the tale of a poor girl

                My name is Fran. Not Frank, just Fran, an ugly, boring name, for an ugly, boring person. I live in the poorest part of town with my grandfather, who`s just about the only friend I have. I haven't heard from mom since I was three. The last memory I have, she`s leaving me here and getting in her car.      
               My school life isn't that great either. Normal kids, middle class kids who have families, don't like run-down kids with no parents. Especially if that kid lives in a rundown house with most of the windows broken and the paint faded or crumbled off. Normal kids don't have that kind of sympathy.                 
               Everyday after school, granddad asks how it was and I give him the same old solemn look with the same shaking of the head to say "no".  He`ll then tell me that I'm the most beautiful girl in all of Alabama people just don't look hard enough to see it. I walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I see an ugly, pale teenage girl, with uneven, matted up brown hair, that could at one time be pretty, but pretty isn't an issue, not in this house, not in this part of town.  I don't care that I can't get a haircut, I don't care that I only have three shirts that I can only hand wash. That's not important, not to me. What's important is that I'm going to a school and that in two years I might get to go to college, but even with a high school diploma you can get a job. Right now the only way we have of getting any money is when I'm at school and granddad sits on the corner of 2nd and 3rd street with a can for spare change for about fifth teen years I've been living off gas station snacks and school food.
              One day after school I find the courage to confront my granddad about his consoling me on how I'm beautiful. I had found a Miss America magazine under an empty table in the cafeteria. I sat down on a worn-out cushion, which probably once belonged to a couch, and sat next to him. "How am I more beautiful than her?" I asked as I pointed to Miss Alabama. "Her hair is neat and shiny, like the girls at school, and she looks like a model. How am I-"   "I would have thought I taught you better." He cut me off giving me a stern look "to that girl beauty is only skin deep, for instance, if I could give you five dollars, and I did how would you react?"
                "I'd probably think it was the greatest thing ever and get us an actual dinner to eat." I replied. "Now, what do you think she would do?" "I don't know" "I can tell you right now she wouldn`t care. And she more than likely throws a tantrum if she had dirt on that outfit of hers. Do you see what I mean? Your beautiful not for how you look but for who you are." His stern face turned to a smile and he gave me a hug and whispered; "keep it that way."
                Three years later; granddad died. I had gotten a scholarship from the Alabama lottery foundation, and got to go to Alabama state university. I was on my way to work when I found out. Construction workers had called the police after finding his body in the old house, which they had thought was abandoned and were going to tear down to rebuild the house in "livable" standards.
                 I let the police officer know that he was my grandfather and asked if I could get some of his belongings. They said because of the state of the place, they could not allow me to go in for safety reasons. One of the officers went in for me and brought out an old box I had never seen before.
                When I got in the car after I said my last goodbyes to my granddad and the old house, as well as thanking the officers, I studied the small, wooden box on the top, in engraved, faded out, painted letters, a name I had not seen before; Alexandra. I took me a few minutes to open it up, for the broken lock on the front was latched. I opened it up and there inside were several things, but the thing that caught my attention the most, was a small not that in very sloppy handwriting, said, Fran, on the top inside, stay beautiful, granddaughter.   And that was it. I soon recognized from the pictures and letters in the box, that I was mom`s. to me this was the greatest present he could have given me.
                At that moment I thought back three year to that conversation we had about what beauty was. I thought about that girl from the magazine that was in that pageant. I thought about as well how she would find such a present which to me was like diamonds would be to her. In that thinking I realized that she`d probably throw it out.
                I then looked to sky through my windshield and simply said "I will."
                To me beauty is not how you look on the outside but the way that you treat people and think of things. Granddad was right; to many beauty  is only skin deep.