Beastly

by Laura Belle Peters

  To my ARC readers – still the best!

  Copyright © 2016 by Laura Belle Peters

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or other fictional creations, is purely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America

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  Every single word was being drawn out of me like torture. There were days that it didn’t seem worth it to finish this stupid degree, to try to get out of my father’s house. I should just stay where I knew the rules.

  Every time I tried to move in a different world, to escape the poverty I faced without a degree or friends, I got burned.

  What was the point of finishing this essay, anyway? It was going to get sent back, maybe with a D, maybe with a pleasant note about the writing center on campus, mostly unread. Professors told me to my face that my writing was so bad that they didn’t bother untangling it to figure out my arguments.

  All they did was get far enough in to decide that there was no way they could give me a passing grade.

  One particularly charming and tactful man asked me how I got into college anyways.

  I wasn’t cut out for college.

  I was totally, totally doomed.

  "It’s this, or stay with the assholes around here," I told myself. I sighed and glumly playing with the duct tape holding the case of my laptop together. There was a corner coming up, and I’d gotten a bad habit of pulling it up and sticking it back down, over and over. Now it would hardly stick at all.

  College, or my father. That meant that there was no choice at all.

  I heard a door slam in the front of the house.

  I flinched.

  I needed that reminder, though, apparently, because I found myself quickly pounding out an entire paragraph.

  It was… It seemed okay to me, but I doubted that it would so much as scrape a C- even if this new professor was one of the nice ones.

  Heavy feet stomped up the stairs and past my door.

  I tasted blood, biting my cheek way too hard. Fuck. This was bad. He was back way too early. If he didn’t want to see me, though, it might be okay.

  Five words.

  I was so, so doomed.

  It wasn’t even worth bothering to try to keep writing. I’d already learned that any essay I wrote with my father in the house would get an F, full stop. Incoherent and rambling.

  I switched to email. Nothing new. I still hadn’t answered the last one from my professor. What the hell could I say, anyways? "No, see, I can’t go to the writing center. I’m only allowed on campus for class. If I linger where there are people my age, I knew that I would face my father's wrath."

  They'd either think I was crazy or report it to the cops, and either way, I was... doomed.

  Besides, I always looked shabby. My father only let me buy clothing once or twice a year. He'd drop me off at Goodwill with twenty bucks and ten minutes. I mended and patched what I could, but... I didn't look good any more.

  When I was under eighteen, he made sure I had plenty of nice clothing and paid for me to keep my hair cut.

  After it stopped being against the law not to give me clothes, he stopped.

  Fuck.

  There was no point in thinking about that. I needed to get over it someday. Find a way to write better. I had enough time, most days, to finish my work, but not a lot of extra to study the finer points of English. I had tried watching some movies on YouTube, but they didn't help.

  I shut the laptop and pushed away from my desk, careful to mind the wobbly leg of my chair. No point to working anymore. Might as well do something I enjoyed.

  Sprawling on the comforter of my bed, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and tapped my reading app, which opened the last book I’d been reading where I left off. I scrolled a few pages back, trying to catch up and make sure I didn’t miss a single word.

  Reading when I fell asleep was wonderful – hell, it was the only way I could fall asleep – but it meant that sometimes I missed parts.

  I settled in to the Romance. My favorites were the Westerns, cowboys and mail-order brides, but I’d read just about anything.

  The front door slammed again, and I held my breath, waiting. I hadn’t heard feet go past my door. Another slam. A shriek. Small feet pounding up the stairs. I let out the breath.

  A few seconds later, my door was flung open and two little girls ran into my room, leaping onto my bed with all the fervor of attacking predators. “Oof! Where did these elephants come from? I know they couldn’t be two little girls. Little girls knock when they want to go in someone else’s room, only elephants are big and loud and rude.”

  “Daddy’s loud too,” Karla said. “Stomp, stomp, stomp. He never takes off his shoes!”

  “Keep your voice down,” I said. “Daddy can do what he wants.”

  “That’s right,” a deep voice said from my doorway. All three of us on the bed were startled. I held my sisters closer for a split second before forcing myself to let go. They squirmed out of my hold and ran for the doorway, flinging their arms around our father with shrieks of glee. “Hah! Daddy isn’t always loud, is he? Daddy can be sneaky.”

  He met my eyes over their heads, and I flinched away.

  They moved in a laughing mass to the kitchen, radiating joy at their togetherness.

  I counted to ten before I followed.

  When I hit the living room, I blinked. “Oh, hello, Kandy,” I said, trying to sound pleasant.

  “You don’t need to bother to pretend to be pleased. You don’t get a say in whether or not I’m here. Your father and I are trying to work things out for the sake of the girls. He suggested I stay for dinner,” she said. “We’re not moving back in yet, but I hope we will.”

  I pasted a weak smile on my face. “That’s great,” I said. “The house is lonely without you. All of you.”

  She fished a cigarette out of her purse and rolled her eyes.

  “You’re a worse liar than your father,” she said, lighting the cigarette and holding it to her lips. I wanted to shake her. She thought she was so good at reading people, so good at understanding the way the world worked.

  My father was an amazing liar.

  At his call, we both headed into the big open kitchen, gravitating towards the warmth and light of the two little girls seated around the table.

  The other adults ignored me until the end of the meal, which suited me fine. I exchanged smiles with my sisters, who chattered on and on, all of us listening patiently.

  “How’s your essay going?” My father asked me as he passed the last of the mashed potatoes to Karla, the picture of concerned fatherhood.

  “Okay,” I said. I thought about adding something, maybe that’s what he wanted me to do. Talk about how wonderful college was, or how terrible it was?

  I’d paused too long.

  “Girls,” my stepmother said, “you’re not going to waste your time with college, right? Look how hard Tabitha is working, and she’s not even passing. She’s wasting her time and her daddy’s money. She’s not even grateful.”

  I bit my cheek again, the familiar tang of blood filling my mouth as I tried to keep silent, staring at my empty plate.

  “Now, Kandy,” my father said, an indulgent smile not quite warming his eyes, “she’s passing. Barely. Some people just need a little more time.”

  I swallowed. The shame rose up in me and burned me from the inside out.

  “I’m
sorry,” I whispered. “I am trying, I really am.”

  At least now I knew what image he wanted me to present. I could work with that. Eyes down low. Showing the shame and misery I felt, instead of hiding it.

  “I need you to pull yourself together,” he said. “Is there anything else you can do to make better grades?”

  I saw my chance, and I took it.

  I shrugged a little, then bit my lip and turned my eyes, wide and hopeful, up to meet my father’s cold eyes at the head of the table.

  “There’s a tutoring center,” I said. “On campus. One of my professors recommended it.”

  He winked at the little girls, sitting across the table from me. “And how much does it cost?” he asked, making a big show of pulling his wallet out of his back pocket, wrestling it free of his jeans while the little girls giggled and Kandy smiled indulgently.

  “Um, it’s free, actually,” I almost whispered.

  I didn’t look at Kandy, or my father.

  “Free?” he asked. “Why in tarnation haven’t you been going, then?”

  “I feel bad, you having to give me a ride to campus. I didn’t want you to have to wait around any longer,” I told my plate.

  “Now, it’s more of a waste of my time if you’re not making good grades, right?” he asked.

  I nodded, slightly. The tiniest movement of my head.

  I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, what he was trying to get me to admit to. I took a small, shaking breath.

  “Why don’t I drop you off before work on Tuesdays, and pick you up when I’m all finished?” he asked. “That will give you a full day once a week. How does that sound?”

  Too good to be true. What would I have to give up?

  “That would be wonderful, thank you, sir,” I said.

  “Call me Daddy,” he said.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” I repeated, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.

  “That will work out perfectly,” he said. “I can pick you up after your last class and you can head to the last call or two with me. Perfect. Maybe you can give me a hand while you’re at it, do some honest work.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “Daddy.”

  “The lights never go off for an electrician,” he said, including the rest of the table in the joke with a broad wink. Kandy laughed, and the girls giggled because their parents did.

  I couldn’t. I could hardly move. He wanted me to go out with him again.

  He must be running out of money, if he wanted to trade me again.

  “Speaking of which,” he said, pulling out his cell phone, “I promised not to check on work stuff at dinner, but dinner’s over, right? It looks like I have to run out. Very fast. I’ll be back in an hour or so, hopefully less.”

  “Daddy, we just got here,” Krystal whined. “I hate it when you have to go to work.”

  She scowled and kicked the leg of the table.

  “I know,” he said, as though it just occurred to him, “I’ll bring all you a treat. All of you. What would you like, Krystal?”

  “Butterfingers,” she shouted, glee all over her face.

  “Ice cream!” Karla yelled, not waiting to be asked.

  “Just something small for me,” Kandy said. “Goes right to my hips, and you wouldn’t want that.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “My Kandy is plenty sweet enough without another drop of sugar. I’ll see if I can talk you into something later. Or maybe out of something.”

  I smiled at my sisters, basking in their enthusiasm, ignoring the flirting.

  “Tabitha?” he asked.

  They all looked at me, expectant.

  “I don’t want anything, thank you,” I said.

  “Your father is being nice to you,” Kandy said. “It’s rude to refuse. You don’t need to be so sullen all the time.”

  “I appreciate it, I do,” I said, hunching my shoulders. “I just… I don’t know what I want. Hard to choose.”

  “Why don’t I surprise you, sweetie?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Can we go watch Sophia?” Karla asked.

  Nothing on this earth made my little sisters quite as happy as watching Sophia the First. The cartoon princess was something that they could both agree on. It was a little young for Krystal, but both girls had fun running around the house pretending that they were princesses.

  No one felt like turning them down. The one thing we all agreed on was making the girls happy, even if we had different reasons.

  Kandy and I sat on opposite sides of the couch, the girls between us. My father headed out, and I kept my mouth shut.

  While we watched, Karla snuggled into my side, leaning on me and looking up at me whenever she wanted to point something out, something that I just HAD to see, right away.

  Because she was six, it was pretty often. She wanted to share each and every moment of the stupid show. Krystal tried to do the same thing with her mother, but Kandy mostly ignored her in favor of her phone. I tried not to glare at the woman. Kandy was a pretty good mother. She had a job, a life of her own, and sometimes she wanted a few minutes where she wasn’t talking to her kids.

  I tried to pretend that I couldn’t smell the stale cigarette smell that clung to Karla’s hair. When they’d lived with us, at least Kandy hadn’t smoked in the house.

  For once, it didn’t take my father long.

  That… wasn’t comforting.

  He’d been out of money for a while. I mean, he kept the lights on and food on the table, at least on the weekends the girls visited, he was very strict about that, but nothing left over. He didn’t have me clean fast food wrappers out of his car, I didn’t sweep cigar ashes off the back porch. Those were last on his list of indulgences, and I hadn’t seen them in weeks.

  Not that it made any difference to me.

  My life was my life, never changing.

  He burst through the door in an explosion of energy that the other three loved, all jumping up to crowd him, hug him, bask in his energy and charm. I wished I could do the same, but… I was tired. Just… tired. I couldn’t seem to muster up the energy that it took to get up and pretend.

  “I didn’t want to buy the whole store, so…” he hesitated, and the girls watched with wide eyes as he plunged his hand into the plastic grocery bag. “I bought Butterfinger ice cream bars. How does that sound? Something for everyone?”

  Karla and Krystal ran to the kitchen, their blonde hair flying behind them. Krystal, older, hair the color of straw, with dark streaks in it, won with her longer legs. Karla stopped and pouted, sighing heavily and shaking herstrawberry-blonde mane. “Not fair,” she said. “You always win.”

  I caught the older girl's eye and mouthed "Be nice" at her.

  “I can’t reach the bowls,” Krystal said. “If I boost you up a little, can we do it together?”

  Once they’d grabbed the bowls and Karla had gone running back to her parents, Krystal looked at me and grinned. I gave her a nod and a thumbs-up. Last visit, we’d had a long and private talk about including her little sister more, letting her feel like she was good at things too.

  It’s hard to be six.

  “What did you bring Tabby? Tabby needs her treat too!” Karla insisted.

  My gloom couldn’t entirely stand in the face of my youngest sister’s open adoration and concern. I stood up. “I’m okay, thanks, though.”

  “I got her some rock candy,” my father said. “New kind. Here, kiddo, catch.”

  Automatically, I caught it, standing there staring dumbly at him. Did he have to? Really?

  “It’s pink,” the girls yelled. “Pink, pink, pink! Princess candy! Can we have some?”

  “No, sorry,” I said. Of course. I had to be the bad guy. “It’s for adults. Rock candy is… is hard to eat! You might choke on it, or start to laugh while eating it and bite it too hard. It can break your teeth. You have to be very careful with it.”

  “Not fair,” Krystal said. �
�She didn’t even ask for it. Why did you have to bring her something she couldn’t share?”

  Unexpectedly, Kandy rose to my defense as I stuffed the baggie out of sight into my pocket.

  “She’s your sister, but she’s also ten years older,” she said. “Let Tabitha have some things that are just for grown-ups. When you’re here, she plays princess games ten hours a day. Give her a freakin’ rest.”

  I smiled at my stepmother.