Beastly: Lindy's Diary Read Online Free PDF Page B

stuff, anything to shut me up. He sounded
    perfectly normal.
    Which made me feel sorrier for him.
    “When I used to live with my father,” Adrian said, still talking about the food, “he never wanted Magda to make Latin dishes. She just made regular stuff then, meat and potatoes. But when he left us here, I didn’t really much care what I ate, so she started making this stuff.” He meant his father. His father had left him. I said, “What do you mean he left you here? Where’s your father now?” He looked away, as if he knew
    he’d said too much, but he said he lived with Magda and Will, that Will was his tutor. I could tell he was trying to keep it very normal, trying not to upset me. It was all so abnormal, though. But then, what in my life wasn’t?
    “Tutor?” I asked, just to keep the conversation as normal as he wanted it.
    as he wanted it.
    “A teacher, really, I guess. Since I can’t go to school because . . . anyway, he homeschools me.” And I
    wondered. “How old are you?”
    “Sixteen. Same as you.”
    Sixteen. My father had said he was a teenager, but he was all alone. Of course, I was alone too. “Where
    are your parents?” I asked. He knew I was just as abandoned as he was.
    He didn’t say it, though. Instead, he said, “My mother left a long time ago. And my father . . . well, he couldn’t handle that I looked like this. He’s into normalcy.” My mind flooded with questions. Had he
    always looked this way? Was his father cruel to him? Did he treat him like a freak, like in The Phantom of the Opera? The house, all of it, was beautiful, but how could he live here, how could he grow up with no
    nurturing? Of course, my father didn’t exactly nurture me either, but at least I could try to live a normal life. Just thinking about him, trapped here, brought tears to my eyes. Now, it was I who looked away.
    “Do you miss him?” I asked, still not looking. “Your father?”
    He shook his head. “I try not to. I mean, you shouldn’t miss people who don’t miss you, right?” I nodded, and said something about my own father, so he’d know I understood, even though I couldn’t, not really,
    not the level of it. We were the same, motherless, fatherless, both freaks in our own way. We were the
    same. I was here because I was meant to be.
    Adrian was the one who changed the subject away from our mutual patheticness. He asked if I wanted
    Will to tutor me, too. I heard myself saying yes. I felt myself meaning it. I feel like, maybe, I was meant to be here, meant to help this poor guy.
    He told me they were reading Shakespeare’s sonnets.
    Then, he invited me to see his rose garden.
    “I’d like that.” I said I would meet him there tomorrow.
    And after a few more stupid statements on my part, a few more awkward ones on his, I started up to bed.
    It has begun.
    Only when I reached my room did I think to ask what else they were studying, what math, what social
    studies.
    Funny how Adrian had homed in on reading, on literature, as if he knew it was what I loved. Does he
    have Magda spying on me, to know I read all day? Crazy. I went back downstairs but stopped.
    As I approached the living room, I heard a voice, quietly whooping. Through the door, I could see
    someone, a boy my own age, more human than not, doing a wild victory dance around the room.
    I smiled. It could wait.
    July 25
    I woke at three, and at four, and then again at five. Each time, I thought I heard noises downstairs. Each time, I tried to go back to sleep. Finally, at six, I gave up and took out Shakespeare’s sonnets. I flipped to my favorite,
    “Sonnet 54.” I chose it in honor of the roses, and of the day.
    O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seemBy that sweet ornament which truth doth give!The rose
    looks fair, but fairer we it deemFor that sweet odour, which doth in it live.The canker blooms have full as deep a dyeAs the perfumed tincture of the roses,Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonlyWhen
    summer’s breath