Pentimento: a dystopian Beauty and the Beast (16 page)

"It's not me," she said, unable to believe it herself. The happiness numbed her and she couldn't even smile. "I can't believe it."

"We were only paranoid," Colton said, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her closer. Iris stood on her tiptoes and pulled his lips to hers. She needed it now more than ever. Colton kissed her while lifting her up in the air and spinning her around. "I'm sorry I scared you with my stupid interpretations," he said.

Iris sounded like she had hiccups, as Colton lifted her up and down again. "I-I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?" Colton's blue eyes twinkled. "We were wrong. You're not the Bride, and I am not cursed." He waved his eyes toward the sky.

Girls started giggling around them. No one had seen Colton that giggly before.

"And we thought..." Iris hiccupped again. "I was so scared. The first five numbers were just like mine, then..." Iris’s hiccups stopped abruptly and her face went pale. Her eyes screamed for help, as she slammed her chest with her hand.

"What's wrong?" Colton wondered. She was acting weird again all of a sudden.

Iris said nothing. Her mouth was agape, staring at Colton with appalled eyes, her tears surfacing again.

"It's not me, but it's..." she stared back at the class she'd left a while ago. “That's why the numbers were so close!" Iris screamed and ran toward the class, slipping away from Colton's hands. "Oh, my. We weren't totally wrong." She said, on the verge of crying. She ran toward the class, pushing students out of her way. This couldn't be. The closer she got, she heard another girl scream. It was a painful scream. It was the scream of today's Bride: Zoe Peterson.

If Iris had thought that watching a Bride tread to her death was the most horrifying thing in the world, then she was wrong. The most horrifying thing was watching her best friend walk to the Beasts' ship.

Iris stood to the right with the girls, paralyzed with fear. It was a mystery to her how her feet still held her. She felt like a rose torn into pieces. She was nothing but scattered petals in the air. She couldn't feel the ground underneath her, yet she was still standing.

As Zoe stood there, wearing her wedding dress, she looked at the light coming from the ship at the end of the red carpet. Instead of marrying Cody and wearing the dress for him, she wore it for the Beasts. Zoe was right about wanting to get married so soon, Iris thought. Sadly, it wasn't going to ever happen now.

The look Zoe gave Iris was the look of a dead girl staring at another dead girl. Zoe was dying on the inside, because she was sent to the Beasts. Iris, because she couldn't imagine the world without her best friend. And because she couldn't do crap to save her.

It wasn't like Iris didn't try. She had pulled Zoe with her and ran out of class, jumped into Colton's car as he drove away, trying to escape the police, the Council, and the Beasts.

But in a land where its borders were the Ruins, there was no escaping an illusion. Like Colton had said, the Beasts were up there, watching them, mocking them, and taking their girls. Without the slightest reason at all. The world must have been the table they used to play roulette and humans were the scattered little steel balls.

Colton hadn't even made it to the Ruins. They were caught by the police soon before that, crashing Colton's car and wounding him and Iris. It wasn't a surprise when the ambulance people dismissed them both and ran toward Zoe to save her. The Bride had to be saved first, so she'd look good in her wedding to the Beast.

Like all the other girls, Zoe was crying now. Each step she took toward the Ship of Light was a step away from Iris. It was just minutes before Zoe would vanish forever, and never be seen again. Cody and Colton managed to come over and grip Iris tight from both sides, in case she decided to do something crazy. Iris was paralyzed by fear and frustration. Whatever she did, no one was going to back her up. Colton and Cody weren't enough. Her father wasn't enough. The sovereign of the Beast needed an uprising. A great one, probably like the one that presumably happened in the past.

Zoe walked closer to the light, which was nothing but a great darkness. It was all about how you perceive things, Iris reminded herself. All you had to do is choose which side you were on. Man or Beast?

Zoe was going to see the Beasts' Pentimento. She was going to uncover the mystery. Sadly, whoever dug that deep never returned, so at least for now, the mystery would remain.

Why couldn't Iris just run to Zoe and face the Beast? Maybe because Colton and Cody were holding her still. Maybe because she feared the Council would hurt her dad. Maybe because Iris wasn't strong enough to risk being taken. But it wasn't that. It was because Iris believed she was more useful to Zoe staying down here in The Second.

Before Zoe was consumed by the light, she gazed back toward Iris. Like usual, the girls lowered their heads, as if Zoe was an epidemic. The Second was preparing themselves to forget a girl named Zoe existed. Iris stood tall, respecting her friend and nodding at her. Although Cody was already sobbing next to Iris, he still held his head up high. Colton had to play strong to take care of Iris and his brother.

Zoe gazed at Cody, and blew him a kiss from her hand. Nothing else was going to happen between them. Then Zoe mouthed something to Iris. The same painful words Eva mouthed to her before. They were the same words. Ironic how the same words have a whole different impact, depending on whom the speaker is. The first time, Iris was shocked, but didn't truly respond to it. This time coming from Zoe, the mouthed words, “Avenge me,” had an impact like no other.

Iris didn't eat. She didn't comb her hair and left it as stiff as it used to be when she was a kid. She didn't brush her teeth or change her clothes. If she could have taken off all her clothes and walked naked through the streets without embarrassing her dad, she would have done it.

Iris didn't speak to anyone. She had nothing to say, and her words would not have come out as sweet and polite. Her phone was locked. She slept the days away and cried silent tears at night, only getting out of bed to use the restroom. If it weren't for Charles feeding her, tolerating her, she might have starved to death by now.

Charles made sure no one saw her, not even Colton. His daughter needed to grieve, a situation hardly appreciated in The Second, as everyone had plastered happy smiles on their faces. At such a young age, grieving was like cutting through one's flesh with a razor. No human being should be grieving at seventeen. It was too early for such deep cuts.

Each day Iris came out of her room and asked her father if the Beasts had used their horn again. Her father told her “no.” Then she would go back to her room, walking like a living zombie, and saying nothing.

Then one day, she opened the door and walked to her father who'd been reading. For the first time, she didn't ask about the Beasts. She was dressed to go out.

"What do you have in mind, Iris?" Charles asked calmly. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Did they catch the 'Beauty' yet?" she said, her eyes dry, void of moisture or light.

"Obviously not," Charles pointed at her and tried to sound playful.

"Are they still searching for me?"

"Every day," he said. "They never stop talking about the Beauty who gives roses to the Bride's parents. Why are you asking?"

Iris said nothing. She pulled out two roses from under her jacket. Actually, it was Colton's jacket, the one he'd left with her the night they kissed. Although unable to talk to Colton, she loved to feel its warmth on her.

Charles winced at the sight of the red roses. He'd never been a coward, but red roses had become officially illegal, a sign of the uprising. Teens who drew red roses on the walls of The Second were arrested and jailed by the law. Those were the teens who didn't know how to get a real red rose, because they didn't know anything about the Ruins. They only wanted to express their anger towards the Beasts. Iris was boldly holding two roses in her hand in the middle of the room.

"Where did you get those?" Charles said. "You haven't left the house in days."

"I realized I had kept two last roses in a vase under the bed." Iris said. "I hadn't watered them, but still...they refused to die."

"And here I thought you had some perfume sprayed in your room. What are you going to do with these roses, Iris?" Charles tried to choose his words carefully. He was torn between what he'd taught his daughter about the Pentimento, and her own safety she was risking by holding the roses.

"The roses always had a purpose, dad. One purpose." Iris said, her lips pale.

"You know you can't do this anymore," Charles shrugged. He'd taught her to do this, and now he was stopping her. A huge pet peeve of parenthood.

"I need you with me, dad." Iris wasn't bargaining. She had made up her mind in the time she'd spent alone in her room. "I can't do it alone. Please, dad."

"They will catch you, darling," Charles took off his glasses. He only called her “darling” when he needed to ask her favors. This time he was begging her to stay safe and not do it.

"So what? I'm no different than all the other Brides," she shrugged her shoulders.

"You are different. You're special, and ending up hurt by the Beasts won't help anyone."

"I owe this to my best friend, dad," Iris insisted. "You taught me that. You taught me about the Pentimento, that if I dig deep enough, I will eventually see through. You haven't taught me though what happens when I look deep enough and still don't see the truth. What do we do when we scratch the surface of the painting and still don't figure out what it was originally meant to be?"

"I don't know, Iris," Charles shrugged. "Any ideas?"

"We do what we only feel is right, dad. And I feel I need to honor my friend, so I can find a way to live with myself after her."

Charles stopped his car in front of Zoe's parents’ house. Iris walked to the main door with the red rose in her hand. She turned around facing her father, and wrote her words on the snow: Zoe Peterson. You're not forgotten.

Iris stopped for a moment, reading the words she'd just written. She knelt down and signed it: the Beauty.

When standing up again, she read them one more time. She wasn't satisfied. “Beauty” was a term given to her by the Beasts. Standing up to them, she didn't want to use the name they had given her. Iris knelt down again. Wiped the snow clean, and signed:
Iris Charles Beaumont. No Beast's Beauty.

Iris saw her dad fidget in his seat, worried someone would see them. She gave him a thumb’s up, and turned around to ring the bell. Like always, once she pushed the button she would run back to her father's car. At least, this was what Charles was expecting.

Iris rang the bell and couldn't move. She stayed fixed in her place, waiting for Zoe's mother to open the door.

Charles began sweating. His daughter was exposing her cover deliberately.

"Sorry, dad." Iris mumbled, and felt the warm breeze from the house touch her face as Zoe's mother opened the door.

"Iris?" Zoe's mother didn't understand what was going on.

Iris raised the red rose to her. Zoe's mother's eyes widened, with unborn tears forming behind them. "It's you?" she said.

"Zoe deserves to be remembered," Iris said. "I'm not going to hide anymore. I wanted to let you know I'm barely going to live half a life without her next to me." Iris couldn't help it and threw herself in Zoe's mother's arms. The woman embraced her, unable to resist the tears anymore. This was a motherless child and daughterless mother, finding peace in each other's arms. Even Charles couldn't stop the tears from rolling down his cheeks while sitting in the driver’s seat.

"I'm sorry the Beasts will arrest you now." Iris said. "Once they know you took the rose."

"It doesn't matter," the woman said. "Zoe deserves to be remembered. What about you, Iris? What are you going to do?"

"What I had to do from the beginning." Iris wiped her tears away. "Please tell my father I'm sorry too," she whispered, and turned away.

Iris ran into the dark of the streets, in the coldest of nights, away from everyone. It was a surprising move her father couldn't keep up with. She ran and ran, her heart pounding so hard, she thought it'd burst out of her rib cage and color the snow in red. Red as in red roses, the color the Beasts hate the most. Iris still had kept the other red rose in her jacket. Colton's jacket. She knew exactly where she was heading.

Once she slid Colton’s father's card in the slot, the metallic door to the enormous Sinai tower opened. Iris dashed in, running toward the nearest elevator. On her way to it, she pushed the emergency button that would alert all police forces in The Second. It was showtime, but on her own terms.

She jumped into the elevator, pushed the button to the roof, and then picked up her phone. In a flash, she sent a message through all her networks; to Colton and Cody whose networks should spread the word to others too. It was a simple, yet unbelievable message: “I am on top of the Sinai tower.”

She tapped her hands impatiently on the inner doors of the elevator until she reached the top. Stepping out into the cold, the wind slapped hard at her, as if trying to stop her from the insane thing she was about to do.

Iris stood in the middle of the rooftop, staring at the beautiful stars above. She craned her head up, wondering if she could glimpse the Beasts' ships beyond the stars.

"I know you're up there watching us, whoever you are." Iris shouted against the wind. "I know I am not crazy and I need you to respond back to me."

She got no reply but the wind swirling around her like a ghost. In the distance, she could see everyone in The Second waking up. She could hear the faint sound of the approaching police sirens. She'd managed to catch everyone's attention. Things were going as planned, except that no Beasts answered her from above.

"I know you're there," she said one more time, as she put her phone's camera on and connected it to a live feed on the internet, so everyone could see her breaking the rules by standing on top of the Sinai tower and challenging the Beasts to talk back to her. If they were actually up there. If they really existed. If they weren't an illusion. "I, Iris Beaumont, challenge the Beasts to take me as a Bride," she shouted.