Beastly: Lindy's Diary (4 page)

Someone was, and he was out in the greenhouse. My own room had no window that overlooked it, but

now that I saw it, I gasped.

Hundreds of roses—red, yellow, pink, coral, white, even purple—roses climbing on trel ises to the

ceiling, roses in pots on the ground, lining the walls as hedges, hanging like a bridal veil. This, too,

persuaded me that I was in a dream. Who had ever seen so many roses in one place?

In the middle of the greenhouse, a shadow moved.

Was it him? Adrian?

I had been avoiding him all these days. Now, I really wanted to see him, but just see him, not talk to him.

Part of the reason I’d been avoiding him, I realized, was not just fear of what he might do to me, but fear of myself. I was afraid he’d be hideous and, more than that, I feared my reaction to him. I’ve always

prided myself on being kind, being understanding. But my father had called Adrian a monster, my father,

who’d seen all kinds of ugliness. What if I cringed when I saw him? What if I cried? What if, like

Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, I found I simply couldn’t look at him at all? I didn’t want to

be shallow, cruel. I wanted to be better than the students at Tuttle, who’d looked down on me because I

didn’t have the right clothes, the right family, the right money. What if I wasn’t?

Now, though, maybe I could see him without him seeing me. The living room was dark, the greenhouse

well lit. I stepped forward.

He had been partially hidden by the roses, but now, as if he knew I was watching, he came into view. He

was pacing, I realized, and when he stepped out from behind the vines, I could see his face.

I gasped. My father hadn’t been wrong or crazy or strung out. Adrian was a monster. He looked like no

one I’d seen outside a movie. At first, I could only see his body.

He was tall, tall and slim, and if I’d seen him from the back, I’d have assumed he was handsome, but as

soon as his face became visible from the shadows, I knew he wasn’t.

Blond hair—fur—covered every inch of his face and what I could see of him. His hands had claws, but

his face was weirder. The nose, long and wolflike, sloped downward to a mouth with white, fanged teeth.

The hair on his head had been brushed to shield as much of his face as possible, but it did little good. It was blond and long, and from beneath it, I could see the most beautiful wide, blue eyes. They seemed to

glow, somehow, from the darkness. They seemed to meet mine.

I realized he was looking at me. Could he see me staring? Of course not. Yet those blue eyes—oddly

familiar—seemed to plead with me.

Again, I backed away. I stumbled across the dark room, half expecting footsteps to pursue me. None

came. I didn’t see Kendra again, in human or bird form. Not caring how much noise I made, I stumble-ran

upstairs, slammed and locked my door. I staggered to bed. Only then did I realize I was crying. Not for

me, not for me, for him. I wanted to hate, not pity Adrian, yet how could I not pity someone who looked

like him, someone so pathetic and twisted and ruined? What accident could cause such a thing? No

accident, other than an accident of birth.

What would it be like to be this way, to have people run from you?

And yet, his roses were so beautiful. He understands beauty.

I had seen him. I could look at him now, I thought, without cringing. Part of me still hated him, wanted to hate him for making me pity him. Before, I could live in the world, not knowing that someone like Adrian

existed, and not somewhere far off, not like the cleft-palate babies you see in magazines, the blind beggars in Slumdog millionaire, but really, in my own neighborhood. I couldn’t ignore him. I pictured the pleading look in those eyes. I had to take pity on him.

Still, I cried, I cried for him until I fell asleep.

Or had I always been asleep? I was dreaming, wasn’t I? I looked up and saw Kendra, still standing there,

still singing weirdly. Then, her mixed-up words became real ones. She sang:

Now, his name means darknessBut once, it meant beauty.His face is hideous as a thornBut within, he is a

rose, maybe.Go to him.Go to him. That was the last thing I remembered before I fell asleep for real. When I woke next, it was midday. No sign of Kendra, but my room was filled with roses of every color.

The fact is, I’m stuck here, whether it’s because my father needs me to be or because I need to run away

from my life, I’m here, alone. Adrian is stuck here too, lonely, ugly, so desperate for companionship he

was willing to resort to blackmail to get it. But I understand now. I understand, and it would be cruel for me to ignore him.

I understand, and I know that, tonight, I will do as Dream Kendra said.

I will go to him.

July 24

All day, I sat on my bed and tried to read, but I was restless, excited, I realized, at the thought of meeting Adrian. I’d sworn to stay in my room forever, but when it came down to it, it was just too difficult. I’ve never been good at sulking. When I was a kid, if I argued with a friend or one of my sisters, I’d pledge

never to speak to her again. I usually lasted an hour, maybe less.

And, of course, I always forgave my dad, too.

It was the same here. If I knew I’d be safe, I’d give the guy a chance, just to have someone to talk to.

So when Magda came to bring me my oatmeal, I stopped her.

“What’s he like? Why does he want me here?” She looked a little surprised, then shrugged and said,

“He is lonely. That is all.”

I nodded and took the oatmeal. It was as I thought, not a murderer or rapist, just a freakish, friendless boy, a lonely soul. Like me.

“And you . . . like him?” I asked Magda.

She said she did.

It makes sense. After all, isn’t it always the handsome, outgoing, “normal” guys who turn out to be

dangerous wack jobs? Every time they arrest a guy for killing tons of women, his neighbors always say

they never suspected.

That he was perfectly normal.

Wouldn’t it then follow that deformed, reclusive freaks are actually safer than normal people?

Well, it made sense in my head.

I waited for nightfall. After everyone was asleep, I picked up the dinner dishes and brought them

downstairs to the kitchen, just to have an excuse to be there. I made noise so he’d know I was up. I heard him in the living room, watching television. I listened at the door. It was some sporting event that must have happened hours earlier.

Still, it comforted me that he was watching sports, not some History Channel special about virgin

sacrifice.

Finally, after a minute, I went in.

Finally, after a minute, I went in.

His back was to me. He said, “I’m here. I want you to know so you won’t freak.”

Freak. Even I cringed at the word, but I stepped toward him.

For one moment, everything froze. Me, standing there, the baseball game on television, Adrian, staring

ahead but—I now knew—not really paying attention to it. The room was shadowy-dark, and I could only

see the back of his head. It was so normal.

Then, he turned to meet my eyes.

At close range, in the dim light, I found I was more fascinated than repulsed by Adrian’s face. I stared at the counterclockwise whorls of fur at the edges of his nose, the eyes human, but wider set than my own.

On its own merits, his face wasn’t ugly, wasn’t repel ant at all. On its own merits, Adrian’s face had an almost catlike beauty.

It was just . . . he was supposed to be human.

He saw me staring and looked down. “Please. I won’t hurt you. I know I look this way, but I’m not . . .

please. I won’t hurt you, Lindy.”

I started babbling, trying to cover my faux pas of staring at him with the greater faux pas of too much talk, too many stupid things I don’t want to remember. He started trying to change the subject, talking about the dinner we’d eaten, what a good cook Magda was, normal stuff, anything to shut me up. He sounded

perfectly normal.

Which made me feel sorrier for him.

“When I used to live with my father,” Adrian said, still talking about the food, “he never wanted Magda to make Latin dishes. She just made regular stuff then, meat and potatoes. But when he left us here, I didn’t really much care what I ate, so she started making this stuff.” He meant his father. His father had left him. I said, “What do you mean he left you here? Where’s your father now?” He looked away, as if he knew

he’d said too much, but he said he lived with Magda and Will, that Will was his tutor. I could tell he was trying to keep it very normal, trying not to upset me. It was all so abnormal, though. But then, what in my life wasn’t?

“Tutor?” I asked, just to keep the conversation as normal as he wanted it.

as he wanted it.

“A teacher, really, I guess. Since I can’t go to school because . . . anyway, he homeschools me.” And I

wondered. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen. Same as you.”

Sixteen. My father had said he was a teenager, but he was all alone. Of course, I was alone too. “Where

are your parents?” I asked. He knew I was just as abandoned as he was.

He didn’t say it, though. Instead, he said, “My mother left a long time ago. And my father . . . well, he couldn’t handle that I looked like this. He’s into normalcy.” My mind flooded with questions. Had he

always looked this way? Was his father cruel to him? Did he treat him like a freak, like in The Phantom of the Opera? The house, all of it, was beautiful, but how could he live here, how could he grow up with no

nurturing? Of course, my father didn’t exactly nurture me either, but at least I could try to live a normal life. Just thinking about him, trapped here, brought tears to my eyes. Now, it was I who looked away.

“Do you miss him?” I asked, still not looking. “Your father?”

He shook his head. “I try not to. I mean, you shouldn’t miss people who don’t miss you, right?” I nodded, and said something about my own father, so he’d know I understood, even though I couldn’t, not really,

not the level of it. We were the same, motherless, fatherless, both freaks in our own way. We were the

same. I was here because I was meant to be.

Adrian was the one who changed the subject away from our mutual patheticness. He asked if I wanted

Will to tutor me, too. I heard myself saying yes. I felt myself meaning it. I feel like, maybe, I was meant to be here, meant to help this poor guy.

He told me they were reading Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Then, he invited me to see his rose garden.

“I’d like that.” I said I would meet him there tomorrow.

And after a few more stupid statements on my part, a few more awkward ones on his, I started up to bed.

It has begun.

Only when I reached my room did I think to ask what else they were studying, what math, what social

studies.

Funny how Adrian had homed in on reading, on literature, as if he knew it was what I loved. Does he

have Magda spying on me, to know I read all day? Crazy. I went back downstairs but stopped.

As I approached the living room, I heard a voice, quietly whooping. Through the door, I could see

someone, a boy my own age, more human than not, doing a wild victory dance around the room.

I smiled. It could wait.

July 25

I woke at three, and at four, and then again at five. Each time, I thought I heard noises downstairs. Each time, I tried to go back to sleep. Finally, at six, I gave up and took out Shakespeare’s sonnets. I flipped to my favorite,

“Sonnet 54.” I chose it in honor of the roses, and of the day.

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seemBy that sweet ornament which truth doth give!The rose

looks fair, but fairer we it deemFor that sweet odour, which doth in it live.The canker blooms have full as deep a dyeAs the perfumed tincture of the roses,Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonlyWhen

summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:But, for their virtue only is their show,They live unwoo’d,

and unrespected fade;Die to themselves.

Sweet roses do not so;Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:And so of you, beauteous and

lovely youth,When that shal fade, my verse distills your truth. I know some people would call it a cliché
,
reading Shakespeare’s sonnets. A lot of my Tuttle classmates complained about reading all that old stuff, but I loved feeling the connection to Shakespeare, to someone who lived hundreds of years ago but who

was still a real man, a man who sniffed roses and thought about beauty.

Sometimes, it’s like I know Shakespeare better than I know anyone.

At seven, Magda brought me breakfast, and at eight, I fixed my hair and got dressed, and at nine, exactly, I went downstairs to the greenhouse.

Adrian had obviously prepared for me. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons was playing on the speakers, and

he’d pulled a table and three chairs out to the greenhouse.

There was even a vase of roses on the table. He seemed nervous. At least, he was talking kind of fast, but he showed me each variety of rose in the greenhouse, describing the different types, floribunda, hybrid tea roses, even one he said was called the “Little Linda.”

“Do all your roses have names?” I asked him. Meaning, had he named a rose after me? That was . . .

weird.

But it turned out to be okay. He explained that when the horticulturalists develop a new rose variety, they name it, and actually, that sounded right. I think I read that somewhere before. The rose called “Little

Linda” was tiny—Adrian called it a miniature—and yellow, my favorite color.

Standing there, inhaling the glorious scent of all those roses, my mind went immediately to Kyle and that night at the dance. Poor, stupid, probably drug-addicted Kyle.

If I just closed my eyes, I could pretend he was there.