The Ugliest Thing

 

IT WAS THE ugliest thing she had ever seen. Obnoxiously ugly. Embarrassingly ugly. Epically ugly. And it was sitting in her family’s driveway.

Actually, no. It was sitting in the Waldmans’ driveway—or, at least, what would shortly become the Waldmans’ driveway when escrow closed in a few days and the house Odette Zyskowski grew up in wouldn’t be her home anymore. That thing would be her home. That run-down, beat-up brown-and-brown RV that Mom and Dad had just pulled up in, honking what was intended to be a cheerful beep, but instead sounded like the mournful death cry of a desperate whale.

Odette looked behind herself at the house, trying to ignore the SOLD banner splashed across the FOR SALE sign stuck in the front lawn. She had never given the house much thought. It was just a house. But now she saw the brick path winding through the grass from the sidewalk, uneven and tipsy, and it occurred to Odette that she knew every brick on that path—which ones were chipped, which listed slightly to the side, which were stamped with the bricklayer’s name, Steinberg & Sons.

She saw the bright red front door, the door she slammed through every afternoon at 3:14 P.M. Behind that door, Odette knew, was the mud bench where she ditched her backpack and shoes. She saw the wide, bright windows, the shutters that framed them. She took in the dark shingle roof that her parents had been talking about replacing for years but would soon become the Waldmans’ problem.

It was a beautiful home.

Mom cut the engine of the RV, and Dad threw open the metal door on the side and a set of two steps popped out.

Rex stood next to Odette, rocking up onto the balls of his feet, the way he did when he got excited. “Awesome, awesome, awesome,” he chanted to himself, and when Dad called, “So, what do you guys think?” Rex shouted “Awesome!” and ran full speed into Dad, butting his head into Dad’s stomach and grinding it against him.

Dad said “Oof!” and laughed, and Mom, coming out of the RV, said, “Careful, buddy,” and then she asked Odette, “So, honey, what do you think?” but Odette was already heading back into the Waldmans’ house, slamming the red door shut behind her.