The Beast of Beauty (16 page)

“I love you too,” she said, “no
matter what happens, I want you to know that.”

She snuggled against my chest as
I carried her, and if it weren’t for her impending death if I didn’t get her to
a hospital fast, it would have been the perfect moment. As it was, knowing that
she loved me, I picked up my pace because I had to be worthy of her love.

As I ran, she kept getting
heavier and heavier, and my strides, while I was giving it all I had, got
shorter and shorter. I had no idea what was happening. For a brief moment, I
thought that I may have been getting sick from the curse like she did, but then
I knew that that couldn’t be it because it took a lot longer for that to happen
with her.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t carry
her anymore. I looked down at her to let her know something was up, but when I
did, I almost dropped her from the surprise.

She was herself again.

I slowly let her down to the
ground, and she opened her eyes.

“Daniel, what’s…” she looked up
at me. “Oh my goodness!! You’re human again! You changed back!! How did you
change back?”

I held up her left hand, and she
saw that she was back to normal too.

“Oh my gosh!!!” she yelled. “My
lungs don’t hurt anymore!! My arm still really hurts, I guess that’s why I
didn’t notice, but I’m not dying! I changed back too!”

“Get on my back,” I told her,
“You may not be a beast anymore, but you still have a ticket to the hospital
for that bullet wound and I’m not strong enough to carry you anymore.”

I gave her a piggy-back ride to
my house, which thankfully wasn’t much farther.

“MOM!!” I yelled, “MOM! GET OUT
HERE!”

My mother came running, before I
could get out anything else.

“They’re over here!” she yelled
to someone in the front yard.

Sure enough, two men came around
the house with a stretcher.

Adeline got off of my back and
onto the stretcher. They began to carry her away. I wanted to stop them and
talk to her about everything that just happened, but I knew that she needed to
get to the hospital as soon as possible.

“I’ll see you at the hospital!” I
yelled after them, “I love you!”

She gave me a thumbs up with her
good hand, “I love you too!”

My mother ran over to me and
hugged me, “I’m so glad you’re back again. What on earth happened? Why didn’t
you tell me that it was a bullet wound?”

I hugged her back and lied, “I
didn’t know what had happened, exactly, just that she was hurt. Can we go to
the hospital now? I have to make sure that she’s okay.”

She let go and nodded. We hopped
in the car and followed the ambulance.

“Mom, why was an ambulance
already here?”

She scoffed, “Because I knew
there was a problem but I didn’t know what it was, and I thought that I had
convinced you to bring her to a doctor, but if I hadn’t, I wanted the ambulance
to be here to take her anyway once you guys got back.”

“How did you know I would bring
her back?” I asked.

“Because you brought the
four-wheeler. By the way, where is it?”

I smiled, “Sorry, I almost
forgot. It ran out of gas somewhere in the woods.”

She laughed, “It’s okay, we’ll
worry about it later.”

“Mom,” I said, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said, “But?”

“How do you know there’s a
‘but’?” I demanded.

She smiled, “Because I’m your
mom. I know things. You want to leave, don’t you? I know you’re dad told you
that it was an option.”

“Yes, I do want to leave,” I
admitted. “Adeline and I can’t stay here any longer. You know how terrible her
father is.”

She sighed, “I do. And it wasn’t
part of the plan, but she can live with us too.”

“What do you mean ‘us’?” I asked.
“You’re coming too?”

“We are all moving,” she said. “I
got a job offer in Colorado writing for a newspaper, and I’m going to take it.
Your father is prepared to resign from office, and all four of us are going to
move. We’ll have to get a house with three bedrooms, though. You know I can’t
condone you two living in the same room. We will still have the same house
rules…”

“Mom!” I interrupted, “I
understand, but why are you doing this?”

She laughed, “Well, before you
interrupted me, I was going to say that we all need to get away from this
drama. We want you to have a good senior year and spend it with us. I’m sure
Adeline’s father won’t mind, but don’t worry, your father and I will discuss it
with him. We’ll take care of all of that. Let’s just make sure that Adeline is
okay, and then we’ll go from there.”

I smiled at her, “You’re the
best, you know that right?”

She just smiled back, and we
pulled into a parking spot at the hospital.

We ran inside and asked about
Adeline. There were doctors tending to her already, and they told us that they
would let us know something as soon as they knew it, but they were confident
that she was going to be fine.

It was like a dream. Adeline and
I really were going to get out of here. The beast spell was gone, and we had
both gotten over Jasper and all of his drama.

A policeman approached me in the
waiting room, “Are you Daniel Cotton? Did you bring in Miss Adeline Jones?”

I nodded, “Yes, sir. What’s the
problem?”

“Can you explain to me the events
that took place to cause this all to happen?”

Of course… she had been shot, and
they wanted to know who shot her. Maybe I wouldn’t be the one who got to do it,
but Jasper was going to get a taste of justice.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and I
explained everything to him, only leaving out the part where Adeline and I
weren’t human for a little while. I told him how Jasper and his friends tied
Adeline to a tree, hit her, and then Jasper shot her. She had a swollen eye,
rope burns, and a bullet wound to prove all three. I also told them that I
knocked out Jasper and exactly where to find him.

Things were definitely looking
up.

I opened my eyes and didn’t know
where I was. The ceiling above me was white, nothing like my bedroom at home. I
frantically blinked my eyes to get a better view of the world around me.

“Adeline?” I heard a familiar
voice ask.

I turned my head to see Daniel
smiling at me, “You’re going to be okay. Everything is going to be fine.”

The memory of the past two days
came flooding back, and I looked down at my human arms. One was bandaged, but
the other was perfectly normal.

“I’m not… you know… anymore. And
you aren’t either. We’re normal again,” I said in amazement.

“Yeah, I’m a bit confused about
how it all happened, but I’m just glad that you’re alive. That whole… you know…
thing was killing you, and I don’t know if the doctors could have helped.”

“I don’t understand,” I admitted.
“The curing spell didn’t work, so what did?”

We stared at each other for a few
moments, and I caught my breath.

“That’s it!” I exclaimed. “It was
the curing spell! The spell called for patience, kindness, and peace!”

His face crinkled in confusion,
“No, I don’t think so. I might have been being kind, but I was very impatient
about getting you help and I wasn’t peaceful at all because I was afraid that I
wouldn’t be able to make it in time.”

I shook my head, “No, that’s not
what I mean. Patience, kindness, and peace are all attributes of another thing.
Love. We changed back after we told each other that we loved each other.”

His eyes lit up, “That makes
sense! You’re a genius!”

I laughed, “Thanks. So, what’s
the verdict with my arm?”

“You got a couple stitches,” he
explained, “but everything is fine. You lost a lot of blood, but they
replenished you and you’re in a completely stable state now.”

I gasped, “What about my dad?
Does he know I’m here?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly, “about
that. He brought your insurance card up here and everything, but when he saw
you, he was kind of freaked out. I think he thinks he’s crazy because you were
normal and he was expecting you to be the way he last saw you. He just turned
around and left.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed that
he wasn’t the kind of person that would be thankful that I was normal, “I guess
it’ll take him a while to get adjusted to me being at home.”

Daniel smiled, “You aren’t going
home.”

My eyes widened, “What do you
mean?”

“I made a promise to you,” he
said. “I promised that I would get us out of here, and I am. Well, my parents
are, anyway. We are moving, and you are coming with us. My mother already said
that it’s okay, and she talked to your dad and he didn’t protest.”          

I was so excited that I could
hardly contain it, but it felt too good to be true. “I can’t let your family do
that, Daniel. I can’t be a burden to them like that.”

“You won’t be. If you’re so
worried about it, you can pay rent, but I doubt they’ll accept it.”

“Pay rent?” I asked. “With what
money?”

“With the money your mom left
you,” he said, pulling the envelope out of his pocket.

My mouth dropped open. In all of
the excitement, I had completely forgotten about the money, “How did you get
that?”

“I had to go back to the cabin
with the police,” he explained. “They arrested Jasper, and I don’t know or care
what’s going to happen with that, but I told them that we had stayed out there
for the weekend. I had to in order to explain that some of our belongings were
there, plus the water bucket, the grass bucket, the bathroom bucket, and the
rabbit skins.” He held up five fingers for each item, “So I got the envelope
then, and Amara’s book. What should we do with it?”

I pondered for a moment. I didn’t
want to keep it and be tempted to use the healing spell now that my arm was
hurt, or to speed the healing of any other hurt in the future.

“We should burn it,” I admitted.
“We really should just destroy it. There isn’t any good that it could do any
person. If anyone can do the spells, then we don’t need someone else turning
into a… you know.”

“Okay,” he agreed, “but don’t you
want to use it to heal yourself?”

“NO!” I yelled, a little too
loudly. “Sorry, no. I don’t want to touch magic again, for the rest of my
life.”

“Okay,” he said. “I understand. I
just don’t want to see you in pain. I suppose we do need to get rid of it.”

We stared at each other in
silence for a few moments.

“I really do love you,” Daniel said,
staring deeply into my eyes. “I even knew it when I thought your name was
Violet.” We both chuckled. “I’m sorry that you had to change so drastically in
order to make me get over myself.”

He leaned forward and kissed me.
It was the most amazing kiss that I had ever felt. Afterward, he pulled away
and placed his forehead on mine.

“You are so beautiful,” he
whispered.

“I’m not the beauty,” I whispered
back. “I’m the beast, remember?”

He shook his head, “You got to be
both for a little while. Now you’re just beautiful.”

“ADELINE! COULD YOU GET THE DOOR
FOR ME PLEASE?” I yelled outside. She quickly opened the door so I could carry
more boxes to the moving truck.

“Is that the last of them?” she
called after me.

“I think so,” I grunted as I put
them in the truck. “I didn’t realize my mom had so much stuff.”

“We moved quite a few boxes from
your room too, mister,” she retaliated.

“No, I moved them. You better not
have done anything with your arm, little missy. Did you?” I demanded, knowing
full well that she wouldn’t or all of the Cotton’s would have called her out on
it.

She shook her head, “Of course
not. I’ve felt pretty useless all day today.”

“You’re not useless,” I assured
her as I put my arm around her. “You’re going to keep me company on the road.
Mom’s driving their car and Dad’s driving the moving truck, so I’m the only one
that gets a passenger. I’m pretty darn lucky.”

She pulled herself up on to her
tiptoes and kissed me, “Nope, that’s me.”

Dad came out and patted me on the
shoulder, “Are you two kids ready for the best family adventure that this here
family has ever seen?” he asked excitedly.

Adeline high-fived him,
“Absolutely!” she agreed, “I can’t wait!”

I had never seen her so happy. We
were finally leaving, and it was going to be glorious.

My mom joined us outside, “Well
that’s the last of it,” she said, plopping a small box in her car. “It’s going
to be even less fun unloading this on the other end after we’ve been driving
all day.”

“True,” I admitted. “Maybe you
can get some of our new neighbors to help?”

“I’m not going to ask them,” she
said, “but I will cross my fingers and hope that they volunteer on their own.”

“I bet you’ll be glad to actually
sleep in a real bed tonight,” Adeline said. “That couch-bed can’t be too
comfortable. You should have let me stay there instead of making me stay in
your room.”

“You needed a lot of rest to help
that arm heal up,” I demanded. “Plus, I’m fine. Mom put like five comforters
underneath me so that it would be more comfy.”

Mom smiled, “I want both of my
kids to be taken care of.” She hugged Adeline tightly, “Do you need any
medicine before we leave?”

“I have some in my bag,” she
assured her, “just in case.”

“Okay, good,” Mom said. “Well are
we about ready to take off?”

“Yup!” my Dad said, clapping his
hands together, “here we go!”

We all hopped in our vehicles and
pulled out of the driveway for the last time.