The Beast of Beauty (5 page)

I had no idea why I let him call
me Violet. We had known each other since Kindergarten. He knows just about
everything about me. Surely he wouldn’t treat me any differently upon figuring
out what my name is.

I stopped suddenly and realized something
that changed my mind; he was nicer to me as this beast today than he was when I
was a human yesterday.

He called me Violet, though. It’s
not exactly what Shakespeare wrote, but that was his inspiration for my name,
and I picked out that book for us to read in class. Did he remember it because
I chose it or simply because it is a great work of art?

The ground crunched beneath my
bare feet. I hadn’t even realized that I forgot to put my shoes back on. I
lifted up my right foot to see a dog-like padding on the bottom of them. I must
have been too tired when I took off my shoes last night to notice.

I sighed. “At least my hands
aren’t padded too,” I said aloud to no one.

My mind suddenly switched from
thinking about Daniel to thinking about my bigger problems. I was part animal
now, and I needed to figure out how to change back. I should have brought the
spell book with me too, but I was in such a hurry to leave that I only grabbed
the plant one.

I backtracked to yesterday
afternoon. Stacy had given me the spell book, but why? Did she give it to me on
purpose, or was it a mistake? If it was a mistake, then what on earth was a
book like that doing in a storage room in a library? Especially lying on the
floor for anyone to pick up? It didn’t make any sense.

My body tensed and I suddenly
felt alert. I turned my head slowly to see a rabbit about thirty feet away from
me, and I wanted to chase it with every fiber of my being, but I stayed still
and fought the urge as it slowly jumped further and further away from me. I
remained frozen until I could no longer sense it.

“Great!” I said aloud, angered by
weird instincts.

Under no circumstances would I
eat an uncooked animal; I didn’t care how much that the spell had changed me. I
had always believed that my mind is more powerful than my body, and now I would
simply think of this as a challenge to prove that.

I breathed the fresh air around
me, glad that no animals were around and I could relax.

Why were no animals around?

I turned in circles, but I
couldn’t see a single bird or squirrel.

“They’re hiding from me. I’m a
predator now,” I said, kind of relieved that I didn’t have to smell them and
kind of sad that something else was avoiding me.

I sat down and thumbed through my
book looking for plants I recognized that Daniel and I could eat. The only
plants that I was sure of were dandelions and clovers.

I sighed, aware of the unlikeliness
that I would find either plant in October.

Nevertheless, I went back to the
cabin and saw a small lean-to shed beside it. I tiptoed up to it so that I
didn’t wake up Daniel.

“Dang,” I breathed as I saw that
it was locked. I tightly grasped the lock and pulled down. It made a huge
popping noise, but it broke.

“I’m so strong!” I whispered to
myself with a smile.

Inside the small shed was a rake,
a small shovel, a rope, and three five-gallon buckets stacked within each
other. I breathed a small sigh of relief as I grabbed two of them and set off
to find food and water.

The water was easy to find. There
was a small stream that wasn’t far from the cabin, and it was flowing nicely
because of the storm last night. The water wasn’t as clear as I had hoped, but
I used it to clean out both buckets and it didn’t look too nasty. I made a
mental note of where the stream was so that I could come back to it after I
found food. I didn’t want to tote around a bucket full of water when I didn’t
know how long I would be walking.

It was about ten minutes before I
came upon a clearing. I stood very still and used my newfound senses to make
sure that no one was around before stepping out into the sunlight. To my
delight, there were both clovers and dandelions in the field.

There weren’t very much of
either, but I was relieved nonetheless. I picked and picked and picked until
the bucket was full, and then I smashed it all down so that I could add more. I
wanted to make this trip as little as possible, and I also knew that it was
going to take a lot of these things to fill us.

I walked back toward the woods.
At the edge of the clearing, I saw a small spot of color. I looked closer to
see that it was a single red rose on a rose bush.

“How weird,” I whispered to
myself. I picked it and put it on top of the greens, grateful that the cabin
would have something beautiful in it.

I hiked back to the stream and
filled the other bucket with water. I hoped Daniel wouldn’t be too disappointed
that it was a little dirty because we had no other option for water at the
moment.

I carried both buckets back, only
vaguely aware that the water bucket weighed more than the plant bucket.

When I got back, Daniel was still
asleep. I tried to be quiet, but I woke him while shutting the door.

He jumped when he saw me,
probably scared at my appearance, and then his face softened when he
undoubtedly remembered that I wasn’t going to hurt him.

“Hey,” he mumbled, “Can I have
some more pain medicine?”

I instinctively looked around for
a clock to see how many hours that it had been since he took the last ones, but
there was no clock here, and I had no idea how long that I had been away.

“Uh, sure,” I said, positive that
he still had to be in pain and wishing that there was something more that I
could do.

“Lay back down,” I told him after
I gave him three more pills. He obeyed.

I stood looking down at him,
wondering if I should tell him about the food and water yet or if I should just
let him fall back asleep. I spent so much time trying to decide that he dozed
off.

I knew that I shouldn’t be afraid
of speaking to him, but I was. I didn’t want him to fear me, so I tried to only
speak when spoken to so that I didn’t startle him.

At least my voice was the same,
and not scary or gruff. I didn’t know if I could bring myself to speak at all
if I sounded the way that I looked.

I quickly remembered my beastly
form and grabbed the spell book to try to figure out what exactly happened and
if it was reversible.

I awoke to the obnoxious sound of
knocking at the door.

“I’m sorry, officer. What is the
problem? What has Jasper done?” I heard my mother say.

I jumped out of bed as fast as I
could and felt the room spinning. I had more to drink the night before then I
realized. I held my head as I walked to the bathroom and took a quick shower.

“Jasper? The officers want to
speak to you!” my mother said as she tapped on the door. It sounded like she
was beating it with a hammer.

“Just a minute!” I yelled back,
hurting my head even worse.

I brushed my teeth to take away
any trace of alcohol and walked to the living room where I saw two cops sitting
with notepads out.

“Son, we have a few questions,”
one cop said. “I’m Officer Harvey, and this is Officer Kerry.”

I nodded as I sat down on the
couch opposite them.

“How well do you know Daniel
Cotton?”

I was a bit thrown by the
question. Why would anyone be asking me about Daniel? Did he rat us out? How
did he even know about the party?

“Uh, he’s in my class. Has been
for years,” I replied.

“Jasper, he’s your best friend!”
my mother interrupted.

“Is that true, Jasper?” Officer
Harvey asked.

I scoffed, “No, it’s not,” I
looked at my mother as I spoke. “We used to be friends, but we aren’t anymore.
We grew up, or at least I did.”

“Did you see him yesterday?”
Officer Harvey continued.

Yesterday… yesterday we beat the
crap out of Daniel. That’s what this is about. I didn’t put a finger on him, so
why are they at my house?

“Yes,” I said, “but not since
school got out.”

“Mr. Cotton said that the two of
you exchanged words after school, pulled over on the side of the road,” Harvey
said.

“Oh, yeah!” I said quickly. “I
did see Daniel. He had a passenger in his car that wanted to ride with me, so
we both pulled over and she switched rides, but I didn’t see him after that.”

“What is the rider’s name?”

“Zoey Hart,” I said. “Officer,
can I ask what this is about?”

“Sorry, we thought your mother
told you,” Harvey explained. “Daniel has been missing since about seven p.m.
yesterday. We are trying to figure out if he’s run away, and if he has, why.”

I was blown away. Cotton ran
away? What a wimp.

“Is there something you need to
tell us?” Kerry asked. He must have seen me make a face.

“Oh, well if Daniel did run away,
I suppose it was because he didn’t make the basketball team. We found out
yesterday who made it and who didn’t, and he was pretty bummed about it. He
even got so upset that he walked out of class once,” I explained.

They jotted in their notepads as
I spoke. “Is there anything else that you think we should know?”

I pondered, “Well, I want you to
know that I would never do something to directly hurt Daniel, but he and Zoey
Hart broke up yesterday, and, well, now I’m dating her. So he could be upset
about that too.”

The cops nodded, just taking in
the facts, but my mother frowned.

“Okay,” Harvey said as he stood.
“We have all that we need for now. We’ll come back if anything new comes up.
Thank you both for your time.”

I stood up and shook both of
their hands to try to win my mother over, but she looked like she was trying to
strangle me with her eyes.

She saw them both to the door and
whipped around to face me.

“You stole your best friend’s
girlfriend? Are you out of your mind?” She said calmly and creepily.

“Mom, I told you that we aren’t
friends anymore, so what’s the big deal? If bro code applied to every male on
the planet, then I’d never have a girlfriend,” I reasoned.

She wasn’t impressed.

“Jasper! You don’t treat other
people like that!” she yelled.

“Look, Zoey should be the one at
fault here. She’s the one whose actions are going to hurt Daniel, okay, not
me.”

“What do you mean ‘going to’? I
thought you said he already knows,” Mom asked.

I sighed, “He’s knows about us
going out, he just doesn’t know the whole story yet. And he may never know,
since he might’ve run away.”

“Well, guess who is going to know
the whole story?” she said calmly. “Me.”

“You don’t want to hear it,” I
warned.

“Try me,” she dared.

“Fine. I slept with Zoey last
night,” I stated.

She gasped, “You can’t be
serious. You had sex for the first time?”

I laughed, “No…”

She grabbed me by the arm and
yanked me to the couch. She sat down beside me, and her eyes started to well
up, “Jasper, this is no laughing matter. You don’t have to do things like that
to be cool, or loved, or accepted.”

I was touched by her concern, but
I did everything I could to hide it, “Are you going to accept me now that you
know I have done those things?”

“Of course,” she answered.
“You’re my son. No choice that you make, no matter how good or bad, will ever
change that. However, I can’t condone that kind of behavior because of our
religious beliefs. You know that, right?”

I nodded.

“God doesn’t want you to do that
anymore. It doesn’t matter if you have already. You can decide today to never
do it again, and he will forget every time you’ve made a mistake before, okay?”

I nodded again.

“I’m going to go for a walk,” she
said as she squeezed my arm. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” I murmured.

Her words stung somewhere deep
inside of me, but I ignored it. I was going to do it again, probably today.
After all, it was a Saturday.

Part of me hoped that Daniel
wouldn’t come back at all so that I didn’t have to listen to him whine about
not making the team, but part of me wanted to see him upset about what Zoey and
I had done.

It would serve him right for
always making me feel like crap for all of those years. I was good and tired of
coming in second to him, and being first at everything wasn’t enough. I had to
serve my revenge cold; I had to hit him where it would hurt the most. I saw his
face when Zoey got into the truck with me, and it made me feel like I had won
the lottery. Sure, she talked a lot and was pretty full of herself, but none of
that mattered. Honestly, she didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting back
at Daniel and showing him who the better man really was.

I chuckled and texted Zoey to
meet me later.