free.” She flipped her own pair down over her eyes
and nodded for Audra to do the same.
Audra settled the glasses on her nose and pulled
her baseball cap down low, then shrugged back into
her long-sleeved jacket. It was so loose now, the
sleeves easily covered her fingertips, blocking their
exposure to the sun. Shamiyah studied these prepa-
rations, shaking her head. “You’re gonna burn up
out here, dressed like that!”
“Dr. Jamison said no sun—”
“But he didn’t say no style. We’ll work on it.” The
arm dropped around Audra’s shoulder again. “Wel-
come to L.A., girl!”
“This is it.” Shamiyah swung wide the double
doors of a building in the same neighborhood as
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the offices where Audra had met the Ugly Duckling
show’s experts a few weeks before. “Home, sweet
home. You’re on the third floor. Letter J.”
The letter J belonged to an apartment near the
back of the building. Shamiyah opened the door
and then handed her a set of keys, nodding her into
the room.
The place was small but adequate. The horseshoe
of the kitchen opened out into a living room, whose
sofa, Shamiyah explained, converted to a sleeping
area. “For the nurse,” she explained. “The first few
days after the surgery.” Down a short hallway were
a small bedroom, a small bathroom and a little
closet. Completing the space was a ledge of a bal-
cony reached by a sliding glass door that was cov-
ered with fake bamboo shades.
“And we’ve made sure you have the Classic Movie
Channel, so you’ll be well entertained.” Shamiyah
turned the TV on and off as Audra yanked on the
cord to lift the bamboo. She had expected the room
to flood with sunlight, but instead, the shady leaves
of nearby palms clustered around the window like a
jungle, allowing barely any additional light inside
the apartment. The little place seemed like a cave.
Audra was about to comment on it when Shamiyah
hustled her into the kitchen.
“Your refrigerator is fully stocked with foods al-
lowed on your plan,” she said, showing Audra the
contents with a quick jerk of the handle. “And there
are some basic implements in the drawers if you
want to cook.”
“Where’s the light switch?” Audra joked. “It’s aw-
fully dark in here, isn’t it?”
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Karyn Langhorne
“That’s what the doctors wanted,” Shamiyah ex-
plained with a shrug. “But the lamps should be
working . . .” She crossed the room quickly and
snapped a switch on the base of a lamp on the sofa-
side table. “Yep. We double-checked everything yes-
terday when they brought in the food and took out
the mirrors.”
“Took out the mirrors?” Audra stared at her.
Shamiyah grinned. “You bet. Look in the bath-
room,” she offered, jerking her springy head to-
ward that alcove. “You’ll see.”
Sure enough, where the mirror should have been
there was nothing but a smooth brown patch of dry-
wall.
“It really wasn’t necessary,” Audra called, wan-
dering from the dark mirrorless bathroom to the
dark mirrorless bedroom. “I hardly ever look in the
mirror anyway.”
Shamiyah’s laughter floated back to her. “Liar! I
saw you checking out how those sunglasses looked
in every gleaming surface from the baggage claim to
the front door of this building!”
“Yeah, but that’s different,” Audra murmured, re-
turning to the living area, where she found the
woman on her knees on the floor, rifling through
Audra’s bag like an addict looking for a fix. When
she saw Audra, she flashed her quick smile, then
pulled out a multicolored stack of undies and set
them on the coffee table, to make it easier for her to
peer inside.
“What are you doing?” Audra demanded, and for
the first time Shamiyah got a taste of her corrections-
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173
fleeting second that her eyes met Audra’s, she
looked intimidated and afraid.
“Looking for contraband!” she said as though
that should have been perfectly evident. “You read
the stuff I sent you, right? About how you’re not sup-
posed to bring any mirrors?”
Audra relaxed. Of course, mirrors had been
on the list of “no-nos”; she remembered that now.
No mirrors, no makeup, no jewelry, no beauty
products—
“There’s no mirrors—or anything else that
shouldn’t be here—in there,” she told the other
woman. “Trust me. I don’t even own much of that
kind of stuff to begin with.”
“I have to search, Audra,” Shamiyah said in a
voice that had suddenly gone flat and professional.
“There will be no mirrors anywhere for you for the
next three months. Not anywhere: doctors’ offices,
hospital, gym . . .”
“What if I want to go to the grocery store, or out to
a restaurant? Or to do some sightseeing—”
Shamiyah shook her head slowly.
“You won’t be doing any of that, Audra. No sight-
seeing. No eating out. No shopping—”
“But what—”
“You’re here to completely change your appear-
ance, and between doctors and trainers, shrinks and
coaches”—the black curly head wagged a little
harder—“your days should be pretty full.”
“Are you telling me I can’t so much as go for a
walk unless you guys have cleared the route for mir-
rors?”
“Worse,” Shamiyah said, grinning uncomfortably
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Karyn Langhorne
now. She busied her hands with placing Audra’s
undies into one of the drawers of the cabinet. “I’m
telling you can’t take a walk at all—unless we say
so. I know there’s a lot of stuff in those contracts,
but”—she sighed—“them’s the rules and we’ve ac-
tually asked women to leave the show for breaking
them.”
“You’ve kicked people off the show?”
“You bet.”
“But why? I mean, is this really necessary—”
“Two reasons.” She held up a finger. “First, we
want the cameras to capture your first reaction when
you see for the first time how beautiful you are at the
Reveal, and”—she hesitated a long second—“two,
we want to make sure you look as”—she hesitated
again, as if afraid of Audra’s reaction to her next
words—“unattractive as possible in all the scenes
before the Reveal.”
Audra stared at her for a second. “Like an ugly
duckling,” she said at last.
Shamiyah nodded. “Exactly.” She pat
ted Audra’s
bag. “You’re clean, Marks,” she said, trying her best
to recover some of the jovial friendliness that had ex-
isted between them out in the sunshine, but the room
was such a cave, even Shamiyah seemed to be finding
it difficult to turn on the high-beams. “Two more
things to tell you, then I’ve got to dash. We’re in the
middle of post-production on one of my other
subjects—the first Ugly Duckling, actually. Her Re-
veal was absolutely stunning!” She gushed, reaching
into her purse again, this time producing a thick let-
ter, sealed with some kind of embossed sticker. “Your
schedule and instructions for the first couple of days.
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175
Open them after I leave . . . and feel free to talk to
yourself, mumble and grumble, lie on the floor and
kick and scream . . . whatever feels right to you.”
Audra chuckled. “Now, why on Earth would I
want to do all that?”
Shamiyah pointed to the ceiling, where Audra
could make out several recessed openings filled
with lenses and wires. “Because the cameras are
rolling, Audra . . . and of course, we’ll be recording
all your phone calls. That’s why we had to have a
phone list—and get the permissions signed by any
potential callers in advance. And camera crews will
accompany you on all your appointments, and of
course we’ll film the surgery as well. Pretty much
every move you make and every word you say will
be recorded for the next three months.”
Audra blinked at her. “Every move? Every word?”
Audra shook her head. “I’m not sure America needs
to hear every word I say. Some of them might be a
little . . .”
Shamiyah took Audra by both arms, staring her
hard in the face as though she were the mother and
Audra were a child. “You’re a student of the glory
days of film, Audra, so you ought to understand
what this is about—that’s one of the reasons they
picked you. You need to give the people a show, girl.”
She gave Audra’s shoulders a determined little
shake. “Remember what I told you the first day we
met, about being willing to do anything for this
chance?” She waited until Audra gave her a single,
slow nod. “Then don’t edit yourself. Let yourself
be yourself. I’m counting on you.” She shrugged.
“Besides, you’ll forget about the cameras soon
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Karyn Langhorne
enough. Until you do, just try to pretend they aren’t
there.”
Audra nodded, tried to smile and cast a ner-
vous glance at the ceiling. Right now—at this very
moment—she was being recorded. Of course she
was, she’d known that from the beginning . . . but
the reality of it made her feel a little sick.
You’ve lost your marbles. Those had been Edith’s
parting words. And right now, it felt like her mother
might just be right.
“You’ve got Dr. Jamison in”—Shamiyah glanced
at her watch—“about an hour. The skin stuff is really
important—it’s a great visual effect—so you’ll have
a lot of sessions with him.” Shamiyah squeezed her
shoulders in a quick hug. “I’ve got to go, but the car
service will take you there and bring you back—in
fact, they’ll get you to all your appointments. I’ll let
you freshen up a bit,” she said gathering up her
purse and notebook. “You smell like New York.”
“Hmm.”
Dr. Jamison put a finger on either side of her
cheeks and turned her face from right profile to left.
“Hmm,” he said again, releasing her. He stepped
away from her, stroking his chin and staring at her
like an artist contemplating a masterpiece gone seri-
ously awry.
Audra tried to forget the bright light being shined
over them, and the presence of the two men—one
resting a heavy-looking camera on his shoulder, the
other supporting the light—which was exactly what
she’d been instructed to do. Pretend they weren’t
there. Pretend she didn’t have a microphone taped
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177
to her back and that she was just sitting in the pri-
vacy of her doctor’s office having a heart-to-heart . . .
which was easy enough with the man frowning and
stroking his lips like she’d done something wrong.
Before she could stop herself, a nervous chuckle es-
caped from her lips and she’d wisecracked in her
best Bugs Bunny voice. “What’s up, Doc?”
If Dr. Jamison were amused in the slightest, it
didn’t show in his mien. His critical expression
didn’t change, nor did his continual chin stroking,
and still he said not a word. There was a lot about
him that reminded her of Art Bradshaw—his sparse
use of the English language, for one. But there was
no point of thinking about Bradshaw, she reminded
herself. No use at all . . .
“Yes, yes.” The doctor nodded. “It’s coming along
fine. I think you haven’t been taking my warnings
about sun exposure seriously enough—but now that
you’re here, we should be able to address that.”
“I don’t spend any time in the sun, Doc, I swear,”
Audra averred, raising her hand for an oath on an
imaginary stack of Bibles as if the gesture added in-
stant credibility. “And I switched to working nights,
so I could stay in days. And I wore hats, like you sug-
gested. See?” And she waved the floppy baseball
cap at him as proof.
Dr. Jamison fluttered his fingers dismissively.
“Not enough. The medication you’re taking de-
presses the melanin in your skin. Sun exposure aug-
ments it.” He frowned. “In order to get the full effect
of the medication, you must not just avoid the sun.
You have to consider it to be your enemy.”
Audra nodded. “Okay, so what do you want me to
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Karyn Langhorne
do? Hire someone to shade me under an umbrella
every time I step into the street?”
She’d thought he might laugh, might crack those
thin lips into something she might recognize as a
smile. But the doctor just blinked at her and said in a
calm, quiet deadpan way: “Yes. That would help. As
would a very wide-brimmed hat, along with a scarf
to cover the neck and gloves for the hands and
arms—”
“Gloves?”
The good doctor’s bushy gray brows shot up.
“Gloves. You must cover your arms and any other
part of your body exposed to sunlight. That is, if you
want to achieve the coloring we’ve discussed.” He
peered at her closely. “Is that still your intention?”
He seemed to almost be offering her the opportu-
nity to back out, to change her mind, to reconsider—
and in that instant a nervous fluttering of image
s
swarmed around her like bees. Her mother and Pe-
tra, Art Bradshaw and Penny. Esmeralda Prince and
Kiana’s Ugly Duckling book.
Audra swallowed hard. “What color will I be
when it’s over? Graham cracker brown?” She reached
into her duffel for the worn leather wallet and
pulled out a picture of Petra, little Kiana astride her
knee. The two of them grinned up at her like a two-
person cheering squad. “Like them?”
The grim doctor’s lips curved into a smile as he
gazed down at her family. “Graham cracker brown?”
he repeated, showing a set of well-shaped teeth that
somehow made him look more intimidating, not
less. “Yes, graham cracker brown. I think that’s ex-
actly what you’ll be.”
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179
Audra nodded. “Then, yes. That is still my inten-
tion.”
“I’ll ask Shamiyah to see about that umbrella-
toting personal servant . . . though I confess it would
surprise me a great deal if that were in the budget.”
He paused a bit. “Your surgery is next week, I be-
lieve, so we’ll begin an increased dosage immedi-
ately.” Then he excused himself, leaving Audra
alone with the film crew and the sick feeling she’d
just offered up her first official, not exactly flatter-
ing, sound bite.
Chapter 15
Tuesday, June 26
Dear Petra,
Well, I’m here . . . and I guess there’s no turning
back now. The first of the surgeries is in a couple
of days and I’d be lying if I pretended like I wasn’t
scared to death. If I didn’t know what was on the
other end, I think I’d back out now. Go home and live
with Ma hollering, “I told you so,” for the rest of my
life.
Well, maybe not.
Please write to me as often as you can. I know
things are heating up for you there, but it means a lot
to have your support.
Be careful out there,
Audra
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181
“So, Audra.” Dr. Anna Goddard crossed then
uncrossed her legs as though she couldn’t
quite get comfortable. In fact, everything about the
woman said “discomfort”: the way she balanced her
notepad on one precarious knee to the occasional
glance she took in the direction of the ubiquitous
cameraman. Which was weird, considering that his
presence couldn’t be a new experience for the psy-
chiatrist. Audra knew for a fact that she was the