Beast (8 page)

Thursday. It's the last class of the day, and all I can think is Jamie, Jamie, Jamie….

“Dylan?”

Except I'm still in English. I look up from doodling
Dr. and Mrs. Ingvarsson
in the margins of my notebook and scribble it out so hard it rips the paper. “Yeah?”

Mrs. Steig waits patiently, but annoyed. “Your thoughts on
The Scarlet Letter
?”

“Which part? The slut-shaming part? The Victorian era masquerading as the Puritans? The familial guilt from Nathaniel Hawthorne for his ancestors being jerks in Salem?”

Mrs. Steig's so sick of me doing this, but she's smiling because she loves me, so I just wait for her to sigh and throw her hands up, and she does. Right on cue. “Have you read the book, or is this tangent time?”

“Yeah, I read it.” In like the eighth grade because I was bored once, but whatever.

“I take it you're not interested in
The Scarlet Letter,
” she says.

I shrug.

Mrs. Steig looks at the clock. Ten minutes before the bell rings. “All right, go ahead.”

“So it's not really about
The Scarlet Letter,
right? Because that book's been beaten to death. We get it. It was amazing at the time, revolutionary, a big slap in the face. Everyone is a hypocrite and no one's better than anyone else, so quit judging, but it was a major coincidence for Hawthorne because it was almost foreshadowing the time to come, both his and in the book, you know?”

She folds her arms and smirks. “How so?”

“It lines up perfectly with the holding country, England, as a last gasp before the Restoration, when everything pulled a one-eighty once Charles the Second came back on the throne,” I say. “Like, we're all talking about Nathaniel Hawthorne using Hester as a metaphor or a trope or an analogy or whatever, but did you know that one of the most prolific and bestselling authors in Britain during Hester's time period, mostly, was a woman named Aphra Behn?”

Mrs. Steig's arms drop. “I've not heard of her. She was more prolific than Shakespeare?”

“No, he was dead by the time she came up,” I say. “But she wrote a lot and made good money for it. She was a legit full-time writer, which is not what you think when you imagine guys in tights and long curly wigs.” The Restoration is one of my favorite time periods. You'd think everyone was all prim and chaste, but they were anything but. “Read her poem ‘The Disappointment' and tell me if Hester wouldn't have been one of Aphra's contemporaries.”

That poem is bold.

A shepherdess is crazy into this shepherd and wants to lose her virginity by banging his brains out. And this poem about a girl wanting to bone sold like hotcakes during the 1600s. It's kind of nuts.

Mrs. Steig gets her phone out and pulls it up. She swizzles her head and shoulders all cheesy-like, fake stage style, and reads in a booming voice:

“ONE Day the
Amorous Lisander,

By an impatient Passion sway'd,

Surpris'd fair
Cloris,
that lov'd Maid,

Who cou'd defend her self no longer ;

All things did with his Love conspire,

The gilded Planet of the Day,

In his gay Chariot, drawn by Fire,

Was now descending to the Sea,

And left no Light to guide the
World,

But what from
Cloris'
brighter Eyes was hurl'd.

In a lone
Thicket,
made for Love,

Silent as yielding Maids Consent,

She with a charming Languishment

Permits his force, yet gently strove ?

Her Hands his
Bosom
softly meet….”

Mrs. Steig stops. She reads far ahead, eyes widening, and puts her phone back in her bag. “Oh my, we can't read this in class.” Now everyone's all writing the name of the poem for later. I grin to myself. If there's one charming thing passed down through time, it's that humans are all a bunch of horny nerds who can't wait to talk about
it.

Wait until they get to the end. The shepherd dude can't seal the deal, and the girl—the girl!—has blue balls. I didn't even know that was possible, but turns out I'm about four hundred years behind the times.

“Well, that's an alley I didn't anticipate getting clubbed in,” Mrs. Steig says. “Where did you learn about Aphra Behn?”

“A podcast.” And then I found a book of her work at Powell's and read that too.

Everyone in class stares at me, but in a good way. They're floored. This girl Bailey and I have a pissing match over grades, and even she crinkles up her nose with admiration.

“Must've been a heck of a podcast,” Mrs. Steig says as the bell rings.

I merge into the flow of traffic in the hall and get carried away to my locker. A note gets dropped in my lap by a cute girl who sprints away so fast, I barely have time to be confused. I think that was JP's newest girlfriend? It's so hard to keep them straight. All the note says is
Adam Michaels?

Shit. I turn the other direction to find the wing where the seniors have their lockers. Everyone in the whole school can't wait until they have the senior wing's because their lockers are painted glossy black and left in the far back of the school where nobody bothers them. I find Adam Michaels crouching in a ball on the linoleum floor and cramming last-minute this and that into his messenger bag.

He peeks at my wheels. “You owe JP,” I say, dropping my voice and giving him a long, hard stare.

“So?” Adam Michaels stands up, and all six feet, two hundred whatever pounds of him looms over me. Well, this has never happened before. How curious. Today of all days, I have to be in this chair?

I stand up and now I'm the one looking down at him. Two can play at this game.

Adam Michaels gathers up the last of his things and zips out of reach on a pair of fleet feet. Frigging Mercury over here. “What's a cripple like you gonna do about it?” he says, leaving me in the hallway like a skid mark on a fresh pair of tighty-whiteys.

“Shit,” I mutter to myself. Stupid chair. Stupid JP.

I'm not chasing after him, the hell with that.

I sit back down with a plop and hope no one saw. Then it's like…Dammit. Now I feel obligated to beat the ever-loving shit out of him just to keep my edge.

Had a similar incident last year, but it didn't end well for that guy. There was this junior who wanted a sweet set of rims that looked like razor wire for his Toyota Camry, but he didn't want to wait until Christmas (because let's be honest, Jesus, Santa, and the Easter Bunny would laugh their asses off with that one). So JP gave him the money. Unfortunately, the guy thought he could blow off repaying some scrawny freshman with a dewy pout and a fat wallet. I proved that junior wrong.

Haven't punched anyone since that guy, though. Just…because. Seeing him down on the ground and rolling around, holding his face. I don't know. Wasn't the first time I laid someone out, but it was different. I broke his nose and cheekbone with one punch. I really hurt him. It scared me. Sat in my gut like an axe left in a tree.

I asked my dad about it, silently and in my head.
Was it right? Was it okay?
I know whenever Dad went into a bar, he'd scan the room for the drunkest guy because it was only a matter of time before some dumbass wanted to prove his machismo and take it outside. My mom told me that story when she tried to prepare me for what my size could bring. He'd tower over the entire room, sizing up the crowd, and she'd always get up and kneel on a bar stool and ask him, “What are you looking for?”

And he'd say, “The biggest idiot.”

My dad did it—he punched other people. So it must be okay because that's what I'm doing, punching idiots.

Except I don't want to get into it with Adam Michaels. But I fear I will, and now I'm wondering, What does it mean? Is this just leveling up? Maybe this is how it's supposed to go.

This is like having the world's strongest magnets inside, pushing against each other. Punch, annihilate, crush bones. No, don't: let it go, make peace. Wipe the floor with his face; you can't let someone disrespect you like that. Laugh it off, who cares, let bygones be bygones. Push, pull. I want both, I want neither.

Maybe if I put Adam Michaels in a coma, I'll never have to do this for JP again. My reputation will speak for me.

It's an appealing thought.

Who knows what Adam wanted: headphones? New Jordans? Like I said, none of my business. I don't care. Besides, who cares about Adam Michaels when Jamie's on my mind? She's always on my mind, it just depends on the corner.

I hear a voice call my name.

“Dylan!” My name comes at me. “Dylan! A word, please! Don't go home yet!”

I am not in the mood for any more delays. “Hey, Coach Fowler.”

He jogs down the hall, his silver whistle bobbing all over the place. Dignity, my man, you lost it when you started harassing me to play a sport I want no association with. Panting, he arrives and lays a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I know we've chatted before…,” he begins.

“Yeah, and my leg's still broken.”

“But it won't be next year!” he says. “We could really use you. It would be a great help to the school if we had you on the team.”

“You know the farthest I got was Pop Warner when I was ten.”

He throws his hands up. “I don't care! I'll take you under my wing, give you a recommendation to any school you want. Heck, I'll even drive you to tour the colleges!”

“I already said no.” Go Team Brain.

“If you're worried about being behind, you've got plenty of time to learn.”

It's not hard to learn how to be a brick wall. “Once again, not interested.”

“Dylan, please…” He leans in and whispers, “Think of the girls!”

I grin. “Already got one,” I say, turning my wheels to go. “Later, Coach.”

Leaving him hanging in the hall was good, but even better? Going to see Jamie and get more. More bus rides and more five good things about her and just plain
more
of everything. I want more. We've only seen each other once in a room full of nutters—but now I'm the one feeling something crazy. I feel hope.

Mom picks me up and starts lecturing as soon as my seat belt buckles. “No running off today. You say hello to that girl and have a nice visit, but you stay at the hospital, understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes,” she demands.

Jeezus. “Yes.”

She rambles on about therapy and how worried she is, blah blah blah. There's no convincing her I am fine and do not need therapy, so I nod my head to the beat. Yes, I'll be there when you pick me up. Yes, I'll listen to the doctor. Yes, I'll participate. But the whole time my heart is thumping Ja-mie, Ja-mie, Ja-mie, Ja-mie….

We slow down in front of the entrance and she helps me unload. Mom hands me my bag and looks me dead in the eye. “You'll be here waiting for me, when?”

“Ninety minutes from now.”

She smothers me in a big hug. “I love you, sweetie. Have a good session. Be strong.”

Inside the lobby, I roll toward our dismal room and wonder if she'll be there early, like me. “Hey,” she says from behind.

I spin around. It's her.

Jamie leans against a metal fire extinguisher cubby. “Want to get out of here and do something horrible?”

“Yes, immediately.”

Ten minutes later we're across the street at a little park where tiny kids take turns falling off a slide onto a squishy sponge disguised as grass. Moms pretending not to check their phones while they push their tots on the swings. I wonder if they have actual things to check or if they're just bored. The kids don't care. They swing and jump and play under the drifting leaves among the last rays of afternoon light.

It's not like Jamie and I want to be here with all these moms, but the park is close enough that I can be back at the hospital in ninety minutes. We meander to nowhere in particular and end up under an old dome that's been repurposed into a rotunda. She holds on to a wrought iron pole and lets gravity swing her down to the stone step below with a plop.

“I just didn't want to be there, you know?” she says. “I'm tired of it. The drivel.”

“I hear you.” It's crisp without the threat of rain, and I lift my face to the sun. My eyes might be closed, but I can see her clearly through the blistering red and yellow leaves. Jamie stands in my mind like a figure cut from different layers of stone. Strong and unexpected. As nervous as I am to be here, and I am beyond nervous, I'm happy.

I hope she is too.

Jamie gets up and takes some scattered pictures of the park. “I decided I don't need therapy anymore,” she announces.

“Yeah? Why's that?”

She shrugs. “Because I'm the most normal person I know.”

“I don't think I need it either. Big waste of time.”

“Hooray for us, we're cured.”

“I'd rather be here.”

She shuffles lightly with laughter. “Me too.”

Jamie's leaning on a pole and watching the kids play. Not taking pictures, but hugging the camera like she's wistful. Pining. “Penny for your thoughts,” I say.

“Cheapskate.” She grins. “I was just thinking about what it was like when I was little. Like, I knew exactly what I wanted to be, but I didn't know how to get there.”

“What did you want to be?”

She looks me right in the eye. “I think I wanted to be a mommy, but I didn't understand it yet. Does that make sense?”

“Uh…” I glance at the kids and then back to her. “So have some babies ten years from now when you're ancient, like almost thirty. Not that hard.”

“For me it is,” she says. “I can't have kids.”

The diabetes. I've heard about this. My mom always cries at
Steel Magnolias.
“Adoption. Surrogacy. There's a million ways around it; you can still be a mom.”

“I know, I know.” Jamie swings her camera to the trees and takes some shots of dappled sunlight and listing leaves. “And I will be. Just adjusting to the idea now.” She stops shooting long enough to send me a small smile. “You don't think it's weird I want to be a mom?”

“No.” I shake my head. “Why would I? Don't lots of girls want to be moms?”

She sighs, her smile curling like an idle leaf. Carefree. “I like being out with you.”

Uh, duh, being at the park on one of the most glorious days of the year with her is amazing. “I like being out with you too.”

“This is why you're so cool, Dylan, I'm telling you. Points for humanity right here.”

“Can I cash in my points and ask you something?”

Jamie shifts and stands straight. “Okay.”

“It's something I've been dying to know.”

Her spine stiffens. “Go ahead.”

“The daisies,” I say. I was too mortified to mention them before. It'd be like I would go to text
so those daisies, huh? coolest flowers ever!
and it felt so stupid, I just deleted it and talked about favorite movies, music, books…everything but daisies.

“Oh my god, the daisies! I forgot all about them!”

“Well, I didn't.”

“Sorry,” she quickly says. “I didn't mean it like that.”

“Fine. How did you know I had surgery?”

“I have eyes everywhere.”

“Can't you just tell me?” JP says girls play games. This must be one of them.

“I'm at the hospital like a billion times a week. I know people.”

“But how did you find me?”

“It's embarrassing.” Jamie's fingers sweep the side of her face, but they're jumpy and she ends up tugging on her earring like it's an anchor. “But I might have told a certain person who works at the food court next to the orthopedic suites about a cup of coffee I bought for a guy on the bus. And we might have chatted at length about it. And she might have seen or heard about someone matching your description being wheeled into surgery. And she might have violated all the HIPAA confidentiality laws by telling me this, so don't breathe a word to anyone. I don't want her to get fired.”

“You talked to someone about me?”

Jamie aims her camera at her face and grimaces a hideous shape with her mouth, pulling it down at the corners and grinding her teeth so they buck as the button goes click-click-click. She cracks one awful face after another, wincing sneers and scowling underbites. It looks like someone's branding her with a red-hot tire iron. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“Self-portraits,” she says.

“Why are you screwing up your face like that?”

“Because it's how I feel right now.”

She goes to make another monstrous face and I push the camera down. “Stop.”

“Excuse me?” She whisks the camera away.

Her stare makes me feel like I've been dipped in boiling water. Stripped and raw. “I don't want to see you like that.”

“What if it's the true me? Can you handle it?”

I blink. Maybe that's Jamie's beast bubbling up. “Yes. I can.”

She puts the camera down and scrolls through her recent photos, deleting some and keeping others.

“Why are you at the hospital so much?” I ask.

“I'll tell you if you tell me,” she says, not looking up.

“Deal.”

“Therapy.” Jamie sinks down next to me. “I'm in so much therapy, sometimes I don't know where my mind is,” she says. “Family therapy, individual therapy, group therapy, it's endless.”

“Why so much?”

“My parents are ‘afraid' for me,” she says, air quotes and all. “There was an incident at my old school. I took some things out on myself. They panicked. Fast-forward to now: my mom says it's all part of the healing process.”

“An incident?”

“I got beat up, okay?”

“One of the mean girls?”

“No. It was a guy.”

I'm furious. “A guy beat you up? Are you shitting me? What piece of scum would do that to a girl?”

“Points!” She throws some more my way.

“Who is he?” I growl. I want to know.

“So chivalrous.” Jamie shines at the thought. “But yeah, that happened and then I got busted for doing something stupid that I don't want to talk about. Your turn.”

“Something stupid?”

“That I don't want to talk about. Your turn.”

My turn. “I fell off a roof.”

“Fell or jumped?”

There's really not a verb for what happened. I confusajumplefell. My mouth wants to clarify with a flurry of words, but it opts for only one. “Fell.”

“That's it? That's all it took to get you into group?”

“That's it.”

“Well, that's a bit overzealous.”

“Right?” I ask.

Whatever I had left of my nerves disappears. Vanishes. I'm with Jamie and Jamie's with me, and it's like the jumping beans in my gut have been drugged.

She springs up and tries to climb the railing of the bandstand.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to get a big shot of the park,” she says. “The light's really good.”

“How high do you want to get?” I get out of the wheelchair and hop over to her.

“What do you mean?”

Bending down, I hold out my hand for her to step onto. “I'll lift you up.”

“I don't want to hurt you,” she says.

“You won't.”

She lightly steps with the ball of her foot into my open palm. “I hope you realize how much I'm trusting you. With everything.”

“I won't let anything bad happen. I promise.”

“Ready.” Jamie holds her camera in one hand and steadies herself against the pole with the other.

I plant my left foot and raise her up, nice and steady.

“Holy crap! Holy crap!” she yelps. “You're doing it with one hand?”

The sun blankets her hair with a yellow glow and casts her face in shadow. She's so high above me. So slight, I could do this for hours. I feel her weight shift in my hand, like a broom you guide so it stays straight. “Don't worry,” I say, not looking up her skirt. Even though I want to. “I'll catch you if you fall. Take your shot.”

Her fingers balance against the dome, testing her center. Jamie's stomach tightens and sends vibrations all the way down into mine. I got her. She will not drop. There's a release in her feet after she takes her pictures, and I make sure she's holding on to the rotunda. I hope she got what she needed.

“One last thing,” she says.

I look up.

The camera is pointed down at me. “Can I?” she asks. “Is it okay? This is too fantastic to miss.”

One flop of my wrist and she could be on the grass, but that snap reaction is gone. I don't feel like hiding. Not with her. “Okay,” I tell Jamie, half expecting each click of the shutter to fall like drops of acid, but they don't. It's okay.

I gently lower her to the ground, where she jumps off with a tiny leap. “That was amazing,” she says in a rush.

I duck my head. “Aw.”

“No, it really was—that was incredible. I don't know anyone in the entire world who can do that. It was like…flying!”

“I could really launch you if you wanted.”

“No doubt—you're crazy strong. Like, insanely strong. I weigh way over a hundred pounds and you're just like, boop, here, let me put you eight feet straight up in the air, like it's nothing. Mad strong.”

My mouth presses shut. “I know,” I finally say.

“It's a good thing!”

I realize this is the first time we're standing together. I haven't been in the wheelchair for a while now, and she's looking up at me for once. She's talking and I can actually hear what she's saying. I grin. It's a revelation. Here's to the tall girls. “Today, it's a good thing.”

“Be proud.”

In a new way, I am. “Thanks.”

My chair looks rigid and miserable. Let it stay by the steps; I want to be free. I relax onto the grass. It's damp and clammy. Jamie sits down next to me, unasked. “I set the ringer on my phone.”

“To do what?”

“So we get you back to the hospital,” she says. “In case we lose all track of time.”

I go to kiss her. “Don't.” She stops me.

“What's wrong?”

“Do you really want to do this?”

“Jamie, I'm so into you.” I'm nervous, telling her that, but her smile is so big I know it's okay.

“Points, points, points.” She leans in, lightly pressing her lips to mine.

I'm light-headed. We kiss, but it's stubborn. Each heartbeat grows more scattered and clueless than the last. We try too hard to be every movie we've ever seen, and it's awful. She angles her head, I do the same, but it's the wrong side, and we buck. I'd laugh, but I'm too embarrassed. I've read how many books and seen how many movies, and this is putting study into practice? I feel like a fraud.

There's a wall of gritted teeth keeping me out. It's like she's terrified. I am too, because this is my first real kiss. This one actually counts and I want it to be good. Scratch that: I want it to be amazing. I want this day to never end.

But she's not there. I pull away. “You okay?”

Her eyes are clenched shut. “No. Can we stop?”

My insides collapse. The cliff slides into the ocean.

“I'm scared,” she whispers.

It's so unfair—I know what her lip gloss tastes like now. Pineapple.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Jamie opens her eyes. Her hand is soft as it touches my cheek. “No,” she says firmly. “You're wonderful.”

Warmth creeps up my spine and floods my chest. Another person, who's not my mom or another blood relative, thinks I'm wonderful. “We don't have to do anything, if you don't want to.”

Her head plunks against my chest. “Thank you,” she murmurs.

We'll just pretend it never happened. I reach for her camera and place it in her lap. “Here. Take some pictures.”

She pushes it to the side. “The only subject I want to capture is off limits.”

I reach for the camera, take off the lens cap, and turn it on. The SLR chatters itself digitally awake, flinging the lens in and out with a jolt. I hand it to Jamie. “Knock yourself out.”

“Really?”

I take a deep breath. “Really.”

She aims the camera at me. My face twitches into a smile. It feels worse than getting my back waxed, but I want to do it. For her.

“Be natural,” she says, her finger on the button. “Pretend I'm not here.”

“Impossible.”

“All right, then think of something that makes you happy.”

I think of her and turn red. She fires a million shots, and I dunk myself backward on the grass to soak up the sun. Jamie hovers and slinks up alongside me, snapping shots again and again. There's no place I'd rather be. There's nothing I'd rather be doing. In the distance little kids squeal and play, and I feel like one of them.

That magical time when you were really, really small and all that mattered was finding an open swing. Back when you let go and ran however the hell you wanted to. Before other people's opinions mattered. Being with Jamie feels like that. Free and good. I didn't know one person could make you a better version of yourself. And the sun is shining down and saying,
welcome to the world, dummy.
Tale as old as time.