Pretty, Ugly, Plain

i.

Once when my friend was seventeen, a woman stopped her in the shopping mall and said, "Do you want to be Miss Teen Santa Clara?" And she said yes, because why not, and she came in runner up that year for Miss Teen California. She took the modeling contract they offered her, too, and stood thin and blonde and flushed in front of the fan, wheat-blonde hair blowing out behind her.

She auditioned for a role in a musical adaptation of The Ugly Duckling, and they cast her as the beautiful swan, an...