Ugly Davey - 4. Chapter 04 – Mar Up Your Pretty Face

Chapter 04 – Mar Up Your Pretty Face

“This is not working out like I expected,” Rick frowned as he inspected me from head to toe.

“That’s exactly what I told you!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in frustration. “I told you this wasn’t going to work!”

Rick was helping me put together my “ugly” look for my first day of work tomorrow. Both Amy and Rick had gotten back from their trip a few hours ago acting all giddy and lovey-dovey with each other. It seemed like their theory that these trips enhanced their love life was true after all. Though Amy had headed back home with a sleepy Josh to get some rest, Rick had told his wife that he needed to stay behind to help me with a “project”. Both of us had agreed that we wouldn’t tell Amy anything about what we were planning since neither of us wanted to be on her shit list. Amy was a petite blue-eyed auburn-haired woman but when somebody got in her line of fire, they were better off wishing they were dead.

“You still look too pretty even with those hideous clothes,” Rick remarked from where he lay sprawled on my bed flipping through a magazine.

“You know it’s comments like those that make me question whether you have any homosexual tendencies,” I said glancing at Rick from the corner of my eyes.

“Yeah, yeah whatever. You're just jealous that I’m secure enough in my sexuality to be able to admit when a guy looks good,” he said dismissively while flapping his wrist.

I rolled my eyes before looking back at my reflection in the full-length mirror that hung beside my closet. I had donned on a pair of grey slacks that were two sizes too big and only held on by a tightly clinched belt. The pants were so baggy that they actually made my toned ass look saggy. The full sleeve button down shirt that I was wearing was in a weird shade of yellow that could only be described as dehydrated urine. Even the shirt was a couple of sizes too big, making my leanly muscled body look plain old skinny. Over the “Pee Shirt” as I dubbed it, I wore a loose dark grey wool sweater vest that had buttons going down the front. All over the vest was a repeating pattern of little white bunnies. Around my neck and tucked into the vest was a navy blue tie that had tiny orange carrots scattered all over it. Jenny the saleswoman at Sears had thought it was a cute idea to have a matching concept for all of the sweater vests and ties. I just thought it was ugly.

Though the wardrobe had succeeded in hiding my toned physique, making my body look unappealing and the thick black-framed glasses that sat atop my slender nose managed to hide my chocolate brown eyes with its caramel flecks, the rest of my face was another story. My olive tone skin (courtesy of my Italian mother) was way too smooth and blemish free to be called ugly and even messing up my slightly long dark brown hair hadn’t failed to hide it’s soft and luscious texture.

“The body’s fine, you just need to do something about your face,” Rick noted.

“Yeah, but what?” I said in exasperation.

“Oh wait! I almost forgot!” Rick said hopping off my bed and running towards the bag he and Amy had brought my souvenir Okanagan Valley sweatshirt in.

“I snuck these out of Amy’s make-up kit when she wasn’t looking. She has so many things in there that I doubt she’d notice these missing,” he said while ruffling through the bag.

“Aha!” he shouted, pulling out what looked like to be red lip liner and a tube of concealer.

“And what am I supposed to do with that? You want me to wear lipstick to work now? Because that is going way beyond anything I agreed to,” I said looking at the make-up guardedly.

“No you idiot! Remember grade six? Mrs. Henning’s class?”

The light suddenly dawned on me. “Oh you mean that time we faked having chicken pox so we could get out of school early?”

Rick just grinned.

Back in the sixth grade, Rick and I had thought up of what we believed to be a brilliant plan to kick off our spring break a day early. We had come up with the idea that after our parents dropped us off at school on their way to work, we would sneak into the boys bathroom before class and create a few fake chicken pox scattered around in discreet places on our arms, neck, and face. We planned to do this by first making little red dots with the lip liner Rick had stolen from his mom’s dresser, and then applying a layer of concealer on top from the tube I had snuck out of my mom’s bathroom. We would then let our teacher find out we were sick, before convincing her that we were feeling well enough to be able to walk home instead of having our parents come pick us up.

Our plan had seemed to be going right on track. We had gone to class before the bell rang and had sat in our seats listening to Mrs. Henning drone on about how the Canadian Federal Government functioned as though nothing was amiss. Then about twenty minutes later, Rick and I discreetly started coughing, getting louder and louder as the minutes ticked by. We then started accompanying our coughs with scratching loudly at the places we had made our fake chicken pox.

Mrs. Henning stopped in her description of the House of Commons, before coming towards where we sat to see what was wrong. When she got closer, she noticed the angry red dots marring our skin and let out a screech. “Oh no! Chicken pox!” she shrieked.

At that the rest of our classmates screamed and tried to get away from us as fast as possible.

Mrs. Henning was a heavy set middle-aged women who got easily frazzled when things didn’t go according to her plans. “Oh children please calm down, please children return to your seats,” she said trying desperately to calm down the students’ screams. Her wispy sable hair was starting to fall out of her bun, making her look even more frazzled.

“Come with me boys, it’s off to the school nurse with you two,” said Mrs. Henning, quickly leading us out of the classroom and away from the chorus of “ewws”, “I feel sick” and “they infected me”.

Rick and I shared an “uh-oh” look as we followed her to the nurse’s office. In all our excitement of implementing our plan, both of us had failed to consider that we might have to see the school nurse before being allowed to go back home.

It didn’t even take the nurse five minutes to find out that we were lying. Not only were we sent to the principal’s office, but our parents were also called in from work to deal with us. The good thing was that we were allowed to go home early since none of our classmates wanted us in the class any time soon, the bad thing was that we were both grounded and banned from seeing each other for all of spring break.

I chuckled at recalling the memory.

“I get what you’re saying but how are having chicken pox going to work in this situation? I won’t even be allowed to go to work if they thought I was contagious,” I said to Rick.

“Not chicken pox Davey. You gotta think outside the box. We’re going to use the same technique to make some fake pimples. That’ll sure work to mar up your pretty face,” Rick snickered.

I scowled at him before seriously thinking over the idea. “Ok let’s give it a shot,” I said finally nodding my head.

Ten minutes later I was staring at my pimple-ridden face. We hadn’t gone too overboard because that would have made it hard to keep track of where each pimple was. Nothing would have looked fishier than having my pimples jump around from one place to another every day I showed up for work. I had added a few to my cheeks, a couple on my forehead, and two or three on my chin. All of them were strategically placed so that I could remember exactly where to replace a “pimple” each morning before work.

I had to admit that I did look pretty ugly right now.

“I never thought I’d see the day when I surpassed you in beauty,” Rick sniggered “just make sure to grease up your hair with some baby oil or something to make it look all limp and slimy.”

Rick looked at his watch before continuing. “Damn it’s almost eleven already, I’m gonna head on home now. You can keep the make up, I’ll just tell Amy that she probably left it at the Motel or something.”

“You’re so bad,” I said chuckling and yawning at the same time, tired after such an exhausting day.

Rick just laughed and left for home after wishing me good luck for tomorrow.

After locking the door behind Rick, I tiredly shuffled to the bathroom where I washed the “acne” off my face, brushed my teeth and did all of the usual nightly duties before continuing on towards my room. Stripping off my clothes, I carefully folded and placed them on the dresser to be worn for tomorrow, before crawling into my bed in only my boxers.

I lay there for a few minutes thinking about what would happen tomorrow but before I knew it, I had drifted off to sleep.

To be continued…