“I get it,” I muttered.
I turned on my heel and went back to my room without him. I didn’t really want to look at him right then.
He’d stuck me in the fucking basement and then dragged me upstairs to let someone stare at me like I was a piece of meat.
That’s just what my father did when he used to pimp me out. Lock me in my room for minutes or hours so I couldn't run away and hide somewhere else, so I couldn't escape, and then suddenly appear and drag me out to “meet” someone.
Fucker.
I didn’t really want to look at Beast that night, but I came out for dinner when I smelled it cooking.
Neither of us really said anything.
I went back to my tiny room and read my way through a Romance novel until my eyes crossed from exhaustion and I fell asleep on top of the covers.
I had the dream again that night.
It had been away for years, but it was the same dream.
I was walking down a long hallway. When I looked down at my feet, they were wearing small pink sneakers. I was the same size as the last time I’d had the dream.
I kept walking, because it was dark behind me and I could hear my father’s voice whispering horrible things, telling me what would happen if I stopped walking.
The end of the hallway came too quickly, and the door was open a crack.
I lifted my hand - small, white, no burn, no scar - and pushed the door open. There was nothing in there but the tweaker I’d met earlier that day, but he was grinning, and reaching for his belt.
I woke up screaming.
I quickly fell asleep again, and had a very different dream. Beast, stroking my hair, shushing me, tucking the quilt over me, telling me that I was his Beauty and everything would be okay.
After the second dream, I finally slept.
The next morning, I was exhausted and jumpy, but whenever I got to shaking too hard, I would take a deep breath and remember the peace of the second dream, of someone caring about me and comforting me.
Even if it was just a dream, I’d take it.
I fixed muffins for breakfast, moving quietly because Beast’s door was still shut. When they came out of the oven, I left them with a kitchen towel over them to keep them warm, and took two back to my room, to eat while studying
I heard Beast get up a little while later, but I didn’t say anything or leave the room.
By the time dinner rolled around, I had made one hundred and fifty Biology flashcards.
I couldn’t bring myself to keep flipping through them.
Too tedious.
I was pretty sure I was going to ace my next test, though. That was something.
Beast knocked on my door around five.
“Tabitha?” he called. “Would you like to go out to dinner?”
I smoothed my hair down absentmindedly, and opened the door.
“Okay,” I said.
We didn't go to Mexican again, we got Indian food for the first time in my life. I wasn't quite sure about it and wouldn't try the lamb he got, but my plain chicken curry was actually pretty delicious. Beast said that when I felt up to more experimentation, we'd go to a buffet and I could try everything.
I figured it would be a long time before I wanted to try that much Indian food.
We didn't talk as easily as the first dinner out we had. I was hurt and angry, and had a hard time thinking of things to say to him that weren't rude or snippy. He looked guilty and sad.
He should be embarrassed, I thought. The people he was hanging around looked like bad news.
He cleared his throat.
“Tabitha?” he asked. “I have a quick, uh. I have something we need to talk about.”
“Yeah?”
“It's not fair to send you to the basement every time, but you'll be out of class for a while, and you said you were going to be mostly taking online classes next semester... I've gotta have these people over.”
“Yeah?”
“And I want you out of there when I do. It's not safe for you. These are not people I want to meet you. I'll be fine alone, but... you being there would... well, it would complicate things.”
“Right.”
“So, I need you to go to the basement or take a walk or a drive, okay?” he asked. “I'll try to make sure you can just take a drive most of the time, but I really don't want you meeting them on the driveway, so if I don't get enough notice, I'll need to ask you to go into the basement or the garage. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
He looked miserable, drawn face, hand crumpling his napkin.
“It's okay,” I said.
It was. It was nothing more than I expected, really.
For a little while, I thought that maybe Beast wasn't like my father, that he really, truly cared about me and would protect me from everything. Just because that wasn't right didn't mean that he was bad to live with. Just that I had to stay careful.
“Nothing's changed,” I said. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something else, to have an opinion or something.
“We both know that that's not true,” he said with a sigh. “I wish it were, though. Thanks.”
I kept my mouth shut and pushed the last bite of chicken around my plate.
It was pretty good, really.
I finally saw Krystal and Karla without my father in the middle of October. I'd seen them for a few quick lunches with Kandy and my father that Beast dropped me off for, but it was months until I got to see them alone. They were excited for Halloween. I couldn't tell them whether or not I'd be there to take them trick-or-treating, and I hated the disappointment on their faces.
I should have realized that that would be another way that my father would have punished me.
If Kandy weren't weakening about getting back together with him, I probably wouldn't have gotten any real time with them until the summer, but he told me to go to his place and watch them for an evening while he and Kandy went on a date.
A date.
Right.
Probably just back to her place to shoot up or fuck without the kids.
When their parents had cleared out, which took about ninety seconds, I expected the girls to leap on me and hug me, but they just walked away.
“Can we watch the princess show?” Karla asked.
“Don't you want to just visit for a little bit?” I asked. “We could bake cookies or something. With pink sprinkles.”
“Okay,” Krystal said. “Sure.”
She sounded about as cheerful and convincing as I did when I told Beast that everything was the same between us.
I sat on the couch.
Karla scuffed her sneaker on the carpet and looked away from me.
Krystal tossed her hair back and glared.
“It looks like you guys are mad at me,” I said. “What's up? What did I do?”
“You don't want to spend the weekend with us any more,” Karla said. “That's not fair. You said you'd always play with us and take care of us, and you-”
“You vanished,” the older girl said. “Poof.”
She sat on the other edge of the couch, still avoiding my eyes, as far away from me as she could get.
“I didn't,” I protested. “Guys, I didn't. I'm just in school a lot.”
“You're with your boyfriend,” Karla said. “Momma says that that's good, you're finally acting like a real girl, and we should have known you wouldn't always be there. She says if you've got a man to take care of you, he won't want to hang around someone else's kids. She said she'd been expecting it for years and didn't want us to be too disappointed.”
“Karla, no!” I protested. “I don't have a boyfriend, and even if I did, I wouldn't date anyone who didn't want to spend time with you guys.”
“Why isn't he here, then?” Krystal challenged.
“He doesn't get along with Dad,” I said. “You know that Kandy is mad at Dad sometimes, too, and doesn't want to be around him. That doesn't mean
that anybody doesn't want to see you.”
“You don't,” Karla said.
Her chin was starting to wobble.
“Honey,” I said. “I love you so much. Both of you. I always want to be with you. It makes me so sad that I haven't seen you guys. I promise.”
“Why don't you come over on the weekends any more, then?” she asked. “Dad and Karla say you are too busy to come see us and only want to do lunches now because that's fast.”
“I didn't know you were coming over any weekends,” I said, helplessly.
“Right. Because you don't care any more,” Krystal said.
“No, because – It's complicated,” I said.
It was clear that neither girl believed me. It wasn't complicated at all to them. They weren't the ones who had changed anything, and their parents still acted the same.
I was the only one who had changed.
How could I tell them that I was a coward, that I'd given up time with them to protect myself?
It woudn't be fair to them if I did.
They didn't need to know that the Dad that they adored was the same Dad who made my life a misery.
I had to be the adult.
“I tell you what,” I said. “I'll try to come out here more, okay? For now, let's bake some cookies. I know it won't fix everything, and you can still be mad at me, but it sounds a lot nicer to be mad and have cookies than to be mad and have no cookies, right?”
Karla grinned and even Krystal nodded, slowly.
“Okay,” she said. “But I want to stir.”
An hour later, they'd forgotten to be stiff and angry with me, and were both sitting in my lap on the couch, a plate of cookies next to us while we watched one of their dozens of interchangeable princess movies.
I heard the low roar of my father's truck pulling into the drive, and had to work hard not to jerk away and upset the girls.
They couldn't think I didn't want to hug them, or I'd undo everything I'd managed to start mending with the cookies, and it would be harder than ever to get them to trust me again.
“Sounds like Kandy and Dad are back,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual.
“Aw, man,” Krystal said, “Mom will make us throw the cookies away so we don't get fat.”
Where they couldn't see, my lips pressed into a thin line. Kandy was terrible about telling the girls all about being fat, how not to get fat, how disgusting it was to be fat, how they should never, ever, ever be fat... It would be a freakin' miracle if both girls got through puberty without hating themselves.
“Are you ready to go, or do you need to get anything else together?” I asked.
Karla shook her head and burrowed more tightly into me, giving me a hug that left me covered in sprinkles and feeling like I could walk on the moon.
Krystal leaned her head into my shoulder for a minute and then pulled away, looking embarrassed.
When the door opened, Kandy almost fell through it.
The girls ran to her, yelling “Mommy, mommy!” and hugging her around the legs.
They almost knocked her down. I tried to keep my face blank. It wouldn't help anything if Kandy saw how little I thought of her being around the girls when she was even a little fucked up.
“Hey, Kandy,” I said, trying to smile.
“Tabitha, you're still here,” she said.
Where else would I be? Not like I would leave the girls alone, even though she said that they were old enough to watch themselves for a few minutes.
“It's nice to see you,” I said as my father followed her into the house, looking too smug for words. “I've been missing weekends with you and the girls, can you text me next time?”
To my surprise, Kandy actually looked pleased.
“Yeah, I can do that,” she said, bending to give each girl a lipstick-staining kiss on the cheek. “You're not totally wrapped up in that boyfriend, then? Remembered you had a family?”
Even if she was being a little nasty – she admitted that the girls were my family.
A real smile spread across my face.
“Yeah, I'm finally done with classes. Took too many this semester, I won't do that again. I'll make sure I have the time for the girls,” I said.
“Hey, college is important,” my father said, with a big fake smile. “You might be that busy again. Who knows? Besides, you're becoming a woman, you need time with yourself and your poor boyfriend.”
“Yeah, isn't he a cripple?” Kandy asked.
“He's – he's not,” I said. No point in denying that he was my boyfriend. “He's not a cripple. He just has some scars.”
I knelt and looked at the girls.
“My friend Beast has some big scars on his face, and they might be a little scary,” I said. “He's also really, really tall. He's really, really nice, though, okay? You don't have to be scared of him.”
They both nodded.
I looked back at the adults.
“See? Shouldn't be a big deal,” I said. “Maybe I'll bring him in a few weeks.”
“Sure,” Kandy said, her eyes lighting up. “Tell him to bring his pretty pink stuff, okay?”
“Um, sure,” I said.
When he picked me up, our ride back was silent. I had too much to think about.
His pretty pink stuff.
The secret basement.
The strange people, people he said weren't safe.
Beast was still cooking meth. Right below me. Any night, something could go wrong, and I'd be blown up with the rest of the house.
Fuck.
I wasn't sure what was worse – being afraid of a lab explosion, or that I still was less afraid to go to sleep in Beast's house than my father's.
I still had the nightmares. Strange people, long hallways, dark whispers.
Almost every night, they fucked with my head and kept me from sleeping until almost dawn. I didn't have the good dreams any more, the ones where Beast saved me or comforted me.
Those stopped almost as quickly as they started.
Sometimes, though, in the middle of the night, I thought I'd hear Beast's voice again, deep and smooth. “Tabitha, will you testify against your father?”
The year settled into fall, leaves golden and red outside the cabin.
More and more tweakers showed up at Beast's door.
After a while, Beast gave up on sending me to the basement. I'd sit in my bedroom with the curtain drawn and a towel over the crack in the door, listening to voices – arguing, excited, angry. Loud bursts of laughter. Everyone full of energy.
It was like being a little kid again.
Beast told me about the meth, but said that he wasn't cooking any more, only dealing, and it wouldn't be for much longer. He said that he had to do it, but he couldn't tell me why. The basement was where it was stored. He swore up and down he wasn't cooking it again, he'd never cook it again.
I'd given up asking questions.
I didn't want the answers.
I just tried to do as much of my classwork as possible and keep the house clean while spending as little time with Beast as I could get away with.
Our dinners were short and silent. We ate breakfast and lunch at different times. I'd stopped accepting when he asked me to come play video games with him, or take a drive.
I was shocked at just how badly that I found myself missing him.
I found myself thinking of his broad shoulders as I did the dishes, and missing his bright smile and the way it lit up his entire face and made me feel like I was in the sun's glow as I swept the floors.
He was one room away, and yet it felt as though we were a thousand miles apart.
It was maddening and ridiculous to be so close to him and yet so far away, so impossibly distant.
There were times I had almost built back up the nerve to join him on the couch and ask to borrow the xbox so I could play Skyrim again, but then some hopped-up junkie would knock on the door and I'd go back to square one.
I saw the girls, at least. Kandy texted m
e every time they were going to go see my father, and Beast never once complained about dropping everything to drive me over, even if the car was full of our silence.
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