Beastly (9 page)

He jerked it away. “Please don’t do that.”

“Sorry. I was just trying to help.”

“Don’t grab people. Would you like it if I grabbed you? If you’d like to offer assistance, ask if the person needs it.”

“Okay, okay, sorry.” This was getting off to a great start. But I needed to get along with this guy.

“Do you?”

“Thank you, no. I can manage.”

Using a cane I also hadn’t noticed, he made his way around the sofa and sat. The dog kept glaring at me, like he thought I was some animal that might attack his master. He let out another low growl.

“Does he tell you where to go?” I asked. I wasn’t scared. I knew if the dog bit me, I’d just heal. I leaned down and stared right into the dog’s eyes. It’s okay, I thought. The dog sat, then lay down. He stared at me, but he stopped growling.

“Not really. I find my own way, but if I’m about to walk down a flight of stairs, he stops walking.”

“I never had a dog,” I said, thinking how dumb it sounded after I said it. Poor little deprived New York kid.

“You won’t have this one either. He’s mine.”

“I understand.” Strike two. “Chill.” I sat on the chair opposite Will. The dog kept looking at me, but the look was different, like he was trying to work out whether I was an animal or a man. “What did my father tell you about me?”

“He said you were an invalid who needed home teaching to keep up with your studies. You’re a very serious student, I gather.”

I laughed. “Invalid, huh?” Invalid was right. As in invalid. Not valid. “Did he mention what disease I have?”

Will shifted in his seat. “Actually, no. Was it something you wanted to discuss?” I shook my head before realizing he couldn’t see me. “Something you might want to know. See, the thing is, I’m perfectly healthy. I’m just a freak.”

Will’s eyebrows went up at the word freak, but he didn’t say anything.

“No, really. First off, I have hair all over my body. Thick hair like a dog’s. I also have fangs, and claws. Those are my bad points. The good point is I seem to be made of Teflon. Cut me, and I heal. I could be a superhero except that if I ever tried to save someone from a burning building, they’d take one look at my face and run screaming into the flames.”

I stopped. Will still didn’t answer, just stared at me almost like he could see me better than other people, like he could see what I used to look like.

Finally, he said, “Are you quite finished?”

Quite finished? Who talked like that? “What do you mean?”

“I’m blind, not stupid. You won’t be able to put stuff over on me. I was under the impression…

your father said you wanted a tutor. If that isn’t the case…” He stood.

“No! You don’t get it. I’m not trying to yank your chain. What I’m saying is true.” I looked at the dog. “Pilot knows it. Can’t you tell how freaked out he’s been acting?” I reached out my arm to Will. The dog let out another growl, but I looked into his eyes, and he stopped. “Here. Touch my arm.” I rolled up my shirtsleeve, and Will touched my arm. He recoiled. “That’s your… it’s not a coat you’re wearing or something?”

“Feel it. No seams.” I turned my arm, so he could feel underneath. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.”

“He did have some rather odd… conditions for my employment.”

“Like what?”

“He offered an enormous salary and use of a credit card for all expenses – I can’t say I argued with that. He required me to live here. The salary was paid through a corporation, and I was never to ask who he was or why he’d hired me. I was required to sign a three-year contract, terminable at his will. If I stayed three years, he’d pay off my student loans and send me to a doctoral program. Finally, I had to agree not to tell my story to the media or write a book. I rather assumed you were a movie star.” I laughed at that one. “Did he tell you who he was?”

“A businessman, he said.”

And he didn’t think I’d tell you?

“We’ll talk,” I said. “That is, assuming… do you still want to work here, now that you know I’m not a movie star, that I’m just a freak?”

“Do you wish me to work here?”

“Yes. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to in three months besides doctors and the housekeeper.” Will nodded. “Then I want to work here. I was actually kind of put off when I thought you were a movie star, but I needed the money.” He put his hand out. I took his. “I’m happy to work with you, Kyle.”

“Kyle Kingsbury, son of Rob Kingsbury.” I shook his hand, enjoying his shocked expression. “Did you say my dad gave you a credit card?”

3

You’d have to say Will and I bonded in the next week, over Dad’s credit card. We ordered books first, because I was such a serious student now. Schoolbooks, but novels too, and Braille versions for Will. It was pretty cool watching him read with his hands. We bought furniture and a satellite radio for Will’s room. He tried to say we shouldn’t spend so much, but he didn’t argue too hard.

I’d told Will all about Kendra and the curse.

“Preposterous,” he said. “There’s no such thing as witches. It must be a medical condition.”

“That’s because you can’t see me. If you could, you’d believe in witches.” I told him about how I needed to find true love to break the curse. Even though he said he didn’t, I think he finally sort of believed me.

“I chose a book I think you’ll like.” Will pointed to the table. I picked up the book, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

“Are you crazy? It’s, like, five hundred pages long.”

Will shrugged. “Give it a whirl. It has lots of action. If it turns out you’re not smart enough to read it, we’ll choose something else.”

But I read it. The hours and days just went on and on, so I read. I liked to read in the fifth-floor rooms. There was an old sofa that I’d pulled up to a window. I’d sit for hours, sometimes reading, sometimes watching the streams of people below on the way to the subway station or out shopping, the people my age going to school or skipping. I felt like I knew all of them.

But I also read about Quasimodo, the hunchback, who lived in Notre Dame Cathedral. I knew why Will had suggested the book of course, because Quasimodo was like me, locked away somewhere. And in my fifth-floor room, watching over the city, I felt like him. Quasimodo watched the Parisians and a beautiful gypsy girl, Esmeralda, who danced far below. I watched Brooklyn.

“That author, Victor Hugo, must’ve been a real fun guy,” I told Will in one of our tutoring sessions.

“I think I’d have liked to have him at a party.”

I was being sarcastic. The book was totally depressing, like the author hated people.

“He was subversive, though,” Will said.

“Why? Because he made the priest the bad guy and the ugly guy good?”

“That was part of it. See, you are smart enough to read that long book.”

“It isn’t a hard book.” I knew what Will was trying to do – build me up so I’d try harder. Even so, I felt myself smile. I’d never thought of myself as smart. Some of my teachers had said I was, that I didn’t get good grades because I didn’t “apply myself,” which is this thing teachers say to get you in trouble with your parents. But maybe it was true. I wondered if maybe being ugly made me smarter. Will said that when a person is blind, the other senses – like hearing and smell – grow stronger to compensate.

Could I be getting smarter to compensate for my hideousness?

Usually, I read in the morning, and we talked in the afternoon. Will would call up to me around eleven.

One Saturday, Will didn’t call up. I didn’t notice at first because I was reading an important part of the book, where Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda from execution, then carries her into the cathedral, yelling, “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” But even though Quasimodo rescued Esmeralda, she couldn’t even look at him. He was too ugly.

Talk about depressing! I heard the clock striking noon. I decided to go downstairs.

“Will! Rise and shine! Time to instill knowledge!”

But Magda met me at the third-floor landing. “He is not here, Kyle. He had an appointment, very important. He said tell you take the day off.”

“My whole life’s a day off.”

“He will be back soon.”

I didn’t want to read anymore, so after lunch, I logged on to the Internet. The week before, I’d found this great Web site where you could see a satellite view of the world. So far, I’d found the Empire State Building, Central Park, and the Statue of Liberty. I’d even found my house. How cool would it be to find the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris? I tried New York again, zooming from the Empire State Building to St. Patrick’s. Was Notre Dame as big as St. Patrick’s? I really needed an atlas, and a travel guide. I ordered them online.

Then, since I was online and didn’t have anything to do, I checked out MySpace.com. I’d heard about people in school who hooked up online. Maybe I could meet someone that way, get her to fall in love with me through IM, then sort of gently explain about the whole beast thing later.

I logged on to MySpace and searched for girls. I still had a profile from back when I was Normal Kyle. I’d never tried to meet anyone on MySpace before, never had to. So I added a few more photos, a few more descriptions, and answered all the questions about my interests (hockey), favorite movie (Pride and Prejudice – Sloane had made me watch it, and I hated every minute, but I knew girls went for that stuff), and heroes (my dad, of course – it sounded sensitive). For I’d like to meet, I wrote “my true love” because it was true.

I started searching. There was no category for my age, so I tried ages 18 to 20, since I knew everyone lied about that anyway. I got seventy-five profiles.

I clicked on some. A bunch of them turned out to be pay sex sites. I tried to avoid anything that had the word kinky in it, but finally, I found one that sounded normal. The member name was Shygrrl23, but the profile was anything but.

I’m considered to be a rare type chick. I don’t think there is really anyone out there like me. I’m 5’2” blond and blue-eyed. Well, you see the pics. I love to dance and spend time with my friends. I love people who can keep it real. I love to go to parties too. I go to UCLA, where I’m studying to be an actress. I like having fun and living life to the fullest…

I looked at the mirror. “Show me Shygrrl23,” I told it.

The mirror panned a classroom and settled on a girl – a girl who was clearly not a second over twelve years old. I hit the Back button on the keyboard.

I clicked on another profile, and another. I tried to choose profiles that were in other states, because then I wouldn’t have to meet them too soon. After all, what was I going to say, “I’m the beast with the yellow flower in my lapel”? I had two years to fall in love and make her love me.

“Show me Stardancer112,” I commanded the mirror.

She was in her forties.

For the next three hours, I trawled MySpace and Xanga. Actually trolled would be a more accurate term. The next profiles I looked at turned out to be:

A 40-something housewife who asked for a naked picture

An old guy

A 10-year-old girl

A police officer

All said they were my age and female. I hoped the cop was there trying to catch the other pervs. I typed a warning to the ten-year-old, and she messaged back, yelling that I wasn’t her mother.

Magda came in with the vacuum cleaner.

“Ah, I did not know you were in here, Kyle. Is okay I vacuum in the room?”

“Sure. I’m just on the Internet.” I smiled. “Trying to meet a girl.”

“A girl?” She came closer and looked at the screen. “Ah.” She sort of frowned, and I thought that I wasn’t even sure if she knew what a chat room was, or what the Internet was, for that matter. “Okay, I be very quiet. Thank you.”

I looked around a little longer. There were a few people who seemed normal, but none of them were online. I’d come back later.

Then I spent another half hour Googling words like beast, transformation, spell, curse – you know, just to see if this type of thing had happened to anyone else outside of Grimms’ fairy tales or Shrek. I found the weirdest Web site, run by some guy named Chris Anderson, with all kinds of chats listed, including one about people who’d transformed into other things. It was probably just some teen group, full of the type of people who liked writing Harry Potter fan fiction. Still, I planned to go back there another day.

Finally, I logged off. I’d heard Will come in hours earlier, but he hadn’t come up to talk to me.

“Will, vacation day’s over!” I yelled.

No answer. I checked out the other floors. No Will. Finally, I went back to my own apartment.

“Kyle, is that you?” His voice came from the garden. I hadn’t been there since the first day. It was too depressing to look at the eight-foot wooden fence Dad had put in to keep people from seeing me, so I kept the curtains closed.

But Will was out there. “Little help here, Kyle?”

I stepped outside. Will was surrounded by pots and plants and dirt and shovels. In fact, he was trapped against a wall by a huge bag of dirt.

“Will, you look like hell!” I yelled through the glass door.

“I can’t say how you look,” he said. “But if you look like you sound, you look like a jerk. Please help me.”

I went and helped him lift the bag of soil. It spilled everywhere, mostly on Will. “Sorry.” That’s when I saw he’d been planting rosebushes, dozens of them. Roses in the once empty flowerbeds, roses in pots, and rose vines climbing on trellises. Red, yellow, pink, and, worst of all, white roses that reminded me of what had ended up being the worst night of my life. I didn’t want to look at them, and yet I stepped out farther. I reached out to touch one. I jumped. A thorn. My claws went out.

Like the lion and the mouse, I thought. I plucked the thorn and it came out. The hole sealed up.

“What’s with the roses?” I said.

“I like gardening and the way roses smell. I got tired of you moping around with the curtains drawn.

I thought maybe a garden might cheer things up. I decided to take your advice about spending your dad’s money.”

“How do you know the curtains are closed?”

“A room is cold when it’s all shut up and empty. You haven’t seen sun since I’ve been here.”