Diary of an Ugly Duckling by Langhorne, Karyn (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

to review the data

from the examination, but we thought it would look

good to have the folders on the table, in the event

any of this footage makes the final cut.” She glanced

at the young man kneeling beside the amplifier de-

vice. “How’s sound?”

“I need a quick vocal of everyone to be sure,” he

muttered, sounding like he, too, was eager for this

session to begin and end.

“You heard the man.” She glanced at Audra, look-

ing her full in the face for the first time since she’d

entered the room. “Say something.”

“Something.”

Laughter filled the room, cutting some of the

tense atmosphere Camilla’s attitude had created.

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117

“That’s it, Audra,” the doctor to her right—whom

Audra had decided must be Alan Bremmar, one of

the plastic surgeons whose offices these were—

chuckled. “I, for one, really do hope this works

out. It’s always nice to work with women with per-

sonality.”

“Yeah, but once you make me beautiful, I won’t

need a personality anymore, now, will I?” Audra

quipped. “Like I said on the tape: The uglier you

are, the more personality you need—”

“We are not rolling yet, people!” Camilla inter-

rupted, her eyes flashing angrily. “If we could just

do the sound check? Please?” And she glared at Au-

dra like the whole thing was her fault.

“Fine,” Dr. Bremmar said good-humoredly

enough, as though the woman’s shrewish rudeness

meant no never mind to him. “I suggest we check by

introducing ourselves to our guest. I’m Alan Brem-

mar.”

One by one, the experts announced themselves.

The blonde doc was actually a cosmetic dentist

named Katherine Martin, the athletic white man,

the plastic surgeon Herbert Koch, whom, Audra re-

alized with a shock, she recognized from another of

the Beautify! Channel’s many makeover shows. The

only African-American expert was a clinical derma-

tologist named Dr. Reynolds Jamison . . . and from

the way he stared at her, she suspected that

he thought she might be just to the left of crazy, and

that she needed far more than a new nose to correct

what ailed her. Audra felt the man’s eyes still trained

on her face, even after he’d introduced himself and

the process had moved on to the next person.

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Karyn Langhorne

The rangy young woman was Julienne Rapista,

the celebrity personal trainer—also vaguely familiar

to Audra for her various TV projects. The bespecta-

cled woman was a shrink with an expertise in body

image named Anna Goddard. Audra had the feeling

she’d seen her on the talk-show circuit recently, but

she couldn’t be completely sure.

Audra stared at each one for a long moment, com-

mitting their names and responsibilities to memory.

It was weird: on the one hand, she felt like she’d

been asked to audition for an important role, and on

the other hand, she felt like a woman pleading for a

pardon.

How do I play this scene? she wondered. What ex-

actly is happening here? She tried to ask Shamiyah

with her eyes . . . but the woman had her face in her

own copy of the file and didn’t look up.

“Good,” the sound guy said, showing Camilla—

who still hadn’t introduced herself—his thumb.

“You guys ready?” Camilla’s steely gaze swept over

the cameras and lights, and receiving affirmatives, she

smiled sweetly. “Roll cameras, please.” She paused,

and then spoke as smoothly as if reading from a

teleprompter. “This is a preliminary meeting of our

expert panel on the case of Audra Marks, a candidate

for Ugly Duckling. Each of our experts has reviewed

medical and personal history information provided

by Audra with an eye toward determining if she is the

right kind of candidate for our unique makeover pro-

gram.” She paused, shooting Shamiyah daggers until

she jumped up and hit a key on the laptop, filling the

TV screen with Audra’s underwear-clad image.

“Dr. Bremmar, let’s begin with you.”

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119

* * *

Carla was right: They were brutal. Even Dr. Brem-

mar, who, Audra’s intuition told her, always tried to

be kind, had very little positive to say.

“We can do the surgery before you lose the rest

of the weight—to reshape your thighs—” He drew

on the keypad in front of him, tracing a slimming

purple line that appeared over the bulges in the im-

age of Audra on the screen. “And your tummy.”

More lines. “And your derriere.” Still more lines.

“But you wouldn’t really be able to see the effects

of the liposuction until you lost a substantial

amount of weight. Probably about, what? Sixty more

pounds—”

“I’m thinking more like seventy,” the nutritionist

piped up, bending back over the sheaf of papers in

her hand. “And even with a fairly low-calorie diet

and a pretty strenuous exercise regimen, I’m not

sure she could lose that amount in only three

months. She’ll lose some fat in the process of the

surgery, but as I calculate it, even on only 1200 calo-

ries, it comes out to about three or four pounds a

week, or”—she scribbled—“between thirty-five and

forty-five pounds overall.” She shook her head.

“Any faster than that, and I’m afraid we’ll be court-

ing a host of nutritional deficiencies—”

“But it says here that Audra’s got a pretty decent

ratio of fat to muscle,” interjected Julienne, the fit-

ness chick. She popped a lazy bicep, admired it,

then continued in a low, calm voice. “Let’s say she

loses forty-five pounds of fat and builds up her lean

muscle mass. She could easily look sixty or even

seventy pounds slimmer than she appears today.

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Karyn Langhorne

And she’s already in pretty good physical shape, by

nature of the kind of work she does.”

“That’s one of the things that argues in favor of her

as a candidate. Her excellent overall health,” Dr.

Koch interjected.

“For the body, I agree,” Dr. Bremmar nodded.

“But the face . . .” He shook his head and sighed.

Dr. Koch echoed the sigh. “Yes . . . the face,” he

repeated, and said no more, letting the room lapse

into a prolonged silence.

Audra stared from expert to expert, but suddenly

no one in the room was looking at her . . . except Dr.

Jamison, whose velvety brown eyes had never once

wavered from her features since he’d entered the

room, even