Beast Read online

  “It’s true, I didn’t. If you guys are gonna be best buds, then get used to him saying a whole lot of mixed-up, twisted shit, Jamie….”

  “Look, I’m trying to be better, I swear,” JP pleads. He touches his perfect face, his hair, his chest. “I know what I look like and how to use it. I’m locked inside a box I didn’t ask for.”

  “Oh, boo fucking hoo,” I say. “How sad for you, JP, being so goddamn pretty. Must be so tough when the world throws itself at your feet; you must stub your toes all the time.”

  “Go ahead, laugh it up. You think I’ve got it so good? Everyone’s got problems. I know how easy it is to just frigging smile at someone while you’re asking them to do something. And then they do it? It’s like this weird superpower.”

  “For a super villain,” I add.

  “Whatever, fine. All these tricks—I can’t unlearn it in a day. Give me a chance.”

  “I never should’ve let you talk me into that pretzel idea,” Jamie mutters.

  “Wait! The pretzel was JP’s idea?”

  “You refused to talk to me!” Jamie shoots back. “I didn’t know what to do. At least JP was there and listened to me, heard me out. He was a friend; where were you?”

  “Yeah, man, you can’t treat girls like that,” he says.

  “Oh my god, I can’t even, my ears, I’m hearing things,” I ramble. “You’re telling me how to treat girls? Am I in an alternate universe? But okay, fine, I do want forgiveness, I do want—”

  A timer goes off. “Yay, I’m done,” Jamie says, hitting a button on her phone. She gets her bike and whirls it around. “Are you coming?” she asks JP.

  “Even after everything you know about JP, you want to go with him?”

  “He’s at least trying.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “Stop. Just stop,” she says over her shoulder.

  “You don’t know what you did to her,” he says.

  My forehead’s all damp from the flying mist that’s finally letting up, and I flick the water to the ground. “Yes, I do. I broke her heart.”

  “Oh, Dylan…” Jamie laughs. A hollow, empty laugh. “You were always so worried about people hurting me. Then you go and hurt me more than anyone in the entire world. You didn’t just break my heart; you stabbed me in the kidneys with rusty knives so that every time my heart pumped, it sent nothing but toxic shit through my veins. I can’t even stand looking at your face.”

  “You can stand it for ten minutes so you can get a show at some café. And this one?” I point at JP. “If he changed, even the littlest bit, he’d sponsor your show because you two are the most awesomest awesome friends ever. Not because he needs a favor.”

  “Dylan, wait a minute….” JP hops near.

  Years of backed-up anger comes pouring out. The miserable things I did just so I’d have a place in this world. “Just be quiet.” I get over him and leer down. “You treated me like a dog my whole entire life. I do a trick so you throw me a bone. I hate your fucking guts, JP.”

  He covers his neck and Jamie separates us. “Leave him alone. He said you choked him in the cafeteria. You can’t do that. Like, ever,” Jamie says.

  “Oh my god.” I spin in a stupid circle, cursing up at the sky. “Yeah, I did almost choke him. Did he tell you why? Because he wanted to embarrass me for being with you.”

  “JP said he was publicly supporting our relationship in front of the whole school.”

  I can’t even look at him. “That’s what you told her, JP? Neat. You know what, Jamie? You got a real sweet deal here. You get a piece of your dreams fulfilled. I have memories of busting kids’ faces for the rest of my life.”

  “Get over yourself, Dylan,” she says. “And do shut the fuck up.”

  JP stands torn between us. Looking at me and then looking at Jamie. “Seems like this was the king shit of all shit ideas,” he says. “I thought we could all figure something out. Seems like I was way wrong. About everything.”

  He follows Jamie and they leave together.

  “Wait,” I say, wanting to stop her.

  Jamie slowly turns around. “You know what I think when I look at you, Dylan? How can someone so smart be so stupid?” She grips her bike even harder. “Let’s go play video games,” she says to JP.

  I lean into my crutches and watch them climb up the slight hill next to the football field. In all this shitty mist, I feel like the world is taking a cold, wet dump on me. I’m this close to running. She thinks I’m the asshole of the universe. Fine, I deserve that, but she got to say her piece and I never got to say mine. About how much I missed her and thought about her every day. She needs to know. Launching myself after them, I race on one leg to get there and do something, say something brilliant, to keep her from going home with him, when the sky changes. The sun sneaks just enough through the clouds and my mouth drops.

  “Motherfucker,” I mutter.

  Careening over them, in a big, happy bank of color, is a rainbow. A bright, shiny, and twinkling-with-every-meager-speck-of-light-in-the-spectrum rainbow. My sign from above. After all these weeks, Dad finally sent me THE SIGN. Let her go, he says.

  So I do.

  I turn around and head for home.

  I let her go.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  My room isn’t as warm as I’d hoped. My back hurts from dragging home mountains of homework and I’m cold and wet. Not to mention, I have nowhere to put all the things clamping my arteries shut with emptiness. I don’t know how else to explain it: it’s like all my blood stopped moving. Which explains why I’m freezing, I guess.

  But I finally got my sign, so it’s time to shut up now. I’m going to do the same things I’ve done for the past several weeks. Eat, sleep, do homework, try to forget Jamie, and lift shit. Only bright side will be getting my cast off tomorrow.

  I exhale.

  That’s honestly the only thing I have to look forward to. After that, I don’t know. Maybe taco night.

  Night falls and I try not to think about them. I can only hope JP has a heater on in his fort while they play video games. It’s getting kind of cold and I want her to be comfortable. There’s all kinds of thoughts bubbling up. Me showing up out of the blue and Jamie flying into my arms, the two of us running away. Jamie realizing it was all a mistake, me telling her no, I made the mistake. I want so bad for everything to happen just like that, but I can’t run.

  Dear Dad, I’m letting her go.

  I turn on my computer and update my podcasts. Ooh, the Dyatlov Pass Incident. That sounds interesting. I click on that and collapse on my bed. Five minutes in, I’m hooked. A possible paranormal modern-day incident with likely scientific explanations? Yes, please.

  Lying on my bed, I am being as apathetic as possible because if I actually acknowledge things, it will be painful. So I zone out and play a stupid game on my phone. My fingers are too big to do much damage, but I like to beat my mom’s score when I can. I’m halfway through Level 5 when my phone beeps. An alert to update Settings. Whatever, that’s a quick fix and I’m already losing this game. Might as well do it now. I swipe out of there and into the updates. Security, check. Games, check. Privacy…Wait. Hold on. What the hell is uGoiFindU, and why is it buried in the Privacy folder?

  I leap up and google it. The first link I find fills me with cold rage. Install on any phone and track an individual’s whereabouts via your device. Does not show on their screen, virtually undetectable. Perfect for parents of minor children!

  It comes up as a cough. My eyebrows cinch together as I stare at the computer. Scattered laughs choke my throat because oh my god. This whole time I’ve been begging a two-dollar-and-ninety-nine-cent app to talk to me. To love me and tell me everything is going to be okay.

  And then I’m furious because are you shitting me? I slam my phone down on the bed. It was never my dad. Mom freaking lied through her teeth! Pacing my room in the ragged remains of my stumpy cast, I’m furious. My mother used a dead man to cover her ass. Telling me my dad
can help her find me in the middle of a city with a tin can and a string from his cloud in the sky? This is bullshit. This makes everything I’ve been waiting to hear from my dad a freaking waste of time. Mom doesn’t have a direct line to heaven; she has a shady phone app from the Apple store.

  He’s not talking to her any more than he’s talking to me, which means I don’t have to listen to any fucking rainbows.

  It was never about fallen power lines and random penguins. What I should’ve done is freaking talk to Jamie.

  When it finally, fully occurs to me, it’s like a slap in the face. No, a punch.

  I grab a warm sweater and write a Post-It, then leave my phone on the bed with the Post-It slapped on it and head out for the tree house. I can’t draw for shit, so there’s no picture of a giant middle finger, just a simple sentence for Mom: Nice try.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Irvington is miles away, no exaggeration. The mist—the freaking miserable, cold-ass mist—won’t stop, but by now I’m used to it and I don’t care. I have a mission. Get to the tree house. Say things I want to say. See what happens after that.

  My crutches slip in the thin puddles and the back of my neck is slick with water, but I keep going. When the houses start to get a little ritzier, I know I’m getting closer. These houses are nice, dream houses even, with two stories and urban farmstead backyards, framed by tall fences whimsically full of reclaimed windows from old houses that bit it long before theirs will. Ideal places to plant roots of all kinds, but they’re not Irvington.

  Irvington, Knott Street in particular, is full of semi-mansions with three stories and people wearing NPR pledge-drive T-shirts, peering out of double-paned windows and pretending not to judge you. Makes nodding pleasantly at the lady walking her goldendoodle and gripping the zipper of her North Face anorak as you pass along the dimly lit sidewalks a fun experience. Hey! I want to tell everyone. Don’t worry, I’m a fifteen-year-old kid. Not gonna club you on the head and rob you blind.

  I get to JP’s house and stop. It’s a corner house. Three stories and fenced in by a stone wall. Taller than me by at least half a foot and every twenty feet a wrought iron light graces a post. I mean, shoot, it’s lovely. I want one just like it someday. Except looking at the few lonely lights feebly suggesting the house is a home, I definitely don’t want what’s inside it.

  Stuck on the sidewalk, I’m faced with a dilemma. How to get to JP’s fort up in the big oak tree on the other side of the property. I could conceivably ring the doorbell and risk asking his mom, but that’s not super appealing. She’s either passed out or will scream and throw things. I’ve never asked him which variation of his mom he prefers. An inkling of pity trickles in for him, but I crush it down.

  I’m not here for him.

  I try to keep inconspicuous so neighbors don’t get all eyeballs on what I’m doing. Last thing I need is for the cops to get called. Surveying the house, I guess I can go in through the garage. There’s a code on the door, and I think I remember it, but then again, I don’t want JP to hear the beeping of the buttons. He might think it’s his dad. I sure as hell don’t want to get his hopes up that his dad actually came home. That would suck. The window above me is the kitchen and I could go through there, but I might break something.

  Then I laugh because fuck it, I’m the Beast and I can do whatever I want.

  I jump up and pull myself up over the wall. Swinging my legs over the side, I jump down. There. And my leg doesn’t even hurt, so multiple bonus points all around.

  His dad had the sweetest tree house in Multnomah County built for JP in the third grade, and JP’s pretty much lived in it ever since. It’s insulated and has electricity and its own router for Internet. I stand on the ground underneath it and look up. The lights are dim. I hear them talking. Then not talking. They’re up there and I’m down here, but not for much longer.

  The ladder is pulled up, just like Rapunzel’s hair (aw, how cute…) but I don’t need some stupid ladder; all I have to do is climb. I grip the branches and knobby burls of the old oak tree and hike myself up until I land at the front door with a thump. “Did you hear something?” I hear Jamie ask.

  I undo the wooden latch and push the door open. “Hi.”

  They both drop their controllers and Jamie screams. “Oh my god! You scared the crap out of us. What are you doing here?”

  “I need to say two things and then I’ll go. You’ll never see or hear from me again.”

  They stare at me with uncertain eyes.

  “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” I say.

  Jamie snorts. “Too late.”

  “That’s why I came. Because I know it is too late and I know there’s nothing I can do about that, but then I saw this rainbow today.”

  “You climb up here like King Kong because you saw a stupid rainbow?” JP says.

  “Well, yeah. Because I thought it was my dad.”

  They hold any snarky comments that were percolating and listen. I’m thankful.

  “I can’t really explain it more than everything just crystallized on the walk over here. It’s so clear to me, I don’t even mind that JP’s here and listens to all this,” I say, looking at him. “Don’t get me wrong, you can sincerely still go screw yourself, but I’m in a very peaceful place right now.”

  “That’s past unfair,” he says. “Between you and me, I’m the one who’s made an effort.”

  “That’s up for debate. But, Jamie, I was really confused after, you know, our night,” I tell her. “I didn’t expect it and I didn’t know what to do with it. I was scared.”

  “You treated me like I was dead because you were afraid?” she says. “That’s bullshit.”

  “It’s worse than that. I treat dead people better than the way I treated you,” I say. “I treated you like you never existed. I know that.”

  Her face twists and she looks away. It guts me.

  “Like I said, after this I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again,” I say quietly. “But I wanted you to know that I never had any doubts about you. It was me I was afraid of. It’s going to sound stupid, but I was looking for a sign.”

  JP laughs. “A sign?”

  “From my dad.” I ignore JP and look at her instead. “Because yeah, I was up my butt. I thought for my whole life that I’m a freak. I mean, who am I really? Am I violent because I’m big? Am I angry because I’m so ugly? If only I had someone to talk to about all this—oh no, wait, he’s dead.” The two of them sit snug together, looking like a billboard in Times Square advertising secret things for beautiful people. “I’m sure there are problems with being really stupid good-looking, but I’ll never know what they are. But I wasn’t becoming a freak; I was fumbling at being a better person, which as you know is a somewhat freakish state for me. I don’t need signs. I only need to do the right thing.”

  JP squints at me.

  “I mean seriously, what is a man?” I say. “A guy with a beard and chest hair and a deep voice? Big deal. If that’s all it takes to be a man, I was one in the seventh grade and I was a total little shit back then. Now I know. Being a person has nothing to do with the packaging. It only has to do with being good. I wasn’t good to you, but I hope I get a chance to be in the future.”

  Jamie smiles to herself. “You were horrible.”

  “I know I was….” My eyes fly toward hers. “I was horrible.”

  “We were horrible.”

  A warm light flares inside my chest. It dims when she lets me go and her eyes drift back to the controller in her hands. As if that’s more important. “We were,” I say to myself. “I wasted all that time waiting for a sign. The sign was, I should’ve opened the fucking door and returned a text message. But I didn’t.”

  No one says anything and I sit, my eyes gazing down at the ground below. My broken leg dangles above slick blades of grass glinting in the lamplight. I sense it’s time for me to go. “Well…I didn’t come here to get you back. But I do want to be the kind of guy you’d be proud to be wit
h,” I say. “Because the best thing I’ve ever held was your hand in mine. And then you in my arms.”

  She drops the controller. Her fingers twist around each other, gripping knuckles with knuckles. My eyes flick to see her face, but it’s hidden. She doesn’t look at me. So I stop looking at her. “Even if I never see you again, I’ll still do my best to get the Ethans and Bryces of the world to understand better. I’ll put my weight behind it. So you can take your pictures and go to RISD and be a mom and do whatever you want in peace.”

  “Yeah, about Ethan and Bryce,” JP slowly says. “They were never going to do anything to Jamie.”

  “What does that mean? Because I was totally aware of those idiots and doing my best to steer clear,” Jamie says.

  “I made it up.”

  “What?”

  “I just wanted Dylan to…you know. Get some missing funds back from Adam Michaels. You were never in any danger from those guys.”

  “Jeremiah Phillip Dunn!” Jamie yells at him. “You turned my safety into a game? That’s disgusting. You said you were my friend, my ally.”

  “I am your ally! I was the one totally in favor of you guys being together in the first place. Between me and Dylan, I’m the good guy here.”

  She scoots herself the hell away from him. An opening!

  “If you want, I’ll walk you home, Jamie,” I offer.

  “No, Jamie, stay here,” JP says.

  She stares at me, stares at JP, stares at me again. “I’m going.”

  Yes!

  “By myself,” she says.

  Shit!

  “I don’t know what it is with you boys, but it feels like I’ve spent the past couple months locked up in a world-class fun house of jacked-up emotions, and I need to go find mine again. I don’t know what’s true anymore.” Jamie edges out of the tree house and brushes past me as she scrambles herself, her bag, and her camera to the door. Her foot rests on the first step down, and she regards the two of us. “I don’t want to see either of you. Not for a long, long time. If ever. Don’t follow me. Don’t call, don’t text. Just—don’t.”