Voted Ugly But Claimed By Her

The girls in my senior class started a Most Unattractive poll. I won by a landslide.

When the list circulated, my heart stopped at one name in particular: Madeline Sinclair. For six years, she had been my North Star, the girl Id quietly adored from the shadows of the back row.

Her handwriting was elegant, every loop and curve a deliberate slap in the face to the boy who had been stupid enough to confess his feelings to her just the day before.

Years later, a financial news anchor interviewed Madeline, now a rising star in private equity. They asked if she had any regrets.

Madeline looked directly into the camera, her expression poised but her eyes haunting. "In high school, I mistook a diamond for a piece of glass. I let someone else take him, and Ive spent every night for seven years regretting it. Luckily, hes single now. Im hoping for a second chance."

The "someone else" she was referring to was currently sitting across from me at dinner. She elegantly set down her fork, pushed a perfectly sliced piece of Wagyu beef toward me, and murmured that she had to make a quick call.

Out on the balcony overlooking the Seattle skyline, her voice turned to ice as she spoke into her phone. "Universal Holdings is in their Series C round, right? Call NorthStar, Solstice, and Vanguard. Tell them to pull every cent of their investment. Now."

The poll was a cruel, low-tech game played in the back of a spiral notebook.

When it reached my desk, the classroom went deafeningly silent. The first page was "Most Likely to Succeed/Hottest." The second page was the "Wall of Shame."

The first category was a heated debate. The second was a consensus. My name, Jude Miller, was written over and over again.

Out of twenty-one girls, seventeen had voted for me.

I wasnt delusional. I knew I wasn't the guy people did double-takes for. I had a heavy brow, lips that were a bit too full for my face, a permanent tan from working outside, and skin that was currently losing a battle with teenage hormones. I dressed in thrift-store flannels and wore my hair in a utilitarian buzz cut.

I had self-awareness. I never expected a movie-style romance, and I certainly didn't expect Madeline Sinclair to love me back. But seeing her handwriting on that page felt like a physical blow to the stomach.

We had known each other since middle school. I had loved her for every second of those six years. I just hadn't expected her to humiliate me so publicly the day after Id bared my soul.

The confession had been an accident.

I was helping my parents at our familys small neighborhood grocery store in a rougher part of town. Madeline walked by, and I called out to her, handing her a bag of fruit. I told her her mother had already paid for ita lie to help them out, since I knew her family was struggling after her fathers business empire collapsed.

Under the dim streetlamp, her long lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. "Jude, I dont need your charity."

She let go of the bag. I wasn't quick enough to catch it. Apples and pears scattered across the cracked sidewalk, bruising in the dirt. Her pride was just like that fruitfragile, easily damaged, and spread out for everyone to see.

"Im not pitying you, Maddie," I blurted out, the words tumbling over each other. "I like you. Ive always liked you. I just want to help."

I tried to force a casual shrug. "Every guy in school is stuffing your locker with Godiva and flowers. Is one bag of fruit really that much worse?"

Three seconds passed. Maybe thirty. Time stretched until it snapped.

"Im sorry, Jude," she said, her voice flat. "But I don't feel that way about you."

She walked away without looking back. It was the answer I expected. I told myself it didn't hurt. I knelt, picked up the bruised apples, wiped off the grit, and went back to work.

My family lived in the part of the city where the buildings were grey and the people looked tired. Everyone here was sprinting just to stay in place.

Madeline was different. She was a fallen princess, temporarily exiled to our neighborhood after her familys mansion was foreclosed on. Before the move, no one at school knew my mother worked as a housekeeper for her family. Madeline had kept my secret, protecting my dignity.

I thought my confession was a way of protecting hersshowing her that even at her lowest, she was still someones dream.

But after that night, she didn't just ignore me. She despised me.

The notebook sat on my desk, her sharp, aggressive script mocking me.

I looked back at Madeline. She met my gaze with a chilling indifference. The girl who had been my sun was now a block of ice.

The rest of the girls held their breath, waiting for the "ugly kid" to have a meltdown. If I showed them I was hurt, theyd won.

I twirled my pen, my heart hammering against my ribs. Then, with a flourish, I wrote my own name at the bottom of the list. I turned around and flashed a grin at the room. "Hey, I'm voting for myself too. Make it eighteen."

If you want to stop a bully, you have to be the first one to laugh at the joke.

That night, the girls couldn't look me in the eye. A few of them even came up to me after class to apologize, claiming it was just a "stupid prank" and that "if your skin cleared up, youd actually be kind of hot."

I laughed it off. Their opinions didn't matter. Madelines, however, was a different story.

I caught her in the alleyway behind the shops on the way home.

"Maddie, wait."

She stopped but didn't turn around.

"I borrowed a copy of Jane Eyre from your library once," I said, my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands. "Theres a line in there I want to give back to you: 'Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?'"

I stepped closer. "Clearly, in your world, being unattractive means I don't have the right to feel things. The funny thing is, none of you think you're bad people. You cry at sad movies and tweet about social justice, but youll tear down a classmate for a lunch-break thrill. You never once wondered if it would hurt. You didn't care."

I took a breath, feeling a weight lift. "I used to think you were different. I was wrong. Youre exactly like them."

I paused. "So, Madeline. Im taking it back. My confession. My feelings. All of it."

She used to be the moon in my sky. Now, she was just another girl in a crowded room. Whether I was "ugly" or not, she wasn't worth the devotion Id given her.

For the first time, I saw a flicker of something in her eyesregret? Surprise?but I was already walking away.

A week later, I moved my seat to the back of the room, right next to the schools most notorious outlier: Cassidy Vance.

She was the only girl who hadn't voted. And she was the only person Madeline Sinclair was afraid of.

3 (Madelines Perspective)

When Madeline wrote Judes name in that cruel notebook, she was picturing the way he had smiled at Cassidy in the hallway.

She didn't actually think Jude was ugly.

She had seen him on the rare days his skin was clear and his hair was styled. He wasn't a classic prom king, but he had a presence. Her mother, a woman with an eye for high-end aesthetics, had once remarked that Jude had "challenging, high-fashion bones"the kind of face that would become striking once he grew into it.

But at seventeen, most girls didn't have that kind of vision.

Jude was smart, resilient, and had a dry wit that could disarm anyone. Once, when a girl teased him about his acne while he was drinking a milkshake, hed just grinned and said, "If you want a sip, just ask. You do my chores, and I'll buy you your own."

Madeline admired him. But she didn't love himor so she told herself.

When he confessed to her, she panicked. Her world was ending; her father was in legal trouble, and they were broke. She couldn't handle the weight of his "goodness." So she pushed him away.

But when she got home to the small apartment her mother was trying to make feel like a home, and saw the groceries Judes family had quietly left for them, guilt ate her alive. She went out to find him, to apologize, to tell him shed been harsh.

Instead, she saw him at the grocery store with Cassidy.

Everyone knew Cassidy was the daughter of a billionaire, a girl who played by her own rules and made teachers tremble. Only Madeline knew the full extent of the "Vance" name. Her father had spent years trying to get an audience with Cassidys father, and the Vances had been the ones to let his company sink without a second thought.

Cassidys custom Ducati was idling at the curb. She tossed a book at Jude. He caught it like it was a holy relic, his face lighting up with a genuine, brilliant smile.

Cassidythe girl who wore five-thousand-dollar bootstook an apple from his stand, wiped it on her jacket, and took a huge bite. It was the same fruit Madeline had rejected.

That night, lying in a bed that felt too small in a room that smelled like old dust, Madeline stared at the window across the alley.

Was Jude ugly?

She decided that when he smiled at Cassidy, he was. He used to only smile like that for her. And now, the moment her family lost everything, he had found someone else to look at.

Two days after moving next to Cassidy, I was already regretting it. She was... difficult.

When I first sat down, she was face-down on her desk, sleeping. When she finally looked up, she gave me a lazy, feline stare. "Done chasing the ice queen?"

"I wasn't chasing her," I mumbled.

Cassidy snorted. She was the only one who knew about my sketchbookthe one shed found in the library, filled with drawings of Madeline. She had tossed it back to me with a single comment: "Zero taste."

Valentines Day came a few days later. The popular kids had lockers overflowing with chocolates. Madelines desk was a mountain of Lindt and Godiva.

Cassidy walked into class, dropped a box of insanely expensive imported dark chocolate on my desk, and said, "No one at my house wants these. Don't let them go to waste."

I pushed them back. "I'm... I'm cutting back on sugar."

Her eyes flashed. She kicked her chair back, grabbed the box, threw it into the trash can, and walked out of the room before the bell even rang.

A minute later, Madeline walked over. She placed a small, plain box on my desk. "These are sugar-free," she said softly.

The class erupted in whispers. My friend Ben slid a note onto my desk:

Holy shit, Jude. The Prom Queen and the Rebel Leader in one day? How?

I wasn't delusional. I knew Cassidy and Madeline didn't "like" me. They lived in a different universe. Plus, I was the "Most Unattractive" guy in school.

Madeline was only doing this because her mother had noticed the tension between us. Id overheard her mom telling her, "Jude is a good boy. Even if you don't love him, don't be cruel."

As for Cassidy? I had no idea. She was a chaos agent.

Her behavior started getting weirder. Shed poke my arm during lectures. Shed doodle my name in the margins of her notebooks. After school, shed race her motorcycle alongside my bus, waving like a lunatic.

She was moody. One day shed give me rare first-edition books and share her earbuds to listen to indie tracks I'd never heard of. The next, shed block the hallway so I couldn't leave or lock me in the equipment room during gym class just to "talk."

Finally, I snapped. "Cassidy, what is this? These head games... do you actually like me or something?"

She laughed so hard her face turned red. "Like you? God, youre such a kid. Its pathetic. Im just bored, Jude. Youre like a stray dog Im trying to train. It's funny."

But even though she messed with me, I couldn't hate her.

Because the night of the "Ugly Poll," when that notebook was being passed around, Cassidy had been the one to snatch it. She didn't just read it; she ripped it into confetti and stood up in front of the whole class.

"You guys have the aesthetic taste of a dumpster fire," shed snarled at the girls. "Is this really how you spend your time? Its embarrassing to breathe the same air as you."

Then shed looked at me, her eyes fierce. "And for the record, hes not ugly. You guys are just basic."

That night, she was my hero. A hero I never thought Id have.

Cassidy was an enigma. She skipped class whenever she wanted, yet she somehow stayed at the top of the rankings.

My first impression of her was that she was just a rich girl looking for a thrill. Id seen her at a music festival over the summer, drenching people with a water gun and laughing like a maniac. Shed accidentally soaked me, then insisted I hop on her Ducati so the wind would dry my clothes.

But then, I saw her on the sports channel.

I was eating dinner when a broadcast of the National Shooting Championships came on. There she was. Cassidy Vance. Her arms were rock-steady as she lifted a competition air rifle. Her expression was focused, cold, and utterly professional. She was a different person.

I held my breath as she squeezed the trigger, hitting the bullseye with terrifying precision.

"Mrs. Miller?"

Madeline was at our house for dinner again. She stood up abruptly. "My dad is coming home from the hospital tonight. We need help moving some furniture. Could Jude come over for a minute?"

It was a lie. There was no furniture to move. As soon as I stepped into her apartment, she locked the door and backed me against the wall.

"Jude, is this what it takes? She gets on TV and suddenly you're obsessed?" her voice was trembling. "Do you know what people are saying? That you and Cassidy were 'locked' in the equipment room for an hour? Do you really think you belong in her world?"

She stepped closer, her perfumesomething expensive and floralfilling my lungs. "She doesn't even have to take the SATs. Shes going to an Ivy League school on a legacy ticket or moving to Europe. Youre just a distraction to her. When she's bored, she'll leave. What happens to your reputation then?"

My phone buzzed. A voice note from Cassidy.

[Hey, Neighbor. Did you see me on TV? Was I a total badass or what? Im outside your place. Come out. Let's get tacos.]

The walls in these old apartments were thin. We both heard it.

My moms voice drifted from the hallway: "Oh, hi! Jude is just across the hall helping Madeline."

Silence followed. Then, the low rumble of a motorcycle engine. A text popped up: [Get out here. Now. Alleyway.]

Madeline moved even closer, her face inches from mine. She looked desperate. "Jude," she whispered, "don't go. Please."

When I reached the alley, Cassidy was leaning against her bike, her helmet tucked under her arm. Her eyes were like flint. "Get on."

She drove like a woman possessed. We hit eighty on the Pacific Coast Highway, the salt air stinging my eyes. She didn't stop until we reached a secluded stretch of beach.

She dragged me toward the water, her grip like iron.

"Cassidy, what the hell is wrong with you?" I shouted, finally wrenching my arm away.

She spun around, towering over me in her boots. "She kissed you, didn't she?"