ance atop a bright red exercise ball.
“It’s perfectly safe, Audra.” Julienne had the hard,
no-sympathy voice of a drill instructor. “Now quit
your bellyaching and lay back like I told you—”
Audra felt a pair of pincer-like fingers curl over her
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
247
shoulder and proceed to gently force her into com-
pliance.
Audra resisted, feeling an uncomfortable twinge
in her abdominals with the effort. By far, of all the
surgeries the tummy tuck and the nose job were the
worst. And probably, for the sheer gross-out
factor—what with tubes stuck inside her to drain
the excess fluid resulting from the procedure—and
for pure, unadulterated pain, the tummy tuck won
the close race between the two. Having just gotten
to the point that she could get in and out of bed
without feeling like her guts were going to start
spilling out between her fingers, Audra wasn’t about
to take any chances, bossy personal trainer or not.
“I’m telling you, Julienne, I’m not ready for—”
Julienne’s face appeared beside Audra’s own,
pink with righteous, zealous anger. “I’m telling you,
if you keep resisting, you’ll never be ready for your
Reveal. All of you Ugly Ducklings are the same: You
don’t want to take responsibility for yourselves. You
think the surgery alone will fix you. But I’m here to
tell you, the surgery only goes so far. The rest is hard
work, diet and exercise, and more hard work! You
have to get some discipline or—”
“Look,” Audra hissed back at the woman. “Don’t
accuse me of having no discipline, because I’ve got
as much of it as you! And I was in good shape when
I got here! I have to be, to keep my job, okay? But I
think I know my own body well enough to know—”
“Do you?” Julienne challenged. “Really, Audra,
do you?”
“Hell yes!” Audra practically shouted at the
woman, giving her anger its head. She felt her fingers
248
Karyn Langhorne
curling into fists, her jaw locking tight. “Now cut it
out, before you make me really, really mad!”
The journal Dr. Goddard had presented to her was
now filled with page after page of meandering,
sometimes petty vituperativeness—and her encoun-
ters with the woman seemed always to find Audra
on the very edge of her seat, sitting on her hands to
keep from slapping the shrink hard enough to make
her taste yesterday. Even Shamiyah was beginning
to work her last nerve, and mirrors or no, Audra
would have to have been ignorant of her own body
not to be able to tell how loose her sweatpants had
become or how light the skin on her legs, arms and
body was, even though she’d stopped using Dr.
Jamison’s cream.
The thought of a mirror was almost scary. In an-
other six weeks or so, she’d be looking into one . . .
and it was pretty clear she probably wouldn’t recog-
nize herself, probably wouldn’t have a clue who the
woman in the mirror was. And that gave her an-
other reason to feel angry: Since while everyone in
her daily life here could see the change in gradual
bits, she, the actual subject, had no such luxury.
She’d started out a heavyset, dark-skinned black
woman and her whole identity was bound up in that
image. What would it be like to look in the mirror
and see this new person, with fair skin and a slen-
der, shapely body? Would her dark-skinned insides
see her light-skinned outside and run screaming for
the hills?
The weirdest part was, the nastier she got, the
happier everyone around her seemed to be. It was
happening again, right now, with Julienne.
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
249
“I’m making you mad, huh, Audra? Good. Forget
the ball, then. You know your body, right? You know
it so well, you’ve taken care of it by stuffing it with
foods it didn’t want and didn’t need. You know it so
well that you’ve overdeveloped the muscles in your
arms and thighs, but left your stomach so weak
you’re afraid you won’t be able to sit back up if you
pect me to believe you know your body?” She shook
her head. “You don’t know a thing about your body,
Audra. No, excuse me. You do know one thing
about it,” she continued in a no-nonsense tone of
voice, all the while glaring at Audra like she’d of-
fended her personally. “You know you positively
hate it. You hate it, and you hate yourself—”
“Why do you all keep saying that!” Audra
bounded up off the ball and yanked her towel off a
nearby rack fast enough to use it as a weapon. But
Julienne barely flinched. She just kept staring at Au-
dra, every rangy muscle in her thin chest and upper
arms flexed and ready.
“You can hit me if you want to,” Julienne said, her
voice calm, her face a mask of earnest sincerity. “It
won’t change anything, though. What will change
things is for you to challenge your body—challenge
yourself—beyond what you think you are capable of.
See, Audra, it’s all one!” And she cupped her hands
together, making them into an irregular circle.
“Your mind, your body, your emotions, your spirit.
When things don’t work here”—she touched her
head with a fingertip—“or here”—she touched her
heart—“it shows up here.” She lay both hands on
her stomach. “Or here.” She patted her behind. “Or
250
Karyn Langhorne
even here.” The hands moved down to her thighs.
“Some people think you have to start at the head or
the heart before you can fix the body issues”—she
shook her head—“but I personally believe you can
enter the continuum anywhere.” She returned her
hands to her circle again. “You can start with any
one of them, and if you keep going, the others will
follow.” Her stern expression broke into a sunny
smile that made her thin face suddenly open and
approachable. “You’re doing great, Audra. Everyone
thinks so.”
“Great? I’m mad as hell,” Audra muttered.
“What’s so great about that?”
Julienne’s smile broadened. “It means you’re
ready for the gym. It’s a great place to work on
anger . . . and a few other things, if you’re so in-
clined.”
“I don’t want to hurt myself. I’ve been hurt
enough!” Audra sputtered, shocked by the violence
of the unexpected admission. “I mean . . . with all
the surgeries and stuff . . .”
Julienne stared at her for a long, silent moment.
“It’s going to hurt, Audra,” she said quietly. “I’m
sorry, but it just is.” She patted A
udra on the arm, a
soothing sisterly gesture that made Audra long for
Petra’s presence so deeply, she had to swallow hard
to keep from crying. “You know my story, right? I
used to weigh almost three hundred pounds. You
think I don’t know about rejection? You think I don’t
know about hurt? Making it better hurts, too. But it’s
a different kind of hurt . . . and when it’s done, you’ll
be able to see the results. And feel them. If you’ll
just—”
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
251
“Surrender to the process?”
She nodded. “It’s a circle, Audra. Your body, your
mind, your heart. Start changing any one of them
and you open the door for changes in the others.
That’s why I don’t put much stock in people who
criticize shows like this one. What difference does it
make if some people start with their outsides first?
They’ll get to the insides soon enough. They have to.
It’s—”
“A circle,” Audra finished. “Got it.” She rubbed
the still sore muscles of her belly and donned her
best Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. “All right,
guv’nor. You gonna teach me to walk and talk and
act like a reg’lar laaaa-dy, you is.”
Julienne patted her shoulder. “No, that’s not my
job. But I can help you work that Reveal dress, girl,”
she said snapping her fingers like a sister. “Now, I’ll
let you hold off on abdominals one more day”—she
showed Audra a single skinny finger—“then it’s
over. We’ve got to work those muscles pretty hard to
see the kind of results you’re going to want for the
Reveal. It’ll also throw your metabolism into gear
and make it easier to drop the last twenty-five or
thirty pounds. Okay?”
No. No it’s not okay. I don’t want to I don’t want to I
don’t want . . .
Julienne must have read it in her face because as
added incentive she said, “I think you’ve got a shot
to win this thing: the money, being in the film, the
modeling contract, the whole Ugly Duckling she-
bang—”
“Okay,” Audra agreed. “Okay. Tomorrow. Right
now, I just want to hit the showers and—”
252
Karyn Langhorne
Julienne rubbed her shoulder, in a gesture that
Audra interpreted as pride and support. “Sure, the
showers. But give me thirty more minutes on the
treadmill first.”
“Yeah, I can dig what she’s saying,” Art rumbled re-
assuringly into the phone. “I never thought of it
quite like that—that the mind, body and spirit work
like a circle—but yeah, I can dig it.”
“I thought you would,” Audra murmured. “Seems
like you should be here, not me.”
Art chuckled. “If I wanted to come on a show that
transforms you into a beautiful woman, I’d have
some pretty big issues, don’t you think?”
“But at least you know what they’re talking about.
I mean, all I wanted was to come here and get made
over. Try to win that Grand Prize package. The
money and . . . the part in the movie. I could even
get discovered—”
Art laughed. “Discovered? You mean like Lana
Turner in Schrafft’s drugstore?” Audra could almost
imagine his shaved head wagging from side to side.
“Money, I can understand . . . but discovered?” An-
other gale of booming laughter filled her ears. “You
wouldn’t really want that life, would you?”
“Why not?” Audra bristled. “You like movies as
much as I do.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to be in them.”
“I bet it’s great.”
“I bet it’s not. I’ve heard it’s really boring. Lots of
standing around . . .”
“There’s a lot of standing around at the prison,
too,” Audra shot back.
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
253
“Touché.”
Audra considered. “You mean you really wouldn’t
want to be a film star, if you had the chance? To live
out your fantasy—”
“I don’t have those kinds of fantasies,” he said in
strangely seductive tone, and in an instant, Audra’s
mind went to a place lit by candles and strewn with
rose petals, and with Art Bradshaw’s long, powerful
body laid out a like a feast . . .
“Audra? You still there? I asked you more about
your workout today—”
“Lots and lots of abdominal work,” she said
quickly. “And lots of fat-burning cardio. I must have
walked the treadmill an hour and a half . . . and it
was just the first day . . .”
And she kept talking, keeping it easy and breezy
while the image of those rose petals and herself in
Art Bradshaw’s strong and powerful arms swirled
in her brain.
That night, she dreamed of him.
In her dreams, she covered his long muscular legs
and thick proud chest with kisses, pausing to suckle
his manhood with her lips. It was as long and strong
as thick as she would have expected from a man of
Bradshaw’s size and as she engulfed it in the cool of
her mouth, she heard him groan his pleasure as
though he were right there in the narrow bed beside
her. His breath grew ragged but he whispered her
name, guiding her with one massive hand while the
other stroked her breasts, bringing her nipples
erect, igniting an even deeper desire inside her.
“Enough,” he muttered gruffly, pulling her slowly
254
Karyn Langhorne
up the long length of milk chocolate skin until her
face was level with his own. Audra read fire in his
eyes and an instant later, her lips were covered by
his own and she was drowning in a sensation she’d
never felt before, as every nerve in her body strained
toward unity with his. Shameless with desire, she
straddled him, pointing herself at the center of his
need, filling herself with him.
Art lifted his hips, as she gripped his chest, riding
him like a bucking bronco, a smile coursing over his
face. “Take what you want, girl,” he said. “Take it!
All of it!”
“I’m taking it,” Audra breathed, as a dizzying
sense of pleasure tightened inside her. “I’m—I’m—”
She came awake with a start, gripping the sheets
between her fingers, her heart pounding in her
chest, an uncomfortable tension wet between her
legs.
“My God,” she muttered in the darkness of the
tiny bedroom far away from New York, far away
from the familiar, far away from Art. The dream
floated before her eyes, playing itself out again in
vivid detail, and she could see Art’s body, imagine
its smell and feel and taste—
But of her own body’s appearance in the dream,
she could recall nothing at all—not the size of her
breasts or the
length of her hair or even the color of
her skin. It was as though she were making love to
the man without a body of her own at all . . . just
making love with her spirit and soul.
“But he likes you, right?”
“I guess so.”
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
255
“Let me get this straight. He’s called you almost
every day for nearly six weeks, offered you support
above and beyond the call of duty . . . but you’re
not sure he likes you?”
Audra sighed. “Okay, I know he likes me . . . but
does he like me like me?”
Dr. Goddard rolled her eyes. “Please don’t do this
to me,” she sighed. “I’m too old . . .”
“Okay,” Audra admitted, letting a grin crease her
face. “That was juvenile. But you know what I
mean.”
“I don’t see—”
“He didn’t like me before .. . before I came
here . . .”
“He didn’t know you before you came here. You
were co-workers, but you really didn’t know any-
thing about each other.”
“We had the movies.”
“Yes, you had the movies. But you still didn’t re-
ally know anything about each other.” She
shrugged. “Now you do.”
“But he didn’t like the way I looked.”
“How do you know that?”
“He wouldn’t look at me if he could help it.”
“And how do you know why that was? Did you
ever ask him: ‘Hey Bradshaw, why don’t you
ever look me in the eye?’ Ever say that?” Her eye-
brows shot up, giving her serious, bespectacled
face an almost comical air. “Maybe he’s got a lazy
eye.”
“He doesn’t have a lazy eye.”
“The point is you don’t know what he’s got. Be-
cause you didn’t ask. And you didn’t ask because
256
Karyn Langhorne
you’d rather guess. You’d rather assume you know
the reason than find out the truth.”
“And what if I’m right? What if he didn’t like the
way I looked?”
“All right.” Dr. Goddard uncrossed and recrossed
her legs. “I’ll bite. What if he didn’t? What if he
thought you were the fattest, blackest and ugliest
woman he’d ever seen? Then what?”
Audra blinked at her in surprise. “I—I don’t
know—”
“Well, would that change or explain or erase all
the help and support he’s given you?”
“No.”
“Would that mean he couldn’t like you—or even