Beast Read online

  Now I’m confused. It’s not like diabetes is an instant death sentence. The discovery of insulin put an end to that. “She didn’t choose to be that way; it’s how she was born. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her.”

  Mom nods. “You know what? Good for you, Dylan. That’s the right attitude. As long as you know.”

  Mom the drama queen. I turn my attention to the flowers. “But she brought these?”

  “Yeah, about that,” Mom says in a way that makes me go uh-oh. “Jamie told me to tell you in big bold letters that those are daisies, and daisies are for friends.”

  “Seriously? She seriously said that? You’re not making that up?”

  “She seriously did.”

  “Hokey.”

  “Hey, you got flowers from a girl, didn’t you?” she retorts. Touché. “I have to say I agree with her. I think you two will make great friends. It’s good to have friends.”

  “I agree.”

  “So that’s where your relationship stands?”

  “Mom, there is no relationship.” Yet. I’m hoping. Although these daisies are sending that hope straight up into the sky like a balloon.

  “For the best,” Mom says, and smiles. “Jamie did take some pictures before she left.”

  I grab on to the metal triangle dangling above and yank myself upright. “She took pictures of what?”

  Mom bites her lip. “You.”

  “What!”

  “I asked her to.”

  “How could you do that to me?”

  “Dylan…”

  “I was unconscious!”

  She sits and pins her hands in her lap.

  “I want to go home,” I say.

  “No way! You need rest.”

  “You know I hate when people take pictures of me.”

  “Hear me out,” she interrupts. “Jamie said it was the first time she’s seen you without a big puss on.”

  “A big puss on.” I fold my arms. “Again…Seriously?”

  Mom’s eyes shoot to the ceiling. “Okay, that was my way of putting it, but fine. Jamie said it was the first time you didn’t look like a sulking axe murderer. Then she asked if she could take some pictures. Said she forgot her camera but her phone would do in a pinch.”

  So she Instagrammed me. I’ve been filtered.

  “She showed me, and I asked her to send some to me because I am your mother and you are my son and I have no pictures of you. None. You haven’t let me take your picture since you were in the fifth grade.” Mom turns her head away, dabbing the corner of her eye with her knuckle.

  “You don’t have the right.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t have the right to pretend you don’t exist. Did you ever think of that? Because for your information, you do exist. And you have people who love you.” She stares down at the phone resting in her clasped hands. Sticking it in my face, she clicks open a picture with her thunb. “Look.”

  It’s a shot of me. A close-up. Very still, very quiet. My eyes are closed, and the shadows hovering around the rambling bedrock of bones that make up my face are soft.

  “Look how handsome you are,” Mom says.

  “It looks like I’m waiting for a plaster death mask to be poured.”

  Mom pulls her phone away and tucks it inside her palm. “Oh, for crying out loud, it does not.” She runs her finger down the side of her phone. “I think she captured you.”

  “Delete it.”

  “No.”

  “How did you get that picture anyway?”

  “Jamie texted it to me.”

  I wedge myself up onto my elbow. “You have her number?”

  Mom looks up at me with a glint in her eyes. “I have her number.”

  “Give me her number.”

  She grins. “Well, look how it’s suddenly not so annoying for your dear old mom to be friendly with your friends, huh?”

  “Mom…”

  “Suddenly that picture I have on my phone is looking pretty good, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t make me beg.”

  “All right.” She twirls the phone in a loop. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “What?”

  “If I give you her number, I get to keep this picture.”

  “Fine.” Gimme, gimme, gimme. I have daisies to discuss.

  “And,” she adds, “any other future pictures she takes of you.”

  “There won’t be any.”

  She smirks.

  Commence eye rolling. “Deal. Text it to me.”

  Her little firefly fingers go to work, and my phone buzzes. I snatch it off my bedside table. Mom gets her coat on. “You must be hungry. I’m off to get a pizza,” she says.

  I wave goodbye. At least, I think I do. I’m busy working on what I hope is the perfect first message. Hey, Jamie. It’s Dylan….

  ELEVEN

  Thursday. It’s the last class of the day, and all I can think is Jamie, Jamie, Jamie….

  “Dylan?”

  Except I’m still in English. I look up from doodling Dr. and Mrs. Ingvarsson in the margins of my notebook and scribble it out so hard it rips the paper. “Yeah?”

  Mrs. Steig waits patiently, but annoyed. “Your thoughts on The Scarlet Letter?”

  “Which part? The slut-shaming part? The Victorian era masquerading as the Puritans? The familial guilt from Nathaniel Hawthorne for his ancestors being jerks in Salem?”

  Mrs. Steig’s so sick of me doing this, but she’s smiling because she loves me, so I just wait for her to sigh and throw her hands up, and she does. Right on cue. “Have you read the book, or is this tangent time?”

  “Yeah, I read it.” In like the eighth grade because I was bored once, but whatever.

  “I take it you’re not interested in The Scarlet Letter,” she says.

  I shrug.

  Mrs. Steig looks at the clock. Ten minutes before the bell rings. “All right, go ahead.”

  “So it’s not really about The Scarlet Letter, right? Because that book’s been beaten to death. We get it. It was amazing at the time, revolutionary, a big slap in the face. Everyone is a hypocrite and no one’s better than anyone else, so quit judging, but it was a major coincidence for Hawthorne because it was almost foreshadowing the time to come, both his and in the book, you know?”

  She folds her arms and smirks. “How so?”

  “It lines up perfectly with the holding country, England, as a last gasp before the Restoration, when everything pulled a one-eighty once Charles the Second came back on the throne,” I say. “Like, we’re all talking about Nathaniel Hawthorne using Hester as a metaphor or a trope or an analogy or whatever, but did you know that one of the most prolific and bestselling authors in Britain during Hester’s time period, mostly, was a woman named Aphra Behn?”

  Mrs. Steig’s arms drop. “I’ve not heard of her. She was more prolific than Shakespeare?”

  “No, he was dead by the time she came up,” I say. “But she wrote a lot and made good money for it. She was a legit full-time writer, which is not what you think when you imagine guys in tights and long curly wigs.” The Restoration is one of my favorite time periods. You’d think everyone was all prim and chaste, but they were anything but. “Read her poem ‘The Disappointment’ and tell me if Hester wouldn’t have been one of Aphra’s contemporaries.”

  That poem is bold.

  A shepherdess is crazy into this shepherd and wants to lose her virginity by banging his brains out. And this poem about a girl wanting to bone sold like hotcakes during the 1600s. It’s kind of nuts.

  Mrs. Steig gets her phone out and pulls it up. She swizzles her head and shoulders all cheesy-like, fake stage style, and reads in a booming voice:

  “ONE Day the Amorous Lisander,

  By an impatient Passion sway’d,

  Surpris’d fair Cloris, that lov’d Maid,

  Who cou’d defend her self no longer ;

  All things did with his Love conspire,

  The gilded Planet of the Day,
r />   In his gay Chariot, drawn by Fire,

  Was now descending to the Sea,

  And left no Light to guide the World,

  But what from Cloris’ brighter Eyes was hurl’d.

  In a lone Thicket, made for Love,

  Silent as yielding Maids Consent,

  She with a charming Languishment

  Permits his force, yet gently strove ?

  Her Hands his Bosom softly meet….”

  Mrs. Steig stops. She reads far ahead, eyes widening, and puts her phone back in her bag. “Oh my, we can’t read this in class.” Now everyone’s all writing the name of the poem for later. I grin to myself. If there’s one charming thing passed down through time, it’s that humans are all a bunch of horny nerds who can’t wait to talk about it.

  Wait until they get to the end. The shepherd dude can’t seal the deal, and the girl—the girl!—has blue balls. I didn’t even know that was possible, but turns out I’m about four hundred years behind the times.

  “Well, that’s an alley I didn’t anticipate getting clubbed in,” Mrs. Steig says. “Where did you learn about Aphra Behn?”

  “A podcast.” And then I found a book of her work at Powell’s and read that too.

  Everyone in class stares at me, but in a good way. They’re floored. This girl Bailey and I have a pissing match over grades, and even she crinkles up her nose with admiration.

  “Must’ve been a heck of a podcast,” Mrs. Steig says as the bell rings.

  I merge into the flow of traffic in the hall and get carried away to my locker. A note gets dropped in my lap by a cute girl who sprints away so fast, I barely have time to be confused. I think that was JP’s newest girlfriend? It’s so hard to keep them straight. All the note says is Adam Michaels?

  Shit. I turn the other direction to find the wing where the seniors have their lockers. Everyone in the whole school can’t wait until they have the senior wing’s because their lockers are painted glossy black and left in the far back of the school where nobody bothers them. I find Adam Michaels crouching in a ball on the linoleum floor and cramming last-minute this and that into his messenger bag.

  He peeks at my wheels. “You owe JP,” I say, dropping my voice and giving him a long, hard stare.

  “So?” Adam Michaels stands up, and all six feet, two hundred whatever pounds of him looms over me. Well, this has never happened before. How curious. Today of all days, I have to be in this chair?

  I stand up and now I’m the one looking down at him. Two can play at this game.

  Adam Michaels gathers up the last of his things and zips out of reach on a pair of fleet feet. Frigging Mercury over here. “What’s a cripple like you gonna do about it?” he says, leaving me in the hallway like a skid mark on a fresh pair of tighty-whiteys.

  “Shit,” I mutter to myself. Stupid chair. Stupid JP.

  I’m not chasing after him, the hell with that.

  I sit back down with a plop and hope no one saw. Then it’s like…Dammit. Now I feel obligated to beat the ever-loving shit out of him just to keep my edge.

  Had a similar incident last year, but it didn’t end well for that guy. There was this junior who wanted a sweet set of rims that looked like razor wire for his Toyota Camry, but he didn’t want to wait until Christmas (because let’s be honest, Jesus, Santa, and the Easter Bunny would laugh their asses off with that one). So JP gave him the money. Unfortunately, the guy thought he could blow off repaying some scrawny freshman with a dewy pout and a fat wallet. I proved that junior wrong.

  Haven’t punched anyone since that guy, though. Just…because. Seeing him down on the ground and rolling around, holding his face. I don’t know. Wasn’t the first time I laid someone out, but it was different. I broke his nose and cheekbone with one punch. I really hurt him. It scared me. Sat in my gut like an axe left in a tree.

  I asked my dad about it, silently and in my head. Was it right? Was it okay? I know whenever Dad went into a bar, he’d scan the room for the drunkest guy because it was only a matter of time before some dumbass wanted to prove his machismo and take it outside. My mom told me that story when she tried to prepare me for what my size could bring. He’d tower over the entire room, sizing up the crowd, and she’d always get up and kneel on a bar stool and ask him, “What are you looking for?”

  And he’d say, “The biggest idiot.”

  My dad did it—he punched other people. So it must be okay because that’s what I’m doing, punching idiots.

  Except I don’t want to get into it with Adam Michaels. But I fear I will, and now I’m wondering, What does it mean? Is this just leveling up? Maybe this is how it’s supposed to go.

  This is like having the world’s strongest magnets inside, pushing against each other. Punch, annihilate, crush bones. No, don’t: let it go, make peace. Wipe the floor with his face; you can’t let someone disrespect you like that. Laugh it off, who cares, let bygones be bygones. Push, pull. I want both, I want neither.

  Maybe if I put Adam Michaels in a coma, I’ll never have to do this for JP again. My reputation will speak for me.

  It’s an appealing thought.

  Who knows what Adam wanted: headphones? New Jordans? Like I said, none of my business. I don’t care. Besides, who cares about Adam Michaels when Jamie’s on my mind? She’s always on my mind, it just depends on the corner.

  I hear a voice call my name.

  “Dylan!” My name comes at me. “Dylan! A word, please! Don’t go home yet!”

  I am not in the mood for any more delays. “Hey, Coach Fowler.”

  He jogs down the hall, his silver whistle bobbing all over the place. Dignity, my man, you lost it when you started harassing me to play a sport I want no association with. Panting, he arrives and lays a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I know we’ve chatted before…,” he begins.

  “Yeah, and my leg’s still broken.”

  “But it won’t be next year!” he says. “We could really use you. It would be a great help to the school if we had you on the team.”

  “You know the farthest I got was Pop Warner when I was ten.”

  He throws his hands up. “I don’t care! I’ll take you under my wing, give you a recommendation to any school you want. Heck, I’ll even drive you to tour the colleges!”

  “I already said no.” Go Team Brain.

  “If you’re worried about being behind, you’ve got plenty of time to learn.”

  It’s not hard to learn how to be a brick wall. “Once again, not interested.”

  “Dylan, please…” He leans in and whispers, “Think of the girls!”

  I grin. “Already got one,” I say, turning my wheels to go. “Later, Coach.”

  Leaving him hanging in the hall was good, but even better? Going to see Jamie and get more. More bus rides and more five good things about her and just plain more of everything. I want more. We’ve only seen each other once in a room full of nutters—but now I’m the one feeling something crazy. I feel hope.

  Mom picks me up and starts lecturing as soon as my seat belt buckles. “No running off today. You say hello to that girl and have a nice visit, but you stay at the hospital, understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes,” she demands.

  Jeezus. “Yes.”

  She rambles on about therapy and how worried she is, blah blah blah. There’s no convincing her I am fine and do not need therapy, so I nod my head to the beat. Yes, I’ll be there when you pick me up. Yes, I’ll listen to the doctor. Yes, I’ll participate. But the whole time my heart is thumping Ja-mie, Ja-mie, Ja-mie, Ja-mie….

  We slow down in front of the entrance and she helps me unload. Mom hands me my bag and looks me dead in the eye. “You’ll be here waiting for me, when?”

  “Ninety minutes from now.”

  She smothers me in a big hug. “I love you, sweetie. Have a good session. Be strong.”

  Inside the lobby, I roll toward our dismal room and wonder if she’ll be there early, like me. “Hey,” she says from beh
ind.

  I spin around. It’s her.

  Jamie leans against a metal fire extinguisher cubby. “Want to get out of here and do something horrible?”

  “Yes, immediately.”

  TWELVE

  Ten minutes later we’re across the street at a little park where tiny kids take turns falling off a slide onto a squishy sponge disguised as grass. Moms pretending not to check their phones while they push their tots on the swings. I wonder if they have actual things to check or if they’re just bored. The kids don’t care. They swing and jump and play under the drifting leaves among the last rays of afternoon light.

  It’s not like Jamie and I want to be here with all these moms, but the park is close enough that I can be back at the hospital in ninety minutes. We meander to nowhere in particular and end up under an old dome that’s been repurposed into a rotunda. She holds on to a wrought iron pole and lets gravity swing her down to the stone step below with a plop.

  “I just didn’t want to be there, you know?” she says. “I’m tired of it. The drivel.”

  “I hear you.” It’s crisp without the threat of rain, and I lift my face to the sun. My eyes might be closed, but I can see her clearly through the blistering red and yellow leaves. Jamie stands in my mind like a figure cut from different layers of stone. Strong and unexpected. As nervous as I am to be here, and I am beyond nervous, I’m happy.

  I hope she is too.

  Jamie gets up and takes some scattered pictures of the park. “I decided I don’t need therapy anymore,” she announces.

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  She shrugs. “Because I’m the most normal person I know.”

  “I don’t think I need it either. Big waste of time.”

  “Hooray for us, we’re cured.”

  “I’d rather be here.”

  She shuffles lightly with laughter. “Me too.”

  Jamie’s leaning on a pole and watching the kids play. Not taking pictures, but hugging the camera like she’s wistful. Pining. “Penny for your thoughts,” I say.

  “Cheapskate.” She grins. “I was just thinking about what it was like when I was little. Like, I knew exactly what I wanted to be, but I didn’t know how to get there.”