The Beast of Beauty (7 page)

Violet carried me outside to sit
on a rock by the fire she’d made. I was so thankful when she told me that she
found some matches because I was terrified that she was going to ask me to make
a fire using the damp twigs from last night’s storm.

She handed me the rabbit, “Okay,
I’m going to go inside while you do this, if that’s okay.”

I chuckled, “Yes, that’s fine.”

I didn’t have a knife on me, so I
had to resort to pushing the knee joints against the skin until it broke. The
rest was simple; all I had to do was separate the skin from the food
underneath.

“I can hear that dreadful sound
that it’s making when you’re ripping it off!” she yelled from inside the house.

“I’m almost done!” I yelled back.
“But you might want to stay in there until I get all of the guts out!”

“Yuck!” she yelled playfully.

I couldn’t believe that I was
staying in the middle of the woods with a girl who wanted to eat me but
couldn’t stand the thought of me skinning a rabbit for her.

I held the rabbit up and examined
it. There was no sign of death anywhere on it, no puncture wounds of any kind.

“How did you kill this rabbit?” I
yelled as the guts spilled on the ground.

“None of your beeswax!” she
yelled. “Are you finished yet?”

“Yes, I’m finished. Come on out!”

She came out and sat on a rock
beside me, but as far away from the guts as possible.

“Something smells really good and
really terrible,” she said.

I laughed, “I’ll bet the rabbit
smells good, but those guts don’t smell good no matter how many animal
instincts you get. Poop is still poop.”

“Charming,” she smiled. “How do
we cook it?”

“I advise that you just hold it
over the fire by draping it over a stick. Just be careful not to hold it too
close so the stick doesn’t catch on fire. It’s too bad that we don’t have metal
rods, huh?”

“Yes,” she agreed. She began to
cook the rabbit, and turned to me with a sheepish look on her face, “I
strangled it.”

“What?” I asked. “You strangled
the rabbit? How on earth did you manage that?”

“It wasn’t easy,” she admitted.
“The poor thing really fought hard for his life, but that’s the point, right? I
had to give him a fighting chance. It wouldn’t have been fair if I just stabbed
it, but I didn’t exactly have anything to stab it with so that was out of the
question anyway.”

I imagined her wrestling with a
rabbit, and I couldn’t help it. I broke out in laughter, barely able to sit up
straight because it was so hilarious.

“It’s not funny! The rabbit
died!” she yelled, but even she couldn’t help it. She began laughing too.

We both sat there, holding our
sides while we cackled into the open night. The sun had finally sat and the
firelight was our only source of light.

The laughter faded and I looked
up at her. I half-expected her to be more frightening in the dark, but she
wasn’t. Her green eyes were glowing in the firelight, and if you had asked me
to describe her at that moment, I would’ve said that she was beautiful.

“So… I’m going to try to eat my
rabbit now,” she said, bringing it closer to her.

I watched as she bit into the
flesh, “How is it?”

She chewed for a few moments and
swallowed, “So much better than the clovers.”

“Do you feel sick at all?” I
asked.

“Maybe just a little, but I bet
it’s just from the human in me being completely revolted because I’m eating
something that isn’t entirely cooked.”

I nodded, “That makes sense. It’s
hard to get past the things that are so harshly engrained into our heads.’

“I agree,” she said. “All the
stuff that’s been drilled in, whether it’s right or wrong, is hard to escape.”

I yawned, “Well, I hate to be a
party pooper, but would you carry me inside when you’re finished? I’m getting
pretty tired.”

“Sure,” she said, sitting down
the rabbit, “I’ll come back out here and finish it. I need some alone time to
think.”

Once we were back inside, she
helped me prop my ankles up again so that I’d be able to go to sleep
comfortably.

“Here are some more painkillers,”
she said. “We only have like ten left, so I’m only going to give you two at a
time until we run out.”

“Alright, thank you,” I said.

“No problem. Goodnight, Daniel.”

“Goodnight, Violet.”

She frowned and walked back out
to the fire.

***

I walked down the hallway at
school toward the Math room and heard the conversations of my peers as I passed
them.

“Did you hear what happened?”

“Yeah, I feel so bad for her. I
don’t know what I would do if I lost my mom.”

“Hey buddy,” Jasper said as he
approached me. “Can we talk for a second?”

“Sure,” I said, unsure of what he
was going to say to me.

“You can’t date Adeline anymore.
You’re committing a social suicide,” he said. “I know her mom just died, but
it’s not like it’s out of the blue; they’ve known that she’s been sick for
months. It’s like ever since she found out, she’s slowly been losing her mind.
She’s stopped hanging out with us and starting being a brooding introvert. Not
even the losers want to hang out with her! You can’t hang out with us and date
Adeline; it just won’t work out.”

I felt saddened, “But, I told her
that I would be there for her.”

“Daniel, listen to Jasper,” a new
voice said. I spun around to see that it was my father.

“Dad, I gave her my word. She
needs me,” I explained.

“No, son, I need you. I need you
to work hard to be in the starting line-up on the basketball team next year so
that you can go to college and play college ball. You don’t have time for all
of this drama in your life. It’s very sad that Adeline has to go through this
at such a young age, but guess what, you don’t! So don’t make yourself,” he
said as he put his hand on my shoulder.

“What if it gets better?” I asked
them, “What if she gets better now that she knows her mom has died? What if it
gives her closure, so she can hang out with us again and I’ll have plenty of
time to practice?”

“Stop trying to justify something
that you know you shouldn’t be doing,” my father said. “This isn’t your
battle.”

“Exactly,” Jasper agreed. “Are
you just going to throw away everything that you worked so hard for, for
Adeline Jones?”

“Adeline is my best friend,” I
said meekly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jasper said.
“And besides, I’m supposed to be your best friend. Don’t be so quick to forget
that.”

I sat upright, waking myself up.
I was drenched in sweat, and my head was pounding. I looked around to see that
Violet still hadn’t come in yet, and I was glad. I didn’t want to explain what
had just happened.

I was dreaming about Adeline
again.

It didn’t make any sense. I made
my choice with her, but I couldn’t put it behind me. The guilt snuck up on me
like a thief in the night, capturing any joy that I had and ripping it away.

I was having fun tonight,
laughing with Violet around the campfire.

But I didn’t deserve to have fun,
because Adeline was probably in her room, crying in her pillow, with no one to
talk to and no one to comfort her.

I had deserted her, so happiness deserted
me.

I spent most of the night tossing
and turning. Even though my stomach was finally full, my heart was completely
empty. I was falling in love with Daniel, and I was doing it while I looked
like a completely ridiculous creature. There was no point to even dream that he
could ever feel the same about me now. I didn’t stand a chance as a human, so
it was hopeless to think I could have a chance now. The universe was cruel.

I wished that I was someone else,
anyone else. I wished that I would have been given a different life in a
different place with different parents and a different set of struggles. I was
so, so very tired of my own struggles. I wasn’t afraid of them; I was over
them. I was over feeling ugly and useless and monstrous.

Yet, that was all I felt.

I stared into the darkness,
listening to the sound of Daniel breathe. Even though my eyesight was better as
a beast, it was still hard to see him in the darkness. He looked the same as he
always did, but I saw him differently. I saw him differently because he was
able to see me differently, probably because he didn’t know that it was
actually me.

I couldn’t stand the thought of
him figuring out who I was. I didn’t want to see his eyes go from warm and
understanding to cold and evasive. I couldn’t bear it. Not again.

I was also able to see him
differently because I was forgiving him. When I looked at him, I didn’t see the
person who let me down; I saw the person that was here right now helping me
stand. I would have gone crazy out here alone with no one to skin my rabbits.

I chuckled softly into the night.
We had fun out by the fire tonight doing something that would have caused me
great stress if I had to do it alone. He took something that terrified me and
acted as if it were no big deal. He slept in the same room with me even though
he knew that I was bloodthirsty. He saw past the beast.

I just wish that he knew who he
was seeing.

In frustration, I turned away
from him and tried to will myself to sleep. There was no reason to waste time
thinking about something that I couldn’t do anything about. Even if I did
change back, what was really waiting for me? My father? Jasper? Daniel? No,
everything would be exactly the same as it was when I left.

Daniel began to mumble in his
sleep. I turned over to see if I could make anything out and smiled at the idea
of telling him what he said in the morning.

“Aaaaaa…” he mumbled.

“What?” I whispered, wondering if
I could interact with him while he slept.

“Adeline,” he grumbled.

I froze, “What?”

He snored twice and turned away
from me.

I couldn’t move. Whether he knew
who I was or not, he was dreaming about me, not Violet.

I glanced up at the rose that I
had picked laying in the windowsill. It was as beautiful and full as it was
when I had picked it earlier today.

***

When morning came, I saw Daniel
flipping through the pages of my plant book. The fact that he slept-talked my
name last night immediately came to mind, but I pushed it back, unable to
confront him about it yet.

“Morning,” he said, not taking
his eyes off of the book.

“Good morning,” I said “Find any
better plants that you would like to try?”

He shrugged, “Not really. It is
October, so it’s going to get hard to find plants soon. I’m hoping to be able
to walk in the next couple of days anyway.”

I hung my head, aware that he
would leave me and I would be all alone.

“Come with me?” he asked.

“To where?” I wondered. “Another
place in the middle of nowhere?”

He laughed, “No, silly, to my
house. I’ll hide you in the extra room and bring you rare steaks.”

I smiled, “What about your
parents? I’m sure it wouldn’t look good for Mayor Cotton if he was hoarding a
beast… especially around re-election time.”

He looked up, “How do you know my
father?”

I froze, trying to keep my face
solid, “Uh, I know a lot of people from all of the towns around this area, not
just Holbrooke.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I…” I started, but I just
couldn’t finish what I wanted to say.

“Yeah…” he said.

I sighed, “I don’t want to talk
about it, okay?”

“Why not? Did you do something
bad as a beast?” he asked. It was the first time that he had called me that.

“No! Just leave me alone!” I
said. My voice got louder and began to drip with attitude.

“You don’t have to get so upset,”
he said calmly. “I just want to know the truth, and you’ve been evading it ever
since I got here. I have no idea who you really were or where you were from, or
how on earth this happened to you. I’d like to help, but you won’t let me.”

“I don’t need your help!” I
yelled.

“You need someone’s help!” He
yelled back.

His words broke me. It was almost
exactly what he had said to me last spring.

“You don’t understand, okay?
You’re attractive, you have money, and you have parents and friends and people
who love you. I DON’T! You can act like you want to help me, but you wouldn’t
know how if I sat here and talked for hours about everything that’s bothering
me because YOU COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND. That’s what would evade you. You can’t
wrap your mind around the pain that I’ve had to go through. You just can’t. So
don’t even act like you want to try,” I said, exhausting myself from the
intensity of my emotions.

“Try me,” he said, “Even if I
don’t understand, I’ll do everything in my power to make it better.”

I stared at him, unsure if he was
serious or not.

“Okay,” I began, “I’m ugly.”

“You aren’t ugly,” he said.

“Let me finish!” I yelled.

He sat quietly.

“I’m ugly, and not just because I
look like an animal. Granted, the animal hair on my face doesn’t exactly help,
but I was ugly before that. I’m not skinny, but I’m not fat either. I’m not
ugly enough to stand out because of it, but I’m also not pretty enough for
anyone to notice. I’m obsolete. No one will take the time to get to know me
because I’m not worth it.

I know this all sounds a bit
dramatic, but it’s how I really feel. I don’t want to wake up one day and
realize that I was ugly all along and I didn’t face the truth, so I’m facing it
now. No one’s ever going to love me; no one’s ever going to fight for me. I’m
too much for them to put up with, and I’m not enough at the same time. Do you
have any idea how that feels?” I asked, out of breath from my monologue.