Audrey Hepburn or a Grace Kelly, laughing a
    throaty, worldly laugh as she tossed her head like a
    princess and rearranged her gown like a woman
    who had a closet full of party clothes at home and a
    dozen places to wear them—
    “Do you mind? You’re crushing me!” the sister
    beside her hissed with some serious New York atti-
    tude. “Can’t you”—she jabbed Audra in the side
    with a pointy elbow—“move over”—another jab—
    “a little?”
    Audra opened her eyes to find herself in reality’s
    living color once again. The woman beside her was
    staring at her with an annoyed expression on her
    face, and Audra saddled up her own ’tude, ready to
    give back as good as she was getting. She took an-
    other quick look at her adversary to make sure the
    sister wasn’t packing something worse than a nasty
    48
    Karyn Langhorne
    mouth and wicked set of elbows. But instead of see-
    ing potential weapons, she found