Beast

by Brie Spangler

  “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 entir
e 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.

  But it’s pretty cool when it’s your song. I smile and she laughs with me. “I like you,” I tell her.

  “I like you too,” she says. “You are a wonderfully horrible boy.”

  She brings the camera down and our noses slowly creep closer.

  The timer on her phone rings, splitting the air between us like a barb. The day I wished would last forever is done. I hobble and huff back to my chair. Jamie takes the handles and pushes me.

  I let her.

  THIRTEEN

  I’m skeptical about luck.

  Nothing dramatic, just real used to the fact that if I go to grab a lucky rabbit’s foot, the bunny will whip around and bite me. When I was a kid and things would go south, I’d ask my dad to please help me out. Please influence that kid to invite me to his birthday party, please give me all the right words before I try talking to that girl. Please let me know you can hear me.

  If anything remotely good happens, it’s my dad pulling a few sky strings from above, because luck and I are not on speaking terms.

  It doesn’t apply to school. As long as I do the work and study hard, my academic achievement is never touched by the chill finger of doom. It’s everything else that occasionally goes to shit. Whenever things start to go my way, I sit back and wait for a kick in the teeth.

  Oh, I just get an actual shirt that fits, like with buttons and everything? Just kidding. The armpit rips open as I reach for a jar on the high shelf. Maybe that one happy day when I found twenty bucks on the street? Oh man, I immediately started planning all the food I was going to buy with that thing. I’m talking double cheeseburgers, extra bacon, and several bags of Doritos to wash it down. All the stuff my mom hates me eating. But wait! Some ranting woman charged up and started hollering that I stole it from her. There’s no way that was true, since she was at least twenty paces behind me when I found it, but that lady threw such a fit, people actually came out of their coffee shops to gawk, so I just gave it to her. When you look like the opposite of innocence, no wide eyes or cherubic cheek in sight, you end up sighing and shrugging a lot.

  So when I asked Jamie if she wanted to meet up at Peninsula Park in the rose garden, I had my doubts things would continue being great. Just because.

  I flag a bus and take a long, slow trip there because she said she would come. Doesn’t matter how happy she sounded when I called; I’m still worried. Maybe this will be the day when she gives me the friendly pat on the head and says, “Stop dreaming.”

  But that’s it right there. I can’t stop dreaming.

  In my mind’s eye we spend the day leisurely drifting in and out of straight rows exploding with flowers that surround the wide, circular fountain. Drops of water sparkle in the sunlight. Roses burst from their bushes in all colors and sizes. Tiny little white ones woven in between big lusty red ones. Thousands and thousands of roses blooming as one. Her feet treading across the weathered brick path, my wheels pushing along beside her. Perhaps we’ll lean in to smell the same rose at the same time, and my lips will brush her cheek. The sun will beam down with golden rays of warmth, surging through our very beings and carrying us forward with the endless time of days.

  Oh my god, shut up.

  I dent the window of the bus with my head. Everything outside is bleak. Gray with dripping clouds. A small touch of hope thinks the sun will shine over the park, just for us, but an increasingly large feeling of dread rises up—it’s the perfect backdrop for Jamie to sign off and go her way.

  The bus slows to a stop. I’m right outside the park. There’s a sidewalk and a ramp on either side of the rose garden, so that’s nice. I’m even on time. Still, the dread
grows. I want to cancel. Maybe stay on the bus and keep going.

  Because what if Jamie is just humoring me?

  The bus kneels and I get off. My stomach straightens out. I’m the one who called her, I remind myself. I want to see Jamie because maybe this is the one day my shirt won’t burst apart. My nerves shake with each push to our meeting place by the little bandstand. I don’t see her. I raced to get here as soon as the bell rang and I’m still covered in school. All loaded up with my book bag and wearing my uniform. I pause to take off the tie. I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying too hard.

  When I get to the bandstand, Jamie’s not there. I check my phone for the time. I’m early and no messages from her. Maybe she’s somewhere else taking pictures. A massive meadow, brown and dusty from last summer’s relentless sun, lies surrounded by tall pine trees screaming up into the sky. She’s not taking pictures of the grass or the trees, so instead I look for what might be rusty or cracked and check to see if she’s crouched before it, working to find beauty in the forgotten and the grotesque.

  “Boo!” Jamie’s breath hits my ear like a shot.

  “You scared the crap out of me!” I jump and land with a big, dumb smile on my face.

  She hops in front of me with a little kick of her heel. “I wanted to surprise you.” Some of her hair got trapped in her lip gloss and she pulls it free. One tug with her finger and the tendril flies back and blends with the rest of her hair, which is long and smooth today. I think I smell perfume, but it could be the flowers.

  “That was the best surprise all week,” I say. “Want to see the roses?”

  “The roses? Uh…” Jamie makes a face. “I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”

  Here it comes.

  “Well, I mean, it was kind of inevitable, wasn’t it?” she says.

  “I know, I know.” Come on, let’s rip the Band-Aid off already.

  Jamie points toward the rose garden below the bandstand. “They’re dead. It happens.”

  “Wait, what’s dead?”

  “The roses? As in, there aren’t any to see today?” she says in concerned tones. “Are you okay? You look a little off.”

  I actually look at the rows of empty bushes. They’re all pruned. Some are wrapped in burlap. Dreams dashed. “What happened to the flowers?”