The Beast of Beauty (9 page)

I accidentally cried myself to
sleep. I rose slowly from the mattress and looked over to see that Daniel had
fallen asleep as well. It seemed like our flood of emotions really took a toll
on us.

I couldn’t believe that he knew
who I was now, and that nothing changed. He was there for me. He held me while
my body was convulsing with sobs and my snot was dripping on his shirt. I never
felt so vulnerable. It scared the crap out of me, but then again, it was so
liberating that I couldn’t help but smile. I had been vulnerable, but I hadn’t
been let down.

I slowly wriggled out of his
grasp and went across the room to my mattress. He looked so serene sleeping
across from me that I didn’t want to do anything to wake him.

I smiled, amazed at how much had
changed this morning.

That’s when I remembered the
policemen.

I began to panic. If any other
people saw me, it wouldn’t matter if Daniel cared about me or not. I replayed
their conversation in my mind, hoping that they somehow found leads that led
them away from our cabin, but it seemed unlikely. He hadn’t meant to run away,
so he wouldn’t have left any clues about where he was going because there was
no plan.

I had to find a way to turn back,
I just had to. I grabbed the book up off of the floor and began reading again. I
started at the beginning and closely read everything. The harvest festivals
sounded fun, but I wasn’t learning anything at all. I grew more and more
impatient, wanting to figure out how to undo this. The spell at the end hadn’t
worked, but maybe there was another spell that I had skimmed over? Maybe if I
found it, I could be human again before Daniel even woke up?

I got more and more agitated as I
read. Then, I read something that I wished that I hadn’t.

Mary’s fiancé took a great fall
yesterday, and severely hurt his wrist. He is a hardworking man, so he was
absolutely devastated that he could not work. I advised Mary to heal it
herself, but she was skeptical. She didn’t want him to know about her magic
just yet, but I don’t understand why. She is a very good person; there’s no way
that he would look at her differently if he knew. I gave her this spell and
told her to use it as soon as possible, as it works more slowly the longer you
wait after an injury.

This wound is not forever

Its power no longer shows

Use this endeavor

To bring this to a close

I shut the book with a force that
should have woken Daniel, but I was terribly glad that it didn’t. I could heal
him. I could make it where Daniel could walk. No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk
him leaving me.

All of my euphoria from earlier
faded away. I didn’t trust him. He had abandoned me once, and I knew that if he
could walk, he would do it again. I couldn’t risk it.

Risk… of course, there had to be
some kind of risk with a spell like that. I opened up the book again to see
what had happened to Mary’s fiancé.

Mary told me that she performed
the spell and that it worked perfectly. It only took a few hours to heal up
completely. I asked her how he took the news, but she did the spell in secret
while he was there so it would heal him. Part of me admires how she is able to
help people without the taboo treatment, but I also wish that she would make a
stand and fight for us. I want to be open with the world, but she fears them
all too much, so I must keep my own powers a secret as well. Imagine how much
good that we could do if people knew about our magic?

He was fine. He healed fine, with
no beastly side effects. And what’s more, Amara wasn’t a bad person. She was
good, and she wanted to do good with her magic, not use it to slaughter people
and take her revenge.

It should have comforted me, but
it didn’t. It just meant that any normal, decent person pushed over the edge
had the capability to do things that their former selves would not have
approved of.

Like me, right now. I was going
to keep the spell a secret from Daniel, and by doing so, I was basically
holding him hostage so that he would fall back in love with me.

It was sick, twisted, and wrong,
and I couldn’t even try to sugar coat it, even in my own mind. I really was a
beast.

I looked over at Daniel, fast
asleep, and realized how tired that I still was. I lay down on my pillow and
closed my eyes, but the guilt of knowing a secret so huge was weighing on my
chest. I couldn’t breathe without feeling it billow up in my chest.

I thought about my mother, trying
to put something good in my head. Her smiling face filled my mind, but then, I
realized that this was something that she would be ashamed of me for. I quickly
brushed her out of my mind as my guilt grew.

I tried the opposite tactic and
thought about the policemen in the woods, and how it was only a matter of time
before someone found us. I made up plans in my head for what we would do and
how I would get us out of here if they came for us and drifted off to sleep
again.

I held Adeline as we lay under
the trees behind her house, gazing up at the blue sky through the branches. I
was so comfortable, so glad to be there with her that I didn’t think about
anything else. The rest of my world may have been in turmoil, but she was my
constant.

She pulled away from me and
looked at me with her beautiful eyes. My admiration of her came to halt when I
realized that she was upset.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, touching
her smooth face, relieved that I didn’t feel any tears.

“I was going to ask you the same
question,” she said softly. “You’ve seemed kind of upset lately. What’s up?”

I sighed, “Well, I’ve been
meaning to talk to you about something, but with everything that’s been going
on with your mom, I didn’t want you to have to worry about my problems too.
They seem really trivial compared to the stuff you have to deal with every
day.”

She shook her head, “Don’t worry
about that. Sometimes I need something else to worry about just so I won’t
spend all of my time hoping that she’ll get better and being upset that there’s
nothing I can do to help her get that way. Besides, you know that you can talk
to me about anything, no matter what.”

“Okay,” I began, “It’s my dad.
He’s being really pushy about this basketball thing. I want to play, I really
do, but I think that all he wants is for me to be better than Jasper. And
that’s no reason to do anything, right?”

“Right,” she said. “You train
really hard, you know all of the plays, but you don’t have to be better than
every single person you come across. That’s sort of delusional.”

“I think it’s just because it’s
Jasper,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ve told you this or not, but you know how
me and Jasper compete with each other no matter what we’re doing? Regardlesss
of whether we even care about it or not?”

She nodded. She knew all too
well.

“Well, it was the same way with
our fathers. They both grew up here and were best friends, and they also made
everything they did a competition. So, I guess the current competition is who
has the best son.”

“Oh wow,” she said, “No, you
never told me that. That makes a lot of sense, though. Not that they should
behave that way at all.”

“Yup, so they’re still competing
with each other vicariously through us,” I said, “but I don’t want to be a part
of it anymore. I know that my dad loves me; I just think that he needs to be
reminded about what is most important. Maybe then we’ll have a relationship
like we used to. Besides, the more intense that Jasper gets about beating me,
the less I care about beating him. Does that make me a coward?”

“No, I think that it just means
that you see how pointless and juvenile it is,” she explained, “because it
really is both.”

“You don’t like Jasper, do you?”
I asked, already knowing the answer.

“How can you tell?” she said,
smiling.

“You’re always making comments
about him that are unflattering without actually saying that you don’t like
him,” I observed. “I guess it’s obvious that he’s not the nicest guy on the
planet, but you seem to have more against him than that.”

She sighed, “I just don’t like
how mean that he is to you. I know, I know, boys do that, but I think his isn’t
friendly. I really think that he tries to bring you down in any way that he
can, and that makes me angry.”

I shook my head, “That’s
ridiculous. We’re friends.”

“Well, I sure wouldn’t want to be
his friend,” she said as she lay back down by my side.

“I wouldn’t let him be mean to
you,” I assured her, “even if it was in a friendly way.”

“Thank you,” she said, nuzzling
against my chest. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Adeline!” her father yelled.

“Coming!” she yelled back. “Come
on in with me,” she said to me.

We walked inside to see her
parents sitting on opposite ends of the sofa watching television.

“Are you guys going to be here
for supper?” her mother asked.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “We were
planning on going over to my house for supper to celebrate my mother’s book
being published, if it’s okay with you for Adeline to go.”

“Oh, that’s great! Tell your
mother congratulations!” Mrs. Jones said, “And of course it’s fine for Adeline
to go.”

Adeline gave each of them a hug
and a kiss. I couldn’t stand to look at her mother. She had begun to lose her
hair from the chemo, and the bags under her eyes seemed more pronounced. She
looked like a completely different person, but she was still the same kind and
sweet woman that I had known since I was a child. It broke my heart to see
someone so wonderful go through something so terrible. Her father looked worse
than she did, and when I looked in his eyes, I saw someone who wished that they
could run away from the problem and pretend like it never happened. I saw
myself. It made me sick to see myself in her father because I never really
liked him, but at least he was still here. I just hoped that he would be there
for Adeline after her mother passed away. Otherwise, Adeline would lose both of
her parents at the same time. I couldn’t imagine how that would feel.

We got in my car and headed out
toward my house. We rode in silence for a few moments as I tried to let go of
the pain that I felt around her mother, but it just didn’t work. Her pained
face haunted my mind, so I changed the subject.

“Do you think I should say
something to my dad about Jasper?” I asked.

She was looking out the window,
lost in thought, “Do you think it’ll make things better or worse?”

“Worse,” I stated, sure of it.

She looked over at me and smiled,
“Then don’t say anything. Decide to give it your best, do it, and then enjoy
yourself. Just leave Jasper out of the equation.”

“Does that make me a coward?” I
asked again.

“Why are you so worried about
people thinking you’re a coward?” she asked. “I’ve never once thought that
about you. Why are you so concerned with it?”

I sighed, “I don’t know. I guess
every guy is.”

“Don’t let fear govern your
decisions. That’s what a coward does. But also don’t do everything based on the
opinions of everyone around you. That’s what an idiot does,” she said.

“But I’m avoiding confrontation.
Cowards do that,” I argued.

“Okay, well then how about you be
brave and go start an argument with every single person you come across?” she
asked sarcastically.

“I get it, I get it. You don’t
have to fight every single battle you’re faced with,” I said.

“Actually,” she said, “sometimes
it’s wise not to. Being a fighter doesn’t always mean that you are brave and
wise. Think about Martin Luther King Jr., who fought for civil rights while not
ever actually fighting at all. He trained himself to simply take it when people
were violent towards him because he knew that peace was the only way to truly
get what he wanted. That is absolute bravery.”

I awoke suddenly, surprised to
find that Adeline was no longer beside me. I stared at her across the room with
her back to me, wondering why she got up and went to her side of the cabin. Had
I upset her?

I let my mind flow with the last
good memories that I had with her before everything messed up, before
I
messed
everything up. I wanted to make it up to her, but without use of my feet, I had
no idea how I would do that.

Then, it hit me.

I would stay with her, even after
I got better, until we found a way to change her back. Then, we would go back
home together.

There was no better way to show
her that I wanted redemption. I wanted to make up for all of the wrongs that I
had done against her. I wouldn’t fight for her by beating people up or slaying
dragons, I would fight by being the peace that she needed.

That’s what someone brave would
do.