Chapter 3: The Beast

Jennifer was a crappy English partner, anyone else might have said. She kept "forgetting" to read the material, and borrowed Colin's notes constantly. She did her lips in class, and generally made it very obvious that she didn't care about schoolwork, that she could slide by on her good looks alone.

A little too obvious, Colin thought. It was as if she were keeping up her reputation as the school bitch. Because Jennifer was smart. Not book-smart—though she could read and write better than he expected of her—but clever. She saw things that other people missed.

"What a bitch," Belladonna said once, as Jennifer breezed by the Dead Kids in the halls, giggling to Needy about something. Even though Bella and Colin had long since broken up, their shared group of friends made it impossible to avoid each other, which led to some awkward moments, and occasionally a twinge of pain on Colin's part. "Cackling like a witch from the Scottish Play, or something." Belladonna was obsessed with Macbeth, but refused to say the play's title. It was supposedly from fear of bad luck, but from a girl who once had slit her forearms and bled all over Colin's bathroom on a semi-regular basis, Colin found it more pretentious than anything.

"She's so shallow," concurred Riley, a guy who gave off the hardcore-goth-rocker vibe like the scent of the cologne he soaked himself in.

"She's not so bad, actually" said Colin, thoughtfully biting his bottom lip. "She's my partner in English."

"Oh, fuck, man! Shitty luck! A dumb frigid chick like that!" That was Riley.

"She doesn't do her share," Colin admitted. "But she's smarter than you'd think."

"Oooh, Gray-boy's in loooove!" Riley hooted. Riley was stupid (far stupider than Jennifer, Colin privately thought), and frankly an asshole.

Colin flushed angrily and rounded on him. "Fuck you, man!" But then he saw Belladonna's eyes on him, and stopped dead. Her expression was cold and unbelieving at his too-vehement response. He stammered, abashed, "She just—she can be cool sometimes, ya know?" Trying to shrug it off.

Belladonna snorted. "Yeah, sure. I can just picture her now, lying on her bed with the pink-priss sheets, leafing through Cosmogirl and putting on way too much lip gloss. Real cool."

There was derisive laughter from Riley. Colin thought he detected a hint of jealousy in Bella's voice. Had he ever really loved her, he wondered?

Fuck, he thought. I need better friends.

One day when Jennifer showed up to class, a CD slipped out of her backpack. He hastened to pick it up—knowing it was expected of him, as the lowly emo serf to the school queen bee—and happened to see the band's name. He raised his eyebrows in total shock.

"The Dwarves? Is this yours?"

"Yeah," she answered casually, plucking it from between his fingers and sliding it back in the side pocket of her bag. "I like to listen to them when I'm leafing through Cosmo and putting on too much lip gloss." Her tone was withering. She'd heard Belladonna.

"I'm sorry, it's just—I know them—I mean—" He was floundering in his surprise and shame.

"The Dwarves don't judge people on how they look," she said, parroting back his words about God with a trace of a smile on her lips. He blushed. Jennifer suddenly looked him straight in the eyes, ultra-serious: "Just because I don't dress like a corpse doesn't mean I can't listen to cool music."

The moment was heavy with meaning. She stared at him; he stared at her; and suddenly he understood that he'd been judging her, too. He looked at her with new eyes. What he saw was a clever, beautiful girl who was really almost a young woman.

That was the day he decided to ask her out. He knew he wasn't her only admirer: practically every boy in the school—and some of the girls too—looked at her with barely-concealed lust in their eyes. He'd seen some of the braver ones go up to her in the hallway and ask her to a movie, and she always turned them down. She'd turn him down, too, despite their closeness in class, and he knew it. What could a Venus like her want with an unpopular Dead Kid like him? She wouldn't want to be seen with him in the hall, bringing down her rep, much less be with him. Still, he felt he had to try. He felt like his destiny included her, somehow.

But just as he'd worked up his courage to the point of asking her, circumstances made it impossible.

Melody Lane, the town's only bar, burned down, killing 47 people. Among the dead were the foreign exchange student who had always been referred to as "Ahmet-from-India," one word, as if that was just his name; Craig Johnson, a star football player; six other kids from school; and the Spanish teacher. The hallways were still; no one spoke, no one laughed, no one chattered. There was only the sound of muffled sobs, and Colin knew that everyone's mind was filled, as his was, with the scent of burning flesh, the crackles of flame.

Needy and Jennifer had been there. He was glad they were both okay. When he tried to tell Jennifer this, however, she brushed him off. She seemed colder than usual, almost cruel. He put it down to denial, or shock, or something.

When he joined the group of Dead Kids in the hall, Riley was proclaiming loudly that he'd seen Jonas Kozelle, a burly jock who was the school's star linebacker, crying in Gym class over Craig's death. Jonas and Craig had been best friends. "Big, tough-guy Jonas was sobbing like a little baby! Ooh, you guys shoulda seen it!" The other Dead Kids listened in mute shock: this was a new low, even for Riley.

Colin nudged his friends aside to confront Riley. He swallowed his anger and tried the diplomatic tactic. "Hey, man, you know him and Craig were tight. Wouldn't you be upset? Have a little respect for the dead."

But Riley, far from being cowed, laughed. "Yeah, they were tight! Bet they were secretly gayboys, and Jonas already misses the good butt-fucking he used to get!" He laughed raucously, delighted with his own wit. No one joined in.

Colin glared at Riley with cold fury, having to restrain himself with every fiber of his being from giving him a good punch right in his laughing mouth, maybe knock a few teeth out. "Fuck, man," he said evenly, staring straight into Riley's eyes, "you're heartless." He shook his head and walked away through the sudden silence.

Behind him, he heard Riley recover himself and start mocking Colin. "Oh, little Christian Colin is all about respect for dead jocks! Maybe he's a gayboy too..." But then Colin was out of earshot, and glad of it.

The next day, however, even Riley was silenced. Jonas had been murdered after school, ripped apart in the woods. Mr. Wroblewski, the biology teacher, had followed his screams and found the body. Parts of Jonas were missing, eaten, and the papers said it hadn't been animals, but cannibalism. Colin felt like vomiting.

A month passed, with the school in a stupor of tragedy. They had a memorial assembly for the students who'd died in the fire, and one for Jonas. There was a candlelit vigil at the pile of ashes that had been Melody Lane. The band that had been playing there the night of the fire, Low Shoulder, had supposedly rescued numerous people from the flames, and were being honored by the town and the world in general as heroes. The one song they'd had a chance to play before the blaze, "Through the Trees," seemed to be everywhere, like it was the Devil's Kettle anthem. The melody echoed through the streets, played by dozens of radios; the school choir sang it at one of the assemblies; the words could be heard all the night of the vigil at the remains of Melody Lane; and the pastor even quoted it at Jonas' funeral.

Colin thought it was all a bit silly. The song couldn't help Jonas, or those poor souls who had died in the fire. The band was just using the town's tragedy to advance their fame. Needy confided in him during Creative Nonfiction: "They didn't save anyone, Colin! They spent the night ogling Jennifer! And that lead singer, Nikolai or whatever... he gave me the willies." She shuddered. "There was something... wrong... with him."

Colin nodded sympathetically. "What a bunch of creeps," he muttered. He tried to figure out what Needy had meant by something being "wrong" with Nikolai, but she didn't like talking about it, so he let it drop.

Jennifer remained... distant. Something was off about her, though Colin couldn't put his finger on it. She talked and laughed the same as ever, but more coldly, with even less regard for others than usual. No one else seemed to notice—though Colin was sure Needy did—but it was like Jennifer's act of being a bitch had become more than an act.

While the class was reading Lord of the Flies, and he was prepping her—as usual—for a quiz with reading he'd done and she hadn't, she suddenly said, "So, this Beast... is it like the Devil or whatever?"

He sighed and tried again. "The Beast is, like, an expression of the evil within humanity. Like Simon said: 'Maybe it's only—'"

"'—Maybe it's only us,'" she finished in annoyance. She narrowed her eyes at his look of surprise; she had been listening after all. "What I mean is, what if Simon's wrong? What if there's a real Beast, some, I dunno, dark presence over the island?"

Colin thought about it. It might be possible, he supposed. He glanced at Jennifer, and for a second he thought he saw fear in her eyes, like she was begging for help. But then it was gone; Jennifer was cool and confident as ever. He shrugged it off.