Beastly

I could feel everyone looking at me, and I was used to it. My dad, the news anchor Rob Kingsbury, taught me early that when you're special, you act like nothing moves you. I was Kyle Kingsbury - rich, handsome, and the undisputed prince of Tuttle School. So when a Goth girl with green hair and a chip on her shoulder named Kendra stood up in English class to call our spring dance ballot an “elitist travesty,” I put her in her place. “If someone's so smart,” I told her, making sure everyone could hear, “they'd figure out how to get better-looking.” Her eyes, a strange, boiling green, locked on mine. “You are ugly now, on the inside, where it matters most,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a curse. “Kyle Kingsbury, you are beastly.”

To teach her a lesson, I asked her to the dance, a cruel joke I orchestrated with my real date, Sloane Hagen. I pictured Kendra showing up alone, humiliated, and it felt like justice. But at the dance, when I cornered her and delivered the punchline, she didn't cry. She just looked at me with those knowing, ancient eyes. “You'll see,” she promised, and vanished. Later that night, I found her sitting on my bed, no longer the frumpy girl from school but a radiant, terrifyingly beautiful woman. As the clock struck midnight, she held up a mirror. “I have transformed you to your truer self,” she said, and in the reflection, I saw it. I was no longer Kyle. I was an animal, a monster covered in fur, with fangs and claws. I was a beast.

The life I knew shattered. My father, horrified and ashamed, tried to fix me with doctors and specialists, but no science could touch this magic. When he finally understood I was incurable, he locked me away in a five-story brownstone in Brooklyn, a gilded cage where no one would ever have to see his monstrous son. He left me there with only Magda, the quiet housekeeper, and a new tutor he'd hired - a blind man named Will Fratalli who couldn't see the freak I'd become. The witch had left me one sliver of hope: two years to find someone who could love me despite my appearance, sealed with a kiss of true love. But trapped in that house, my only connection to the world was a magic mirror she'd given me, which showed me my old friends moving on without a second thought. I gave up on Kyle. I was Adrian now, the dark one.

My world became the four walls of my prison and the greenhouse I built in the backyard. The roses became my life; their fragile beauty was the only thing I had left. Then one night, a man broke in, a junkie trying to steal from me. I caught him, and in his terror, he offered me the one thing I couldn't refuse: his daughter. He would trade her for his freedom. I knew it was wrong, but it was my only chance. Her name was Lindy, and when I saw her face in the mirror, I recognized her. She was the quiet, mousy girl from the dance, the one I'd given a cast-off white rose to - the one small act of kindness the witch said had earned me my second chance.

When Lindy arrived, she saw only a monster and a jailer. She locked herself in the beautiful suite I had prepared for her, refusing to speak to me, hating me for tearing her away from a life that, however broken, was her own. Days turned into weeks. I left her alone, respecting her prison within my prison, until one night she crept downstairs. In the dim light of the television, she saw me for the first time, and though she was terrified, she didn't run. We began to talk, first about books and then about our lives, two lonely people abandoned by fathers who could never truly see us. Slowly, the walls between us began to crumble.

I took her away from the city to a secluded house in the mountains, where we could walk outside under the winter sky without anyone staring. We built snowmen and raced down hills on an old sled, and for the first time since the curse, I felt the warmth of another person as I held her in my arms. I was falling in love with her, with her quiet strength and her fierce intelligence. But she missed her father, and seeing him sick and alone in the magic mirror, I knew I couldn't keep her. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done, but I let her go, promising she was free to return in the spring, if she chose.

Months passed in silence. The snow melted, and the deadline for the curse - two years to the day - loomed. I returned to Brooklyn, my heart a hollow space, tending my roses and accepting that I would be a beast forever. On the final night, with only an hour to spare, I heard her voice cry out my name - not from the street, but from inside the mirror. She was in trouble. Forgetting everything else, I ran, bursting from my prison and into the city, a monster loose in the subway, a creature of nightmare exposed to the world.

I found her in a derelict building, cornered by a man with a gun. I fought for her, not as a boy, but as the beast I was, and took a bullet meant for him. As I lay bleeding on the floor, the world fading to black, Lindy rushed to my side. I told her I loved her, and with tears streaming down her face, she told me she loved me too. She had come back for me. It was midnight. It was too late. But she leaned down and kissed my lipless mouth, and in that moment, the world exploded into the scent of roses.

When I opened my eyes, her face was inches from mine, filled with confusion. “Kyle Kingsbury?” she whispered. “But…where's Adrian?” I took her hand - my hand, smooth and human once more - and told her that the beast she had loved was me. The curse was broken. The witch, Kendra, revealed herself one last time - she had been Magda all along, watching over me. And though my face was my own again, I was not the boy I had been. Standing on the roof at sunrise, with Lindy's hand in mine, I knew that whatever magic had made me a beast, a greater magic had made me human.