“You know, the play,” I prompted.
It took her a while to comprehend that I was talking about The Curious Savage, and understanding finally lit Chel’s eyes.
“No, but that would’ve been totally awesome! Now, don’t distract me. I’m on a mission.”
“That’s trouble.” I spun my combination and opened my locker.
Chel just smiled. “So what’s this about a hottie getting into your Shaggin’ Wagon?”
“Shh!” I slammed the locker, forgetting why I’d opened it in the first place. “You know I hate that name.”
“So who is it? Brent Skylar. William Straggon.”
I just stared at her as she continued to rattle off names. I couldn’t breathe. Someone saw us last night. Did they hear us, too? I prayed our conversation was at least kept private. I couldn’t let people find out the truth. They’d lock me up and probably dissect us both.
“How…how…” I couldn’t quite spit out my questions as I recovered from the shock.
“Stacy told Amy who told me that Danny saw you two talking. Come on. Spill the juicy details!” Chel bounced with excitement.
Did Kyle send Danny to spy on me? My silence sent her wild with questions.
“He’s totally gorgeous, isn’t he? Name, Tay. I need a name! How long have you been secretly meeting this guy? Wait, you haven’t been hiding him because he’s older?”
My tongue felt swollen. What was I going to tell her? He’s a werewolf who’s not so hot in the light and is now stuck to me like an annoying shadow? I didn’t answer, and she took it as a yes.
“Tay, college guys are totally delicious! Or are you just afraid Kyle will find out?”
“No,” I scoffed at the mention of Kyle.
“I knew it. You do have a secret love!” She squealed in delight.
I should have stayed quiet. “Shut up,” I hissed. “People are starting to look. Besides you’re totally blowing this out of proportion.”
“But he’s hot, right?” she whispered.
“Maybe at one time he was, but his face is a little deformed, and he needs some serious plastic surgery and waxing,” I said, herding my friend outside. The image of those muscles flexing without nasty hair covering them made my face flush.
“You’re blushing! Details,” she squealed.
Forget the flu, I could have chickenpox and Kyle would still hunt me down. This bit of gossip was just too tantalizing for him to let slide.
“You must’ve seen something you liked.” Chel wasn’t going to let it go.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, he’s totally ripped, like he lifts weights all day.”
She sighed and a dreamy look smoldered in her eyes. “I think I could overlook his face if that kind of a body was distracting me.” Chel’s voice turned sultry.
“But we’re not dating.”
“Sure,” she said with disbelief.
I pulled her across the street before anyone could see her drool. Reaching the safety of the park, I finally let her go, only to feel a pinch in my abdomen. This day just kept getting better. Beast was still hiding in the hedge lining the school. Kyle could trap me, and I wouldn’t be able to run until the students cleared out. Ug! I scanned the school lawn for him, watching the quickly thinning crowd. Had I missed him?
I picked my nails. Was he in the park waiting to jump out at me? I looked for movement among the trees. Chel’s knowing blue eyes turned on me.
“Avoiding Kyle?” She turned her eyes on the school behind me.
“You think!”
“Then you’d better hide, because he’s coming.”
I whipped around. Sure enough, I spied Kyle scanning the crowded front lawn of the school. He looked like a hunter tracking a scared animal—me.
“Crap, crap, crap!” I vented as we ran behind a clump of pine trees.
“You and that stupid word. Broaden your vocab will you,” Chel snapped, irritated by the overuse of my favorite word.
I glared at her. “I’m not worried about being poetic right now.”
“Forget Kyle! Who’s this guy?” she whispered, finished with my careful dance around the topic.
I peeked out from around the tree trunk to scan the thinning crowd. “It’s not what you think.”
“No?” Chel put her hands on her hips.
“I’ve never met him before in my life. Believe me, I was scared!” My voice trembled slightly as I relived that first meeting in my head.
“Then why’d you let him in your van?”
“Shh! Do you want Kyle to find me?” I whispered, pulling her closer to the tree. I took a deep calming breath. “I know it sounds crazy, but I felt obligated to give him a ride.”
A car honked, and I whipped around in time to see Kyle slap a car’s hood while shouting at the driver. The commotion riveted everyone’s attention to them, and Beast took that moment to streak across the street.
Within moments, the soft tickle of breath on my hand alerted me to Beast’s presence behind me in the shadows of the trees.
“I swear one day Kyle is going to piss off the wrong person.” Chel snorted. “But seriously, Tay, obligated to a complete stranger?” Chel’s voice dripped with disbelief. She wasn’t going to let this go.
“Yeah.” My mind stumbled for a plausible explanation. “He gave me his dog.” A sharp gust of warm air hit the palm of my hand, causing me to amend my statement. “Well, wolf.”
Chel’s eyebrows spiked. “I mean it looks more like a wolf than a dog. Anyway, I figured I could give him a ride, since I was adopting his dog,” I finished lamely, pleasing no one in the process.
“He gave you a dog?” Her eyebrow rose, incredulously.
A low growl brought Chel’s eyes to my side where a canine nose stuck out of the low-lying branches behind me.
“That dog?” she squealed.
I tugged my hair in frustration. Why couldn’t he have stayed hidden? Now, there was no preventing them from meeting. Reluctantly, I stepped aside exposing Beast to Chel’s excited eyes.
“Meet Beast.”
“He’s beautiful,” she said with awe.
I smiled. She came up with the same word I’d used to describe him. Suddenly, I was proud of the wolf’s beauty.
“Look how huge he is! He has to be part malamute. Here, doggy.” She crouched down ready to scratch his ears and enfold him in a bear hug. But the wolf was quicker and dodged to my other side, nipping and tugging on my jacket sleeve.
“Sorry, got to go. I’ll call you later,” I said as I sprinted to the van with Beast by my side.
CHAPTER 17—Claws on Steel
Parking in front of my house, I rolled a window down for Beast to stick his head out. Now that I had the dog adoption story to cover my tracks, I didn’t have to hide him quite as much. His stocky tail wagged from the passenger seat, slapping rhythmically on my thigh. I struggled to block my leg from the torrent of stinging thwaps.
What was I going to do about this bond? About Beast? I rubbed my left temple and opened my phone. It lit up with missed alerts. Quickly, I punched in my code and listened. The first message was from last night. Chel’s worried voice chirped in my ear. By the third message, my frazzled nerves couldn’t handle her multiple apologies about Kyle, and I started deleting them as soon as I heard her voice. It was Grandma’s message I wanted to hear.
“Darling TayTay. I’m headed out, Need to paint before those pesky tourists scare off my wolves. Anyway, thanks for watching the house. Money’s on the kitchen table, in the normal spot. Sorry about the short notice, but Lily won't mind. I’ll give her a call, though. Love ya! Oh, and don’t forget to feed Froggy his flies. See you in a week.”
I smiled as I deleted Grandma’s eccentrically impulsive message. She danced to her own rhythm, drawing people to her like bugs to a bright light. And how many sixty-year-old grandmas had a pet frog she caught herself while bog hopping in Louisiana? I could only think of one: Grandma Jonas.
House sitting was the perfect excuse to hi
de Beast from my family until I could figure all this out. It at least gave me a few days. Grabbing Beast’s clothes and my overnight bag already stuffed with the essentials, I left a note for Aunt Lily on the kitchen table and hopped in the van where the wolf waited for me. Normally, I wouldn’t spend the night at Grandma’s if Aunt Lily’s emotions were rocky, but looking at the huge wolf in the back, I knew I didn't have much choice.
The wolf’s grating claws screeched through the van. I winced.
“Stop it! We’re almost there,” I snapped, and he growled, only to do it again. Through my peripheral vision, I could see the destruction he was wreaking on my van. My eyes twitched in irritation at the agitated thud-thud of Beast’s paws on the thin carpet. Every few paces around the van, he unleashed his claws on the metal walls of my van. I groaned. It was in bad enough shape without chunks of metal ripped out.
Eagerly, I turned down Grandma’s street, relieved to see her sunny yellow house standing like a beacon in the stormy gray neighborhood. It wasn’t a rough neighborhood like the ones I avoided in Charleston, but the washed-out, gloom-colored buildings were dull in comparison to Grandma’s house. Pulling into the driveway, I felt transported to the Swiss Alps. The lacy, white trim against the canary yellow reminded me of a gingerbread house. The house in all of its oddity felt safe and peaceful, like you could have a perfect life there. If only it was that easy.
Another hair-raising screech of claws on metal was a stark reminder of my current reality. Looping my arm through my bags, I jumped out of the van intent on getting Beast out of my van before he gouged a hole straight through it.
I barely managed to click the back door open when Beast barreled out, toppling me over. I hit the ground with an oomph. Irritated, I collected my bags and brushed off the rocks stuck to my pants. I glared at the wolf running the perimeter of the lawn.
He dove at the grass, twisting and rolling on it, his claws throwing dirt clods every which-way, as if relishing the natural world under him. I couldn’t hold a smile from spreading across my face, and for a moment, I forgot the claw marks he’d left on the inside walls of my van. Watching him play on the lawn was mesmerizing. He looked like a frolicking puppy, instead of the snarling werewolf that he was.
After a minute or two, I realized I probably wasn’t the only one watching his little antics. The thought pushed me into action. I didn’t need the neighbors calling animal control on my “unruly pet.” I doubted Beast would go willingly, and I cringed to imagine what would happen if they tried.
“Beast, come on.” I hollered over my shoulder as I shoved my key into the lock and pushed open the front door.
The massive wolf bounded quickly across the yard, and his soft pelt brushed against me on his way into Grandma’s house. I hoped he’d gotten out his destructive bout, because there was no way I’d let him destroy any of Grandma’s art.
Her paintings were always in demand, so much so that she struggled to fill all the orders, and her house was bursting with canvases. Just inside the entry, I kept my eyes purposely on the hardwood floor as I dumped my heavy bags. The quick scrambling of claws seeking purchase on the slick surface sent my head up just in time to see Beast slide into the wall. Bouncing lithely from his crash, he stood panting in the hallway, oblivious to the severity of his accident. The large portrait, the one I’d always tried hard to avoid, swayed dangerously from the shockwave of his crash. Lunging, I barely caught the picture before it wiggled off its nail and smashed to the unforgiving floor.
My hands trembled as I steadied the gilded frame. Why couldn’t Beast have attacked any other picture, but this one? If it had fallen, I wouldn’t have cared, but Grandma’s heart would have shattered with it. I finally lifted my gaze to assess the last picture she’d painted of her daughter—my mother—Rose.
Although Grandma recounted funny stories of my mother all the time, I knew a part of her heart died the day she’d disappeared. I was only a baby when it happened. My chest tightened as I gazed unwillingly at the portrait of Rose at seventeen. A smile lit her face, and her chocolate brown eyes shone with joy. Slender hands held a paintbrush to a large canvas, poised to brush a masterpiece to life. A pang of loneliness crept through my heart, and I gritted my teeth in anger. Nowhere in the painting was there room for me—there never had been—and I hated the portrait more for it. I didn’t need another reminder that a few years after this was painted my mother would birth me, only to abandon me a week later.
I didn’t buy Grandma’s theory that an old boyfriend kidnapped her. The police found nothing to support that, and Rose even wrote a letter saying the responsibility of raising a child was too restricting.
I was too restricting.
Hate flickered in my heart and moisture clouded my vision, but I clenched my jaw, refusing to shed a single tear for her. Too many nights I’d dug a small replica of this picture from my underwear drawer, each time bringing more questions to the surface. Why did she leave? Did I cry too much as a baby? I know my birth was a mistake, but why didn’t she put me up for adoption at birth? It would have been less painful than abandonment. Was she happy now without me? Was she still alive?
In the painting, my mother’s face seemed to morph into a sorrowful expression, her eyes downcast as if I had broken her heart.
“You left, not me.” I’d told the large picture hanging on the wall, in a quiet, resolute voice. “Why should I care about you?” But no matter how I denied it, I would always care, and my heart would always ache when I saw a copy of this painting.
Other than the curly coffee-brown hair floating down her back and her fair skin, I doubted we had anything else in common. My bright emerald eyes looked nothing like her chocolate ones. Where she was curvy and petite, I was straight and large boned. Not to mention she was artistically talented like Grandma, a skill I obviously didn’t inherit.
Uncle Stan once told me Grandma favored Rose over Lily. He didn’t think Grandma meant to do it, but Rose and Grandma shared the same passions, like an undeniable gravitational pull, something Lily never could compete with.
Passing Grandma’s open studio door, I stopped midway down the hall to peek inside. Her newest project was draped in a white sheet, beckoning to me.
Entering the room, I was wrapped in the scent of paint and Grandma’s rose-lavender perfume. Warmth spread through my body. It felt like stepping back into the security of childhood, where I didn’t have to worry about the people I loved. My body relaxed, and I was swept away from the problems of the day. I was a child again on my grandma’s knee with my small hand in hers as she directed my clumsy brush strokes.
I chuckled softly at the memory. No matter how atrocious my watercolor paintings had been, Grandma always praised their beauty and promptly hung them on her fridge.
Sitting on a stool with a comfortable back, I closed my eyes and breathed in the calming scent of brush lacquer and gouache for several minutes. I might have stayed that way all night if Beast hadn’t nuzzled my arm, forcing me back to reality.
I took one last deep breath before opening my eyes and smiling down at the wolf by my side. “Let’s see what Grandma’s been working on.”
I ripped off the white sheet covering her working canvas and gasped.
The eyes.
My mouth popped open and the sheet fluttered to the floor—forgotten. Silvery-blue eyes stared back at me from the canvas, captured perfectly. I sucked in a breath and turned to Beast.
“It’s you!” I whispered in shock. Beast’s ear flicked as if this wasn’t a big deal. Grandma had seen him. But when?
I gazed at the painting. The eyes were the only feature completely finished on the painting. I could still make out the lightly penciled outline of Beast’s broad shoulders and huge frame dwarfing the surrounding hunter-green bushes. The way she painted Beast against a mysteriously scary background glued my eyes to the canvas.
My fingertip traced his eyes and the flow of Grandma’s paint strokes. My heart ached. He looked so majestic that it stol
e my breath. So much beauty. It was hard to look upon it and not feel pain, the pain of everything that wasn’t majestic in my life: the pain of losing my mother, Uncle Stan, and my aunt to depression. This painting depicted it all, and it wasn’t even finished yet.
A tear slid down my cheek, and I couldn’t bear looking at it anymore. I cleared my throat and re-covered the canvas, hiding it from my watery eyes.
I moved toward the door and away from the tumultuous emotions swirling in the room. “Hungry?”
It was a stupid question. I could feel how hungry he was, but I needed to say something to pop the suffocating emotional bubble the painting formed around my heart. My feet carried me down the hallway, decorated with wolf paintings and werewolf lore, to the kitchen. There on the dark wooden table were three twenty-dollar bills and a buzzing jar of flies. Usually the money went to pizza and movie rentals but with Beast to feed, I had a feeling it wouldn’t go as far as usual.
Eyeing the flies, I decided I’d do that disgusting chore after I ate. Instead, I opened the fridge and took in the nearly bare shelves. Pickles and cheese wouldn’t feed us both. Luckily, Grandma had some frozen hamburger that would work for Beast and spaghetti noodles for me.
The wolf lounged on the kitchen rug as I defrosted the meat and prepared the other ingredients. His intense eyes followed my movements. With the pasta boiling, I pulled the raw meat out of the microwave and plopped it into the skillet, careful not to touch it. I tried not to breathe in the smell, but the hunger plaguing my stomach was overpowering. I looked at the raw meat with longing and suddenly felt my fingers curl around the bloody flesh and bring it toward my salivating mouth. I fought the urge with all my willpower. The metallic smell of blood stopped my hand only seconds before touching my open lips.
Gagging, I threw the meat back in the pan and scrubbed off the poor animal’s blood until my hands were raw. When I was sure I wasn’t going to hurl, I marched back to the meat and flipped off the burner. I dumped the contents onto a large baking sheet and kicked it toward Beast, pinching my nose. He lapped it up so fast I was sure he didn’t chew it before swallowing. Watching him eat the bloody heap made me queasy again, so I turned away, even though the hunger pangs dropped considerably. Cooked meat was bad enough, but raw? I could just imagine an arm or leg within the mass. Yuck…
Curse of the Beast Page 13