Beastly (19 page)

The limo had been my father’s doing. After I spoke to Magda, I’d called him at work. It had taken some time to get through the studio phone system, but finally I heard that famous voice, full of fatherly concern.

“Kyle, I’m almost on the air.” It was five fifteen.

“This won’t take long. I need your help. You owe this to me.”

“I owe this to you?”

“You heard me. You’ve had me locked up in Brooklyn for over a year, and I haven’t complained. I also haven’t gone to the Fox network with my story of Rob Kingsbury’s beast son. Face it, you owe me.”

“What is it you want, Kyle?”

I explained. When I finished, he said, “You mean to say you have a girl living there?”

“It’s not like we’re doing it.”

“Think of the liability.”

You know, Dad, when you ditched me with the maid, you forfeited the right to supervise my conduct.

But I didn’t say that. After all, I wanted something from him.

“It’s fine, Dad. I’m not hurting her. I know you’re as concerned as I am about my getting out of this curse.” I tried to think of what Will would say. Will was smart. “That’s why it’s really important that you help me with this. The sooner I get out of this, the less chance there is of anyone finding out.” I made it all about him because that’s the way he’d think of it.

“Okay,” he said. “Let me see what I can do. I have to go on the air now.” What he’d done was take care of everything – the place, the transportation, everything but a guy to feed the roses. That I’d done. Now I watched Lindy as she dozed, her head lolling close to my shoulder, and the car made its way across the Manhattan Bridge. I felt like someone who’d been thrown a rope at the cliff’s edge. There was a chance that this would work, but if it didn’t, I would fall, and fall hard.

Though Lindy slept, I couldn’t. I watched the early traffic rolling into the city’s waning lights. It wasn’t that cold. By noon, the light snow would be a slushy mess, but soon there would be cold and Christmas and so much to look forward to. Magda and Will slept on the other side of the seat. The driver had had a fit when he saw Pilot.

“He’s a service dog,” Will had explained.

“Does that mean he won’t poop on the seats?”

I’d suppressed a laugh. I’d dressed as a Bedouin once again, but now, with the wall up between me and the driver, I removed my disguise. I stroked Lindy’s hair.

“Are you going to tell me now where we’re going?” she asked when we exited the Holland Tunnel.

I started. “I didn’t know you were awake.” I took my hand off her hair.

“It’s okay. It felt nice.” Does she know I love her?

“Have you ever seen the sunrise?” I pointed back to the east, where a few streaks of red were making their way over the buildings.

“Beautiful,” she said. “We’re leaving the city?”

“Yes.” Yes, my love. “I never have before. Can you believe that?” She didn’t ask again where we were going, just curled up on the pillow I’d brought her and fell back asleep. I watched her in the dim light. We were going north slowly, but even so, she wasn’t going to jump out. She didn’t want to leave.

When we reached the George Washington Bridge, I fell asleep myself.

I next awoke at almost nine on the Northway. Snow-covered mountains loomed in the distance.

Lindy gazed out the window.

“I’m sorry we can’t stop for breakfast,” I told her. “But it might start a panic. Magda brought some bread and stuff.”

Lindy shook her head. “Look at those hills. It’s like a movie – The Sound of Music.”

“They’re mountains, actually, and we’re going to get a lot closer.”

“Really? Are we still in the United States?”

I laughed. “We’re in New York, if you can believe it. I’m taking you to see snow, Lindy – real snow, not gray slush pushed by the roadside. And where we’re going, we can go outside and roll in it.” She didn’t answer, just kept staring at the distant mountains. Every mile or so, we saw a farmhouse below, sometimes with a horse or some cows. A while later, she said, “People live in those houses?”

“Sure.”

“Wow. They’re so lucky to have all that space to roam around.” I felt a twinge for keeping her inside all these months. But I would make it up to her. “It’ll be great, Lindy.”

An hour later, we pulled off of Route 9 and in front of one house, the best house, I thought, surrounded by snow-whitened pines. “This is it.”

“What?”

“Where we’re staying.”

She gaped at the snow-shingled roof and red shutters. Behind the house, there was a hill that I knew led to a frozen lake.

“This is yours?” she said. “All of it?”

“My father’s, actually. We came here a few times when I was little. That was before he started acting like if he missed a single day of work, he’d be replaced. After that, I started going skiing with friends during Christmas break.”

I stopped, not believing I’d mentioned skiing with friends. Beasts didn’t ski. Beasts didn’t have friends, and if I had, it opened up questions, lots of them. It was strange, because I felt like I could tell her everything, tell her things I’d never been able to say to anyone, or even to myself. But I couldn’t really tell her anything.

But Lindy hadn’t seemed to notice. She was already out of the car, streaking across the freshly shoveled path in her pink robe and fuzzy slippers. “Oh, how could anyone not come back to this… this wonderland?”

I was laughing, stumbling out of the car ahead of Will and Magda. Pilot looked freaked out, like he wanted to run and bark at all the snowdrifts. “Lindy, you can’t go out in your robe. It’s too cold.”

“It’s not cold!”

“You’re warm from the car. It’s below freezing.”

“It is?” She spun around, a pink dot on the white. “So I guess it’d be a bad idea to roll in all this wonderful, fluffy snow?”

“A very bad idea.” I trudged toward her. I wasn’t cold, nor likely to get cold. My thick coat kept me warm. “Wonderful and fluffy soon become cold and wet, and if you get sick, we can’t play outside.” But I could warm you. “I’ve brought appropriate clothing.”

“Appropriate?”

“Long underwear.” I saw the driver bringing our suitcases, and I pulled my costume around my head. I pointed to the red suitcase. “That’s yours. I’ll bring it to your room.”

“It’s so big. How long are we staying?”

“All winter if you want. We have no jobs, no school. This is a summer resort area. Some people come to ski on weekends, but the rest of the time, it’s deserted. No one will see me if we go outside. I’m safe.”

She glanced at me a second, almost like she’d forgotten who she was with. Could she have? Then she was spinning in circles again. “Oh, Adrian! All winter! Look at the icicles hanging from the trees.

They’re like jewels.” She stopped and picked up a handful of snow, pressed it into a ball and threw it at me.

“Careful. Don’t start a snowball fight you can’t win,” I said.

“Oh, I can win.”

“In your robe?”

“Do I hear a challenge?”

“No challenges yet,” Will said, walking Pilot toward the house. “Let’s put away the suitcases and get some decent clothing on and have breakfast.”

I picked up Lindy’s suitcase.

She mouthed, Decent clothing?

I mouthed back, Long underwear, and we broke up laughing.

My father had prepped everything as I’d demanded. The house was clean – the wood shone, and everything smelled of Pine-Sol. A fire blazed in the fireplace.

“So warm!” Lindy said.

“Oh, were you cold, miss?” I teased. I carried the suitcase to her room, which made her scream some more and jump up and down because it had its own fireplace and a handmade quilt, not to mention a bay window with a view of the pond below.

“It’s so beautiful, and no one lives here. I haven’t seen anyone for miles.”

“Hmm.” Had she been looking for someone, a way to run?

As if in answer to my unspoken question, she said, “I could be happy here forever.”

“I want you to be happy.”

“I am.”

After breakfast, we put on our parkas and boots and went outside.

“I told Will we’d mostly study on weekends,” I said, “since that’s when people are here. Now, are you still up for that snowball fight?”

“Yes. But can we do something else first?”

“Anything. I’m at your service.”

“I’ve never had anyone to make a snowman with me. Can you show me how?”

“It’s been a while since I made one too,” I said. It was true. I could barely remember a time when I’d had friends, if I had. “First, you have to make a small snowball and – this is the hard part – you don’t throw it at me.”

“Okay.” With her mittens, she packed a snowball. “Oops!” It hit me in the head.

“I told you that was the hard part.”

“You were right. I’ll try again.” She made another – and threw it. “Sorry.”

“Oh, this is such war now.” I picked up some snow. I didn’t need mittens, and my paws were very good for making snowballs. “I am the world champion snowball fighter.” I threw one at her.

It ended up deteriorating into an all-out snowball war – which I won, by the way. But finally, she made a snowball and handed it to me for the snowman.

“Perfect,” I said. “We’ll be experienced ice sculptors by the time winter’s over.” But what I wanted to say was I love you.

“So now you roll it on the ground to make it bigger,” I said. “Then, when it’s as big as you can stand, that’s the bottom.”

She rolled it bigger. Her face was getting pink and her green eyes shone, set off by the green jacket I’d chosen for her. “Like this?”

“Yeah. You have to keep changing direction, or else it gets like a jelly roll.” She obeyed, pushing it around, barely making a dent in the knee-deep snow. When the snowball got to the size of a beach ball, I joined her, pushing shoulder to shoulder.

“We work well together,” she said.

I grinned. “Yes.” We changed direction at the same time, until finally the bottom ball was finished.

“The middle ball is the tricky part,” I told her. “It needs to be big enough, but you still have to be able to hoist it up onto the first ball.”

We made the perfect snowman, then a second one, a snow woman, because no one should have to be alone. We went to Magda for carrots and other stuff, and as Lindy put in the carrot nose, she said,

“Adrian?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for bringing me here.”

“It was the least I could do.”

But what I really wanted to say was, Stay. You aren’t my prisoner. You can leave at any time, but stay because you love me.

That night, I went to bed without locking the front door. I didn’t tell Lindy I was doing it, but she could see if she had the eyes to. I turned in early. I lay in bed, listening for her footsteps, knowing that if she approached the door, if I heard it open, I wouldn’t follow her. If she was to be mine, she would be mine on her own terms and not because I forced her to be. I stayed up, watching the digital clock click the minutes away. It reached midnight, then one. I heard no footsteps. When the clock reached two, I crept as quietly as an animal can creep out into the hallway, then across to her room. I tried the door. I had no excuse to give her if she caught me.

Her door had a lock on it, and I expected to find it locked. In the beginning, back in Brooklyn, she’d made a big show of locking it, in case I entered to do what she called, “some unspeakable thing.” Lately, she hadn’t made a show, but I assumed this door was locked.

It wasn’t. The lock didn’t stop my hand, and my heart fell to my stomach because I knew that if it was open, it meant she was gone. She’d snuck out when I’d taken a wink of sleep. If I opened the door, I’d find her gone. My life was over.

I stepped in, and against the quiet of this snow-draped land where no other humans were for miles, I heard breathing, soft as the snow itself. It was her. Her, sleeping. I stood for a moment, afraid to move and wanting to watch her. She was still there. She could have left, but she didn’t. I trusted her, and she trusted me. Lindy shifted in her bed, and I froze. Had she heard the door open? Had she heard my heartbeat? In a way, I wanted her to see me, watching her. But she didn’t. Her arm reached to pull the covers closer. She was cold. I crept slowly into the hallway and found the linen closet where we kept the extra blankets. I chose one and crept back into the room and fluffed it out, so it fell perfectly over her. She snuggled into it. I watched her for a long time, the moonlight hitting her red hair, making it shine like gold.

I went back to bed and slept as one can sleep only on a cold night in a warm bed. In the morning, she was still there. She came out holding the extra blanket, a questioning look on her face, but she didn’t say anything.

From that night on, I never bolted the door. Every night, I lay awake wondering. Every morning, she was still there.

5

We’d been there a week when we found the sled. It was Lindy who found it early one morning, high on a closet shelf, and gave a shriek that brought all of us out of our rooms to see what animal had attacked her. Instead, we found her pointing.

“Look!”

I looked. “It’s a sled.”

“I know. I’ve never had a sled! I’ve only read about them.” Then she jumped up and down until I pulled it off the shelf for her. We both looked at it. It was a big sled, light, polished wood with barely used metal runners and the words flexible flyer painted on it.

“Flexible Flyer. It must really be like flying to race down a hill like that!” I smiled. We’d made an army of snowmen (“Snow people,” Lindy said) in the past days, and just the day before, I’d woken early to clear a section of pond for skating. Lindy had come down, hours later, to find me still at it with my shovel. Pond clearing was hard work. But it was worth it when she exclaimed, “Skating on a pond! I feel like Jo March!” and I’d known exactly what she meant, because she’d forced me to read Little Women weeks earlier, even though it was a girl’s book.

Now I stared at the sled, remembering. My father had bought it when I was little, five or maybe six.

It was a big sled, the kind that could take more than one person on it. I’d stood at the top of a seemingly endless hill, afraid to go down on my own. It was a weekend, so some other boys were there doing it, but they were older than I was. I saw another father and son. The father positioned himself on the sled, then let his son sit in front of him and wrapped his arms around him.