The Beast of Beauty (14 page)

I ran as fast as I could through
the woods, dodging trees, panting with every breath. I had to stop to break
twice, but I didn’t allow myself to break for long because once my heart beat
slowed down, I began to think about how bad Adeline looked. She looked like her
mother did in her last days with cancer, and I couldn’t imagine losing Adeline,
especially when I’d just gotten her back. I felt like I was in a race against
time, and I didn’t know who was going to win.

Once I made it back to my car, I
felt like I was getting closer to victory. I put it in gear and did a U-turn,
heading back toward my house. I prayed that my parents wouldn’t be home.

When I pulled in the driveway, I
was disheartened to see that my mother was indeed home, and she would want to
know what was going on.

“Honey, you look flustered,” she
said as I ran into the house. “What’s wrong?”

“Mom, I’m going to tell you
something, and I need your help. I need you to promise not to tell anyone else,
and I also need you to listen and help without asking questions, okay? That’s
what I need from you right now. Can you do that?” I asked.

She nodded, wide eyed, “Can I ask
if you’re okay?”

“I’m okay,” I said, “but Adeline
isn’t. She’s very sick, and she’s at a location where it is impossible to bring
her to the hospital.”

“That doesn’t make any sense; you
can always bring someone…”

“Mom!” I interrupted, “No
questions! She’s very very weak, and she’s coughing up blood. I don’t know
what’s wrong, but I need some medicine to bring to her, okay?”

My mom sighed, “I’m not a doctor,
Daniel, but I seriously think she should see one, what you’re describing is
serious. As your mother, the best thing that I can do is give you some of my
pain pills from my surgery. It’s still illegal, but maybe if she takes them you
can get her out of the location to bring her to a doctor?”

“Are you sure there’s not
anything else that I can give her?” I asked.

“There might be, at a hospital,
but I don’t have anything that’s going to help her here,” she explained.
“Daniel, this is serious. I’m going to go see her with you.”

I sighed, “No, Mom, I can’t let
you do that. You’re going to have to trust me. Can I have the pills, please?
I’m going to take them to her on the four-wheeler so that I can get there
faster, okay? I’ll try to be back soon, but if I can’t be, I’ll call. Don’t
follow me.”

“Daniel…”

“Mom, I’m serious. Don’t follow
me. You don’t need to be involved with this. Promise me,” I demanded.

“Okay,” she agreed, “I promise.”

I felt bad that I made her
promise to do something that she knew wasn’t right. I was playing on the fact
that I had been gone for a weekend, and there was a silent, “If you don’t do
this for me, I’ll leave again,” hanging in the air that I didn’t necessarily
have to say to know that she felt. I had to do what was best for Adeline,
though, and if Adeline saw my mother, she would feel betrayed again. If I
didn’t have much time left with her, then I didn’t want her last moments to be
angry with me.

I shook my head, refusing to let
myself think like that. I was going to get back there in time. I just had to.

We walked and walked through the
woods, trying to remain unheard, when I saw a house in the distance through the
trees.

“Hey, guys! Look!” I whispered
excitedly. “There’s a house over there!”

“That’s so weird!” James
answered. “We are really far out here. Do you think that it has electricity or
plumbing?”

“No there’s no way! Like you
said, we’re way too far in the woods,” Elliot remarked.

I smiled as I started putting the
pieces together. This house must have been the place that Daniel stayed at for
this past weekend, and I would’ve bet a million dollars that Adeline stayed
there too. They probably spent all weekend hiding out from the real world and
all of their problems. It was pathetic.

“Let’s walk slower and quieter,”
I said, “just in case someone is in there right now. Daniel might be inside.”

As we crept up to the cabin, I
took a moment to take in my surroundings. There was a fire pit with dry ashes,
meaning that it had been used since the rain on Friday. I heard a light buzzing
sound and looked around to see the skin of two rabbits thrown aside, covered in
flies. I motioned with my hands and pointed toward them on the ground, and the
guys made faces. I was afraid that this trip was about to get even weirder.
There was also a path from the cabin to the fire pit with no leaves on it, so
it had to have been made recently.

When we got to the side of the
house, I motioned for them to stay back because if there was something going on
in there, I wanted to be the first person to see it. I wanted the credit for
discovering it.

I shrunk myself lower than the
bottom of the window and slowly brought myself up until I could peek at the
inside. I was startled to see a dead rose right in my face, but focused my eyes
beyond it to the inside. After a few seconds, I realized that no one was in
there. I stood up to get a full view of inside the cabin. There were a few
buckets and a mattress on the wall opposite me, and it looked like there was
also a mattress on my wall as well. I moved further down away from the mattress
so that I could see more of it, and…

… on top of that mattress was
exactly what Zoey described, with blood on its mouth.

“Holy crap,” I breathed. “Guys,
we have to find something to tie this thing up with.”

I stepped back, and the guys
slowly approached the window. They stared wide-eyed at the beast within, and
then looked back at me.

I couldn’t believe that it was
real. I almost felt bad for giving Zoey so much crap about it.

“Let’s look around out here,” I
said, slowly tiptoeing back around the house.

On the other side of the house,
there was a small lean-to shed. The lock had been broken off of it. I opened it
up to see exactly what I needed: a rope. It was too good to be true.

“I’ve got it!” I whispered. “Now
here’s what we’re going to do…”

I gathered my friends and regaled
my plan of how we were going to take down the beast. We had to subdue it
together, but we also had to keep it conscious because I needed to know if it
was really Adeline under all of that blood and hair. My curiosity would not be
quenched until I had all of the answers.

One question kept boggling my
mind as I told them my plan; where was Daniel? Had he gone to a different
location? Was he coming back soon?

I knew that we had to act as
quickly as possible, just in case he did.

My body ached with a pain that I
didn’t even know was possible. I wanted Daniel to come back more than I wanted
to admit, because if I did end up dying soon, I didn’t want to die alone.

I smiled as I realized that he
had come back; he had come back for me. He wasn’t angry with me anymore for
keeping the secret of the healing spell from him, and for that I was immensely
grateful. At least if he didn’t come back, we had cleared up all of the badness
between us and we could part on good terms.

I thought that I kept hearing him
walking around outside, but then I realized that I must be delusional along
with everything else. I must have just wanted to hear him so badly that I was
imagining the sound of his footsteps.

I shook my head, because I knew
that I would hear the four-wheeler long before I heard the sound of him
stepping on the leaves outside.

I hoped that no one would hear
the four-wheeler and follow him out here to me. I didn’t think that I could
stand people ridiculing me in the condition I was in.

I heard feet shuffle, and I knew
that someone was outside. There were several people outside. My eyes
immediately shifted to the windows, but there was no indication of people, only
my rose, which was now turning black.

I slowly began to crawl to the
back of the cabin to get as far away from the door as possible, but as I
crawled, I heard the door open.

I turned around to see my biggest
nightmare—Jasper, holding a rope.

I could tell that even though he
looked like the one with the upper hand, he was afraid of me. I took advantage
of that and lunged myself at him from the ground, and he jumped back in fear. I
hit the floor of the cabin hard, and I heard them laugh.

“She’s weak. Get her,” he
ordered, and his friends grabbed me and pulled me outside. They drug me along
the path that I had cleared for Daniel to the nearest tree, stood me up, and
tied me to it with the rope. They had to tie it tightly because I couldn’t hold
myself up on my own.

“So, beast, what do you have to
do with Adeline?” Jasper asked, just inches from my face.

I looked up at him and gave him
the angriest look that I could muster, but refused to speak. I thought of
Martin Luther King, Jr., who had terrible things done to him, but he didn’t
escalate the fight by fighting back. That’s what I tried to convince myself
that I was doing, but it wasn’t. It never had been. Jasper beat me to the
ground, and I didn’t do anything to stop it. King wouldn’t have done that.
Nonviolent and doormat are not synonymous. He fought for what he believed in.

“ANSWER ME!” he yelled.

Again, I didn’t answer, leaving
him angrier than even I was.

“You are her? Aren’t you?” he demanded.
“TELL THE TRUTH!”

I took in a big breath, and let
it out as I finally spoke, “What does it matter to you? Does my name make a
difference in how you would treat me? You drug me out here like an animal
before you knew who I was, and you would do the same to anyone else. So it
doesn’t matter who I am. You’re the monster here.”

“You are an animal,” he corrected.
“What do you think, guys? She sure sounds like Adeline.”

They all agreed.

“So, Adeline, how did this happen
to you,” Jasper taunted. “Was it the cafeteria food? That stuff is atrocious.”

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“Does Daniel know?” Zeke asked.

“SHUT UP, ZEKE!” Jasper yelled.
“I’M THE ONE ASKING QUESTIONS HERE!”

As he screamed, I could smell the
alcohol on his breath. His face was flushed from the sudden anger, and for the
first time in my whole time of knowing him, I was afraid of him, for real.

“What are you staring at, you
ugly piece of crap,” Jasper said to me. “Now, let us know where Daniel is.”

“Daniel who?” I asked.

He backhanded me, and I felt the
blood in my mouth where my lip busted on my teeth.

“Don’t lie to me. Daniel was
missing for almost three days, and when he left school early, this is where he
came. He’s not here now, though, so where is he?” Jasper asked again.

“You followed Daniel out here?” I
asked without thinking.

Jasper smiled, “So he was here.
Where is he now?”

“He left,” I said simply. “Who
knows?”

“Cut the crap, Adeline, where did
he go?” Jasper got more and more irritated with every second.

I didn’t know what to do. I
didn’t want them to go after Daniel, just in case they caught up to him before
he made it to his house, but I also didn’t want them to be near me either.

“Oh yes, now I remember. He went
to your house, to go find you and confront you about what a bully you are. You
should look for him there,” I said sarcastically.

“You tell us where he is, or
you’re going to be sorry,” he threatened me.

“What does it matter? You have me
here, tied to a tree. You won. Just go home,” I said finally.

Jasper chuckled, “You know what?
You’re right. We do have you here, tied to a tree. Don’t you think that the
authorities would want to see this?” He turned around to face his friends,
“Does anyone have their phone on them?”

A couple of the guys pulled
phones out of their pockets, and Jasper grabbed one of them. I was so tired and
sick that their faces were too blurry to tell which person the phone belonged
to.

“Now, smile for the camera,” Jasper
said as he snapped a picture of me.

I would have been completely
mortified that he had proof that something like me existed, but I was too out
of it to care. I felt like my whole body was slumping, and if it weren’t for
the rope, I would’ve been on the ground.

“I have the best idea!” Jasper
yelled suddenly. “James, take a video.”

He held my face up by my chin,
“Growl.”

“What?” I croaked.

“You’re an animal now, a beast or
werewolf or whatever. Growl, so that everyone can see that I brought you down.”

“You want me to look strong so
that it’ll make you look stronger? How does that work, since I couldn’t even
stand up when you ‘captured’ me?”

He hit me again, but this time it
was with a closed fist. My head ached and I screamed out.

“That wasn’t quite a growl!”
Jasper remarked. “Let’s try this again.”

His fist hit my face again in the
same spot, and I wished that he would at least hit the other side of my face so
that my left side could rest for a moment. I cried out in pain again, but it
still wasn’t the animalistic growl that he was hoping to catch on tape.

“You sound like a human,” he
remarked, spitting on me. “But guess what? You’re not human. You never really
were, so stop pretending.”

I hung my face down. The ground
was swaying beneath my feet from the force of his blows. Tears streamed down my
face, and I was hoping that the hair that covered my face would at least be
good for something and hide them from my audience. I began to welcome death
again just so that I could get away from Jasper.