Summary: An unattractive seventeen-year-old who has a beautiful singing voice undergoes a physical transformation before performing in a singing competition with her choir in Switzerland, where she meets a boy with troubling secrets, and they fall in love.

eISBN : 978-1-101-42752-1

[1. Secrets—Fiction. 2. Singing—Fiction 3. Beauty, Personal—Fiction. 4. Love—Fiction.
5. Sick—Fiction.] I. Title
PZ7.M82924 Si 2010
[Fic] 22

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For Matt,
who left us too soon.

prologue

Damn, she’s ugly.

My bio-dad’s first words when he saw me. It’s my only image of him. A shadowy figure bending over Mom wearing a hospital gown, holding a flannel-wrapped bundle in her arms.

Damn, she’s ugly, Tara. What did you do?

Like she ate or drank something strange that made me come out red and pimply with a purple blotch on my forehead. No hair. Cone head from the delivery. My baby face screwed up and screaming at him.

Mom didn’t hate him enough to actually tell me that story. She doesn’t talk about him—not to me. He played in a rock band. Not a big one. That’s all I know. I’ve seen the picture, though. It’s in our family album with the rest of my baby pictures. The only one that survived with him in it. But Mom did hate him enough to tell that story over and over to his sister, her best friend since high school, every time his name resurfaced between them.

It’s my first clear memory. Stacking Cool Whip bowls and margarine containers on the kitchen floor, listening to Mom talk on the phone, tuning into the quiet intensity of her voice.

“
Damn, she’s ugly.
Our beautiful baby. That’s all he had to say.”

I was her beautiful baby. She called me that all the time.

Beautiful? Now I knew the truth. I was ugly.
Damn ugly.
No wonder Dad took off. Never looked back. Not at his ugly daughter making a fairy-tale tower from white and yellow plastic bowls, singing the first song she ever wrote, quietly to herself.

Da-amn ugly, da-amn ugly.

At least I can sing. Got that from my mom’s side. I may not look like a songbird—more like a song stork—but if you close your eyes, it’s beautiful.

chapter 1

THE OFFERING

Crap. There’s a naked freshman chained to my locker.

No. Not naked. Briefs. Not a good look, kid. Spindly white legs, wimpy chest, shaking arms. Black socks. Maybe his mom didn’t do the laundry all spring break, and that’s all he’s got today.

A bike chain encased in lime-green plastic goes through my locker’s handle down the poor kid’s underwear and out a leg, loops up, locked tight. He could escape if he wanted to streak.

Sniggering behind me. I don’t turn. That’s what they want. The sound multiplies. Amplifies. Magnifies into an audience.

I didn’t see it coming while I slumped into the hall traffic, sinking lower into my baggy sweatshirt and loose Levi’s, my eyes tracing the regular lines in the floor tiles, as I hid behind my long brown frizzed-out mane, face rigid just in case.

My progress was strangely quiet. No guys darting in front of me telling me to “get my effing ugly face” out of their way. No one shouting, “Take cover. The Beast is loose.” No dying animal moans echoing off the lockers as I walked by. Only silence. Deadly silence. I thought I’d escaped this morning. I should have known. The hunters are on the attack.

But I’m not the only one they attacked this time. I focus on the trembling kid. “Did they hurt you?” I accidentally brush his arm.

He jerks back, stares at the spot I touched like it will burst into flames or harden to stone and turn to dust. Can’t blame him. I’m Beth the Beast. Too tall to ever stand straight. Bony body. Face full of zits. Bug eyes magnified by industrial-strength glasses. The braces have been off for three years, but no one sees my straight, white teeth. Just fangs, long yellow ones. Dripping blood.

“They said”—the kid shudders and swallows hard—“to tell you I’m the offering.”

They.
We both know who
they
are. Colby Peart, Travis Steele, Kurt Marks. The Horsemen. Aren’t there supposed to be four? And I think that’s biblical. Ironic. Nothing biblical about Colby and his senior ultra-jock following who hold Port High School in their grasp. Apocalyptic? That works. But the end of their reign approaches. Seniors graduate. Unless by some sick shake of fate’s dice they fail, next year this place will be liberated. The Horsemen will ride off into the sunset. I hope warriors hiding behind the hills get them and tear them to pieces.

The kid’s talking again. The press behind me seethes in close enough to hear. “They said the Bea—you—require a sacrifice.” He shudders again and looks down at the floor. “Every full moon.”

The crowd behind us roars. Laughter is supposed to be healthy, uplifting. Not in Port, Michigan.

“It’s okay.” I restrain myself from patting his shoulder. “We’ll get Mr. Finnley to bring his bolt cutters.”

The kid won’t shut up. His head comes back up, and he grimaces at me. “They said you’d drag me into your lair—”

More laughter.

Heat pours into my face, and I mumble, “I don’t eat freshmen for breakfast.”

“Eat me?” Confusion knits the kid’s brows together. “That’s not what they said you’d do.”

Riot levels break out behind us. It sounds like half the school has crammed into the hall.

I don’t turn and look. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Can you knock me out first?”

The laughter, mocking and harsh, bounces back and forth across the hall, off the metal locker stacks.

This kid must have swallowed every word of the Beast legend. I’m a giant. I’m hideous. But a crazed female rapist preying on skinny freshmen?

I hold up my hands and back off. “They got you, okay.” My eyes sting. They got me, too. “You’re safe.” I turn and try to push through the wall of unyielding bodies to find the custodian. My eyes are blurry. Crap.

Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it. “Excuse me. Please.” The surging wall of cackling bodies solidifies.

Then I see Mr. Finnley’s head. Scott’s there, too—leading him through the crowd. I swallow hard.

“Sorry, Beth.” Scott bites his lip. “I wanted to get this cleaned up before you got here—but the kid wouldn’t leave his whities.”

“That’s enough, people. Don’t you have classes to go to?” Mr. Finnley glares, and the masses scuttle off back to the cracks and drains they came from. The Finnster shakes his head and gets busy cutting the chain. “I’ll have to report this.”

That’s all I need. Another session in the office. Questions I can’t answer. “Who did this?” Silence. “Who do you think did this?” Who do
you
think did this? We all know. Colby and his clones are behind everything nasty that goes on here. Nobody names them. We have another assembly about bullying. Nothing changes.

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