My name is Shane. That’s all you need to know. I am Nothing. I know that N is capital. I want it that way. Because that is what I am. Or am not. Whatever.

I like in New York. Or lived. I am still there in heart. But right now I’m in Atlanta, Georgia. It is also Nothing. But it’s more Something than me. The fact of the matter is: I’m Ugly. Capital U intended. And the reason Atlanta is so nothing is because it is an open chest for anyone who wants to find anything. There’s no mystery. No air of wonder. The street layout is pretty messed up so I guess there’s a mystery in trying to find out why the streets change names every few blocks or why you end up in a different section of the town by following one street and turning a corner.

Anyway, New York is so much better. It’s Free. Atlanta is a free, but without the capital F. In New York, when I want to run away from my Ugliness, I can hop on the G train and transfer to the A and no one will ever find me. I can catch a bus and (if finance permits) flag down a gypsy cab to nowhere (the driver doesn’t care, so long as he gets his money).

Atlanta’s fee is just the fact that you can get on a train and get to where you’re going if you want to walk half the distance. Also, it has some stupid ‘t’ layout. Like a cross. It’s SO unsophisticated. New York’s subway is just the best there is I guess. It’s funny because New York’s Free is being trapped in a tunnel underground and Atlanta’s free is… well… a retarded cross mostly above ground. It’s so stupid.

I suppose you could say I’m a little antisocial. I hate people who look down upon the Nothings as inferior. In fact, I hate other Nothings for not recognizing themselves as such and trying to be something they aren’t. They try to be models and singers. They need to stay OUT of the public eye. They get stupid operations in the hopes that their higher cheekbones will bring them admiration. They think their poison-pumped faces are really something to be marveled at. I hate them.

Nothings with money get stupid cosmetic operations to not be Nothings anymore and then they turn their backs on us. Well nobody is turning their back on me—not Shane (you’re NOT getting my last name). I won’t give anybody the chance to. I have an innate paranoia and seventh-sense and they tell me that others (Nothings or otherwise) are bad news all together. The seventh-sense has never led me wrong. From my escape from the thugs in my Freshman year to the best school-skipping (as far as the adjective ‘best’ could be used to describe Atlanta) adventures I’ve been having in this, my Junior year, I have always been lucky.

I guess that’s why in New York my ‘friends’ call me Fortune Cookie. Besides my Malaysian (NOT CHINESE) heritage, I don’t get caught. I don’t get caught lifting when I stop by a Deli because I’m hungry, I don’t get caught skipping because I know which classes to report to and how to get my hands on the attendance rosters, and I don’t get caught physically. That’s right. Nobody can catch me. If you’ve ever seen Superman run, imagine him running ten times faster and there you have me.

I swear, sometimes I go so fast that it looks like the people around me are paused. Well, I mean, as far as human experience goes, but I am fast. And I can go a distance. When I was in New York City, I had a run-in with some of the local high school thugs, you know, one fat no-neck and one stretchy-boy. Well Stretchy could run. He tried to catch me when I refused to have my head dunked into the toilet (I don’t give a damn about initiation). He was going to beat me up. So I ran. I ran far away (the school yard). When I saw him approaching and the gate locked, I hurled my bag over the chain link fence and climbed up and shimmied down. He never caught me. He never would. For that same day, my mother was sending me down to Atlanta to live with my grandfather because she had to go to Japan and do business. Whatever. She just didn’t want me.

In other words, I’m fast and lucky. I’m the Fortune Cookie. I’m still a Nothing though, and I accept my place. I’m Ugly too. My eyes are slits—don’t give me that Asian ethnicity stuff—my eyes are practically closed! My nose is huge. It’s like an old witch’s with a small hook in the middle. And my nostrils are like bullets. My head is like an squared boulder that just sits on my shoulder. I’m paler than the White people around here too—you could practically see the blood coursing through my body. I’m nothing… And I’m proud of it. But I’m still Ugly. And that’s where my Charming comes in.

If you’ve ever seen those stupid games where you had to add points to character attributes, you know you aren’t supposed to deck them out in one department and leave the others bare. Either God didn’t know (so much for omnipotence) or he just wanted to screw me over miserably for a past life or something. While I’m Ugly, I’m also Charming. I can get people to do what I want. But there’s a price. To do it, I have to recognize that I am Ugly. I have to disassociate myself with non-Ugly things. Doing this, I can Charm my way into non-Ugly things and events. In order to be non-Ugly, I have to be the very definition of Ugly: Myself.

“Yo, Fortune!” Jeb calls to me. I nod in acknowledgement but I don’t take my eyes from the subway map I’m studying. If I do take my eyes away, then I’ll lose my place. If I lose my place, then I’ll lash out at Jeb. So if I take my eyes away, then I’ll lash out at Jeb (I absolutely love syllogism). I don’t want to lash out at Jeb. I’ll keep my eyes on the map. “I just got this crazy idea.”

I take my eyes away slowly, marking a particular route with my finger. (Being in New York for a summer after a full nine months in Georgia makes me feel really slow.) I see Jeb in all that he is. Tall, gangly, big-foreheaded, wide-eyed, too symmetrical-faced… Ugly just like me. Only he has a redeeming feature. His Afro is huge and soft and there is never a hair out of place unless he styles it that way. In a sea of White faces in New York, I find ethnic features to be exotic—just not mine. “What’s your idea, Head?” (As I’ve said, he has a big forehead. It’s funny because his face is small but his forehead is huge. His hair not framing his face just makes it look all the larger.)

“We should go back to school,” he said as though it were a totally wild idea. He made it sound almost believable. He had Charming, I guess, but he wasn’t Ugly enough to have as much Charming as I did. I’m sure I have the most ever.

“How about no?” I say as I go back to the map. I am glad that people listen to me as easily as they do. None of my friends ever doubt me. I can tell he wont bring it back up because he sighs in defeat. I guess I’m so Ugly that my Charming works on the subconscious level. There have only been few times I can remember when I never got what I wanted.

The park is empty for this time of day. Students are in school. Adults are at work. Jeb rests his head in his hands and I notice as two girls pass us by. They are skippers. It takes only one glance and I can see that they are ditzy airhead whores looking for some money. The glasses and pizza-hut pepperoni zits don’t fool me. I can see passed the frizzy hair as well. They are trying to look like they’d be offended if anyone ever called them whores. As if. I’d say something if I weren’t so engrossed in the map.

As I am studying the map (more so now to commit the rail line to my flawless memory), one of the undercover whores whispers something to the other. I hear them really well since I’m not looking at them (it works funny that way). As far as I can hear, they’re talking about me. One of the whores is telling the other to look at how cute I am. I hate when people mock me that way.

People do it all the time. If it isn’t one thing it’s the other. They say all this stuff—about how I’m non-Ugly. And how they wish I’d stop walking so fast so they could get to know me. And how I should look at people when they talk to me. And how I have pretty eyes. It’s all total bullshit. I know they’re laughing once they go behind the closed door. I know they don’t mean a word of it and are just trying to get a laugh. It’s funny for them. That’s what non-Ugly people do. They play tricks on Ugly people.

It’s a good thing I rescued Jeb from that. Some girl had him cornered by his locker and was sitting there telling him how cute he was. How she liked his definition. She gave him a slip of paper with her number on it and told him to call. I was able to befriend him and use my Charming to get him to see how he was Ugly and the girl was probably going to record the phone call and play it over the morning announcements. I’m nice in the way that I don’t allow Ugly people to be taken for granted.

It turned out that the girl was working on the sophomore yearbook committee and wanted to get a short biography of him for ‘Most Handsome’ after I saw through her partner’s trick and turned her down. They just don’t give up. It just stresses me out sometimes that other people are so stupid. They don’t see how Ugly they are. They don’t see how non-Ugly people attempt to take advantage of them. I do. And now I have to go around like some superhero and make them see how Ugly they really are and how they need to stop trying to be something they aren’t.

I’ve been called a pessimist and self-deluded by non-Ugly people who wanted to make me forego my mission of help. Even Ugly people brainwashed by the non-Ugly people turned against their nature and therefore turned against me. I am Ugly, so to turn from Ugliness is to turn from Shane. I especially hate the psychiatrists who label me with their non-Ugly labels. They called me “troubled” when they thought I could not hear. They said I had an “interesting vision of reality”. But the worst one of all was the one who said that I had some signs of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

So just because I’m Ugly and recognize myself for that that I am, I’m crazy? That’s messed up. At least I was able to save Jeb and a few others from their former master’s grip (yes, the non-Ugly people are masters who mentally brainwash the Ugly people. But I am the very embodiment of Ugly, so I cannot be brainwashed).

Other things I hate are the movies where the non-Ugly actor playing an Ugly role (and can’t play the role properly) get un-Ugly at the end. It’s sickening. Just a mockery of my people.

But it will soon end. Because I’m Special. I don’t mind telling you. I have an understanding of the hearts of Ugly people. I know their plights better than they do—because I am their plight. As I’ve said before, I am Ugly in the flesh. I am the concept, the existence, the ‘ugh’ of Ugly in physical being. Every flawed feature is a part of me. Every distorted image is a part of me. Every rejected image, concept is a part of me. Everything that is Ugly is what makes me.

There are many levels of this which are probably beyond your comprehension because you have never lived as I have. I have lived with my Ugliness since before Time itself (even if I only remember vividly the fleshy years). There is Divine, Heavenly, Awesome, Marvelous, Beautiful, Handsome, Incredible, Gorgeous, Dazzling, Amazing, Delightful, Remarkable, Pretty, and Ugly. In that order.

These are the labels in which one can have. Everything from Divine to Pretty is non-Ugly. I must say non-Ugly because so that you don’t get Pretty or some other word mislabeled. It must be done that way. For your sake.

I yawn and crack my neck as my neck goes from left to right and vice-versa, I see that Jeb has gone away unannounced. He is a smart boy. He understands that we are not ‘friends’ so much as leader and lackey (me being the former). The only things we have in common is our both being male and both being from places that are overlooked by America (he’s from Madagascar and I’m from Malaysia. When was the last time you heard anyone talking about current news there?). To be honest, I don’t think he likes me for being his savior (I did save him from humiliation, after all). He hangs out with me only because I have been able to show him some of the truth about his Ugly self. Even in the Christian Mythology, I’m sure non-believers stood around and listened to Jesus Christ as he talked. And some believed gradually.

I see Jeb that way. But he might need some persuading. I don’t want him to go through life being tricked by non-Ugly people. I would have to turn him to My Way.