The Beast of Beauty (10 page)

My mother stood before me,
beautiful with long, beautiful brown hair. I didn’t realize how much that I had
missed her until I saw her standing there. I rushed up to her and flung my arms
around her, hoping that she would stay even though I knew that she never would.
She embraced me for a moment, and then she was gone.

I looked around to see that I was
in the school parking lot, standing outside Daniel’s car. He leaned against the
side, looking at his feet. There was no one else in sight.

“Getting through her service
wasn’t as bad as I expected,” I said. “I guess it made it better that so many
people were there. I sort of felt like that I had to show that I was okay so
that they would feel better, even though she was mom. Is that crazy?”

Daniel didn’t respond. I waited
and waited, but he said nothing.      

“What is it?” I asked him.
“What’s on your mind?”

“Why don’t you want to hang out
with my friends anymore?” he asked. “They want to know what’s up.”

I scoffed, “Are you seriously
upset about something as small as that? Why does that even matter right now?”

“It’s a question you need to
answer,” he said coldly. “It’s important to me.”

“Fine,” I said. “I don’t like
hanging out with people who make me feel terrible, and you shouldn’t want to
hang out with people like that either.”

“Watch it,” he warned. “Those
people are my friends.”

“
Those people
are cruel and heartless.
They aren’t anyone’s friends, Daniel. What’s going on?” I asked.

He sighed, “Look, I know that
your mom just died. And I’m really sorry. You have no idea how sorry that I am…
but you’ve been really negative about my friends lately and it’s really starting
to bug me. Why can’t you just get over your problems with them?”

“What do you want me to do? Hang
out with people who treat me like I’m not good enough to be in their presence?”
I asked, getting angry, “I should just get over something small like that?”

“See? There you go again,” he
threw his hands up in the air. “You just can’t quit. And they don’t treat you
like that. They were just fine with us dating until you started getting all
weird.”

His words stung, “Weird? You mean
SAD because my mother was SICK?”

“Yes,” he said, “you fit in just
fine before that.”

“Well, I’m so glad that I got a
glimpse into being super popular like you are, Daniel. Thank you for this
privilege,” I remarked. “I don’t understand. We were friends BEFORE you started
hanging out with Jasper all of the time, and you were well liked. People wanted
to be around you because you made them happy, not because they wanted to be
popular by association. Wasn’t that better than this?”

He snorted, “I’m not super
popular! Don’t you get it? I’m barely hanging on here because of…”

“… because of me,” I finished.
“I’m bringing down your social status because I’m so weird and I don’t do every
little thing I can to make Jasper happy.”

He just stared at the ground.

“Are you kidding me? Do you even realize
how ridiculous this conversation is? My mother just died, her service was
literally hours ago, and we are sitting here talking about how your social
status is in danger because I was sad? That’s so petty.”

He still didn’t say anything.

“You know what? You’re being a
coward,” I said, wanting to find anything that I could say to hurt him the way
that he was hurting me by being silent.

His head finally snapped up, “No,
I’m not!”

“Yes, you are!” I yelled. “You
are basing your actions on what other people want, not what you want. That’s
being a
coward!”

He scoffed, “How do you know what
I want?”

I looked at him, but I didn’t
recognize him. He had never given me that cold stare before. He looked at me
like he was looking at a stranger that he was very, very angry with.

“I thought you wanted… me?” I
asked, suddenly more afraid of losing him than being mad. I didn’t even realize
that I had let myself get so vulnerable until the words were already out of my
mouth.

“Don’t go feeling sorry for her,
Daniel,” Jasper said. “It’ll just be a waste of your time.”

I turned around and saw Jasper,
smirking.

“You got that right,” Daniel
said.

I whipped back around to face
him, and his face showed no remorse. It was like I was a nuisance that he
needed to get rid of.

“Goodbye, Adeline,” Daniel said,
and Jasper laughed.

I jumped and woke myself up. I
stared at the wall of the cabin, so upset that I could feel the sweat all over
me and my heart beat faster than I ever realized it could.

I closed my eyes to try to escape
the thoughts that were pouring in, but then the scenes from my dream became all
the more vivid, and I had to open my eyes to escape them. It was a mess. I was
in love with Daniel, and he left me right after my mother died. I needed him
more than I ever needed anyone before in my life, and he wasn’t there for me.
He valued Jasper’s opinions over my feelings. I couldn’t trust him to be there
for me now, since I was at least ten times more hideous than I was when he
broke up with me.

“Adeline?” he whispered.

I faked sleep.

“Adeline? Are you awake?” he
said, his voice rising a little.

“Hmm?” I mumbled.

“Sorry, I just thought I saw you
jump,” he explained. “Would you like to sleep longer?”

“No!” I said harshly.

“Okay…” he said, “What’s wrong?”

“Bad dreams, that’s all,” I said,
hoping that he wouldn’t ask for details. I turned over to face him and sat up
on the bed.

“Why did you leave?” he asked.

“Oh, I just woke up before you
and thought that I would entertain myself by reading one of my two books, but I
just got really tired again and fell back asleep over here,” I explained.

“Did I do anything wrong?” he
asked, “because I’m really sorry if I did.”

“No,” I said, “I promise.”

Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in
my head.

“Ahh!” I moaned, holding my head
with both of my hands.

“What’s wrong?” he asked,
crawling across the space between us.

“I don’t know,” I said, gritting
my teeth in pain.

It was the worst pain I ever
experienced, like someone was beating on my head with a hammer repeatedly, and
then, just as it came, it went away.

I opened my eyes to see Daniel’s
face, full of concern, staring at me.

“I have no idea what that was,” I
said, dumbfounded. I kind of wished that I had some kind of noticeable physical
side effect so that he would know that someone was really wrong and that I
wasn’t crazy.

He put his hand on my knee, “Are
you okay now? Is there still pain?”

“No,” I said, “there’s actually
no pain at all. It’s so strange.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Is
there anything that I can do?”

“I’ll take some painkillers,” I
said. “In all of that excitement, I forgot to go get me some food. I need to go
do that. Maybe that’ll make me feel better?”

“Good idea,” he said. “Are you
sure that you’re okay to go off by yourself? I can’t come save you if something
happens.”

I smiled, “I know, but I’ll be
okay. Don’t worry about me.”

I got up, took some pain killers,
and headed out the door.

Daniel scrambled back to his bed,
“Adeline?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really glad that you saved
me,” he said.

“Oh, no problem,” I said,
brushing it off.

“No,” he said. “I mean, I’m
really glad that it was
you
that saved me.”

I smiled and went out to kill my
supper.

I couldn’t stand Zoey anymore.
Yeah, she was attractive, but that didn’t make up for the level of annoying
that she was. I was also quite certain that she was crazy, and I really didn’t
have the patience for crazy.

“Jasper, are you even listening
to me?” she asked, angry that I had zoned out yet again.

I looked up from the steering
wheel and finally glanced in her direction. We were sitting in her driveway
“talking,” which was my second-to-the-least favorite thing in the world to do.
My least favorite was listening, and she wanted me to do both.

“Say something!” she demanded,
throwing up both of her hands in anger.

“Zoey,” I said, “no offense,
okay? But that never happened. I think you might be insane. Maybe someone
slipped something else into your drink or something. For one, you didn’t see
some kind of mythological creature. Two, I was most definitely not with you.”

She fumed, “I am not insane.
There was a wolf-man, or woman, in the woods Friday night. Why won’t you
believe me?”

“You were really, really drunk
that night,” I explained, “and it was two days ago. There’s just no way that it
could be possible, no matter what you believe. There are just some things that
you have to accept aren’t real and will never be real. You didn’t see a
wolf-man.”

“Yes, I did, and you saw her too.
It wasn’t a man, it was a woman. You thought it was Adeline,” she explained,
“Adeline Jones. You recognized her underneath that creature.”

I almost busted my gut laughing,
“Adeline? Okay, okay, I get it. This is all a joke, isn’t it? Adeline is a
scary creature of the night? Good one.”

Her eyes began to well up with
tears, “No, it isn’t. I was really afraid. I still am really afraid, and you
don’t even care. We both could have died. She pushed you down, don’t you
remember that?”

“It’s not that I don’t care,” I
said, “It’s just that I don’t think that you have any valid reason to be
afraid. It doesn’t make any sense. And I fell numerous times that night, so
don’t go asking me where I got each of the tiny scratches on my arms.”

“Think about Daniel,” she said.

“What about Daniel?”

“He’s been missing since Friday
night… I, no, WE saw the wolf-girl Friday night… I don’t think that’s a
coincidence. What if she killed him?”

I scoffed, “Adeline wouldn’t kill
Daniel anyway because she still cares about him. Did you see the way that she
got all flustered when they were partners? If she was going to kill someone,
then she probably would have killed me. So there’s your proof that whatever you
saw wasn’t Adeline.”

She just sat across the truck
from me and pouted.

I sighed, “Also, if the wolf-girl
was Adeline, then the police would be looking for her too, right?”

“Right,” she said, “That makes
sense, but what if no one knew she was missing?”

“She’ll be at school tomorrow,
and you’ll see that all of this was just crazy-talk, okay? Just because she
doesn’t have a social life doesn’t mean she’s missing.”

She slumped in her seat, “Okay, I
guess you’re right. We’ll see tomorrow.”

“Oh, there’s one more thing. I
don’t think that we should see each other anymore,” I said, gripping the
steering wheel to brace myself for more insanity.

She just stared at me, “You’re
breaking up with me? Are you serious? We’ve only been together for two days!”

I scoffed, “Were we ever actually
going out? Because I didn’t realize that we were.”

She looked stunned, “Well, yeah,
I thought we were. I left Daniel for you, literally, on the side of the road.
Doesn’t that mean anything to you at all?”

“Well, look at it this way…
either way, you wouldn’t have a boyfriend right now because Daniel’s missing.
So don’t be too hard on yourself.”

Her brows furrowed, “You do
realize that this has been like the shortest relationship is the history of
relationships, right?”

“Yeah, so?” I asked, confused.
“And it wasn’t a relationship!”

“You didn’t even give us a
chance! No one even knows that we were ever together. What was the point?”

“Don’t worry, I already told people
what happened. Everyone at school will know that you climbed the social ladder
from Daniel to me. And I think you know what the point was.”

She stared at me.

“That’s what you want, right?” I
asked. “For everyone to know that you were with someone cooler than him? So
that you could say that you were with someone who was on the starting five in
the basketball team?”

She grabbed the door handle, “You
know what? I may be really vain, and just seem like the dumb popular girl. But
guess what? I still have feelings, and you have no right to treat me as if I
don’t. You really are the jerk that everyone says that you are.”

“Look, don’t get on my bad side,”
I warned. “I do have the power to make you an absolute outcast. Do you want
that? Do you want to end up like Adeline?”

“No,” she admitted, “but you
don’t have that kind of influence. It’s not like I was popular because of you.”

“Please,” I said. “Don’t try me.
You can definitely become un-popular because of me.”

She flung open the door, jumped
out, and slammed it.

I hadn’t realized it, but I was
getting a headache from listening to her go on and on about some kind of forest
monster and then getting upset when I didn’t want to hang out with her anymore.
I don’t know how she could blame me; if I were acting like a complete lunatic,
she probably wouldn’t want to hang out with me either, and I would completely
understand.

I pulled out of her driveway and
headed home glad that all of that was over with. Now, she could call all of her
friends and talk about how terrible I was, and I didn’t even care as long as I
didn’t have to listen to it.

Something about what she said
kept bugging me while I drove. Maybe I did see Adeline in the forest? I
certainly didn’t remember seeing a wolf-man though. I think that I would remember
her being a werewolf or whatever if I saw her, regardless of how much I had to
drink.

Where was Daniel? He’d been gone
for two days. No one goes away to cry alone about their problems for that long.

What a coward.