Beastly: Lindy's Diary (2 page)

someone who needs me. It’s going to be someone who can, for once in my life, be a hero.

I’m hoping guys like that still exist.

May 23

He spoke to me!

I was beginning to wonder if I’d hallucinated our previous conversation (followed, as it was, by eight

months of silence on his part, punctuated by the occasional could-be-my-imagination nod in the hall ). I

realized that, okay, maybe we hadn’t made a connection that day back in September. Maybe, I thought,

Kyle Kingsbury is exactly the kind of jerk people think he is. Maybe he’d been playing me before, and he

really did think I was beneath him.

But tonight, he spoke to me, not only spoke to me, but actually gave me a flower.

Here’s how it happened.

I was taking tickets, like a pathetic drone, wearing this white blouse they made all the workers wear, so I looked like a total geek, when Kyle showed up with Sloane. I noticed immediately because people started

gathering around the table when they came in, trying to bask in their light. But something was off.

I don’t know if Sloane was just not speaking to Kyle or if she was actually high, but she flounced in ahead of him, not making eye contact, and joined her covey (or is it coven?) of friends.

Kyle, looking like he needed a friend too, leaned against my table and produced two tickets. “That one’s

for her, when she decides to come in.” He jutted his thumb at Sloane.

I ripped his tickets and noticed he was holding a corsage, a white rose with a light blue ribbon. I’ve

always loved roses.

“Pretty flower,” I said.

He glanced at it, flipping it in his hand like he’d forgotten he had it. “Oh, yeah.”

I wanted to say that a white rose represented purity and innocence, but I recognized that it would be a

completely dorkified thing to say. So, in trying to avoid saying the dorky thing, I said nothing at all. I looked away, pretending to count the ripped ticket halves.

Yet he still stood there. I felt his presence, magnetic.

Stupid Sloane doesn’t know how lucky she is. If I could go to a dance with Kyle, have him give me a

rose, I’d be completely happy. Or, at least, happy enough not to be a complete . . . never mind!

“Hey, do you want it?” he asked.

“What?” My head snapped back toward him.

He held up the flower. “Here. Take it.”

“That’s not nice.”

“What isn’t?”

“Goofing on me, pretending you’re going to give it to me, then taking it back.” That had to be it, of course.

Why would he give me Sloane’s corsage? If there’s anything I’ve learned in these years of being my

father’s daughter, it’s how to protect myself.

He protested. “I wasn’t pretending. You can have it.” He held it up. The ribbon exactly matched his blue

eyes. “It’s not the right color for my girlfriend’s dress or something, so she won’t wear it. It’s going to die, so you might as well take it.”

I glanced at Sloane. Her dress was black, which goes with everything, but probably, the corsage wasn’t

expensive enough for her. Sloane probably needed an orchid fresh-picked today in Brazil and airlifted in

for her pleasure. With a ribbon made of thousand-dollar bills.

“Since you put it that way.” I started to take it from him but, at the very last minute, he pulled it back. “Let me.” And he pinned it on my ugly blouse. I let him. The gesture had more intimacy than I’d expected, the

back of his hand brushing my neck as he pinned it on.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

“Enjoy it . . . Linda.” He smiled.

And for that second, it was like he and I were the only two people in the room. I inhaled deeply. Some

roses, the ones you buy cheap from guys on the street, don’t have much scent, but this one did. I

remembered my father, in one of his lucid moments, telling me that smell was the sense most associated

with memory and that whenever he smelled a certain lemony-scented perfume, it reminded him of my

mother (which made me want to either buy a lifetime supply of it or destroy every bottle). I know that, for as long as I live, I’ll associate the scent of roses with him, with Kyle. I was trying to think of something to say, something more than thanks, but he’d already moved away and was talking to, of all people, Kendra

Hilferty, this emo girl from my chem class.

I inhaled again. Probably better to dream.

The rest of the night, I took tickets and picked up discarded cups and tried not to pay attention to Kyle laughing, Kyle talking, Kyle being crowned dance royalty.

I mean, it’s too pathetic to be stalking the popular guy.

But I enjoyed watching him. He was so opposite the way I was, so full of life and energy, and yet, I knew he and I were alike deep down. Deep down, we were both lonely.

He was just better at hiding it.

I took the rose home and pressed it between the pages of Atlas Shrugged, which is the biggest book I own.

Hokey, I know, but I honestly believe that sometimes, there’s more to people than meets the eye.

May 31

He’s gone.

Kyle hasn’t been to school in over a week, not since the night of the dance.

The rumors are all over the place. He got mono. From Sloane. He got a modeling contract in France. He

went to Florida to live with his mom. No, he’s in rehab. And then, he’s going to boarding school next

year. Sloane is shockingly quiet on the subject. In fact, she’s dating someone else.

WHERE IS KYLE??????????

Though I’d rather believe he has mono, rehab is the most persistent rumor. It’s probably true. It’s typical, after all.

There are no heroes in the world, only good-looking vill ains. People at school relish this gossip. On

Kyle, drugs sound glamorous, I guess, like something rock stars do. But I only have to look at my father, emaciated, sick, shaking, willing to do anything for his next fix, to know that ADDICTION IS NOT

SEXY!

I wish him in Florida with his mother instead, and at night, I look at his picture in the yearbook, or I open the pages of Atlas Shrugged, inhale the waning scent of the rose he gave me, and dream of what might

have been.

Stupid, stupid girl.

June 13—A Year Later

I haven’t written in a while, over a year, actually. I guess that’s telling. It’s sad how often I used to write about Kyle Kingsbury, but what else in my life was, or is, interesting?

Still, I like the idea of a journal. It keeps my head straight.

But the sad fact is, I have nothing to write about, nothing except my clichéd crush on a strung out pretty boy.

I suppose I should write about my everyday life—

interesting. That’s what Samuel Pepys did. His journal (circa 1665) is filled with detailed and ultra-

scintil ating accounts of the wine he drank, the cloaks he wore. It’s considered an important primary

source for information regarding life in 17th Century London.

But I doubt anyone will be researching 21st Century Brownsvil e or consult my diary if they are. Still, I’ll try to be better. I need to write. It makes the real world seem far less real.

July 13

In case I was worried about not having enough to write about, I shouldn’t have been. My father always

provides material, sooner or later.

In this case, he’s completely insane!

Usually, I’m pretty good at ignoring noises in the night.

This is an important skil for people who live in New York City and even more so for people whose

fathers are engaged in low-grade criminal activity—particularly if those people need to study. I’ve slept through banging on the door, even gunshots.

But tonight, my father burst into the apartment. He was messed up, babbling about cops who were going to

arrest him, drug dealers, a monster, a freak. His hands were shaking, and his eyes were wide. If he wasn’t high, he needed a fix.

I asked him to go sleep it off. Repeatedly, I asked him.

Tell me in the morning. He wouldn’t leave.

Finally, I got the story (if any of it was even true) out of him.

He was bad in debt. His pusher, a mean mother named Hob, wasn’t taking no for an answer this time.

He’d threatened to hunt me down, to kill me (me!), if Dad didn’t pay him.

“How much do you need?” I reached for my wall et, which I kept in my pocket at all times, figuring this

was just another scam to get drug money from me and too tired to resist.

But he said, “Too much. You don’t have it.” And then, he started to cry. He couldn’t pay. He was freaking out, but finally, he’d come up with a solution.

With surprising clarity, he told me about it. He’d called an old friend, a hitherto completely unknown-to-me friend who owed him a favor. I was surprised he had any favors to call in, but he actually had a lot of details. The friend lived in Brooklyn. He traveled a lot, but he had a son my age, a freakish kid who

needed a companion. I could stay with him until it blew over and it was safe for me to come home.

A freak? Were there even freaks anymore? I asked my dad what he meant by freak, and that’s when the

lucid moment ended. He started describing a creature more animal than man, a wolf-boy with fangs and

claws, hair all over his body. “But he’ll protect you,” he promised.

Yeah, right.

I was pretty sure my dad was delusional or, let’s face it, stoned out of his mind. There’s no such thing as a wolf-boy. Well, not outside of the movies.

“Right. You want me to live with some stranger? What if he . . . attacks me?”

“There’s someone else living there, a housekeeper or something. It’s the only way. Please, Lindy. It’s the only way to save us, um, you.”

At this point, I couldn’t process any more of this, especially not on an hour’s sleep. I told him to go away.

I’d talk to him in the morning.

I’ve been up ever since.

The obvious fact is, my father is kicking me out of the apartment and coming up with some lame story to

hide it.

I should probably be happy he even found me someplace else. Do I need my father? To live? Well, no.

I’ve been making my own money since I was thirteen and got kids at Tuttle to pay me for “helping” them

with papers. At worst, I’ll end up in foster care, which probably won’t be any worse than where I am

now. I certainly don’t need him for emotional support, though I’d miss him. He is my dad.

But there could be real danger. My father’s friends aren’t exactly professors at Columbia. That’s for sure.

We’ve been on the lam before. Once, when I was nine, we hid in Staten Island for almost a year with a

friend of his, and my father never left the house.

My father is never concerned about me or my safety, only his own. And yet, he seemed so afraid just now

that I wonder if he really could be, for once. When I was little, he used to hold my hand when I crossed

the street. He used to kiss my knee when I fell. Maybe it’s like that again.

Doubtful. Would I be any safer with some “friend” my father could produce? Possibly. Once, before my

mom died, my father was a respectable person. Maybe there’s someone from that previous life who still

cares about him, who would take pity on him, take pity on me.

The teenage freak son is a strange detail, strange even for my father. Freak. An odd, obsolete, un-PC

word, a lonely word that sounds like something from the Victorian era. There were news stories about the

man in Indonesia whose skin looked like tree bark, the conjoined twins in Iran, joined at the head. Could he be like that?

It’s intriguing. I’ve always felt like a freak myself. When I went to school in the neighborhood, the kids would stare at me because I was reading, because I cared about school. Now, at Tuttle, I’m freakish for

other reasons.

But what would it be like, to wear my freakishness on the outside, to have it be obvious to the world?

Or is it already?

In Jane Eyre, one of my favorite books, there is a point where Jane realizes that she will never have

freedom (liberty, she calls it, since it’s a Victorian novel), because of her condition of poverty, plainness, and friendlessness. But at least she may have a different kind of servitude. This is what inspires her to leave her position as a teacher at the horrible Lowood Institution and, instead, become a governess. A

new servitude, but one of her own choosing.

I don’t know if what my father says is true, or why my father wants me to go live with this wolf-boy, this freak, but suddenly, I know I won’t run away from it. I know that, like Jane, I will go.

I just have to get something from my father in return.

July 19

It’s happening. I’m going. Today. Maybe I’m crazy to go along with my father. Yet my life up until now

has been so crazy that even craziness seems somehow sane.

I told my father I’d go on one condition. I will go if he goes to rehab.

He was surprisingly agreeable. He said that this experience showed him that he really needed to get help.

He’d hit bottom. Still, I called my sister Sarah and got her to agree that she and her (big) boyfriend would pick him up and take him in. They promised not to take no for an answer.

I didn’t tell her why, that I was going to live with some stranger. She might try to talk me out of it, and I’m determined to go.

So I’m going.

Which, amazingly, probably isn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever done.

July 20

I’m here.

I don’t know what I was expecting, a dungeon, maybe, or a torture chamber, my captor in a hood or one of

those medieval masks, invisible servants or clocks and candlesticks like in the Beauty and the Beast

cartoon.

Maybe.

I got none of it. My new “home” is a normal brownstone in a neighborhood too nice for me to know. No

wolf-boy in sight. Instead, when I got here, the door was opened by a man who said his name was Will.