Beastly (12 page)

Grizzlyguy:
I have an important announcement

Froggie:
ne1 hear frm silent

Grizzlyguy:
Im in! im sleepng in a condo!! They let me in.

BeastNYC:
Who did???

Grizzlyguy:
the 2 girls… they took me in.

Froggie:
thats awsum grizz!!!

BeastNYC:
<- very jealous

Mr. Anderson:
Tell us about it, Grizzlyguy?

Grizzlyguy:
1 night they let me in & i slept on the bath-mat. When I didn’t eat anyone, I guess they thought it was ok for me 2 come back every night.

BeastNYC:
That’s great!

SilentMaid joined the chat.

Froggie:
Hello silent

SilentMaid:
Hi, Froggie. Hi everyone. You’ll never guess where I’m writing from.

BeastNYC:
where (r u speaking 2 me, or r u still mad?)
SilentMaid:
Yes, I’m speaking to everyone. I’m writing from his house!

Froggie:
house? Evryl gets 2 b in a house

BeastNYC:
That’s great!

Froggie:
im stil in a pond

SilentMaid:
I met him out dancing in a club. He danced with me. I don’t have my voice, but I danced and he liked it, even though it hurt my feet. He talked his parents into letting me sleep on the sofabed in their study. We’re good friends, but of course, I want it to be more.

Grizzlyguy:
of cours

SilentMaid:
We go sailing together and for long walks.

Grizzlyguy:
That’s right. U can walk now.

BeastNYC:
How is it?

SilentMaid:
It’s hard for me. My feet bleed and bleed, but I always act like it’s no big deal because I don’t want him to feel bad. I love him so much even though he calls me dumb.

Mr. Anderson:
Dumb?

BeastNYC:
What a jerk! You’re not dumb!

SilentMaid:
Dumb as in unable to speak. Mute. Not as in stupid.

BeastNYC:
Still don’t like it

SilentMaid:
Anyway, I think it’s going well. I’m sorry to talk about myself so much. How’s it going with everyone else?

Grizzlyguy:
U get 2 sleep on a sofabed. i hav 2 sleep on a mat!

Froggie:
stil no hop here, i meen ther is hop but not HOPE

BeastNYC:
Ditto here. Waiting 4 something 2 happen.

PART 4 - THE INTRUDER IN THE GARDEN

1

7 Months Later

I picked up one petal from my dresser, dangled it out the window, then watched it fall. One year left. Since Halloween night, I’d only talked to Will and Magda. I hadn’t been outside. I’d seen no light except in the rose garden.

On November 1, I told Will I wanted to build a greenhouse. I’d never built anything – not even a birdhouse or a napkin holder in camp. But now I had nothing but time and Dad’s Amex card. So I bought books about greenhouses, plans for greenhouses, materials for greenhouses. I didn’t want a cheapo plastic one, and I needed the wall to be solid enough to hide me from view. I built it myself on the ground floor behind my apartment, a big one that took up the whole yard. Magda and Will helped by doing everything that had to be done from outside. I worked by day, when neighbors were mostly at work.

By December, it was finished. A few weeks later, shocked by the sudden spring, yellowish leaves began to grow from the branches, then the green buds. By first snow, everything was in full bloom, the red roses showing in the winter sun.

The roses became my life. I added additional beds and pots until there were hundreds of flowers, a dozen colors and more shapes, hybrid teas and climbing roses, purple cabbage roses the size of my outstretched hand, and miniatures barely the size of my thumbnail. I loved them. I didn’t even mind the thorns. All living things needed protection.

I stopped playing video games, stopped looking for lives in my mirror. I never opened the windows, never looked out. I endured my teaching sessions with Will (I didn’t call them tutoring anymore; I knew I wasn’t ever going back to school), then spent the rest of my day in the garden, reading or looking at my roses.

I read gardening books too. Reading had become my perfect solution, and I researched the best food, the perfect soil. I didn’t spray for pests, but washed off those that came with the roses with soapy water, then guarded against reinvasion. But even with the hundreds of flowers, I was aware of the small deaths brought by each morning, as one by one, the roses withered. They were replaced by others, of course, but it wasn’t the same. Each tiny life that bloomed into being would live only in the greenhouse, then die. In that way, we were alike.

One day, when I was plucking a few dead friends from the vine, Magda came in.

“I thought I would find you here,” she said. She had a broom with her, and she began to sweep up some of the fallen leaves.

“No, don’t,” I said. “I like to do that. It’s part of my work each day.”

“There is no work for me. You never use your rooms, so nothing to clean.”

“You make my meals. You shop. You buy plant food. You wash my clothes. I couldn’t live the way I do without you.”

“You have stopped living.”

I plucked a white rose from a vine. “You said once that you were afraid for me. I didn’t understand what you meant, but I do now. You were scared I’d never be able to appreciate beauty, like this rose.” I handed it to her. It was hard for me to do, to pick my prizes, knowing they’d die sooner that way. But I was learning to let go. I’d let go of so much already. “That night, there was a girl at the dance. I gave her a rose. She was so happy. I didn’t understand why she cared so much about a rose, a stupid rose that was missing petals. I understand now. Now that all the beauty of my old life is gone, I crave it like food. A beautiful thing like this rose – I almost want to eat it, to swallow it whole to replace the beauty I’ve lost.

That’s how that girl was too.”

“But you do not… you will not try to break the spell?”

“I have everything I need here. I can never break the spell.” I gestured for her to give me the broom.

She nodded a little sadly, and handed it to me.

“Why are you here, Magda?” I said, sweeping. It was something I’d been wondering about. “What are you doing here in New York, cleaning up after a brat like me? Don’t you have a family?” I could ask that because she knew about my family, that I didn’t have one anymore. She knew they’d abandoned me.

“I have family in my country. My husband and I, we came here to make money. I used to be a teacher, but there was no work. So we came here. But my husband, he couldn’t get his green card, so he had to go back. I work hard to send money back to them.”

I stooped to get the leaves with the dustpan. “Do you have children?”

“Yes.”

“Where are they?”

“They grow. Without me. They are older than you now, with children of their own I have never seen.”

I lifted the dead leaves. “So you know what it’s like, then, to have no one?” She nodded. “Yes.” She took the broom and dustpan from me. “But I am old now; my life is older.

When I made the choice I made, I did not think it was forever. It is another thing to give up so young.”

“I haven’t given up,” I said. “I’ve just decided to live for my roses.” That night, I looked for the mirror. I had brought it upstairs, to the fifth-floor rooms, where I’d left it on top of an old armoire.

“I want to see Kendra,” I said.

It took a few moments, but when she finally showed, she looked happy to see me. “It’s been a while,” she said.

“Why does the mirror take so long to show you to me, but others I see instantly?”

“Because sometimes I’m doing something you shouldn’t see.”

“Like what? In the bathroom?”

She scowled. “Witch things.”

“Right. Got it.” But under my breath, I sang, “Kendra’s on the potty.”

“I was not!”

“Then what do you do when I can’t see you? Turn people into frogs?”

“No. Mostly I travel.”

“American Airlines or astral projection?”

“Commercial airlines are tricky. I don’t have a credit card. Apparently, paying in cash makes one a security risk.”

“You are, aren’t you? I’d think you could just wiggle your nose and blow up a plane or something.”

“It’s frowned upon. Besides, I can time-travel if I travel my way.”

“Really?”

“Sure. You say you want to go to Paris to see Notre Dame. But how about if you could see it being built? Or Rome at the time of Julius Caesar?”

“You can do that, but you can’t undo your spell? Hey, can you take me?”

“Negative. If I hung around with a beast, they’d know I was a witch. And witches got burned in those days. That’s why I prefer this century. It’s safer. People do all sorts of weird stuff, especially in New York City.”

“Can you do other magical stuff? You said you felt sorry about the spell. Can you do me a favor to sort of make up for it?”

She frowned. “Like what?”

“My friends, Magda and Will.”

“Your friends?” She looked surprised. “What about them?”

“Will’s a great teacher, but he can’t get a good teaching job – meaning a job other than sitting around tutoring me – because no one wants to hire a blind guy. And Magda works really hard to send money to her kids and grandkids, but she never gets to see them. It’s not fair.”

“The world just reeks of unfairness,” Kendra said. “When did you get so philanthropic, Kyle?”

“It’s Adrian, not Kyle. And they are my friends, my only friends. I know they get paid to be here, but they’re nice to me. You can’t undo what you did to me, but could you do something for them – help Will see again, and bring Magda’s family here, or send her there, at least, for a vacation?” She stared at me a second, then shook her head. “That would be impossible.”

“Why? You have incredible powers, don’t you? Is there some kind of witch code that says you can turn people into beasts but not help people?”

I thought that would shut her up, but instead she said, “Well, yes. In a way. The thing is, I can’t grant wishes just because someone asks for something. I’m not a genie. If I try to act like one, I could end up stuck in a lamp like one.”

“Oh. I didn’t know there were so many rules.”

She shrugged. “Yeah. It sucks.”

“So the first time I want something for someone else, I can’t have it.”

“I already agreed it sucks. Hold on one second.” She reached over and took out a big book. She flipped through a few pages. “It says here that I can do you a favor if and only if it is tied to something you have to do.”

“Like what?”

“Well, let’s say that if you break the spell I placed on you, I’ll also help Magda and Will. That’s okay.”

“That’s the same as saying no. I can never break the spell.”

“Do you want to?”

“No. I want to be a freak all my life.”

“A freak with a beautiful rose garden…”

“ … is still a freak,” I said. “I love gardening, yeah. But if I was normal-looking, I could still garden.”

Kendra didn’t answer. She was looking at her book again. She raised an eyebrow.

“What now?”

“Maybe it isn’t so hopeless,” she said.

“It is.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Sometimes, unexpected things can happen.”

2

That night, as I lay in bed on the edge of sleeping, I heard a crash. I put my hands to my ears and willed it not to wake me. But then I heard glass falling, and I was awake.

The greenhouse. Someone was invading my greenhouse, my only sanctuary. Without even dressing, I ran to my living room and flung open the door that led out.

“Who dares disturb my roses?”

Why did I say that?

The greenhouse was bathed in moonlight and streetlights, brighter still for the hole in one of the glass panes. A shadowy figure was in the corner. He’d chosen a poor entry point, near a trellis. It had fallen over and lay on the floor, the rose branches broken, surrounded by dirt.

“My roses!” I lunged at him at the same time he lunged toward the hole in the wall. But my animal legs were too fast for him, too strong. I sank my claws into the soft flesh of his thigh. He let out a yelp.

“Let me go!” he screamed. “I have a gun! I’ll shoot!”

“Go ahead.” I didn’t know if I was invincible to gunshots. But my anger, pulsing, pounding through my veins like fireblood, made me strong, made me not care. I’d lost everything there was to lose. If I lost my roses too, I might as well die. I threw him to the floor, then pounced on him, wrestling his arms to the ground and prying the objects from his hands.

“Was this what you were going to shoot me with?” I growled, brandishing the crowbar I’d stripped from him. I held it aloft. “Bang!”

“Please! Let me go!” he yelled. “Please don’t eat me. I’ll do anything!” It was only then that I remembered what I looked like. He thought I was a monster. He thought I’d grind his bones to make my bread. And maybe I was, and would. I laughed and grabbed him in a headlock, him struggling against me. Holding his arms with my free paw, I dragged him up the stairs, one flight, then two, heading to the fifth floor, to the window. I held his head out of it. In the moonlight, I could see his face. It looked familiar. Probably I’d just seen him in the street.

“What are you going to do?” the guy gasped.

No clue. But I said, “I’m going to drop you, scumbag.”

“Please. Please don’t. I don’t want to die.”

“Like I care what you want.” I wasn’t going to drop him, not really. It would bring the police there, with all their questions, and I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t even call the police to arrest him. But I wanted him to fear, to fear for his life. He’d hurt my roses, the only thing I had left. I wanted him to pee in his pants in fear.

“I know you don’t care!” The guy was shaking, not just in terror, I realized, but because he was coming down. A junkie. I put my hand in his pocket for the drugs I knew were there. I pulled them out along with his driver’s license.